While considerable research in educational and applied linguistics has focused on student mobility and study abroad, fewer studies have analyzed the experiences of international English language teachers who take graduate studies and professional development programs in countries such as Canada. In my talk, I will share data from two studies of international English language teachers from Japan and four southeast Asian countries who studied in Canada, and whom I followed up to learn about the impacts of studying in Canada. I focus on four questions:
- How do international English language teachers perceive their professional identities during and after studying in Canada?
- What opportunities and benefits does completing a graduate program in Canada bring to international English language teachers?
- What challenges and constraints do teachers face when applying knowledge learned in Canada in local contexts, and how do they overcome them?
- And, how should higher education programs frame their practices to welcome international English language teachers in ways that are inclusive and which honour different ways of understanding education?
Through the discussion, I will look for connection to the contexts of learning and teaching EAL in BC colleges and language schools. I will conclude by presenting a set of principles for teaching international English language teachers, arguing for the following: internationalization that is not top-down, understanding knowledge borders as blurred rather than clearly delineated, seeing professional teacher identities as disrupted and fluid rather than fixed and linear, and shifting from a target native speaker of English to a speaker of English as a lingua franca.
Selected References
Barkhuizen, G. (Ed.). (2022).
Language teachers studying abroad: Identities, emotions anddisruptions. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Ilieva, R. (2010). Non-native English–speaking teachers' negotiations of program discourses in their construction of professional identities within a TESOL program.
Canadian Modern Language Review,
66(3), 343-369.
Ilieva, R., Beck, K., & Waterstone, B. (2014). Towards sustainable internationalisation of higher education.
Higher Education,
68, 875-889.
Ilieva, R., & Ravindran, A. (2018). Agency in the making: Experiences of international graduates of a TESOL program.
System,
79, 7-18.
Marshall, S. & Amburgey, B. (2024). Challenges faced by Japanese English teachers applying knowledge after study abroad. In K. Beck & R. Ilieva (Eds.)
Language, Culture, and Education in an Internationalizing University: Perspectives and Practices of Faculty, Students, and Staff (pp. 129-146)
. Bloomsbury.
Marshall, S., & Spracklin, A. K. (2022). “We are in our country. Why do we have to resort to western ways of doing things?”: an analytic framework for knowledge application in language teachers studying abroad.
Educational Linguistics,
1(2), 267-289.
