Teacher Development in EFL: What is to be Learned Beyond Methodology in Asian Contexts?
Teacher Development in EFL: What is to be Learned Beyond Methodology in Asian Contexts?
Keywords: teacher development in EFL in the Asian context, the classroom is like a microcosm
John Adamson
Editor for the Asian EFL Journal and
Senior Associate Editor for the Asian Business Journal
johnadamson253@hotmail.com
Bio Data
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.
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.
See pages: 74-84
[/private]Category: Main Editions, Volume 7 Issue 4
