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May
2005 Conference Proceedings
Speech
Title
Teacher
Development in EFL: what is to be learned beyond methodology in
Asian contexts?
Address
Dr. John Adamson
Profile
John
Adamson gained his Doctorate of Education from Leicester University
specializing in the area of inter-cultural interview communication
with Thai learners. He teaches sociolinguistics, study skills and
discourse analysis, as well as Business and General English in Japan
at college and company level. His publications focus on interview
discourse, learning strategies and Business English methodology.
He is most active in his local area of Japan creating teacher research
groups and organizing workshops. John is an Editor for the Asian
EFL Journal and Senior Associate Editor for the Asian
Business Journal. He can be contacted at: johnadamson253@hotmail.com
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Abstract
This
paper investigates teacher development in EFL in the Asian context,
specifically referring to the Thai and Japanese contexts at the tertiary
level. It argues that teacher development for native speaker teachers
of English would benefit from gaining local knowledge of the norms of
classroom behavior and a background to the history of EFL in that country.
This goes beyond finding appropriate methodologies for the local context,
taking the learning process into the spheres of sociology, economics,
politics and religion. As examples of such teacher development, it proposes
a teacher development (TD) model for the Thai setting which explores
the relationships between the classroom, society and religion. It also
puts forward a similar, tabulated model for TD in Japan in which the
history of EFL is traced to various social and political events. The
paper concludes that there is a need for foreign lecturers to raise
their awareness of influences upon the learner and the educational system
in which the classroom is framed, and that this process needs to consider
local, non-anglo-centric concepts to enhance teacher development.
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