From western TESOL classrooms to home practice a case study with two ‘privileged’ saudi teachers (2)

This article was downloaded by: [Monash University Library] On: 21 August 2014, At: 12:48 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Critical Studies in Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcse20 From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: a case study with two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers a b Osman Z Barnawi & Phan Le Ha a Royal Commission Colleges and Institutes, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia b Department of Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA Published online: 21 Aug 2014 To cite this article: Osman Z Barnawi & Phan Le Ha (2014): From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: a case study with two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers, Critical Studies in Education, DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2014.951949 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2014.951949 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions Critical Studies in Education, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2014.951949 From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: a case study with two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers Osman Z Barnawia and Phan Le Hab* Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 a Royal Commission Colleges and Institutes, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia; bDepartment of Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA (Received April 2014; accepted August 2014) This article is located in the debates concerning the continued problems underlying the cultural politics of English-speaking Western countries’ Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) programmes and ‘Western’ pedagogies It examines two Saudi TESOL teachers’ pedagogical enactments in their home teaching contexts after returning from their Western-based TESOL programmes It aims to obtain insights into questions of knowledge construction, pedagogy and training in Western TESOL programmes and their impacts on these teachers’ teaching in Saudi settings We argue that these teachers have never been passive in the entire process nor have they been naïve about the cultural politics of TESOL They have appeared to proactively take advantage of being trained in the West to teach effectively and to appropriate their given privileged status in the home contexts They have also appeared to so with awareness and with a strong sense of agency This very aspect of agency, as we argue, deserves substantial scholarly attention in future research We also argue that to move beyond the mindset that positions periphery teachers at the receiving end of Western TESOL training and as the recipient of Western TESOL pedagogical experiments, it is no longer valid to assume the enlightening and educating role of such training Keywords: English; pedagogy; TESOL; Western-trained; Saudi Arabia; periphery contexts Introduction The growing global demand for competent English language users as well as the increasing global demand for English-medium courses has turned the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) enterprise into ‘a successful global industry’ (Walker, 2001, p 187) At the same time, the commercialization, the cultural politics and geopolitics underlying the worldwide spread of English and the TESOL industry has been well discussed (Chowdhury & Phan, 2014; Kubota & Lin, 2009; Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992; Widin, 2010) These discussions question the ethics and effectiveness of Western TESOL degrees and training These discussions also demonstrate how TESOL as a commercial cultural product and how colonial discourses including racial discrimination and the sustained Self-Other dichotomy continue to embed and inform the pedagogy and practice of English language teaching around the globe, which has been actively created and shaped by both the Self and the Other At a more specific level, the debates surrounding post-method pedagogy (which will be defined in a later section of this article) in the post-Enlightenment period in the TESOL sphere play an important role in understanding teachers’ everyday classroom practice *Corresponding author Email: halephan@hawaii.edu © 2014 Taylor & Francis Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 O.Z Barnawi and P Le Ha While the construct of method has been problematized in the literature (e.g., Pennycook, 1989), to date few studies have been conducted to specifically explore and document how teachers use post-method pedagogy and its macro-strategic framework in English language classrooms, particularly those in countries where English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is taught Canagarajah (2002) argues that the paucity and absence of explicit research into post-method pedagogical practices in EFL classrooms resulted from the fact that these practices ‘simply have not been documented in the professional literature’ (p 148) What is clear in the post-Enlightenment period is, as Kumaravadivelu (Kumaravadivelu, 2006) articulates, a ‘laudable transition from awareness to awakening’ but ‘what is not clear is how this awakening has actually changed the practice of everyday teaching and teacher preparation’ (p 76) in EFL contexts The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one such context, in which the association of English and English language teaching (ELT) to ‘Western’ values has long been controversial (Mahboob & Elyas, 2014); and as such it deserves more scholarly attention Informed by the above debates and discussions, this article examines in depth the educational and pedagogical experiences of two Western-trained Saudi TESOL male language teachers to obtain insights into questions of knowledge construction, pedagogy and training in Western TESOL and their impacts on these teachers’ teaching in Saudi settings The article investigates the extent to which such experiences have equipped these teachers with pedagogical underpinnings and criticality regarding post-method pedagogy and practices in their home classrooms The cultural politics and recent developments of Western TESOL It can be argued that the TESOL industry is still largely shaped by the growing marketization and commercialization of education, ethnocentrism, colonial remnants, racial discrimination and by the neo-colonial relations of power embedded in its curriculum, ideology and practice evident in numerous TESOL programmes in North America, Britain and Australia (NABA) (Canagarajah, 2002; Inoue & Stracke, 2013; Kubota & Lin, 2009; Kumaravadivelu, 2003; Mahboob & Golden, 2013) These programmes in various ways continue to reproduce images of ‘the superior Self’ over ‘the inferior Other’ (Pennycook, 1998) At the same time, despite the quest for the internationalization of higher education, most NABA TESOL programmes often give little recognition to international students’ intellectual capabilities and to their academic and professional identity construction journeys These programmes often demand international TESOL students to discard their prior knowledge in exchange of more advanced teaching methodologies and pedagogies, criticisms that were raised by Liu (1998) and Auerbach (1995) nearly 20 years ago What is more, Auerbach (1995) argues that NABA TESOL are ‘often controlled not by the structure or objective of the program but by the specific and sometimes incidental interest of the faculty’ (p 86) Recent studies such as Chowdhury and Phan (2014), Inoue and Stracke (2013), Ilieva (2010) and Ilieva and Waterstone (2013) continue to show the persistence of native speaker ideology in the curriculum, pedagogy and practice of TESOL programmes Specifically, Ilieva and Waterstone (2013) investigate the curriculum discourses circulating in a Western TESOL programme for international students in a highly reflective manner In questioning their own practices as teachers teaching in NABA TESOL programmes, these authors conclude that the discourses and practices existing in these programmes are still informed by Western superiority They raise several critical questions in their article, which include ‘Is a critique of native speaker ideology and Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 Critical Studies in Education embracing the discourse of multi-competence truly a route to disrupt existing power relations or could these be another iteration of Center [NABA] domination of TESOL programs? [; and] Are we advancing academicentrism?’ (p 34) (see also Ilieva, 2010 for similar accounts) Several studies document international students’ reflections on their exposure to critical theories introduced in their NABA TESOL programmes (Chowdhury & Phan, 2014; Matsutani, 2012; Phan, 2008) Through such exposure the students become more aware of the cultural politics and the discourses of colonialism underlying TESOL and thus develop a more complex professional identity; however, the students also reveal that there is often only one course in their entire programme that gives them space for developing critical understanding of the field This calls for a more consistent and collectively critical approach in TESOL pedagogy and curriculum Given all the above discussions, we are not claiming that Western institutions, teachers teaching in NABA TESOL programmes and courses in TESOL programmes are not aware of international students’ pedagogical needs at all or not provide any room for critical engagement with critical theories; neither are we assuming that international students are passive recipients of Western TESOL and are unreflectively adopting Western-generated approaches such as communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based learning (TBL) in their home settings Instead, we are interested in how international TESOL students appropriate, critique and put in practice what they have obtained in NABA TESOL, particularly in this era of post-method pedagogy This is because post-method pedagogy should all in all invite teachers and students to call into question the cultural politics, ethics and appropriateness of teaching regardless of contexts Post-method pedagogy in TESOL and its predicament in EFL contexts We would like to start this section by highlighting Kachru’s (1986, 1996) premier work that captures the spread of world Englishes, in which he coined and discussed the three circle model of English, the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle In this model, the Inner Circle constitutes the traditional bases of English, largely referring to native-English-speaking countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, the USA and the UK) The Outer Circle includes countries where English is used as a second and/or an official language Many of these countries were former colonies of Britain (e.g., Singapore, India, Nigeria and Ghana) Finally, the Expanding Circle contains countries that use English as a foreign language (for instance, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Korea and Thailand) However, it is important to note that the borders of these circles are not always clear-cut The Inner Circle in Kachru’s work is also referred to as the Centre, while the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle are grouped under the Periphery (Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992) Throughout the article, these terms are used, and we fully acknowledge the limitations associated with them Numerous criticisms of method particularly its embedded ‘marginality’ on the part of the Other and the hegemony of the Western Self’s worldview in the forms of unequal power relationships with the Other (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Kumaravadivelu, 2003; Pennycook, 1989; Phillipson, 1992) have given ways to the development of post-method pedagogy in TESOL A fundamental shift from method to post-method is seen as an attempt to decolonize Western-based pedagogies According to Kumaravadivelu (1994, cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2003), post-method means ‘a search for an alternative to method rather than an alternative method’ (p 544) He contends that ‘any attempt to discover a new or a better method within the existing methodological framework is bound to be Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 O.Z Barnawi and P Le Ha conditioned by the construct of marginality’ (p 544), hence is subject to pedagogical inappropriateness, among other things Post-method presupposes that periphery teachers will devise their classroom pedagogy in ways that are compatible with local intellectual conditions They have to have ‘a desire to challenge the debilitating effects of method’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p 545) introduced to them as a marginalizing tool To put such endeavours into practice, they need to comply with the framework of post-method pedagogy that is based on the three fundamental parameters identified by Kumaravadivelu (1994 cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p 544): ‘particularity’, ‘practicality’ and ‘possibility’ The ‘parameter of particularity’ indicates that language teaching should respond to the local, individual, institutional and socio-cultural needs of a particular group The ‘parameter of practicality’, on the other hand, refers to language teachers’ awareness of the reciprocal relationship between theory and practice The ‘parameter of possibility’ offers learners space for critical reflection on their life experiences and their socio-cultural and historical background in order to appropriate the English language in line with their own values and visions (Kumaravadivelu, 2003) Indeed, these three parameters are not mutually exclusive, but rather, they complement each other in helping periphery language practitioners to develop a conceptual rationale vital for constructing a post-method pedagogy as a move towards decolonization Nevertheless, the successful construction of such notions is often associated with challenges, particularly when the discursive formation of the colonial concept of method is not critically discussed in TESOL courses Like the postcolonial predicament, postmethod pedagogy derives from a colonial history ‘characterized by a particular discursive formation called method which has been shaped by the form of orientalism’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p 546) This colonial concept of method will continue to affect pedagogic practices in periphery ELT classrooms, particularly when periphery TESOL teachers are not aware of and are not meaningfully engaged in critiquing those assumptions of mainstream institutions As Kumaravadivelu (2003, p 546) warns us, the postmethod pedagogy predicament is manifested in ‘two dimensions’: (1) the ‘process of marginalization’ and (2) the ‘practice of self-marginalization’ The ‘process of marginalization’ is produced and upheld through what Kachru (1996) called ‘paradigms of marginality’ that consist of ‘paradigm myopia’, ‘paradigm lag’ and ‘paradigm misconnection’ in Kumaravadivelu’s (2003, p 547) words These three paradigms articulate the existence of flawed research practices in Centre applied linguistic circles: i.e., ‘monolingual speakers and societies’ are treated like the norms ‘for forming hypotheses about bilingual development’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p 547); the ‘scientific theory’ status of ethnocentric-oriented hypotheses is perpetuated by the mainstream literature, and investigative processes of hypothesis formation, testing and confirmation are disassociated from the sociolinguistic and historical realities of language used in periphery classrooms Kachru (1996) also discusses the ways in which the aforementioned paradigms are implemented as ‘a very effective strategy of subtle power’ (p 242) One consequence of this myopic vision of mainstream institutions is that international TESOL students are subjected to constricting and exclusionary practices which may adversely affect their professional endeavours (Chowdhury & Phan, 2014) It is this practice of subtle power in Western TESOL that maintains the dominance of Western knowledge over local knowledge For example, the macro-strategic framework that derives from the post-method pedagogy requires periphery teachers to localize their classroom pedagogic practices through bottom-up strategies Yet the pivot of post-method pedagogy is based ‘on the theoretical insights that originated from an already documented Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 Critical Studies in Education Western knowledge base’; it would be much more preferable for the theoretical support for this pedagogy to have been derived ‘from the findings of empirical research conducted and documented in and by periphery communities where English is learned and taught as a second/ foreign language’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p 547) In the face of a paucity of documented local knowledge based on post-method pedagogical practices, international students may unintentionally transfer those ethnocentric-oriented pedagogic practices to their contexts Worse still, they might unknowingly argue for the validity of these Western-based instructional strategies The practice of self-marginalization by language teachers and academic administrators in periphery contexts can be seen in different ways It is common practice, for instance, for institutions in many EFL and ESL countries to post job advertisements stating that they require teachers with recognized NABA TESOL certificates and qualifications, especially native speakers (Mahboob, 2010; Mahboob & Golden, 2013) Such selfmarginalization practices would further endorse NABA programmes to perpetuate their dominance ‘by exploiting the practice of self-marginalization on the part of the subaltern’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p 548; Widin, 2010) With regard to Saudi Arabia, the academic relations between the Saudi government and many Western countries reinforce this hegemony across the country In 2004, the Saudi government put billions of dollars into Western-style higher education by launching a scholarship programme called the King Abdullah Scholarship (KAS) that helps Saudi citizens to complete their further education at Western universities Accordingly, parents are encouraging their children to apply for the KAS to pursue their education overseas, and local universities are competing (i.e., by launching different job-incentives) to recruit Saudi manpower with Western qualifications For instance, King Saud University, one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the country, offers four monthly stipends for Saudis who are studying at the top 100 universities in the USA Such country-wise trends have introduced a strong discourse of the privilege of Western qualifications and led Saudi higher education authorities to normalize the effectiveness of Western pedagogies and accept often without questioning the pedagogical outcomes of NABA TESOL Saudi teachers without Western qualifications have been labelled a subordinate group of language educators across the country The high importance attached to Western qualifications could be described as a form of hegemony perpetuated ‘through social practices, social forms and social structures produced in specific sites such as the church, the state, the school, the mass media, the political system and the family’ as McLaren (2003, p 76) puts it Given the above discussions, this article examines how Western-trained Saudi teachers of English perceive post-method pedagogy introduced in their NABA TESOL courses and the extent to which such courses have prepared them to develop meta-pedagogical and critical awareness, and how this preparation has been translated into their everyday classroom practices The context: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia English in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is not a ‘neutral’ language It is loaded with political, religious, social, and economic overtones and is a topic of heated debate While the influence of globalisation and modernisation policies adopted in KSA has led to an increase in the use of English in the country; there are processes of resistance to English that question its validity and contribute to a shift in the language to suit local beliefs and practices (Mahboob & Elyas, 2014, p 128) Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 O.Z Barnawi and P Le Ha In the midst of such resistance and the tendency to self-marginalise as discussed above, the pursuit of English as a desirable form of social, linguistic, political, cultural, intellectual and economic capital has also been central at all levels in the KSA, the largest country in the oil-rich Gulf States of the Middle East The Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education have been investing enormously in ELT across the country The past two decades has witnessed several major government initiatives to promote mass literacy in English nationwide (see Mahboob & Elyas, 2014 for more details) What is more, the geopolitical reality of the globalization of English, the impacts of the 9/11 event on the Islamic countries’ education systems (Rizvi, 2004), and the recent ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings (i.e., a series of protests, demonstrations and civil wars took place in the Arab world in mid-December 2010) have all played major roles in accelerating English education policy reforms in the KSA Together with offering scholarships to Saudi citizens to obtain Western education overseas, the Saudi government has been boosting the internationalization of higher education in the country With direct financial and logistic supports from the government, local universities have been adopting top-down internationalization policies to promote national, institutional and individual competitiveness in response to the increasing globalization of English Universities and colleges are revising their mission statements to ensure a commitment to internationalization, franchising international educational providers to their local people, cultivating partnerships with foreign institutions, launching joint TESOL (e.g., MA TESOL, Diploma in TESOL) and adopting international curricula, among other endeavours English is now considered a medium of instruction in Saudi higher education contexts, especially in engineering, medicine, business and information technology At post-secondary education, topics of accreditation, international partnerships, joint ventures, English as the medium of instruction and the internationalization of higher education are highly regarded in university communities as well as at senior official talks Possessing Western training/education in the Saudi contexts is considered to possess a form of capital With awareness of the complexity of English and ELT in the KSA, we now present our research project conducted with two Western-trained Saudi TESOL teachers to obtain more insights into the questions raised in the article The study The study adopted a qualitative research approach with the aim to obtain rich descriptions of data, comprising highly detailed accounts of the participants’ personal experiences, beliefs, attitudes and everyday teaching practices It examines the extent to which NABA TESOL have prepared Saudi EFL teachers for their teaching back home with a particular focus on how they are able to devise context-sensitive and institution-specific classroom pedagogies and to develop their own sense of plausibility A qualitative approach makes it possible to understand such complex issues as it helps not only reveal the participants’ experiences, but also connect their experiences with wider social contexts (Creswell, 2007; Park, 2013) Males and females are segregated in the Saudi education system; therefore, the first author who was the one who conducted the study had access to male participants only The data presented in this article were part of a larger project collected from male Saudi teachers of English in a period of six months Multiple data collection methods including a questionnaire, observation of lessons and semi-structured interviews were employed We Critical Studies in Education will report the data from two teachers from whom we have collected the most data using all the above-mentioned techniques The participants’ pseudonyms are Ali and Refat Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 Participants Age Gender Educational background Ali 37 Male Refat 40 Male Qualifications Teaching Currently experience teaching at BA in English Literature MA TESOL/Applied 12 years & Linguistics Linguistics, UK BA in English Literature MA & PhD TESOL, 13 years USA University University The data collection process consisted of three phases; each phase informed the one that followed The researcher first distributed a questionnaire to obtain data about the participants’ educational and professional backgrounds They were also asked to voice their opinions about the concept of post-method pedagogy and to state whether their pedagogical needs had been met with regard to teaching materials and the pedagogical strategies that informed their classroom practices, and who was responsible if such needs had not been met Based on their responses to the questions, semi-structured interviews were designed to obtain more details and insights Classroom observations were then conducted to explore how the participants’ classroom pedagogies were realized in their everyday classroom practices The teachers were informed that the primary purpose of these observations was to capture the general pedagogical strategies they employed in their classrooms to meet their students’ needs In order to overcome any problems arising from power relations and conflicts of interest between teachers and students, we obtained the consent of each party separately The students’ consent form was written in Arabic while the teachers’ form and survey were in English The semi-structured interviews were conducted in both English and Arabic Classroom observations began in week three of the spring semester, which meant that the learners were familiar with the purpose of the researcher’s presence, and also with their teachers and their classroom teaching styles All classroom observations were scheduled with each participant in advance to ensure that tests and other forms of examination were not being observed Both participants had given the researcher their teaching schedules in advance and at the same time highlighted the examination or test weeks/days Based on the data obtained from the classroom observations, interviews were subsequently conducted with both participants, concentrating on the teaching strategies they employed in their classrooms and the rationale behind these practices All interviews were conducted in a quiet place, audio-recorded with the consent of both participants, and transcribed verbatim The process of data analysis commenced before the end of the data collection We also used the constant comparative method to identify themes related to (1) the participants’ perceptions of obtaining Western TESOL qualifications, (2) their opinions about the concept of post-method pedagogy, (3) their views on whether their pedagogical needs had been accommodated in NABA TESOL and who was responsible if such needs had not been met and (4) their classroom pedagogies and the rationale behind those practices Western TESOL qualifications as capital, privilege, marginalisation and authority The participants viewed their Western TESOL qualifications within the Saudi context in various ways, ranging from seeing them as monetary and tangible resources to seeing O.Z Barnawi and P Le Ha them as an advantage which would have a beneficial influence on all aspects of their professional lives For Ali, his TESOL qualification had transformed him into a ‘great resource’ compared to his co-workers who held degrees such as MAs in English Literature or Linguistics obtained from Saudi universities: I consider myself as a great resource because of my experience in the past as an international student who studied at one of the top-notch universities in the UK, and currently a teacher who holds a major that does not exist at Saudi universities (survey) Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 Ali further described other forms of accumulated capital that had been bestowed on him by his Western education: Yes, there is a big demand for MA TESOL holders across the country, with high salary Thus, I had a one-year study leave from my secondary school and went to the UK to complete my Master's degree I thank God for the fact that my current qualification has given me a rewarding job at university level It helped me to become the coordinator of the Applied Linguistics track within one semester In the university community and Saudi society, I have been perceived as a model language teacher who had a Western education, linguistic and cultural practices Of course, I am extremely happy to be treated in this way (Interview 1, 16 February 2013) Similarly, Refat stated that although his TESOL MA and PhD qualifications from the USA had made his professional journey rather complex, they had empowered him within the Saudi context Throughout his teaching career, he had experienced various types of privilege: It was so sad I was planning to complete my degree in English literature Surprisingly, my university approved my scholarship for a TESOL degree because there was a high need for it After graduation I realized that I had been given more space to take decisions such as introducing new, changing course structures, and leading various departmental committees, despite the fact that there are some senior co-workers who hold PhD degrees from nonWestern universities My authority has never been questioned (Survey) These attitudes experienced by Refat at his university are evidence of the dominant discourses of privilege attached to Western qualifications which have not only been normalized and remain unquestioned (Park, 2013) at Saudi universities, but have also contributed to the marginalization of other Saudi language teachers who hold locally obtained qualifications Refat elaborated on these ‘disrupting’ normative discourses as follows: To be honest with you, I sometimes feel that my everyday practices are not right Yet both co-workers and administrators, unknowingly, attach more credibility and legitimacy to my decisions because of my Western qualifications This scenario has put me under a lot of pressure (Interview 1, 21 February 2013) The complex feelings experienced by Refat may be attributed to the fact that Saudi educational authorities often uncritically accept the assumptions of second language acquisition theories and pedagogy imported from Western TESOL, thus in effect legitimizing their own marginalization These self-marginalization practices (Kumaravadivelu, 2003) were also reported by both participants, who noted that Saudi language teachers perceived degrees from Western universities to be ‘golden’, ‘the mainstream’ (Refat, Critical Studies in Education Interview 2, 11 March 2013) and ‘the house of knowledge and research’ (Ali, Interview 2, 20 March 2013) In contrast, they considered local universities as places of academic cliques, and described local degrees as ‘survival degrees’ (Ali, Interview 2, 20 March 2013), ‘local knowledge’, ‘easily attainable’ and ‘not prestigious’ (Refat, Interview 2, 11 March 2013) The use of such terms by these teachers is also an indication of how the cultural politics underlying NABA TESOL shapes language teachers’ perceptions and practice in the field Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 From inferiority complex to critical awareness and critiquing In expressing their viewpoints regarding post-method pedagogy they experienced in their TESOL courses, Ali and Refat described how they positioned themselves as they were progressing in their studies in Britain and in the US respectively Notably, the participants’ experiences of post-method pedagogy and its macro-strategic framework in NABA TESOL seemed to be within the discursive hegemonic nature of so-called method As such, in the beginning Ali and Refat both saw themselves as victims of their self-assigned non-native non-Western international student status whose confidence and legitimate stance were challenged in the new educational contexts In Ali’s words, when I was asked to review the assigned reading materials and post my responses on the class Wiki, I felt that my comments all originated from existing Western knowledge … The theories in these reading materials stemmed from Western studies and we were asked to make sense of them” (Interview 4, 28 March 2013) These (ethnocentric) practices in his TESOL programmes were also reported by Refat They had caused him to develop a sense of inferiority complex, whereby he fixated on his non-native speaker status and saw his international student status being insignificant and minor My first semester on the MA TESOL [program] was challenging because I found that the materials were mostly based on the works of Anglo-American scholars I could not fulfill the requirement of my first assignment that asks each student to conduct a mini-teaching session, because the class was dominated by native speakers and it was so stressful (Interview 4, 27 April 2013) Refat further described his journey as follows: ‘I was mostly passive in class and found it hard to be assertive…’ and ‘…it took some time for me to realize that this was a wrong self-image developed by me’ (Interview 4, 27 April 2013) Ali also described his early experiences in the TESOL lectures as those of a ‘handicapped student’ who accepted the fact that he needed some ‘physiotherapy sessions’ to meet the standards set by British students and professors Accordingly, he sought the assistance of senior international classmates to help him ‘stand on his feet’ (Interview 5, May 2013) Ali’s and Refat’s experiences are rather common among international students studying at Western universities who often experience ‘culture shocks’ in classrooms partly because they tend to perceive themselves as inferior and lacking linguistic, academic and cultural knowledge (Marginson & Sawir, 2011) However, the problem here lies in the tendency to overemphasise these cultural shocks and to blame international students for lacking necessary knowledge and skills required to be successful in Western classrooms, as argued in Chowdhury and Phan (2014) and Singh (2010) Obvious consequences of 10 O.Z Barnawi and P Le Ha Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 this problem include host institutions offering international students remedial support, a practice that both reinforces the authoritative image of NABA hosts while safeguarding them from having to question and revamp their curriculum, pedagogy and practice Another consequence is the underestimation of international students’ agency and power to challenge the status quo and to critique what is presented to them in their courses Ali and Refat clearly showed their critical stance after the initial cultural shocks as they progressed in their studies and gained more experience Regarding post-method pedagogy, they acknowledged its strengths while pointing to its weaknesses as well Throughout the program, I noticed that, theoretically, the post-method pedagogy is a more democratic approach for the language teaching profession It discusses how to conduct our classroom practices based on our personal conceptualizations and local needs However, throughout my study in the TESOL program I felt this picture was always blurred (Ali, Survey) For Ali it seems post-method pedagogy was ‘the main ingredient for successful EFL instruction as it gives more recognition to teacher autonomy, beliefs and experiences’ Yet he noted in the beginning he had struggled to adapt to ‘Western-oriented classroom discussions’, to comment on ‘culturally inappropriate reading materials’ in his TESOL course and to fulfil the requirements of ‘one-size-fits all’ assignments (Interview 3, 18 March 2013) For him, these were the primary reasons preventing him from being able to experience more fully what he called ‘the essential means for effective teaching’ Sharing a similar view, Refat said ‘I strongly believe in the concept and practices of the post-method pedagogy’ and ‘much has been discussed about it and its macro-strategic framework in our classes, but the program requirements did not help us contextualize these ideas’ (Interview 4, April 2013) It should be noted that the macro-strategic framework of post-method pedagogy ‘is based on the hypothesis that teaching and learning needs, wants and situations are unpredictably numerous’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p 68) Thus, educators in NABA TESOL cannot always prepare international students to deal with the wide variety of unpredictable needs, wants and situations they will encounter in their own countries Nevertheless, it is expected of them to provide space that will enable international students to recognize the differences between NABA teaching practices and those that are applicable in their own countries so that they can devise a context-sensitive approach to ELT upon graduation Doing so would enable ‘counter-marginalization’ to take place among both TESOL teaching staff and students Indeed, the heart of the matter is that post-method approach needs to be challenged by teachers and teacher trainers in all contexts As they went on with their studies, Ali and Refat also took on different positions with regard to what they viewed as culturally inappropriate classroom discussions and reading materials introduced to them These positions included ‘avoiding’ and ‘focusing on suitable parts only’ strategies (Refat), and ‘going with the flow carefully’ (Ali) approaches to adapt and gain from the Western system In addition to the adaptation strategies, Ali and Refat also showed great awareness of the complexity of EFL instruction in different contexts For instance, Ali reported that the notion of Communicative language teaching (CLT) and its modified version designed to suit local needs was optimistically introduced in his programme However, he felt rather pessimistic regarding the appropriateness of CLT in the KSA: In my program, I was introduced to the concept of communicative grammar, communicative tasks, communicative testing, communicative reading, task-based learning and so on But I think the Saudi culture does not support such concepts because our students are Critical Studies in Education 11 Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 psychologically, culturally and socially not ready to accept these principles in our classrooms What matters to me is the learning outcome at the end of the day; i.e., my students should gain communicative and linguistic competence together (Survey) Ali also expressed that in his course he did not get ‘enough practical skills that are applicable in everyday classroom practices’ This is because many of the discussions about teaching strategies were introduced through ‘Western lenses’ (Interview 5, May 2013) Likewise, Refat expressed the view that ‘the post-method condition opened up a wider space for teachers to localize their classroom pedagogies’ Nevertheless, he complained that ‘…in classroom discussions, I found memorization and drilling methods openly being condemned by my professors…methodological choices are always critical because they largely depend on local needs’ (Interview 5, 27 April 2013) Overall, these responses reflect the participants’ awareness of the fact that postmethod pedagogy, according to Block and Cameroon (2002, p 10) ‘opens up new opportunities for the expertise of language teachers in periphery contexts to be recognized and valued’ and ‘makes it more feasible for teachers to acknowledge and work with the diversity of the learners in their classrooms, guided by local assessment of students’ strategies for learning rather than global directives from remote authorities’ It is also clear from their responses that they felt uncomfortable when their TESOL professors condemned memorization and drilling methods so as to legitimize their advocacy for process-oriented paradigms such as task-based learning and Communicative Language Teaching in language teaching and learning These findings show that Ali and Refat had been critically aware of the complexity of the teaching beliefs that informed their everyday teaching practices, of ‘the vitality of the macrostructure – social, cultural, political, and historical – that shape the microstructures of the language classroom’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p 59), and of the importance of localizing their methodological practices to accommodate local needs A transition from critical awareness and critiquing to Attainment: classroom pedagogical strategies To understand more clearly how Ali’s and Refat’s meta-pedagogical and critical awareness as well as how their transitions from critiquing to attainment were translated into their everyday classroom practices, one-semester classroom observations with both participants were conducted This methodological technique helps justify better in what ways the participants’ everyday classroom pedagogical strategies were not mere reproductions of ready-made Western packages, but instead were the ‘continued recreation of personal meaning’ (Diammond, 1993; cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p 74) on the part of the teachers as critical transformative practitioners The outcomes of these observations are presented below The classroom observations focused on (1) the pedagogical strategies employed by each teacher to meet his students’ needs and (2) the underlying principles behind those strategies This is because strategies ‘do not constitute a method but function as a heuristic to develop an appropriate pedagogy from the bottom up’ (Canagarajah, 2002, p 142) to meet local learners’ needs taking into consideration their learning traditions Additionally, classroom realities often not correspond to any recognizable method; in other words, a teacher might commence his class with a specific method in mind, but then might be influenced by classroom contingencies to alter his strategies as he goes on (Kumaravadivelu, 2003) It is for these reasons that we will summarize each participant’s 12 O.Z Barnawi and P Le Ha Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 overall pedagogical strategies and then critically report on the underlying principles behind these strategies from each teacher’s point of view Ali teaches a three-credit course called English Academic Writing (ENG 311) to a group of EFL students These junior students are taking the course as a requirement for their Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems Refat teaches a four-credit course called Reading Comprehension (ENG 101) for foundation programme students These students are expected to specialize in different engineering subjects upon successful completion of their foundation programme Pedagogical strategies employed by Ali on the ENG 311 Course Ali gave a full orientation to his students at the beginning of the term to familiarize them with the teaching framework and strategies that he would be employing throughout the semester He informed his students that ‘you will be learning how to write through negotiating’ because ‘writing is a complex social process’ Notably, he used what he called a ‘negotiating cycle for teaching writing’ (Interview 3, 18 March 2013) throughout the semester, which is summarized below (Figure 1) Ali’s pedagogical strategies placed great emphasis on the students’ roles in constructing their own knowledge while learning how to write in English At the beginning of the semester, he informed his students that he would be negotiating with them how to write in English and that his role would be changing gradually from that of a ‘directive’ to that of a ‘non-directive’ teacher As shown above, Ali created a writing context to start his teaching endeavours He brought a variety of formal and informal texts to his classes as models He then explicitly taught his students which texts were considered to be legitimate academic writing and which were not In these practices, a careful, reflexive and critical reading of the various models by the students gave them ample opportunities to recognize the structures of written texts, vocabulary, text organization, genres and so on Figure Pedagogical strategies used in ENG 301 Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 Critical Studies in Education 13 Ali also asked his students to team up with each other and bring two examples of legitimate texts to the class Using the materials they brought, he analysed the various textual features with his students and answered various questions posed by them Ali justified such practices in an interview, ‘I want my students to have an awareness of what we mean by academic writing, and not to use inappropriate texts that are posted on Facebook or other social networking sites’ (Interview 3, 18 March 2013) In the student– teacher text construction stage, Ali’s students were asked to write short essays on different topics following the course guidelines Ali then met his students individually to discuss their written papers and to negotiate preferred types and strategies of feedback on their papers In these sessions, he gave direct advice about sentence structure, vocabulary, writing conventions, etc He said he felt that such scaffolding processes ‘will allow him to accommodate different individual learning styles in the classroom and address any misperceptions students may bring to their writing classes’ (Interview 6, 12 May 2013) This line of argument is compatible with post-process views of writing that writers often come to the moment of writing ‘with baggage, desires, hopes and fears about the world’ (Kent, 1994, p 4) However, writing teacher and students can negotiate to address such issues In the last two stages, the students were asked to write a paper on assigned topics independently and compare them with a similar text Ali justified the use of this ‘negotiating cycle’ as follows: ‘the notion of post-method pedagogy drew our attention more towards students' needs’, so ‘depending on my own creativity or transplanting Western writing pedagogies’ in the classroom may not help students master the skills of writing He mentioned that writing is a complex social process, and thus, ‘our students should take more active roles in learning how to write through negotiation and interaction processes’ (Interview 7, 15 May 2013) In Ali’s classes, a great emphasis was placed on the student-writers; i.e., the student-writers’ innovation, creativity and their active roles in constructing their own knowledge of writing were tapped Ali seemed more confident about his teaching practices, explaining: ‘although it is hard to relate my current teaching strategies to a particular method, they work best for my students I can see their progress through time, and their feedback is another source of evidence for me’ (Interview 8, 22 May 2013) Ali saw that this negotiating cycle had dual outcomes: ‘it helps me reflect upon my own practices and the way I function in classrooms as a writing teacher’, and it also ‘acknowledges students' existing or prior knowledge that has been shaped by their local high school teachers’ (Interview 8, 22 May 2013) Building on his experience of teaching, knowledge of writing pedagogies, and intuition and awareness of local needs, it seems Ali had creatively devised bottom-up classroom pedagogical practices to suit his students’ needs What really matters in post-method pedagogy, as Prabhu (1990) puts it, is when EFL teachers learn ‘to operate with some personal conceptualization of how their teaching leads to desired learning – with a notion of causation that has a measure of credibility for them’ (p 172) Equally persuasive is Canagrajah (2002), who maintains that ‘though terms like experience, wisdom, and intuition are unscientific to base a pedagogy upon, in the post-Enlightenment period we are quite comfortable with them’ (p 140) What Ali did with his teaching offers a powerful pedagogical account that is appropriate to a specific context and suitable for a particular audience whose learning needs and aspirations are well incorporated in the teacher’s pedagogy Pedagogical strategies employed by Refat on the ENG 101 reading course The pedagogical strategies employed by Refat on the reading comprehension course entailed a textual (or cognitive) approach, a functional approach and comprehension Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 14 O.Z Barnawi and P Le Ha assessment tasks He believes ‘reading comprehension involves many things; thus, students should be trained to accomplish different kinds of reading tasks’ (Interview 2, 10 March 2013) Conceptually, the strategies and attitudes imparted by Refat to his students were something resembling a combination of explicit and implicit instruction Throughout the semester, Refat would usually read the assigned topics aloud and then stop from time to time to offer explanations of concepts, elaborations of difficult words, phrases, passages and critical interpretations of texts He would also stop occasionally to comment on a point of syntax or vocabulary In these sessions, his students usually took notes; i.e., explanations of words, cross-references and any other remarks given by the teacher He also stopped from time to time to answer questions, in order to enhance his students’ literacy, critical thinking, knowledge and skills To enhance the students’ oral skills, he allowed them to comment on different aspects of the texts (e.g., difficult words and syntax) and to ask questions centred on the assigned texts To assess his students’ comprehension skills, he would ask an individual student to read passages of text aloud and then he would question him and comment on his reading He also used strategies like summarization, question generation and cooperative learning as consolidation strategies for comprehension assessment throughout the semester Although direct instruction or building on one or more mental representations of a text was predominant in Rafat’s pedagogical strategies, he believed that such practices would offer his students a ‘proper grounding’ in reading comprehension, since they had had little exposure to English in their former studies He maintained that it is these practices ‘which stemmed from the traditional system of Islamic education – known as Madrasah – that have produced Arabic scholars with incredible linguistic skills throughout history’ (Interview 5, 27 April 2013) He further added, ‘I know the Madrasah system has produced great scholars of Arabic But I think the same teaching styles can be implemented with our EFL students, since they are familiar with these practices in Arabic instruction’ (Interview 5, 27 April 2013) This line of argument is compatible with the tradition of Islamic educational views, which normally start with proper grounding (as Refat called it), in that ‘the learner was made to read and memorize the Qu’ran in well drawn-out stages’ (Hashim, Rufai, & Nor, 2011, p 100) Despite the plethora of NABA TESOL pedagogies in the ELT industry, Refat still believed that Saudi EFL learners have their own learning tradition, and so this tradition needs to be recognized and maintained Most notably, post-method pedagogy had provided him with new insights into teacher growth, especially his own These views were evident in his assertion that ‘in a postmethod pedagogy teachers need to keep searching and developing different pedagogical strategies that suit their local classroom instruction In this way, we could end up justifying our teaching practices and reflecting upon them’ (Interview 7, 17 May 2013) Concluding remarks and implications Growing evidence discussed in the existing literature including that of this study consistently demonstrates that power relations and discourses of privilege have continued to significantly influence the production and dissemination of knowledge in the ELT industry The increasing presence of international TESOL students means that NABA TESOL educators should actively and proactively acknowledge and engage with the various ways in which ELT is realized in other communities and critically reflect on the appropriacy and intellectual rigour of their pedagogies and practices to enable necessary change beneficial to those involved Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 Critical Studies in Education 15 By exploring local realities, this study has examined how Western-trained Saudi teachers apply, critique and reflect on post-method pedagogy in their classrooms to offer a response to the cultural politics and questions of appropriateness and ethics underlying TESOL in the Saudi context This article represents only an initial attempt to examine the extent to which NABA TESOL have prepared international teachers to develop meta-pedagogical and critical awareness, and how this awareness is being translated into their everyday classroom practices More studies with similar purposes would open up more avenues for negotiating, ‘(re)examining and (re)structuring worldwide graduate [TESOL] programs aiming to prepare all teachers to work in globalized contexts’ (Park, 2013, p 22) Having acknowledged the above, we nevertheless assert that when it comes to whether and to what extent NABA TESOL programmes are appropriate and relevant to their international multilingual multicultural participants, the answer is complex While it is tempting to condemn such programmes for their colonial and imperial ideology, it is also important to look at the multiple layers of the training and listen carefully to the voices of those receiving the training The empirical data reported in much existing literature, while highlighting the cultural politics of TESOL and its advocated pedagogies, demonstrate student–teachers’ varied degrees of appreciation of the training (see for example BruttGriffler & Samimy, 1999; Inoue & Stracke, 2013; Phan, 2008) It also discusses how and in what ways TESOL as a site of struggle, growth and identity (re)formation and negotiation is felt and affirmed by TESOL students This is also clearly evident with Ali and Refat in this study Criticisms of TESOL programmes in many cases stem from ideological debates (Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992), or from data collected through questionnaires, journal writings, group discussions and interviews with TESOL students (see the references cited above) As such, what happens between the ideological level, TESOL students’ perceptions and their actual classroom teaching remains little known Our study with more data collected in a period of over six months using multiple techniques including classroom observations of two teachers’ microteaching processes helps unveil the myth to a modest extent, given the small data sample The data obtained from Ali and Refat demonstrate each teacher is striving to devise and create his own pedagogical paradigm Neither Ali nor Refat had uncritically adopted the assumptions of Western pedagogies or acted within the existing methodological framework Instead, they both showed great understanding of the complexity of ELT in periphery contexts These aspects were reflected in the pedagogical axioms underlying their practices Ali used his ‘negotiating cycle’ throughout the semester to help his students acquire competence in writing He started with explicit instruction and then gradually assumed the role of facilitator These practices show how Ali was creatively and constructively adopting what he had learnt in his NABA TESOL courses specifically the process-oriented approach Ali clearly articulated these creative practices work for Saudi students owing to his ‘personal knowledge, experiences and students' feedback’ In contrast, Refat employed pedagogical strategies originating in the traditional Islamic education system as a framework for devising relevant methods of teaching reading throughout the semester He believes his students are more familiar with such teaching practices in their first language and hence believes these strategies should also work effectively in their EFL classrooms A significant similarity across the pedagogical strategies used by both Ali and Refat is that they are creatively using the process-oriented approach of EFL instruction throughout their pedagogical strategies Their pedagogical strategies appear to have been informed by Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 16 O.Z Barnawi and P Le Ha their critical stance of what they have gained in their NABA TESOL education The data obtained from the classroom observations show that a selective and well-informed employment of post-method pedagogy has made it possible for Ali and Refat to play multiple roles, including an analyst, a critical transformative practitioner and a decisionmaker This is clear evidence of an ‘art-craft conception of teaching’ (Arikan, 2006, p 4) by EFL teachers who ‘theorize what they practice or practice what they theorize’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p 37) It can be argued that although many aspects of NABA TESOL education can be irrelevant, colonizing and alienating to their prior knowledge, experience and practices, such education at least offers space for critical reflections that then enable more informed pedagogies to be implemented in the classroom It is also evident that Ali and Refat have taken the ownership of their pedagogical practices and thus have been able to perform their teacher roles effectively Ali and Refat have invested in their educational journeys through fulfilling admission requirements of their respective programmes, participating in overseas training, and successfully completing their respective degrees on the grounds that such qualifications have great value in Saudi Arabia In return they have benefited from these investments financially, professionally and socially across Saudi contexts and settings Ali’s and Refat’s accounts offer evidence that the hegemony of NABA TESOL is acknowledged, resisted to, appropriated and negotiated by stakeholders at the receiving end In the midst of all this, the data show the hegemony of NABA TESOL programmes exists and operates at multiple levels, and it is partly through the Western-trained TESOL teachers that such hegemony continues to sustain Ali and Refat were never passive in the entire process nor were they naïve about the cultural politics of TESOL They appeared to proactively take the advantage of being trained in the West to appropriate their given privileged status in the home contexts They shared with one of us their concerns about problems of NABA TESOL pedagogies and Western practices, but their struggles and their scepticisms of the quality of their training were not known to their colleagues, their bosses and the society at large They continued to enjoy the social cultural economic and symbolic capital brought about by such training They appeared to so with awareness and with a strong sense of agency This very aspect of agency deserves substantial scholarly attention in future research At this point, we would like to revise the question Prabhu (1990, p 175) raised 24 years ago in which he was concerned about how to prepare periphery teachers to reflect critically on their own practices and to enable ‘teachers' varying senses of plausibility’ To move beyond the mindset that positions periphery teachers at the receiving end of NABA TESOL training and as the recipient of NABA TESOL pedagogical experiments, it is no longer valid to assume the enlightening and educating role of such training The question now should demand periphery teachers and NABA TESOL teachers to constantly reflect, engage and communicate with one another to create meaningful interactions and pedagogies throughout the training process and in their classroom practice Notes on contributors Dr Osman Z Barnawi has a PhD in Composition and TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Education in TESOL from the University of Exeter, UK He is currently Director of the English Language Center at Royal Commission Colleges and Institutes, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia He teaches at the Department of Applied Linguistics of RCY and holds an adjunct position at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia He has published extensively in international referred journals He is also a regular presenter in local and international Critical Studies in Education 17 conferences His research interests include second language writing, teachers’ identities, critical pedagogy, crisis leadership in higher education, performance assessment in higher education, language programme evaluation, curriculum design and development, and teacher education Dr Barnawi can be contacted at albarnawim@hotmail.com Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 12:48 21 August 2014 Dr Phan Le Ha is an associate professor of Education in the Department of Educational Foundations in the College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA She also holds adjunct and honorary positions at Monash University in Australia, Vietnam National 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Traditional Islamic education in Asia and Africa: A comparative study of Malaysia’s Pondok, Indonesia’s Pesantren and Nigeria’s traditional Madrasah World Journal of Islamic History and Civilization,... critical awareness and critiquing to Attainment: classroom pedagogical strategies To understand more clearly how Ali’s and Refat’s meta-pedagogical and critical awareness as well as how their transitions