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Teacher Education for English as a Lingua Franca
This edited collection responds to a gap in the literature by presenting a muchneeded examination of both the theoretical and practical aspects of teacher education for English as a lingua franca in Indonesia. Through a series of extended research-based and conceptual chapters written by experts in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) in and about Indonesia, this book offers an insight into Indonesia’s unique cultural, social and institutional contexts. The content focuses on four interrelated themes: the transition of perspective from English as a foreign language (EFL) to English as a lingua franca (ELF); the knowledge base of ELF pedagogy; teacher agency and identity in ELF; and innovations in teacher education for ELF. This book is highly relevant to English teachers, teacher educators and scholars worldwide aspiring to broaden their horizon and professionalism in the teaching of ELF. Subhan Zein, PhD, teaches at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has trained teachers in Australia and Indonesia. He is the lead editor of English Language Teacher Preparation in Asia: Policy, Research and Practice.
Routledge Critical Studies in Asian Education Series Editors S. Gopinathan, Wing On Lee and Jason Eng Thye Tan
The Sustainability of Higher Education in an Era of Post-Massification Edited by Deane E. Neubauer, Ka Ho Mok and Jin Jiang Emigration, Employability and Higher Education in the Philippines Yasmin Y. Ortiga Literature Education in the Asia-Pacific Policies, Practices and Perspectives in Global Times Edited by Chin Ee Loh, Suzanne Choo and Chatherine Beavis English Tertiary Education in Vietnam Edited by James Albright English Language Teacher Preparation in Asia Policy, Research and Practice Edited by Subhan Zein and Richmond Stroupe Lesson Study and Schools as Learning Communities Asian School Reform in Theory and Practice Edited by Atsushi Tsukui and Masatsugu Murase The Asian EFL Classroom Issues, Challenges and Future Expectations Edited by Soo-Ok Kwen and Bernard Spolsky Teacher Education for English as a Lingua Franca Perspectives from Indonesia Edited by Subhan Zein For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Critical-Studies-in-Asian-Education/book-series/RCSAE
Teacher Education for English as a Lingua Franca Perspectives from Indonesia
Edited by Subhan Zein
First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Subhan Zein; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Subhan Zein to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the author for his individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-30396-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-73052-2 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents
List of illustrations List of contributors Series editors’ foreword Preface 1 Setting the scene for teacher education for English as a lingua franca
vii viii xi xiii 1
SUBHAN ZEIN
PART I
ELF and teacher education 2 From EFL to ELF: Implications for teacher education
19 21
SUBHAN ZEIN
3 Critical pedagogy in the ELF era: An Indonesian-based English language teacher educator’s reflection
41
JOSEPH ERNEST MAMBU
4 Professional teacher in the making: A case study of Indonesian pre-service teachers’ identity-agency in the context of English as a lingua franca
58
SITI NUR’AINI, LAILY NUR AFFINI AND AJENG SETYORINI
5 How well prepared are Indonesian pre-service teachers to develop their future students’ intercultural communicative competence?: A study of English as a lingua franca
77
UTAMI WIDIATI AND NUR HAYATI
6 A cyclical model of peer coaching for teacher professional development in the Indonesian ELF context PANDE MADE SUMARTINI
94
vi Contents PART II
ELF pedagogy in teacher education 7 EIL pedagogy in an initial teacher education program in Indonesia: The case of an academic writing class
113 115
NUGRAHENNY T. ZACHARIAS
8 Multimodal communicative competence of Indonesian secondary school teachers and pre-service teachers: Implications for teacher education in ELF
131
DIDI SUKYADI AND BUDI HERMAWAN
9 Learning from a teacher’s classroom discourses to re-modify the ELF framework in the ASEAN context: A possible way forward?
156
RIBUT WAHYUDI AND SUMTI CHUSNA
PART III
Epilogue
173
10 Enhancing the quality of Indonesian teachers in the ELF era: Policy recommendations
175
BACHRUDIN MUSTHAFA, FUAD ABDUL HAMIED AND SUBHAN ZEIN
11 From EFL to ELF: The time is right
191
ANDY KIRKPATRICK
Glossary Index
204 206
Illustrations
Figures 4.1 6.1 6.2 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6
Continua of target language proficiency and professional preparation External training and peer coaching Practice and praxis in association with individuality and collectivity A multimodal text excerpt from the Ministry of Agriculture, Human Resource Support and Development Agency A multimodal text excerpt from a secondary English textbook, When English Rings the Bell, p. 2 Multimodal communicative competence awareness of undergraduate English education students Multimodal communicative competence awareness of graduate English education students Comparison of multimodal communicative competence awareness between undergraduate and graduate in English education students The multimodal communicative competence model of teachers in the context of English as a lingua franca
61 105 107 138 140 141 143 143 150
Tables 3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 7.1 7.2
Focal participants Summary of data gathering Code description Example of identity-agency analysis Additional competences Students’ positions in final essay Students’ stated reasons for their argument
47 63 64 65 87 122 122
Boxes 5.1 5.2
Sample of meaning-based analysis Main competences
83 84
Contributors
Laily Nur Affini is a lecturer in the English Department of Universitas PGRI Semarang. She is responsible for teaching speaking and computer-assisted language learning. Her research interests include pre-service teachers’ motivation in mastery of English, curriculum and syllabus design, and intercultural communication in language teaching. Email: lailynuraffi[email protected] and laily_naffi@yahoo.com Sumti Chusna graduated from the English Language and Literature Department, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang. Her research interests are linguistics and English language teaching. She has co-authored an article in Language, Discourse and Society. She is the owner of a private English course, and English instructor for English for Specific Purposes. Email: [email protected] Fuad Abdul Hamied is professor of language education at Indonesia University of Education in Bandung, Indonesia. A former Vice Rector at the University (1996–2003) and Deputy Minister for Education at the Coordinating Ministry for People’s Welfare (2005–2010), he is currently President of Asia TEFL. His book chapters have appeared in publications from leading publishers including Routledge, Multilingual Matters and Springer. Email: [email protected] Nur Hayati is a faculty member of the English Department, Universitas Negeri Malang. She has been active in pre-service teacher education programs in Indonesia. Her research interests include teacher cognition, teacher education, and teacher professional development. One of her current projects is the TEFLIN Teacher Development Series, which she co-edits with Dr. Willy A. Renandya. Email: [email protected] Budi Hermawan completed his master’s degree from The University of Sydney, majoring in professional communication. He is currently on the teaching staff of the English language and literature study program at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia while writing his dissertation on verbal visual intersemiosis in science textbooks for junior high school in Indonesia. His research interests include the applications of functional grammar and social semiotics. Email: [email protected]
List of contributors ix Andy Kirkpatrick is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Professor in the Department of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at Griffith University, Brisbane. He is co-founder and chief editor of the book series Multilingual Education, published by Springer. He is currently co-editing two new handbooks: Asian Englishes (Wiley-Blackwell, with Kingsley Bolton as co-editor) and Language Education Policy and Practice in Asia (Routledge, with Tony Liddicoat as co-editor). Email: a. kirkpatrick@griffith.edu.au Yoko Kobayashi (PhD, University of Toronto) teaches at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Iwate University, Japan. Her research interests include East Asian students’ sojourn experience in ASEAN contexts. She is author of The Evolution of English Language Learners in Japan: Crossing Japan, the West, and South East Asia (Routledge, 2018). Email: [email protected] Joseph Ernest Mambu is currently a faculty member of the English Language Education program at the Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana, Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia. His main research interest is critical (spiritual) pedagogy in English language teaching. He has published in TEFLIN Journal, The Journal of Asia TEFL, and Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, among others. Email: [email protected] Bachrudin Musthafa is a faculty member at the School of Postgraduate Studies of the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia in Bandung, Indonesia. His major research interests include early and adolescent literacy, academic literacy, and teacher development. Email: [email protected] Siti Nur’Aini is a lecturer at the English Department of Universitas PGRI Semarang (UPGRIS). She majored in applied linguistics for her doctoral degree at Massey University, New Zealand. She has a designated role as a pre-service teacher trainer at UPGRIS. Her research interests include identity, agency, and motivation in language learning. Email: [email protected] Ajeng Setyorini is a faculty member at Universitas PGRI Semarang. She mainly teaches academic writing and computer-assisted language learning, Her research interests cover areas such as writing and the role of technology in language teaching. Email: [email protected] Didi Sukyadi is on the faculty of Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, with interests in semiotics, multimodality, assessment and language teaching. He has contributed a chapter to Secondary School English Education in Asia (Spolsky and Sung, 2015). At present, he is a vice president of Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia (TEFLIN), vice chief editor of the International Journal of Applied Linguistics, and the founder of the Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN). He is also the external reviewer for professorships in the applied linguistics discipline at the University of Malaya. Email: [email protected]
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List of contributors
Pande Made Sumartini is currently a doctoral student at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include communities of practice, discourse analysis, and English teachers’ professional learning. In between her research activities, she also works as Indonesian tutor at the University of Melbourne. Email: [email protected] Ribut Wahyudi is a lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang. He has recently completed his PhD from the School of Education, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has published two book chapters with Palgrave Macmillan and an article with the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL)’s ESP SIG Journal [English for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group], among others. He also serves as reviewer of some international peer-reviewed journals. Email: [email protected] Utami Widiati is a faculty member of the English Department, Universitas Negeri Malang. She has researched and published extensively in the areas of TEFL, curriculum and material development, second language acquisition, and teacher professional development. She is a pre-service and in-service teacher trainer and has written secondary school English textbooks prescribed by the Indonesian government. Email: [email protected] Nugrahenny T. Zacharias is currently a visiting assistant professor in the English Department, Miami University of Oxford, OH, USA. Her primary interest lies in English as lingua franca (ELF) pedagogy and English as a second language (ESL) composition. She has published in RELC Journal, EA Journal, Journal of Asia Pacific Communication and TEFLIN Journal, among others. Email: [email protected] Subhan Zein (PhD, Australian National University) currently teaches at the University of Queensland, Australia. His publications have appeared in Journal of Education for Teaching, Applied Linguistics Review and Asian Englishes, among others. He is the lead editor of Early Language Learning and Teacher Education: International Research and Practice (Multilingual Matters) and English Language Teacher Preparation in Asia: Policy, Research and Practice (Routledge). Email: [email protected]
Series editors’ foreword
We are pleased to introduce this book, entitled Teacher Education for English as a Lingua Franca: Perspectives from Indonesia, to readers. From the perspective of the Critical Studies in Asian Education series, we think this book is a valuable addition not only to this series, but also to the discourse on the adoption of English as a lingua franca in Asia. Asia is the most diverse continent, as compared to the others, in terms of languages spoken, religions, philosophies, ethnicities, and cultures. According to The Washington Post, there are at least 7,102 living languages in the world, and out of these, 2,301 are in Asia, 2,138 in Africa, 1,313 in the Pacific, 1064 in the Americas, and 286 in Europe (Noack & Gamio, 2015). With respect to religions, Asia is the birthplace of Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Taosim, and Zoroastrianism. The diverse philosophies in Asia are closely related to the historical and conceptual backgrounds of these various religions. In addition, Asia is home to over 60% of the world’s population, and it is not surprising to find more than hundreds of ethnic groups in this continent. In view of such great diversities and varieties, it is easily understood that no single language has become dominant across Asia as a lingua franca. It is at the same time amazing and surprising to find that English has been employed as a useful lingua franca for Asians to communicate between themselves for quite some time, as a matter of practicality. Some countries, such as India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Singapore, and Malaysia, have even assigned English as an official language alongside their national language. This provides an interesting scenario, given the huge population of Asia—practically, there are more Asian people speaking English as a lingua franca than there are in Europe or the United Kingdom, where the language comes from. The question that follows is, in this case, what type of English is to be expected to be used and to be taught, in order to make English a most convenient means of communication for Asians? This book addresses this significant question. The editor and authors of this book offer critical examination of the issues and the related linguistic and pedagogical concepts. They share their soul-searching journey in examining the feasibility of adopting the English language as the lingua franca in Indonesia. For example, English was once being taught and to be used as a native language (ENL) in Indonesia. The authors of this book query such an approach: is it feasible and desirable for people who speak English as a second language (ESL) to
xii Series editors’ foreword aim to achieve proficiency at ENL level? On this issue, Professor Andy Kirkpatrick offers a very clear answer: it is the choice of the speaker to aim at achieving ENL, but only as a personal choice in terms of language variety, and a personal goal of proficiency, not as an ideal type. The authors basically point out that it is impossible for the majority of speakers who learn and speak ESL to achieve ENL levels. On that basis, alternative concepts are examined, such as World Englishes, English as an international language (EIL), and English as a foreign language (EFL). And the most significant approach that the authors of this book would recommend is the ELF approach: English as lingua franca. ELF acknowledges the backgrounds of the people who speak English are non-native speakers, and most of them would find it very difficult to achieve native levels. But the more important question is, why should they have to speak the type of English spoken by the native speakers? In Asia, and perhaps in the world at large, the non-native English speakers far outnumber the native speakers. If the cultural background of the language speaker is important (which the authors all think is a very important issue), we should spend more effort in examining how to make English speaking meaningful to those speakers who come from other cultures, and how to make the English language make sense to them. This question also has far-reaching implications for pedagogies and teacher education, if the aim is to teach English as a language that can become a lingua franca in the society and/or across the Asian cultures. The kind of pedagogies should be considered in this light. And in this context, the authors examine critical pedagogies for teaching ELF. We wish readers would agree that the questions in regard to the approaches to be adopted for English to become a lingua franca in Asia are important both in academic and practical terms. We sincerely recommend this book to you. Conducting the discourse in the context of one country, in this case Indonesia, has the advantage that the issue can be studied more deeply and contextually. S. Gopinathan Academic Director, The HEAD Foundation, Singapore Wing On Lee Zhengzhou University, China Jason Eng Thye Tan National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Reference Noack, R. & Gamio, L. (2015) “The World’s languages, in 7 maps and charts”, The Washington Post, 23 April. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ worldviews/wp/2015/04/23/the-worlds-languages-in-7-maps-and-charts/?utm_ term=.ad1734d0e076. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Preface
This edited book, Teacher Education for English as a Lingua Franca: Perspectives from Indonesia, aims to make scholarly and pedagogical contributions to the domain of teaching English as a lingua franca (ELF) in Indonesia. The focus on Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation, predicted to rise to the world’s fifth largest economy by 2030 and the fourth largest by 2050 (PWC, 2015)—is a welcome step forward to advance understanding of English teacher education in a context that has received relatively modest attention from the international ELF community so far. This volume serves not only as a reference source about English teacher education in Indonesia, but also as a catalyst for increased international discussion by addressing mutual agendas that are shared by the international English teaching community, such as the tensions between local dominant languages (national identity) and English language (global identity); local English teachers’ dual identity as non-native English speakers and English teaching professionals; and global English ideology that promises upward mobility and deepening social divisions that confine quality education to a small(er) segment of society. The chapters address the first two issues: Indonesian English teachers’ beliefs, the impact of the ELF concept upon their professional identity, and educational implications for practicing the ELF pedagogy and departing from native-speakerism (Braine, 2010; Holliday, 2009; Kirkpatrick, 2014). For example, Chapter 3 by Joseph Ernest Mambu reports how his students were caught between national and ASEAN identity. The students who were enrolled in an undergraduate English language teacher education program in Salatiga, Central Java tended to prioritize national over ASEAN identity. A case in point is Adit, who is identified as “a talented member of the university’s English Debating Society.” The student believed that “maintaining Indonesian culture was more important than being ASEAN aware.” Moreover, Chapter 4 by Siti Nur’Aini, Laily Nur Affini, and Ajeng Setyorini sheds light on the dilemma of some pre-service English teachers in a teacher training university who strive to improve their English skills and develop their professional identity while feeling apprehensive about the future of their indigenous language(s) that are increasingly marginalized. One participant is quoted as saying: “I see English as imperialism in linguistics and has undermined the rights of other languages and marginalize the survival of the indigenous language.”
xiv Preface This volume contributes to the domain of English language teaching and research by making Indonesian pre-service teachers’ voices heard, including the ones that appear to be in conflict with their decision to become qualified English teachers. Exercising caution in imposing scholarly suggestions on local English teachers, the book’s editor, Subhan Zein, has assembled a pioneering collection of innovative studies that approach the critical topic of English teacher education in Indonesia from diverse research and pedagogical contexts, making the book walk “in the footsteps of Gimenez, El Kadri, & Calvo (2017) whose publication on teacher education for ELF in Brazil is the first of its kind in the world (Chapter 1).” This book is ideally intended for English teaching professionals and researchers around the world who attend to the void between the ELF pedagogy and practice while seeking a better understanding of the pervasiveness of native-speakerism. As accentuated by the editor, the strength of the book is not to exclude native English speakers (NES) from the ELF, but rather to adopt “the most recent perspective that acknowledges NES as part of the equation of lingua franca interactions.” The latest conceptual expansion is however not invariably acknowledged or practiced either in Indonesia or around the world where the conventional Western-centric English education practices prevail (e.g. Chapter 5 by Utami Widiati and Nur Hayati). To compound this matter further, the “NS–NNS dichotomy” (Higgins, 2003) figures in discussion on ways to elevate non-native English teachers’ professional identity as well where they are positioned superior to native English teachers. The contributors of this volume, many affiliated with English teacher programs at Indonesian universities, also vary in the evaluation of native English speakers as ‘part of the equation of lingua franca interactions.’ For example, guided by a question, “Who is the most effective English teachers? Native- or Non-native English teachers?” and having students in a teacher education program complete pre- and post-writings, Chapter 7 by Nugrahenny T. Zacharias ascribes her participants’ changing notion of ‘the best’English teachers—from native English teachers to non-native English teachers—to the implementation of the ELF pedagogy. The diversity in viewpoints about the ELT pedagogy constitutes the significance of this volume that aims to facilitate further discussion for the teaching and researching of English as a lingua franca in and beyond the Indonesian context in a way that creates an inclusive teaching experience for qualified teachers. Moreover, the book significantly highlights unique challenges posed for Indonesia. Unlike Northeast Asia, dominated and surrounded by non-native Englishspeaking nations such as China and Japan, Indonesia has to continue manifesting leadership as one of a few non-English-speaking nations within the Englishspeaking ASEAN community at a time when English-speaking member states such as Singapore and Malaysia have increased their presence as a global education hub (Kobayashi, 2011, 2017) in part due to their English-speaking population (e.g. Tan, 2014). As described in Chapter 8 by Didi Sukyadi and Budi Hermawan, Indonesia has strived to secure its clout by investing in tourism and student-
Preface
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exchange programs whose success hinges upon an effective English communication between Indonesian nationals and visitors primarily from other ASEAN nations. When it comes to the training of qualified English teachers, however, Indonesia appears to be lagging behind other non-English-speaking ASEAN member states (e.g. Thailand, Vietnam), according to Chapter 10 by Bachrudin Musthafa, Fuad Abdul Hamied, and Subhan Zein that points out “the absence of governmental policy directives” and “the grim picture” of many Indonesian English teachers’ limited English proficiency. Indeed, Chapter 9 by Ribut Wahyudi and Sumti Chusna provides a glimpse into the gravity of the situation in Indonesia by focusing on a 28-year-old female novice teacher working at a private Islamic primary school: she was recommended by the school principal as the research participant because she “was the only one who gained a bachelor degree in English”; even this supposedly qualified teacher answered a question “How did you teach English as lingua franca?” with a response, “What is it?”. Showcasing the teacher who teaches American English by exercising authority, Chapter 9 calls for the further modification of existent ELF frameworks such as Kobayashi (2017)’s modified model in the Malaysian English teaching context based on Kirkpatrick (2014)’s “Lingua Franca Approach.” As rightly pointed out by Zein, the insufficient impact of ELF concept and pedagogy on Indonesian (pre-service) teachers needs to be examined by taking into account a “transition currently taking place in the landscape of English language education in Indonesia” (Chapter 1). As documented in this volume, this transition is manifested in pre-service teachers’ varying degrees of English skills, teacher training background, professional identity, familiarity with the ELF pedagogy, and receptive attitudes toward it. Overall, the book’s editor hopes that “the volume could help stimulate further research on teacher education for ELF in other Asian nations,” and this volume is very likely to be recognized as one of the earliest international publications that have opened a new chapter in the domain of English teaching as a lingua franca in the dynamically changing Southeast Asia. On the other hand, what remains to be seen is whether or not “the effort put into this volume could pioneer a movement to improve the quality of teachers in an integrated and systematic ELF teacher education in Asia.” A concerted effort by practitioners, scholars, policymakers, and all other stakeholders is contingent on the outcome of this unprecedented and vitally important challenge. Yoko Kobayashi Iwate University, Japan
References Braine, G. (2010). Nonnative Speaker English Teachers: Research, Pedagogy, and Professional Growth. New York and London: Routledge. Higgins, C. (2003). “Ownership” of English in the outer circle: an alternative to the NS– NNS dichotomy. TESOL Quarterly, 37(4), 615–644. doi:10.2307/3588215
xvi Preface Holliday, A. (2009). English as a lingua franca, ‘non-native speakers’ and cosmopolitan realities. In F. Sharifian (ed.), English as an International Language: Perspectives and Pedagogical Issues (pp. 21–33). Bristol: Mutilingual Matters. Kirkpatrick, A. (2014). Teaching English in Asia in non-Anglo cultural contexts: principles of the ‘lingua franca approach’. In R. Marlina & R. Giri (eds), The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers, and Students (pp. 23–34). Basel: Springer. Kobayashi, Y. (2011). Expanding-circle students learning ‘standard English’ in the outercircle Asia. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 32(3), 235–248. doi:10.1080/01434632.2010.536239 Kobayashi, Y. (2017). ASEAN English teachers as a model for international English learners: modified teaching principles . International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27(3), 682–696. doi:10.1111/ijal.12173 PWC (2015). The World in 2050: Will the Shift in Global Economic Power Continue? London: PricewaterhouseCoopers. Available at: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/ the-economy/assets/world-in-2050-february-2015.pdf. Tan, Y.-Y. (2014). English as a ‘mother tongue’ in Singapore. World Englishes, 33(3), 319–339. doi:10.1111/weng.12093
1
Setting the scene for teacher education for English as a lingua franca Subhan Zein
English as a lingua franca, ASEAN and Indonesia The Biblical account of the Tower of Babel depicts humanity’s confusion after the loss of what was believed to be a common tongue. Ever since then, people have scattered around the world and spoken different languages. Meanwhile, the search for a common tongue continues, with humanity’s progression seeing many languages function as a lingua franca, that is, “a vehicular language between speakers who do not share a first language” (Mauranen, 2018, p. 7). This has been the case with, for example, Latin in medieval Europe, Swahili in East Africa, Arabic in the Middle East and Malay in Southeast Asia. Despite the long search for a common tongue, it is only recently that humanity has chronicled the truly international expansion of a lingua franca. The language is English, a language that has now become the driving force for globalisation with influences that have crossed the linguistic sphere and even permeated the economic, political, cultural, ideological and religious ones (Crystal, 2003; Graddol, 2006; Rubdy & Saraceni, 2006). The roles that English plays in the lives of people vary, ranging from marginalisation and domination on the one hand (Pennycook, 1994; Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996), to empowerment and upward social trajectory on the other (Crystal, 2003; Rubdy & Saraceni, 2006). Kachru (1996, p. 135) states that “the universalization of English and the power of this language have come at a price; for some, the implications are agonizing, while for others they are a matter for ecstasy”. But the significance of English transcends individual-level contacts with the language. First, the global spread of English dictates a sociolinguistic reality whereby it is spoken more by people for whom it is a second or additional language than by those for whom it is a first language (Crystal, 2003), making it a lingua franca for people coming from highly diverse national, cultural, religious, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds (Jenkins, 2006, 2007; Seidlhofer, 2004, 2011). Second, English is not only a domestic language or otherwise salient in a particular community, but it is also an international lingua franca that is used in areas such as international businesses, academia, tourism and migration (Jenkins, 2007; Mauranen, 2018; Seidlhofer, 2011). English’s expansion at the political level, for example, has resulted in its official use as a working language of government
2 S. Zein associations. This is reflected at regional level such as in the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Economic Community whereby English has been adopted as the working language of its member states (Stroupe & Kimura, 2015). The truth is English has been voluntarily selected by ASEAN members (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) to communicate with one another. Most citizens of these ASEAN nations are in fact multilingual, speaking various indigenous and national languages, so they use English to communicate with fellow Asian multilinguals (Kirkpatrick, 2010). The voluntary adoption of English as a means of communication among the ten ASEAN member states not only creates a sociolinguistic phenomenon “where there are no native speakers, as traditionally defined, of the language” (Kirkpatrick, 2016, p. 286), but also a situation where English plays an official role beyond its traditional Anglo-American cultural domain (Kirkpatrick, 2011, 2012). ASEAN has become a lingua franca context, using English as a lingua franca (ELF), which is a term referring to “any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 7). Indonesia as one of the founding members of ASEAN has a pivotal role to play. With a population reaching 266.6 million in 2018 (Worldometers, 2018), Indonesia is ASEAN’s most populous country, the fourth most populous in the world, and is potentially the world’s fifth largest economy by 2030 (PWC, 2015). The country could prove influential in maintaining regional stability, with its political developments providing “a vital ingredient in building up confidence and credibility as well as enhancing the pursuit of leadership in ASEAN” (Rattanasevee, 2014, p. 125). In this regard, English is expected to become the spearhead of Indonesia’s contribution to the ASEAN Integration and the country’s acceleration for global competitiveness (Hamied, 2011, 2012; Zein, 2018). As a consequence, the importance of English within Indonesia’s language education system cannot be underestimated (Musthafa & Hamied, 2014; Sukyadi, 2015) and its influence within its diverse communities has been both far-reaching and illuminating (Sugiharto, 2014; Zentz, 2015).
Motivations for this volume For decades, English language education in Indonesia has been principally dominated by the English as a native language (ENL) ideology, as seen in the English as a foreign language (EFL) (Dardjowidjojo, 2000; Mistar, 2005) and English as a second language (ESL) (Ariatna, 2016) perspectives. Within the ENL ideology, strict adherence to certain varieties of English such as American English and British English results in the imposition that “native” English is the only norm worth teaching, although the term “native speaker” itself has been declared a myth (Davies, 2003) and potentially leads to monolingual bias (Cook, 1999). The implementation of the ENL ideology requires teachers to teach according to the “standard native” versions of English (Seidlhofer, 2011, 2018), while learners are expected to avoid their first language (L1) in communication and should strive
Setting the scene 3 to attain “native-like” proficiency (Jenkins, 2006, 2007). Manara (2013a) notes that English language educators in Indonesia are not only dictated by this ENL ideology, but also shadowed by the issues of native-speakerism and “standard” English, not to mention testing requirements (e.g. Test of English as a Foreign Language, TOEFL; International English Language Testing System, IELTS) and professional certifications (e.g. Certificate of English Language Teaching for Adults, CELTA; Diploma of English Language Teaching for Adults, DELTA) associated with them. This leads to the assertion that maintaining the ENL ideology does not represent Indonesia’s present-day sociolinguistic realities, as the country appears to be making a transition to ELF (see Chapter 2 for full discussion on the issue). First of all, Indonesia has joined a global linguistic movement characterised by the highly changing nature of English language interactions and the dynamic and complex relationships of English users who do not speak it as their first language (see Dewi, 2014a). What is urgent is for Indonesians to communicate in English with fellow ASEAN members, rather than with the so-called “native speakers” (Kirkpatrick, 2010, 2012b). The use of English among Indonesians, as a consequence, is more likely to occur in lingua franca contexts, and its role is best seen as a lingua franca with other ASEAN members and the broader international community. Second, although favouritism towards the ENL ideology is still present in Indonesia (e.g. Dewi, 2012; Zacharias, 2014), a growing body of literature demonstrates how the ideology has been widely contested. This seems to be a phenomenon occurring in recent years (see Bradford, 2007; Dewi, 2011, 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2017; Jayanti & Norahmi, 2014; Kramadibrata, 2016; Manara, 2013a, 2013b; Mukminatien, 2012; Sakhiyya, Agustien & Pratama, 2018; Setiawan, 2015; Zacharias, 2013, 2014, 2016), but its origin may be traced back to the late 1990s when tolerance of “non-native” pronunciation of English took shape as a result of the increasing emphasis on fluency (Dardjowidjojo, 2000). A shifting attitude among teachers and students demonstrating greater appreciation towards “non-native” English is a common topic found in Bradford (2007); Dewi (2014a); Kramadibrata (2016); and Setiawan (2015), while willingness to develop learners’ and teachers’ awareness of English varieties other than the “native” varieties is an emerging theme in Dewi (2014b, 2017) and Mukminatien (2012). This alone suffices to inspire Jayanti & Norahmi (2014) to call for a revisiting of the EFL perspective in Indonesia, which tends to have unrealistic expectations about what students can achieve. Another reason is that Indonesia needs a perspective that is in alignment with character building. Indonesia’s educational goal to develop character building requires a perspective that is aligned with Indonesia’s social, cultural and religious values – something that both ESL and EFL perspectives stand against due to their “native” culture orientation. An ELF perspective, on the other hand, is supportive of the use of English that conforms to social, cultural and religious values, as it purports to have a new understanding of English in new fields and in cultural contexts that go beyond the Anglo-American influences (Kirkpatrick, 2012, 2016a). This gains more importance given the increasing need for English to play a role in linguistic and cultural enrichment (Dewi, 2014a), cultural exploration
4 S. Zein (Zacharias, 2014), and negotiation of multilingual and multicultural practices (Sugiharto, 2014). From this point of view, it appears that ELF awareness starts permeating the realm of English language education in Indonesia. This volume captures this transitionary nature of English language education in Indonesia to ELF. It responds to the urgent need to educate local teachers at both pre-service and in-service levels for competency in teaching English in lingua franca contexts. These include contexts such as the larger international communities where Indonesians would encounter other “non-native” English speakers (Zacharias, 2014, 2016) as well as “native” English speakers (Dewi, 2017; Zacharias, 2013). It is even more significant in the context of ASEAN, where the lingua franca role of English requires the employment of a multilingual framework, given its highly diverse linguistic communities (Kirkpatrick, 2018). Teacher education in the ASEAN context needs to “empower non-native English teachers to provide professional, empathetic teaching in spite of native English norms dominant in or outside the workplace” (Kobayashi, 2017, pp. 12–13), and this volume works within the Indonesian context to provide an answer to this contention. Second, there is a need for a book that brings together empirical research and conceptual studies focusing on the education of local English teachers in Indonesia, taking into account the various issues relating to the use of ELF. The Indonesian Government itself, through the Ministry of National Education (now the Ministry of Education and Culture), established various policy measures to improve teachers’ quality, including the Government’s Regulation No. 19/2005 on National Standards of Education and the Teachers and Lecturers Act No. 14/ 2005 (Saukah, 2009). Yet, the efficacy of training programmes resulting from these policies has been criticised (see Sukyadi, 2015 for discussion on secondary education). In the academic domain, there has been no systematic research that addresses English language teacher education in Indonesia as a sustainable process of teachers’ professional development (Luciana, 2006; Saukah, 2009), not to mention integration of the ELF framework. Meanwhile, the need has been voiced to incorporate the ASEAN curriculum into teacher education, for example (see Widiati & Hayati, 2015), and concern about reconceptualising the knowledge base in teacher education in alignment with a lingua franca approach has been raised (Sakhiyya et al. 2018). Thus, this volume will help inform policy decisions in Indonesia and other countries aspiring to improve the English proficiency of their citizens in order to successfully participate in lingua franca communications. This gives another impetus to this volume. Third, this edited collection fills gaps in the literature. While there have been many influential and internationally well-established publications on teaching methods and language teacher education (e.g. Harmer, 2010; Burns & Richards, 2009; Richards & Farrell, 2005; Richards & Renandya, 2002), they are often premised on contexts of practice in ESL classrooms in English-speaking countries and are framed within the ENL ideology. The contexts are far distant from the classroom realities of the majority of global English users nowadays. As a result, teacher education worldwide seems to be lagging behind when it comes to incorporating ELF in a practical manner (Dewey and Patsko, 2018). There is a
Setting the scene 5 need for a book on teacher education to cater for contexts where English is generally learnt not for integration into an L1 English-speaking community, but for meaning making in lingua franca contexts; and where English is practised not in largely monolingual contexts, but in diverse multilingual and multicultural contexts. This gives rise to a volume that considers how ELF develops more complex relationships within and between diverse multilingual and multicultural communities, and prepares teachers to address such complex relationships. This book aims to tackle these concerns by focusing on teacher education for ELF in multilingual and multicultural Indonesia, walking in the footsteps of Gimenez, El Kadri & Calvo (2017), whose publication on teacher education for ELF in Brazil is the first of its kind in the world.
ELF in this volume English as a lingua franca does not refer to a fixed variety of English, but implies a context of language use characterised by dynamic, variable and flexible utilisation of linguistic resources by its speakers (Seidlhofer, 2011). ELF communication exhibits variation and fluidity as diverse users of English coming from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds adapt and modify their language based on the contextual and communicative needs (Baker, 2015). The goal of ELF research underpinning this present volume follows Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey (2011), that is, ELF accounts for the diversity and fluidity of the English language and its valuation of the communication strategies adopted by interlocutors when communication difficulties arise. Throughout the present volume, ELF is used as a conceptual framework that examines the use of English by those considered “non-native” English speakers in countries where English does not have an historically established presence (Jenkins, 2006; Kirkpatrick, 2011; Seidlhofer, 2004), while acknowledging the use of the language by the so-called “native” English speakers (Mauranen, 2018). As this volume adopts the most recent perspective, acknowledging “native” English speakers as part of the equation of lingua franca interactions, it is distanced from the argument that ELF excludes “native” English speakers (see Marlina, 2016). Thus, it follows Mauranen’s (2018, p. 33) assertion of it being a “more comprehensive definition” of ELF that mirrors the reality of English today: “English is spoken in situations with widely varying combinations of participants, including first-language speakers of different varieties.” In this respect, the chapters in this volume embrace the ontological perspective that ELF and English as an international language (EIL) “are one and the same phenomenon, and that both refer to lingua franca uses of English primarily along its non-mother-tonguespeakers” (Jenkins, 2007, p. xi). This stance is taken despite the assertion that EIL is an umbrella term encompassing other frameworks such as ELF and World Englishes (see Marlina, 2016). ELF, World Englishes and EIL are in principle theoretical perspectives maintaining the pluricentricity of English as well as the adaptability of the language to new social and cultural environments (Bolton, 2005; Jenkins, 2006, 2007;
6 S. Zein Sharifian, 2009; Seidlhofer, 2011). ELF and World Englishes are different in a way, in that the former describes the practices occurring in lingua franca communication (Jenkins et al. 2011), whereas the latter is concerned with the identification of core linguistic and pragmatic features characterising nativised varieties of English (e.g. Singaporean English, Indian English), also called “New Englishes” (Bolton, 2005). In this volume, however, ELF and EIL are deemed synonymous because the similarities between them are far more substantial than the differences. Thus, in cases where the term EIL is used in this volume (e.g. Chapter 7), it is considered to be synonymous with ELF. Paradigmatically speaking, ELF is essentially the same as EIL – they both serve as a linguistic and epistemological framework to critically revisit the conceptualisations of English. For example, ELF and EIL frameworks are mainly concerned with the view of English as a pluricentric language. They take into account the sociolinguistic realities of English within various contexts where variations in linguistic and cultural behaviour are inevitable due to the diverse and complex backgrounds of the speakers (Jenkins, 2007; Marlina, 2016; Seidlhofer, 2004; Sharifian, 2009). Second, both ELF and EIL frameworks embrace a similar view on language change and linguistic adaptability. The evolutions of English are evident not only within the epicentrum of English ecology with its pervasive use of ENL, but also in the periphery where varieties of New Englishes are emerging (Jenkins, 2007; Sharifian, 2009). Third, ELF and EIL put forth a more democratic view of language, challenging the hegemonic ENL norms while acknowledging the use of English varieties. ELF challenges the prescriptive notion of ‘standards’ and how the use of non-standard English is considered to be linguistic deficiency (Seidlhofer, 2004, 2018), a view shared by EIL scholars (e.g. Marlina, 2016; Sharifian, 2009). Fourth, both ELF and EIL acknowledge the fact that, in the majority of interactions involving users from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, the variety of English used is dependent on the users themselves, and thus unpredictable. There is more than one English variety involved because each speaker brings a variety that he or she is most comfortable with (Jenkins, 2015; Matsuda, 2012). Fifth, ELF and EIL do not endorse some kind of unifying code or variety of English. Baker and Jenkins (2015, p. 193) argue that “[n]o mainstream ELF researchers that we are aware of are currently claiming that ELF is a ‘universal code’” and that “attempts to delineate ELF as a variety of language are not part of contemporary ELF discourses”. In a similar vein, Marlina (2016, p. 6) argues that “the EIL paradigm rejects the idea of having a single variety of English as the chosen form of English for global communication.” Sixth, in light of the changes that English has undergone as a consequence of its recent worldwide expansion, ELF and EIL encourage reviews and revisions of languageteaching approaches. This proposition has been widely accepted by scholars working with either or both frameworks, as they examine how such reviews and revisions would impact teacher education (e.g. Matsuda, 2011, 2017; Sifakis, 2007; Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2018; Zacharias, 2016). It is not the intention of this chapter to provide an exhaustive account of comparisons between ELF and EIL – a topic of this kind warrants research on its own.
Setting the scene 7 But the summary above provides a basis for the theoretical stance of this volume. The summary consists of underpinning principles for contributors to this volume to conceptualise ideas on teacher education in Indonesia that embrace the ELF framework. The implementation of such a framework marks a departure from the ENL ideology that has long governed English language education in Indonesia.
Towards teacher education for ELF in Indonesia Recent studies show that teachers’ attitudes to the lingua franca approach in Indonesia have been somewhat positive (e.g. Dewi, 2014a, 2014b; Zacharias, 2013, 2014, 2016); others document teachers’ struggles in challenging the pervasive ENL ideology (e.g. Manara, 2013a, 2013b). Although favouritism towards the ENL ideology persists, teachers participating in Zacharias’ (2014) study were open and enthusiastic about implementing the lingua franca approach for cultural exploration. Other teachers were more willing to develop learners’ awareness of English varieties and place an emphasis on intelligibility, although textbook availability means that they could only teach either American English or British English (Dewi, 2017). Teaching with the lingua franca approach was not necessarily more manageable, but teachers in Zacharias’ (2013) study maintained that it had a positive impact on increasing their confidence. Given its increasing prominence, scholars such as Dewi (2014b), Sakhiyya et al. (2018) and Zacharias (2014, 2016) have even argued for the inclusion of the lingua franca approach in teacher education, citing its usefulness, for example, in enabling cultural exploration (Zacharias, 2014), facilitating linguistic and cultural enrichment (Dewi, 2014b) and increasing teachers’ professional confidence (Zacharias, 2013). Integration of the ELF paradigm in teacher education has thus been voiced – teachers could make a paradigm leap when ELF concepts have become part of the knowledge base of teacher education (Dewi, 2017; Sakhiyya et al. 2018; Zacharias, 2013, 2014, 2016). This edited volume attempts to provide insights such as those above, documenting the transition currently taking place in the landscape of English language education in Indonesia. The teacher in Chapter 9, in particular, was initially not aware of the ELF discourse, but participants in studies reported in the other chapters were. Student teachers participating in the study reported in Chapter 3, for example, discussed ELF-related issues as part of their critical pedagogy course, while those involved in the study reported in Chapter 7 examined an important issue in lingua franca approach: the role of “native” and “non-native” teachers. Given its transitionary nature, this volume aims to make ELF conceptions part of the knowledge base of teacher education in Indonesia. The volume takes inspiration from Sifakis (2007) and Sifakis & Bayyurt (2018) in an attempt to develop ELFaware teacher education in Indonesia. It also follows Kirkpatrick’s (2010, 2011) and Kobayashi’s (2017) proposition to invest resources in the teacher education of local multilinguals rather than employing native speakers. Kirkpatrick (2011, p. 10) states that here “the major aim of learning English is to use it as a lingua franca in multilingual settings” and “the successful multilingual user of English not only offers a role model for students, but also provides the linguistic model.”
8 S. Zein This translates into the education of local Indonesian teachers that is at the core of the present volume, both at pre-service and in-service levels of education. All the chapters in this volume are intended as a collective effort in teacher education to cater for ELF pedagogy in the Indonesian context. Contributors to the book have captured a wide range of arguments and research questions that characterise ELF as a paradigm for thinking and how it relates to other emerging concepts. These include critical pedagogy and teacher education (Chapter 3), teacher identity in professional development (Chapter 4) and critical academic writing (Chapter 7), multimodality and communicative competence (Chapter 8), and power relations and classroom discourse (Chapter 9). The chapters in this volume also present methodological innovations that facilitate the paradigm shift of ELF in teacher education. The incorporation of teaching materials integrating ASEAN/Asian cultures and the implementation of translanguaging pedagogy are proposals voiced in Chapter 2.Chapter 7 shows how teacher educators’ appropriate scaffolding occurs in an academic writing course. Other chapters, on the other hand, rely on multimodal semiotic resources (Chapter 8), classroom discussions and exchanges through Schoology (Chapter 3) and peer-coaching (Chapter 6). Another common theme emerging in this volume is how cultural elements are associated with teacher education for ELF. Chapter 4 captures the need for developing teachers’ skills in relation to the promotion of teacher identity in the ELF context, while the development of intercultural competence is a topic of interest in Chapter 5. The following section explains how the volume is structured.
Overview of the volume This edited collection is divided into three parts. Part One, Chapters 2–6, emphasises the pedagogy of teacher education for ELF. Chapters 7–9 constitute Part Two, focusing on the pedagogy of ELF in the classroom and its implications for teacher education. Part Three, Chapters 10 and 11, extends the discussion on ELF to examination of issues such as policy and conceptualisations of ELF for teacher education that have emerged in this volume. Part One focuses on the pedagogy of teacher education, which develops alignment between practice and theory, emphasises reflection and focuses on depth rather than breadth of curriculum (Kitchen & Petrarca, 2016; Korthagen, 2016). Teacher education is most effective when its approaches are meant to produce reflective teachers through the provision of a variety of learning experiences that stimulate introspection, collaboration, awareness-raising and learning from experience (Kitchen & Petrarca, 2016). The complexity of developing such approaches to pedagogy for teacher education for ELF is shown in this volume, especially when it is related to issues such as Indonesia transitioning to ELF (Chapter 2), critical pedagogy (Chapter 3), teacher identity (Chapter 4) and intercultural competence (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 examines the attempt to encapsulate such pedagogy for teacher education for ELF through peer coaching and community of practice.
Setting the scene 9 Part One starts with Chapter 2. I have this chapter to set the tone for the volume, arguing that there is a shift of orientation in English language education in Indonesia from EFL to ELF. First, the chapter provides a review of the historical background of English language education in Indonesia, sketching the curricular alterations in the country. I contend that the increasing prestige and use of English in Indonesians’ daily life implies the questionable nature of the status of English as a foreign language in Indonesia. Furthermore, the need to use English to communicate with ASEAN counterparts, which leads to ELF interactions, actually describes more realistic settings for most Indonesians, rather than the traditionally defined “native-speakers” of English from England or the USA (Kirkpatrick, 2010, 2012). I argue that both ESL and EFL perspectives stand against the perspective that grows organically with Indonesian’s cultural, social and religious values. An ELF perspective, on the other hand, would support the use of English that conforms to local values and is in alignment with the need to develop character building. One implication for teacher education is the integration of ELF-awareness (Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2018). This requires openness and flexibility on the part of the teachers (Hamied, 2012; Kirkpatrick, 2012, 2016), so they could accept varieties of English and challenge the established role of “native” English speakers. Furthermore, teacher education needs to help teachers develop locally appropriate teaching materials that promote cultural identities. Another implication is a move away from the monolingual view of language teaching that treats languages as separate entities to a translanguaging pedagogy (Canagarajah, 2013) that develops fluid, mobile and multiple discursive resources in multilingual classrooms. Teacher education needs to capture this paradigm shift, hence preparing teachers for a pedagogy in which the L1 is valued and deliberately utilised in language teaching. Chapter 3 is written by Joseph Ernest Mambu. This chapter focuses on critical pedagogy on teacher education in the ELF era. This is an important area of interest, since ELF mainstream research has not addressed the relationship between ELF and critical pedagogy. Data were collected from undergraduate students through audio-recorded classes, students’ comments on Schoology and journal entries. In this chapter, the author successfully explores the nuances of criticality and power dynamics involving English and other languages in a dialogic process between a teacher educator and student teachers. The discussion takes place through ELF as the teacher educator and student teachers negotiate linguistic forms (e.g. using repetitions) and co-constructed sociocultural values (e.g. appropriating an opponent’s stance) of concepts related to critical pedagogy (i.e. social justice). The study shows that scaffolded classroom discussions and exchanges through Schoology are proven as effective means to negotiate and or co-construct notions of ASEAN awareness and social justice as an integral component of ELF use in the ASEAN community. This study brings about the idea that scaffolded discussions on ELF are not only a process of developing ELF awareness (Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2018), but no less importantly, it is a direct implementation of critical pedagogy in teacher education (Hawkins & Norton, 2009).
10 S. Zein In Chapter 4, Siti Nur’Aini, Laily Nur Affini and Ajeng Setyorini discuss professional teacher identity in the making. The authors collected data using written narrative and semi-structured group interviews involving two cohorts of pre-service teachers who completed practicum in high schools. Their study demonstrates that the activities the pre-service teachers undertook in order to become competent English users in ELF context were individually scoped and unstructured, rather than systematically organised at institutional level. There was little evidence pointing to how teachers were trained to develop teaching skills in an ELF-contextualised manner that could promote teacher identity. For this reason, the authors reiterate Kirkpatrick and Sussex’s (2012) assertion for the development of a pre-service curriculum that includes the languages and cultures of the ASEAN countries. To corroborate such a proposed curriculum, the authors suggest that universities in Indonesia develop collaborative pre-service exchange programmes with other ASEAN countries, rather than inviting teachers or teacher educators from the traditionally defined ‘English native-speaking countries’. The authors argue that such a practice would assist in the development of teachers’ teaching skills while promoting their identity as teachers of ELF within the ASEAN community. The development of intercultural competence in teacher education for ELF is the focus of Chapter 5. The authors, Utami Widiati and Nur Hayati, designed an epistemologically a posteriori – inductively data-driven – study through analysis of curricular documents of ten teacher education institutions offering courses relevant to the development of inter-cultural competence (ICC). Their analysis suggests unanimous agreement among institutions about the inseparable relationship between language and culture. However, the emphasis on Western (especially American) cultures remains the established norm in these institutions; and in five of the institutions, developing understanding of diversity, multiculturalism and cultural differences is a common feature. These findings indicate that on the one hand this reflects the traditional ENL ideology that is still common in teacher education programmes in Indonesia. On the other hand, they show a transition towards language and social harmony where the incorporation of ELF into ICC courses could help develop understanding and tolerance. The challenge for teacher education is to equip teacher candidates with practices that can help them design activities for ICC development in which the use of ELF as a bridge for communication features prominently. To overcome this challenge, the authors urge teacher education to move away from merely providing pre-service teachers with ICC as English learners, to developing pre-service teachers’ ICC as Englishteacher candidates. The authors follow Kirkpatrick’s (2012) proposition for an ASEAN-oriented curriculum in pre-service education that allows for an emphasis on the attainment of natural-sounding multilinguals, the inclusion of regional and local cultures rather than the so-called “native” English cultures, and the use of English to discuss ASEAN regional and local cultures and values. They further assert the need for renewed linguistic and cultural competence to be integrated within pre-service teacher education, allowing for the utilisation of cultures other than “native” English by teachers in the ELF context until the teachers can embed language and culture varieties within their pedagogy (Li, 2017).
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Chapter 6, written by Pande Made Sumartini, focuses on peer coaching and teacher efficacy in professional development programmes. Using a simultaneous cyclical model of peer coaching, the author attempts to provide recommendations to direct the imposing top-down approach to professional development into a collegial professional development within the practical context of ELF teaching and learning. The author demonstrates how peer-coaching can be utilised to develop ELF as goal and practice that accommodates the movement from collective praxis to individual practice (PX!(px & PC)!pc) as well as its opposite: from individuals’ practices to collective praxis (pc!(px & PC)!PX). In doing so, peer-coaching could help raise awareness of ELF and lead teachers to revisit their belief in native-like proficiency as a goal of teaching, and how this belief influences their teaching. This is how teachers could reorganise their practice as praxis. The author reiterates Sifakis’ (2007) assertion to utilise professional development activities to raise teachers’ awareness of the primary concerns of lingua franca, including issues such as lexicogrammar, pronunciation and pragmatics. This is parallel to Dewey and Patsko’s (2018) contention on developing engagement in any professional development activities to encourage teachers to develop a working understanding of ELF and how this may inform their pedagogy. Similar to Nur’Aini et al. (Chapter 6), Sumartini suggests exchange partnerships with university students and lectures from other ASEAN countries to allow for opportunities to integratively use ELF. For this reason, Sumartini argues for such partnerships to occur as part of post-certification training, enabling teachers to further develop professionally beyond the merely administrative purpose of teacher certification. The focus of Part Two of the volume is on drawing implications for teacher education from classroom pedagogy. Given the prevalence of normative outlook on the ENL ideology, Sifakis (2014) proposes a gradual engagement with ELF in teacher learning. Implications drawn from classroom teaching, classroom observations and studies on teacher attitudes can therefore serve as awareness-raising tools for such a gradual engagement (Dewey & Patsko, 2018; Sifakis, 2014; Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2018). Chapters 7–9 aim to accomplish this in order to assist teachers in teaching English in lingua franca contexts. Part Two commences with Chapter 7. The intersection between a lingua franca approach and critical academic writing is at the core of the chapter. The author, Nugrahenny T. Zacharias, focuses on the implementation of EIL pedagogy in an academic writing class at a pre-service teacher education programme in Indonesia. For the purpose of the study, the author collected data from essays and reflective writings of 18 student teachers. In the chapter, she shows how teacher educators’ appropriate scaffolding of materials in, for example, the history of non-native English-speaking (NNES) movement and pedagogical consequences of being non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs), could result in prospective teachers’ increased awareness of EIL-related issues. This success, according to Zacharias, was attributed to the fact that the design of the classes did not follow the traditional academic preparation writing class that views students as “accommodationist” (Benesch, 2001, p. ix) with their role being limited to reproducing
12 S. Zein conventional academic genres. But what was instrumental to the success was the critical approach to the writing class that suggests teacher present knowledge as a possibility rather than an absolute truth (Morgan, 2009) and that places student teachers as active learners who “shape academic goals and assignments rather than passively carrying them out” (Benesch, 2001, p. xiv). The author argues that teacher education needs to embrace such a critical approach to academic writing classes when exploring EIL-related issues such as the notion of “nativeness” as both linguistic concept and social practice. This paradigm shift would enable student teachers to place their “non-nativeness” at their advantage rather than to the detriment of their teaching. Chapter 8 is written by Didi Sukyadi and Budi Hermawan. In the chapter, the authors discuss multimodal competence of local teachers in the context of teaching ELF. The participants of the study were 32 prospective teachers, and 50 newly recruited and experienced teachers who responded to open-ended questionnaire on multimodal competence concepts. The data from these participants show that the available semiotic resources in coursebooks, classrooms and the internet were underutilised. The authors assert the importance of equipping teachers with abilities to employ multimodal semiotic resources and multiliteracies in order to develop their communicative competence in teaching English in lingua franca contexts. The authors further propose ELF-based multimodal communicative competence (ELF-MCC) as a pathway of integrating MCC into knowledge and skills of teachers teaching in the ELF context. They argue that visual, spatial and gestural verbal and non-verbal modes can be used in the context of ELF, as a tool of communication among individuals of different language backgrounds and cultures. This implies equipping teachers with basic understanding of systemic functional linguistics, grammar of visual design and multimodality (Kress, 2000). This understanding, however, needs to be interweaved with the provision of multimodality that allows teachers to develop awareness of the intricate relationship between language, culture, multimodality and teaching. Furthermore, the authors argue that cultural aspects in multimodal communication are essential features in teachers representing meanings through verbal, visual, gestural and spatial modes. This is a significant contribution of the authors, especially after recent development in ELF research, for example, still has not identified multimodality as part of the issue (see Jenkins, Baker & Dewey, 2018). In Chapter 9, Ribut Wahyudi and Sumti Chusna tackle the issue of power relations that has been absent in the mainstream ELF research. Using data from interviews and observations of a primary school English teacher in Java, the authors discuss power relations in the teacher’s classroom discourse. The authors contend that power relations should be understood by primary school English teachers. One reason is given the seemingly asymmetrical relationship between the teacher and students in the primary classroom. The second is given the hegemonic role of British and American Englishes that have made them a disciplinary power (Walshaw, 2007). The authors argue that the incorporation of power relations in the currently existing ELF frameworks in the ASEAN context (Kobayashi, 2017) would provide more nuanced understanding and dynamic interactions. Although
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language in lingua franca use is prone to power actualisation between interlocutors, with the more proficient party being more benefitted (Blommaert, 2009), the authors maintain that the occurrence of student resistance in their data means that power relations in the primary classroom are dynamics and could be unpredictable – they need to be interpreted according to the local context in the ASEAN communities. In the broader ASEAN context, the authors of this chapter assert that their proposal could add value to Dudzik and Nguyen’s (2015) proposal on regional English teacher competency and teacher education curricula. In the specific Indonesian context, the authors argue for the inclusion of power as part of the minor of Bachelor’s in English Language Education (Zein, 2017) and English Language Teacher Professional Development Programme (Widiati & Hayati, 2015). Incorporating power relations into teacher education curriculum, the authors argue, would further transform current understanding that tends to simplistically categorise their relationship as one being hierarchical in nature. Part Three examines major issues that reflect the emerging conceptualisations of teacher education for ELF in Indonesia. With teacher education for ELF placing emphasis on linguistic corpora and awareness-raising (Dewey & Patsko, 2018; Matsuda, 2011; Sharifian, 2009; Sifakis, 2014), this allows space for discussion on policies for improving teachers’ quality that becomes the focus of Chapter 10. In Chapter 11, all emerging conceptualisations of teacher are discussed to develop a conclusion of the volume. Part Three starts with Chapter 10. Bachrudin Musthafa, Fuad Abdul Hamied and Subhan Zein are the writers of the chapter. In the chapter, the authors make policy recommendations on the improvement of teachers’ quality to enable them to teach in lingua franca contexts. The authors argue that the goal of teaching and learning should be directed towards assisting learners to use English successfully in the ASEAN context with other bilinguals/multilinguals. For this reason, a revamp in the curriculum is necessary. Following Kirkpatrick (2012), the authors propose that curriculum contents need to ensure that topics are relevant to ASEAN/Asian cultures; listening materials need to provide exposure to the pronunciation of other speakers in the ASEAN community; and activities need to incorporate critical discussions on cultures. Preparation of teachers at pre-service level and professional development of teachers at in-service level, according to the authors, need to be geared towards this curriculum renewal. This leads to the authors’ second recommendation in which teacher education should pay more attention to providing exposure to student teachers’ intercultural competence in the classroom, leaving behind the ENL ideology. Third, the authors argue that policies should be directed towards developing teachers’ proficiency in the context of ELF. That being said, teacher education must prepare teachers, so that they could serve as a model of language user, a model of language learner, task designer, learning facilitator and assessment developer. Finally, an interdisciplinary research framework involving an inter-ministerial coordinating body is necessary in the context of teaching ELF in Indonesia. Such an inter-ministerial coordinating body would ensure the provision of support system that is responsive to the changing needs and contextual demands in teacher education and research in ELF.
14 S. Zein To conclude the volume, Andy Kirkpatrick writes Chapter 11. Kirkpatrick summarises the volume, outlining the conceptualisations of ELF for teacher education that have emerged in this volume. He also identifies focal issues for future directions in research and practice relating to teacher education for ELF. Overall, the contributors to this volume have captured what it means to be able to help teachers to develop their professionalism in teaching English as a language that bridges linguistic and cultural boundaries. The contributors have demonstrated a confluence of sentiment that promotes respect for the diversity of speakers of English and that encourages active participation from those involved in teacher education: teacher educators, prospective teachers at pre-service level and in-service teachers undertaking professional development. I invite readers to peruse the chapters presented in this volume; and I, on behalf of the contributors, am hopeful that the volume could help stimulate further research in other ASEAN as well as Asian nations. We shall wish the effort put into this volume could pioneer a movement to improve the quality of teachers in an integrated and systematic ELF teacher education in Asia. If so, we feel privileged to be part of the movement.
References Ariatna (2016). The need for maintaining CLT in Indonesia. TESOL Journal, 7(4), 800– 822. doi:10.1002/tesj.246Baker, W. (2015). Culture and complexity through English as a lingua franca: Rethinking competences and pedagogy in ELT. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(1), 9–30. Baker, W. & Jenkins, J. (2015). Criticising ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(1), 191–198. Benesch, S. (2001). Critical English for academic purposes: Theory, politics and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Blommaert, J. (2009). Language, asylum, and the national order. Current Anthropology, 50(4), 415–441. Bradford, A. (2007). Motivational orientations in under-researched FLL contexts: Findings from Indonesia. RELC Journal, 38, 302–323. doi: doi:10.1177/0033688207085849 Bolton, K. (2005). World Englishes. In A. Davies & C. Elder (eds), The handbook of Applied Linguistics (pp. 367–396). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. doi:10.1111/ b.9781405138093.2005.00020.x Burns, A. & Richards, J. C. (eds) (2009). The Cambridge guide to second language teacher education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Canagarajah, S. (2013). Literacy as a translingual practice: Between communities and classrooms. London: Routledge. Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33(2), 185–209. doi:10.2307/3587717 Crystal, D. (2003). English as a global language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dardjowidjojo, S. (2000). English teaching in Indonesia. English Australia Journal, 18(1), 22–23. Davies, A. (2003). The native speaker: Myth and reality. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Dewey, M. & Patsko, L. (2018). ELF and teacher education. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 441–455). London: Routledge.
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Dewi, A. (2011). English(es) for Indonesians: a review of literatures. Journal of English Language and Culture, 1(2), 143–155. Dewi, A. (2012). Is English a form of imperialism? A study of academic community’s perceptions at Yogyakarta Universities in Indonesia. Asian Englishes, 15(1), 4–27. doi:10.1080/13488678.2012.10801317 Dewi, A. (2014a). Perception of English in relation to communication and identity: a study of Indonesian lecturers, teachers, and tertiary students. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 24, 1–20. doi:10.1075/japc.24.1.01dew Dewi, A. (2014b). Perception of English: A study of staff and students at universities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Dewi, A. (2017). The English(es) to teach after study and life in Australia: A study of Indonesian English language educators. Asian Englishes, 19(2), 128–147. doi:10.1080/ 13488678.2017.1279762 Dudzik, D. L. & Nguyen, Q. T. N. (2015). Vietnam: Building English competency in preparation for ASEAN 2015. In R. Stroupe & K. Kimura (eds), ASEAN Integration and the role of English language teaching (pp. 41–70). Phnom Penh: IELTS. Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M. S. & Calvo, L. C. S. (eds) (2017). English as a lingua franca in teacher education: A Brazilian perspective. Amsterdam: De Gruyter. Graddol, D. (2006). English next: Why global English may mean the end of English as a foreign language. London: British Council. Hamied, F. A. (2011). English as a lingua franca: an Indonesian perspective (Keynote Address). In The Fourth International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca Conference. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute of Education. Hamied, F. A. (2012). English in multicultural and multilingual Indonesian education. In A. Kirkpatrick & R. Sussex (eds), English as an international language in Asia: Implications for language education (pp. 63–78). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Hamied, F. A. (2013). ELT intricacies within the Indonesian language policy. In T. W. Bigalke & S. Sharbawi (eds), English for ASEAN Integration: Policies and practices in the region (pp. 32–40). Bandar Seri Begawan: IELTS. Harmer, J. (2010). The practice of English language teaching (8th edn). London: Longman. Hawkins, M. R. & Norton, B. (2009). Critical language teacher education. In A. Burns & J. C. Richards (eds), The Cambridge guide to second language teacher education (pp. 30– 39). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Jayanti, F. G. & Norahmi, M. (2014). EFL: Revisiting ELT practices in Indonesia. Journal on English as a Foreign Language, 4(1), 5–14. Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 157–181. Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a lingua franca: Attitudes and identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2015). Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca. Englishes in Practice, 2(3), 49–85. doi:10.1515/eip-2015-0003 Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. & Dewey, M. (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44(3), 281–315. doi:10.1017/ S0261444811000115 Jenkins, J., Baker, C. & Dewey, M. (eds) (2018). Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca. London: Routledge. Kachru, B. B. (1996). World Englishes: agony and ecstasy. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 30(2), 133–155.
16 S. Zein Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a lingua franca in ASEAN: A multilingual model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2011). English as an Asian Lingua Franca and the multilingual model of ELT. Language Teaching, 44(2), 212–224. doi:10.1017/S0261444810000145 Kirkpatrick, A. (2012). English as an international language in Asia: implications for language education. In A. Kirkpatrick & R. Sussex (eds), English as an international language in Asia: Implications for language education (pp. 29–44). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-4578-0_3 Kirkpatrick, A. (2016). English as a Lingua Franca and its educational impact in Asia. In G. Leitner, A. Hashim & H.-G. Wolf (eds), Communicating with Asia: The future of English as a global language (pp. 282–295). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107477186.019 Kirkpatrick, A. (2018). The development of English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 138–150). London: Routledge. Kirkpatrick, A. & Sussex, R. (eds) (2012). English as an international language in Asia: Implications for language education. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Kitchen, J. & Petrarca, D. (2016). Approaches to teacher education. In J. Loughran & M. L. Hamilton (eds), International handbook of teacher education (pp. 137–186). Singapore: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0366-0_4 Kobayashi, Y. (2017). ASEAN English teachers as a model for international English learners: Modified teaching principles . International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27(3), 682–696. doi:10.1111/ijal.12173 Korthagen, F. A. D. (2016). The pedagogy of teacher education. In J. Loughran & M.L. Hamilton (eds), International handbook of teacher education (pp. 311–346). Singapore: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0366-0_8 Kramadibrata, A. (2016). The halo surrounding native English speaker teachers in Indonesia. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 282–295. doi: doi:10.17509/ijal. v5i2.1352 Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality: challenges to thinking about language. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 337–340. Li, G. (2017). Preparing culturally and linguistically competent teachers for English as an international language education. TESOL Journal, 8(2), 250–276. doi:10.1002/tesj.322 Luciana. (2006). Developing standards for language teacher education programs in Indonesia: Professionalizing or losing in complexity? TEFLIN Journal, 7(1), 19–28. Manara, C. (2013a). The struggle of moving towards EIL: Competing and conflicting narratives of professionalism in an Indonesian context.In N. T. Zacharias & C. Manara (eds), Contextualizing the pedagogy of English as an international language: Issues and tensions (pp. 150–167). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Manara, C. (2013b). English language educators’ professional learning as a site of identity struggle. PERTANIKA Journals of Social Sciences and Humanities, 21(3), 1193–1212. Marlina, R. (2016). The pedagogy of English as an International Language (EIL): More reflections and dialogues. In R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (eds), The pedagogy of English as an international language: Perspectives from scholars, teachers and students (pp. 1–22). Basel: Springer International Publishing. Matsuda, A. (2012). Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Matsuda, A. (eds) (2017). Preparing teachers to teach English as an international language. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
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Mauranen, A. (2018). Conceptualising ELF. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 7–24). London: Routledge. Mistar, J. (2005). Teaching English as a foreign language in Indonesia. In G. Braine (ed.), Teaching English to the world: History, curriculum and practice (pp. 168–189). London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Morgan, B. (2009). Fostering transformative practitioners for critical EAP: possibilities and challenges. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 86–99. Mukminatien, N. (2012). Accommodating World Englishes in developing EFL learners’ oral communication. TEFLIN Journal, 23(2), 222–232. Musthafa, B. & Hamied, F. A. (2014). Conditions for English language learning in Indonesia: What Indonesian teachers of English have attempted to do to enhance students’ English learning.In B. Spolsky & K. Sung (eds), Conditions for English language teaching and learning in Asia (pp. 63–76). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Pennycook, A. (1994). The cultural politics of English as an international language. New York: Longman. PWC (2015). The world in 2050: Will the shift in global economic power continue? Available at: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/the-economy/assets/world-in-2050-februa ry-2015.pdf. Accessed 13 June 2018. Rattanasevee, P. (2014). Leadership in ASEAN: The role of Indonesia reconsidered. Asian Journal of Political Science, 22(2), 113–127. doi:10.1080/02185377.2014.895912 Richards, J. C. & Farrell, T. (2005). Professional development for language teachers: Strategies for teacher learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sakhiyya, Z., Agustien, H. I. R., & Pratama, H. (2018). The reconceptualization of knowledge base in the pre-service teacher education curriculum: Towards ELF pedagogy. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(1). doi: doi:10.17509/ijal.v8i1.11464 Saukah, A. (2009). Language teacher education in Indonesia. In Y. H. Choi & B. Spolsky (eds), English language teacher education in Asia (pp. 1–28). Seoul: ASIA TEFL. Seidlhofer, B. (2004). Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 200–239. doi:10.1111/1473-4192.00011 Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Setiawan, A. W. (2015). Attitudes towards Indonesian teachers of English and implications for their professional identity. Doctor of Education thesis, University of Adelaide. Sharifian, F. (2009). English as an international language: Perspectives and pedagogical issues. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Sifakis, N. C. (2007). The education of the teachers of English as a Lingua Franca: A transformative perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(3), 355–375. doi:10.1111/j.1473-4192.2007.00174.x Sifakis, N. C. (2014). ELF awareness as an opportunity for change: A transformative perspective for ESOL teacher education. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3(2), 317– 335. doi:10.1515/jelf-2014-0019 Sifakis, N. & Bayyurt, Y. (2018). ELF-aware teaching, learning and teacher development. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 456–466). London: Routledge. Stroupe, R. & Kimura, K. (eds) (2015). ASEAN Integration and the role of English language teaching. Phnom Penh: IELTS. Sugiharto, S. (2014). The multilingual turn in Applied Linguistics? A perspective from the periphery. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 414–421. doi:10.1111/ ijal.12111
18 S. Zein Sukyadi, D. (2015). The teaching of English at secondary schools in Indonesia. In B. Spolsky & K. Sung (eds), Secondary school English education in Asia: From policy to practice (pp. 123–147). New York: Routledge. Phillipson, R. & Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1996). English only worldwide or language ecology? TESOL Quarterly, 30(3), 429–452. Richards, J. C. & Renandya, W. A. (eds) (2002). Methology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rubdy, R. & Saraceni, M. (eds) (2006). English in the world: Global rules, global roles. London: Continuum. Walshaw, M. (2007). Working with Foucault in education. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publisher. Widiati, U. & Hayati, N. (2015). Teacher professional education in Indonesia and ASEAN 2015: Lessons learned from English language teacher education programs. In R. Stroupe & K. Kimura (eds) (2015). ASEAN Integration and the role of English language teaching (pp. 21–148). Phnom Penh: IELTS. doi:10.5746/LEiA/ASEAN_Integ_ELT Worldometers (2018). Indonesia population. Available at: http://www.worldometers. info/world-population/indonesia-population/. Accessed 13 June 2018. Zacharias, N. T. (2013). One teacher’s struggles to integrate EIL approaches in a microteaching class: an action research project. In N. T. Zacharias & C. Manara (eds), Contextualizing the pedagogy of English as an international language: Issues and tensions (pp. 134–149). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Zacharias, N. T. (2014). The relocation of culture in the teaching of English as an international language. In R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (eds), The pedagogy of English as an international language: Perspectives from scholars, teachers and students (pp. 129–142). Basel: Springer International. Zacharias, N. T. (2016). Indonesian teacher identity construction: insights from practicing ELF pedagogy. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 26(2), 321–339. Zein, S. (2017). Elementary English education in Indonesia: Policy developments, current practices, and future prospects. English Today, 33(1), 53–59. doi:10.1017/ S0266078416000407 Zein, S. (2018). English, multilingualism and globalisation in Indonesia: A love triangle – Why Indonesia should move towards multilingual education. English Today, 1–6. doi:10.1017/S026607841800010X Zentz, L. (2015). “Is English also the place where I belong?”: linguistic biographies and expanding communicative repertoires in Central Java. International Journal of Multilingualism, 12(1), 68–92. doi:10.1080/14790718.2014.943233
Part I
ELF and teacher education
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From EFL to ELF Implications for teacher education Subhan Zein
Introduction English in Indonesia is situated within the second largest linguistic ecology in the world, with 707 living languages being spoken in the country (Ethnologue, 2017). Speakers of major indigenous languages such as Javanese, Sundanese and Batak constitute 140.4 million people or 59.3% of the country’s population (BPS, 2011). This multilingual context means that the majority of Indonesian children generally learn an indigenous language first and only begin to learn Indonesian as the national language at school age. English is not a compulsory subject at Sekolah Dasar (SD) or primary school level, but it is compulsory at Sekolah Menengah Pertama (SMP) or junior high school and Sekolah Menengah Atas (SMA) or senior high school. At the university level, students attending non-language departments are required to undertake two contact-hours of English studies per week. In the past decade, the need for English within Indonesian communities has increased considerably to the realm beyond language education. The importance of the language for improving Indonesia’s global competitiveness has been widely asserted (e.g. Ariatna, 2016, Dewi, 2014a; Hamied, 2012; Madya, 2007; Zein, 2018a). But in addition to the global orientation, there is also regional orientation in that there is an urgent need for Indonesians to be able to communicate successfully within the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) community. This is especially motivated by the recent officialisation of English as the working language of ASEAN and the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, leading to the ASEAN Integration. This chapter explores the development of English language in Indonesia in the wake of the ASEAN Integration, touching upon issues such as its brief history, the transition from English as a foreign language (EFL) perspective into English as a lingua franca (ELF) and implications for teacher education.
Brief historical background English has had a relatively short history in Indonesia. Shortly after the nation’s independence on 17 August 1945, the newly formed Indonesian Government
22 S. Zein decided to teach English as a compulsory subject in junior and senior high schools. The decision to select English was motivated primarily by the Indonesian public’s pervasive aversion to Dutch. Dutch was closely associated with the language of the Dutch colonisers who had occupied the nation for three and a half centuries; and the language was considered to be of no international stature. English, on the other hand, was seen as the language of the future as represented by the then-dominant global political powers – the UK and the USA – and it was foreseen that English would become a language of global importance (Dardjowidjojo, 2000). Over the course of its development, English language education in Indonesia has undergone curricular alterations a number of times. The first methodology implemented was the grammar-translation method (GTM). Dardjowidjojo (2000) describes that the focus of the study then was for students to be able to understand passages in English and to translate them into Indonesian. The implementation of GTM in the early years was deemed appropriate because of the large classes and the teacher-oriented structure of GTM lessons, which does not require a high level of teacher proficiency. The popularity of GTM waned when the Ford Foundation developed Standard Training Centres in Yogyakarta and Bukit Tinggi to revamp English language teaching (ELT) in Indonesia. According to Dardjowidjojo (2000), the development of Standard Training Centres was significant in the production of language-teaching materials centrally managed in Salatiga, Central Java, and it marked a significant departure from the oral approach, which placed emphasis on the development of oral skills. The structural approach was introduced in 1975 as a reaction to the oral approach. The view of language and language learning within this approach, according to Madya (2007), expanded considerably into a set of learnt behaviour, where repetition of sounds, words and expressions plays a prominent role in the development of one’s language proficiency. The focus of language and language learning, however, was still on the oral language. Teaching began with the introduction of English phonetics, both in isolation and in a series of sounds. This allowed the audio-lingual method to gain prominence in Indonesian classrooms. The grammatical system of English was also considered to be of importance, as it was believed that mastery of grammar “will enable students to understand, give response, and express themselves in a situation to communicate with other people” (Madya, 2007, p. 12). The implementation of the structural approach lasted for approximately nine years, that is, until 1984 when a new curriculum was introduced. The 1984 Curriculum was heavily influenced by Dell Hymes’ Communicative Approach, which views language as more than mere structure but as a means of communication. This became the core principle of ELT encapsulated in the 1984 English curriculum. The emphasis of the 1984 Curriculum was the nature of language as a means of communication and the importance of meaning and functions (Madya, 2003). To support the implementation of the curriculum, the Indonesian Government set up an official role for English as the first foreign language through Presidential Decree No. 28/1990.
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Despite being communicative in its goals, the structural orientation of the 1984 Curriculum meant that it was never fully communicative. Madya (2007) argues that with the components of each unit, including structure, reading, vocabulary, conversation, writing, pronunciation and spelling, being presented in a matrix format, the curriculum was more like a weak version of the functional approach. According to Purwo (1990), the 1984 Curriculum did not provide a guideline as to how the core of language use (i.e. pragmatics) is implemented in language teaching. The coursebooks prescribed by the curriculum, for example, were misguided in their treatment of pragmatics as being a separate topic rather than incorporated into language skills. The 1984 Curriculum was then replaced by the 1994 Curriculum. The communicative notion in this curriculum was based on kebermaknaan [meaningfulness]. In the new curriculum, meaning was greatly emphasised. Linguistic elements played a limited role in the arrangement of teaching materials, but themes were developed into instructional topics that worked in integration with the four language skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing). The primacy of learning, however, was on reading. Meaningful learning activities that help students develop their potential in science, technology and the arts were drawn from reading (Madya, 2007). In the first six years following the new millennium, the Indonesian Ministry of National Education (MoNE) developed two curricula. Both had significant impact on English language education. First, in 2004, MoNE initiated the Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK) [Competence-Based Curriculum]. The broad aims of English learning within the KBK are: (1) to develop communicative competence; (2) to raise awareness of acquiring EFL as a means of learning and communication; and (3) to raise intercultural competence. KBK, however, was deemed to have placed a heavy emphasis on coursebooks, resulting in teachers being heavily reliant on using them, and in their juxtaposing them with the curriculum (Widodo, 2016). KBK was then revised; it became the Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP) [Local Education Unit Curriculum]. KTSP was implemented in 2006 with the aim of meeting different social, economic, cultural and educational backgrounds. Paradigmatically speaking, KTSP was an accentuation of KBK as it retained a focus on the development of students’ competencies. The major difference is that, at the operational level, the school or educational unit was expected to develop its own curriculum. To ensure consistency of the school-level curriculum with the legal mandates, MoNE provided a guide book for KTSP development and conducted school-level curriculum development training (Madya, 2007). The implementation of KTSP ended about seven years later when, in 2013, the Ministry of Education and Culture developed the 2013 Curriculum. The key element of the 2013 Curriculum is character building, which aims “to sharpen education’s role as a site of moral inculcation in the face of growing social diversity that threatens social cohesion and the prolonged social problem of massive corruption” (Qoyyimah, 2016, p. 109). Principles anchoring the development of the 2013 Curriculum were: (1) student-centred pedagogy that affords students an
24 S. Zein opportunity to select their preferred learning competency; (2) interactive pedagogy that focuses on the interactions between the teacher and students; (3) integrated pedagogy that assists students to explore the inseparable relationship between learning and learning materials; and (4) exploratory and engaging education (Widodo, 2016). The 2013 Curriculum has been recently reviewed, becoming the Revised 2013 Curriculum. It has been implemented nationally since 2017, retaining original’s emphasis on character building. This emphasis has seen the reduction of hours for English teaching in both junior and senior high schools to four hours per week. In primary schools, there is no curricular space for English, as the local content subject unit is now allocated to local languages. Consequently, public primary schools do not teach English, while private primary schools and madrasah diniyah [“Islamic-based schools primary schools”] have the flexibility to teach it (Chodidjah, personal communication, 2018).
From EFL to ESL … or to ELF? Scholars have analysed the curricular alterations occurring within the English language education landscape in Indonesia through a number of lenses. Dardjowidjojo (2000) and Musthafa & Hamied (2014) consider curricular alterations as part of the problem. The fact that a new curriculum always requires a new method has made it difficult for teachers to adapt. This is especially so when teachers’ implementation of the old curriculum is still far from satisfactory but a new curriculum has already emerged (Dardjowidjojo, 2000), and teachers themselves are not equipped with adequate support for its implementation (Musthafa & Hamied, 2014). Madya (2007), on the other hand, views curricular alterations from a different stance. She states that the curricular alterations reflect the effort of the government “to improve English learning in the true sense within the dynamic and unique contexts full of challenges, both internal and external” (p. 36). Ariatna (2016) envisages curricular alterations as a development that culminates in the communicative approach. He argues that the KBK, KTSP and the 2013 Curriculum are essentially communicative in nature, stating that “[d]espite the changing names, all curricula work within the communicative framework and are specifically aimed at developing learners’ communicative competence” (p. 805). In my view, the curricular alterations reflect not only the changes in views on language and language learning, but also the sociocultural and geopolitical changes in Indonesia. The change from the structural approach to the communicative approach occurring in 1984 reflects a change of linguistic perspective. The hegemony of Chomskian structural linguistics was then replaced by Hymes’ communicative competence, paving the way for the development of a communicative curriculum. The new political orientation that appeared in the late 1990s to early 2000s, that gave rise to decentralisation of education, on the other hand, was the precursor for the development of KTSP. The decentralisation of the curriculum into the smallest educational unit (i.e. school) reflects the decentralisation of politics from central to local government. In a similar vein, the heavy emphasis on
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national identity characterising the 2013 Curriculum and the Revised 2013 Curriculum was a sociocultural factor that imposes character building on education. The analytical lenses notwithstanding, the curricular alterations to English language education in Indonesia have occurred within the EFL perspective. Being a foreign language, English has little functional role in people’s day-to-day lives. This limited functional role has been cited as the culprit in the struggle of English teaching in Indonesian schools to help develop students’ communicative skills. As a result, Indonesian EFL has been considered to be a “failure” (Dardjowidjojo, 2000; Jazadi, 2000; Madya, 2002), while a more positive note labels it “not yet successful” (Mistar, 2005). For example, Jazadi (2000, p. 31) states that “university graduates who have studied for six years in junior and senior high schools and another year in the university generally cannot communicate adequately in English.” The main argument put forward has been the notion that without sufficient exposure to the language, teachers and students have limited opportunities to use it. Basalama (2010) states that both teachers and learners of English in Gorontalo have little opportunity to interact with English “native speakers”. Jazadi (2000) adds that classroom materials are limited in discourse, in that no exposure to non-classroom types of discourse, such as listening to “native speaker” conversations, are available. For this reason, Ariatna (2016) asserts that exposure to English needs to be heightened through the changing status from EFL to English as a second language (ESL). He states that “Indonesian students need English as a second language to function effectively in English” (p. 816). Compared with the EFL perspective, the ESL perspective offers greater exposure to the language. However, both share one thing in common. Within the EFL and ESL perspectives, English is positioned in the theoretical framework of mainstream traditional second language acquisition research. Here the “native” English standards are regarded as the perennial and ultimate goal of teaching and learning. This is the English as a native language (ENL) ideology that has been pervasive all over the world. Within this ideology, teachers are supposed to teach “native” varieties of English, which is typically either British English (BE) or American English (AE). This is despite the impossibility of reaching a conclusive definition of the “native speaker” (Davies, 2003). Teachers are led to believe that “native” English is the only norm worth teaching, regardless of its future use by learners. Teachers teach from a “right or wrong” perspective, imposing a clear line between the so-called “standard” and “non-standard” versions of English. These standards are “a set of conditions on ‘correct’ or proper behaviour. These conditions are essentially fixed rules for social conduct established by institutional authority” (Seidlhofer, 2018, p. 88). As a consequence, learners are expected to follow the “native” standards during their learning process. They should avoid the influence of their first language (L1) because it is regarded as interference, and because the use of L1 is seen as deficient linguistic competence (Jenkins, 2006; Seidlhofer, 2004, 2011). In the Indonesian context, the prevalence of the ENL ideology is evident. Dardjowidjojo (2000) notes that there was a strong preference for BE over AE in the early years of English teaching in Indonesia. However, the political and
26 S. Zein economic domination of the USA in the 1980s and 1990s has resulted in a change in language attitude. People no longer demonstrated an inclination towards either BE or AE; and on the other hand, Australian and New Zealand varieties of English had not been as popular as BE and AE. Although there is no particular reference as to which type of English to conform to, English teachers in Indonesia have generally accepted both AE and BE as the norms, believed to be the “standard Englishes” (Dewi, 2014b; Zacharias, 2014). The pervasiveness of the ENL ideology can be seen in the operation of Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia (TEFLIN) as an organisation that facilitates professional development and research dissemination (Musthafa & Hamied, 2014), as well as the aim to implement communicative language teaching (CLT) within the ESL perspective (Ariatna, 2016). Whether Indonesia remains with its EFL perspective or shifts to an ESL one, as stated earlier, both are framed within the ENL ideology. But neither the impetus for ESL status nor the maintenance of EFL status holds true nowadays. In the following sections I will discuss three reasons as to why the ENL ideology, as encapsulated in the EFL and ESL perspectives, may not best capture the current context of English language education in Indonesia, and why the country is actually making a transition to ELF.
Changing landscape, changing role “Foreign language” is a commonly used term, and one common measure for differentiating language instruction in an L2 setting from that in a foreign language setting is through the amount of input. Scholars agree that what constitutes foreign language learning is when there are insufficient input conditions, such as limited exposure to the target language inside the classroom (e.g. Larson-Hall, 2008; Muñoz, 2008). The limited exposure inside the classroom is generally related to the actual hours allocated to foreign language learning per lesson or per week. Larson-Hall (2008, p. 36) identifies instruction time occurring in foreign language classrooms as “no more than four hours of instruction per week”, while Muñoz (2008) characterises foreign language instruction time as being limited to two to four sessions of approximately 50 minutes per week. With Indonesian learners receiving no more than four hours of school instruction, the term EFL seems to be appropriate. However, determining ‘foreignness’ in a language is actually very difficult (Ehlich, 2010). There are degrees of distance involving typological differences between a language and the so-called ‘foreign’ language. There are also aspects of variations that construct the mental activity of perceiving a language as ‘foreign’. These issues would have been much easier to resolve had there been a rigorous procedure to conduct multiple changes of perspective of a language through the eyes of speakers of many other languages. But such a procedure is absent (Ehlich, 2010). In addition, determining input solely through school hours is oblivious to sociolinguistic reality. In Indonesia, over the past decade, the linguistic landscape of English language has changed considerably. Despite the limited hours allocated
From EFL to ELF
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to English in public schools, exposure to the language outside school has increased significantly. This increasing exposure to English has been evident in many domains of Indonesian people’s day-to-day life. Hamied (2013) maintains that “with the tremendous advancement of information and communication technology exposure to English is a daily phenomenon” (p. 37). With Indonesia being the fourth largest user of the internet, a substantial portion of Indonesians have daily exposure to English (Hamied, 2013) and the internet plays a significant role in tertiary students’ lives (Dewi, 2014a). This has enabled them to have daily contact with a range of varieties of English, not to mention those in Asia (e.g. Singaporean English, Malay English). Furthermore, it is common to find airlines making announcements in English alongside Indonesian. National radio and television selectively broadcast in English, and local television companies fill their programme schedules with Western movies as well as English-language songs. Moreover, new products, from soap to instant noodles, from clothes to novels, targeted at young adults, are labelled and promoted in English (Lamb & Coleman, 2008). Thus, while the number of school hours is fixed, Indonesians have a far greater amount of exposure outside school hours on a day-to-day basis. By the same token, the prestige attached to English has also been instrumental in the more prominent role that the language plays in Indonesian society. English proficiency is highly valued in the labour market. Demand for labourers with strong English proficiency has always been on the rise, with priority and higher salaries being reserved for those graduating from a university abroad. Such a demand has been triggered by the shift to a free market economy and the increase of foreign investment. This has contributed to the societal perception of the importance of English for upward socio-economic mobility. This socio-economic imperative attached to English has translated into an instrumental motivation to learn English among Indonesian job-seekers for securing employment. As a consequence, many elements within Indonesia’s diverse societies perceive English as having a considerable impact on children’s future educational and career trajectories. This widespread perception has a snowball effect on the creation of societal pressure that has resulted in the mushrooming of classes, centres, schools, institutes, universities and private courses offering programmes in English. Furthermore, English plays an important role in accelerating academic progress, such as passing university entrance examinations and securing scholarships to study overseas. But this role has extended further to the preparation of students to perform various interactional functions in a wide range of social facets. Such an extended role is apparent in an educational policy on internationalising public schools through English as a medium of instruction. The policy was implemented a few years ago, but was later reverted, with many arguing that it facilitated linguistic imperialism (Sugiharto, 2015a). The changing landscape of English language in Indonesia means a revisiting of its status. On the one hand, it is true that there is generally limited opportunity for Indonesians to use English with so-called “native speakers”, and there is limited exposure to the language inside the classroom as well. However, the increasing prestige and use of English in Indonesians’ daily life means that the status of EFL
28 S. Zein is sociolinguistically questionable. Focusing solely on contact with “native speakers” denies the sociopragmatic function of English worldwide, where it is mainly used among those who do not speak it as their mother tongue (Jenkins, 2007, Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey, 2011; Seidlhofer, 2004, 2011). In this regard, Indonesia itself has become part of a global linguistic movement characterised by the highly changing nature of English language interactions through globalisation, and the dynamic and complex relationships of users of English who do not speak it as their mother tongue (see Dewi, 2014a). This is so because there is a more urgent need for Indonesians to be able to communicate successfully in English with their ASEAN counterparts (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines, Vietnam), rather than with traditionally defined “native speakers” (Kirkpatrick, 2010, 2012b). With English recently being adopted as the sole working language of ASEAN, of which Indonesia is a founding member, the importance of the language in the region has become more evident (Kirkpatrick, 2016a). The adoption of officialised English in the 2015 ASEAN Charter is a valid international commitment for many Indonesians. This gives rise to a heightened emphasis on the use of English to communicate, work and trade with other ASEAN members, especially with the recent ASEAN Integration. Using English for communication with ASEAN counterparts is a more realistic setting for most Indonesians, rather than communicating with traditionally defined “native speakers” of English from the UK or the USA. This is the place of English as a lingua franca (ELF). In the ELF context, all varieties of English vary as users exploit their pragmatic options to express themselves. English, as a linguistic code, is therefore only one factor in communication, and participants in communication will make use of it as a resource through exploitation of various linguistic and social elements at their disposal in order to achieve effective communication, regardless of conformity to standard English (Seidlhofer, 2018). Participants in ELF communication draw on “their multifaceted multilingual repertoires in a fashion entirely motivated by the communicative purpose and the interpersonal dynamics of the interaction” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 108). It is unclear how such highly dynamic and complex use of English can be accommodated by both the EFL and ESL perspectives. In fact, the highly dynamic and complex use of English resulting from its officialised role at the regional level of ASEAN make both the EFL and ESL perspectives in Indonesia no longer relevant. English is now best seen as a lingua franca with other ASEAN member states as well as the broader international community. The focus of ELF users, according to Seidlhofer (2011), is on the purposes of the talk and their interlocutors as people, rather than on the language as a code. For this reason, scholars such as Hamied (2012) and Kirkpatrick (2010, 2012a) argue that the key issue for Indonesian learners of English as part of the ASEAN community is no longer native-like English, but how to get their message across, that is, how they can understand and be understood in the context of ELF. Thus, the goal of English instruction is not for learners to acquire native-speaking proficiency and to sound like “native speakers” (in the traditional meaning), but to
From EFL to ELF
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help learners use English for communicative purposes in lingua franca situations (Jenkins, 2006, 2007; Seidlhofer, 2004). This is how the ELF perspective fits into the Indonesian context.
The importance of character building Any proposal for altering the status of English in the Indonesian linguistic landscape, such as that of Ariatna (2016), will require, at the bare minimum, strong political intervention in the background. For example, Singapore, one of Indonesia’s closest neighbours, uses English as an official language. In that country, English is used as a medium of instruction in schools, and is used widely in public life, commerce, technology, etc. However, such a linguistic landscape has occurred after centuries of British colonialism. Direct political intervention was influential in making English a second language, hence its prevalent use. Similar situations are also found in other contexts that were once British colonies, such as Hong Kong and India, but not in Indonesia. In fact, there is no evidence that political motivation is strong enough to make English a second language in Indonesia. Ever since the plan to create the 2013 Curriculum, questions have emerged regarding the place and role of English in society in general, and education in particular. Arguments have been made for a more traditional approach to education, promoting social, cultural and religious values to develop character building. In the past four curricula – KBK, KTSP, the 2013 Curriculum and the Revised 2013 Curriculum – character building has been the key phrase (Madya, 2007; Qoyyimah, 2016). The Revised 2013 Curriculum, for example, explicitly includes spiritual and moral competencies to be developed in the teaching of all subjects in primary and secondary education. The Revised 2013 Curriculum also recognises learners’ individual and cultural differences. Madya (2002) argues that the development of character building through education should be framed within the recognition of linguistic and cultural differences, gearing towards inclusivity and national unity. Thus, any proposal for increasing the official role of English in a way that detaches Indonesia from character building, such as changing its status to ESL, is likely to meet strong resistance. If the goal for developing character building has in fact seen a reduction of hours of English teaching in junior and senior high schools, as well as the abolition of English in primary schools, it is highly unlikely to see a reverse. Moreover, what is needed is a perspective that grows organically with Indonesia’s social, cultural and religious values. The ESL and EFL perspectives are diametrically opposed to this tenet, but the ELF perspective is not. First, the EFL and ESL perspectives attach to themselves a sense of adherence to the monolingual culture associated with native speakers of English. Drawn from the ENL ideology, which holds a secular view, the EFL and ESL perspectives require significant adjustment in teachers’ pedagogy to account for local religious values. Qoyyimah (2016), for example, shows how in mainstream EFL classes, teachers have been preoccupied by the task of reconciling Western secular values with local, religious ones. This is unlikely to occur in classrooms with an ELF
30 S. Zein perspective. The reason is that ELF allows for a new understanding of English in new fields and in cultural contexts that are removed from Anglo-American influences (Kirkpatrick, 2016a). An ELF perspective would in fact support the use of English that conforms to cultural and religious values at the local level. In Indonesia, the teaching of English has resulted in the integration of Islamic perspectives found not only in pesantren [Islamic boarding schools], but also in public schools where Muslim students are the majority. In my experience teaching English in Indonesian public schools, I used coursebooks where students could learn about Islamic topics such as prayers and fasting. Recent studies have also shown how English teaching materials are replete with cultural and religious values (Sugiharto, 2014), while the language itself is believed to have developed positive religious practices (Dewi, 2012) and cultural enrichment (Dewi, 2014a). Nowadays, the multilingual context of Indonesia necessitates a move to a perspective that affords equal importance to the maintenance of heritage and indigenous languages and cultures and the promotion of Indonesian as a means of national identity, and English as a language of global importance that open(s) door for upward social and economic mobility (Zein, 2018a). The “ultra-multilingual practices” in Indonesia in fact require a perspective that can satisfy the vibrant, albeit mundane linguistic interactions involving English that occur in both the urban and rural, remote regions of the country (Sugiharto, 2014, p. 419). The localised linguistic practices, or what Sugiharto (2014) calls “grassroot performativity”, might indeed flourish under the ELF perspective due to its support for the development of Indonesian social, cultural and religious values. This is parallel to the aim of national education that revolves around character building. Second, the worldwide globalisation process and the growing dominance of English have led to the situation where people’s identities are rooted in their local cultures while shaping the larger national, regional and global identities. In this regard, the ELF perspective encourages the development of multiple cultural identities. Kirkpatrick (2012a, 2012b) argues that for learners to be able to communicate successfully with regional context learners, they need to know the cultures and literatures of the region. Thus, the curriculum used in the ELF context “needs to include topics of regional and local cultures that are relevant for lingua franca users in these contexts; it is a cross-cultural course based on ASEAN” and “the curriculum must therefore be designed to allow students to be able to engage critically in discussions about their own cultures and cultural values and interests in English” (Kirkpatrick, 2012a, p. 40). For example, students could learn themes that suit their local cultural context, such as “I am a Buginese” or “I am a Papuan”. This is followed by “I am Indonesian”. The next theme is “I am a member of ASEAN”. Then the next theme is “I am Asian”. Afterwards, learners could learn the theme “I am an English speaker”. Finally, learners could learn the theme “I am a citizen of the world”. In this respect, the ELF perspective enables teachers to “promote the cultural values of their local context as well as cultural values of other ELF speakers across the different nations” (Jayanti & Norahmi, 2014, p. 11). Moreover, such an approach to the curriculum is in alignment with the goal of developing character building that cultivates people’s local, national,
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regional and global identities. The implementation of such a lingua franca approach will hopefully enable English to provide “Indonesian speakers of English with ‘a distinctive Indonesian identity’, a particularly [sic] identity which is different from ordinary representations of the Indonesian language for national identity and English for international communication” (Dewi, 2011, p. 150).
Shifting perspective, shifting attitude Although it is still widely embraced in Indonesia, the ENL ideology has actually been widely criticised for quite some time. The traditional perspective of second language acquisition, as seen through the interlanguage theory (Selinker, 1972) that underpins both the ESL and EFL perspectives, has been questioned and critiqued (Cook, 1999; Firth & Wagner, 1997). First, “native speakers” are not the majority of English speakers worldwide – they are only a small minority of English speakers. These so-called “native speakers” do not all speak the same variety of English; some varieties are mutually unintelligible to one another. Thus, using one native variety is highly unlikely to be an appropriate pedagogical choice because specific usages attached to that variety may not be acceptable outside the local community (Jenkins, 2006, 2007). “Native” English pronunciation itself is not an optimum means in the contexts where English is used as a lingua franca (Jenkins, 2000). Furthermore, there has been agonising debate about the impossibility of arriving at the precise definition of the “native speaker” (Davies, 2003). The notion that some people are born as “native speakers” of a language means achieving the status of “nativeness” is unattainable for L2 learners, regardless of their effort. As Cook (1999) states, “adults could never become native speakers without being reborn” (p. 187), and so making “native speakers” the model condemns all learners to ultimate failure. On the other hand, there is an increasing number of ELF users who are not originally “native speakers” of one of the varieties of English, but who are fully competent speakers of English. Such speakers “should be considered as speakers in their own right, not as approximations to monolingual native speakers” (Cook, 1999, p. 185). This is so because such ELF users speak and write a correct, fluent and easily comprehensible variety of the language, and this makes them a totally acceptable model for learners (Kirkpatrick, 2010). This leads to the assertion that the model for teaching should be the fully competent ELF user, without constraining whether or not such a speaker was someone who speaks English as their mother tongue. It is not native-speaking status that should make one a model, but the level of proficiency (Jenkins, 2006; Seidlhofer, 2004, 2018). In the case of ASEAN teachers – and Indonesian teachers are part of the equation – this means the models for learners are local teachers who are multilingual and fully competent in English (Kirkpatrick, 2010, 2016a). Although not quite widespread yet (see Chapter 4, in which a participant was not aware of the ELF discourse), this ELF perspective is currently taking shape in Indonesia. This might have started in the late 1990s, when the increasing emphasis on fluency meant that non-native pronunciation of English became more
32 S. Zein acceptable and more widely used in Indonesia (Dardjowidjojo, 2000), and when the culture-based approach to ELT was introduced (Aziz, Sudana & Noorman, 2002). There is no study documenting this change of language attitude occurring within this specific period of time, but nowadays it appears that awareness of lingua franca issues has entered the mainstream English language in the country. This is evidenced by a growing body of studies on the theme, including Bradford (2008), Dewi (2011, 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2017), Jayanti & Norahmi (2014), Kramadibrata (2016), Manara (2013a, 2013b), Mukminatien (2012), Mulder & Marentek (2016), Sakhiyya, Agustien & Pratama (2018), Setiawan (2015) and Zacharias (2013, 2014, 2016). As far as I am concerned, there has only been one study that concerns the linguistic features of ELF communication in Indonesia (Mulder & Marentek, 2016). Mulder & Marentek (2016) investigated the use of articles and plurals by Indonesian speakers of English in lingua franca communication. Their study shows a systematic occurrence of articles and plurals that is pragmatically driven within the context of ELF communication. Other studies focus on issues such as native speakerism and English varieties. For example, native speakerism is the uniting theme in Bradford (2008), Dewi (2014a), Jayanti & Norahmi (2014), Kramadibrata (2016) and Setiawan (2015). Findings from Bradford’s (2008) study show participants’ almost neutral attitudes towards “native” English speakers. The findings also suggest that their ultimate purpose was to be able to communicate with fellow “non-native” English speakers rather than the “native speakers”. Participants in Kramadibrata’s (2016) study demonstrated a changing attitude regarding the view on “native speakers” of English being associated with biological inheritance. The participants held a more fluid understanding of “nativeness”, arguing that English no longer belongs to the minority “native speakers” but also the majority “non-native speakers”, or everyone who uses it – a finding shared by Dewi (2014a). Of “native” and “non-native teachers”, one of Kramadibrata’s (2016) participants states, “It’s not about native or non-native. It’s just about the way he/she teaches.” (p. 293). This is in line with Setiawan (2015), whose study suggests there was no particular preference for “native” or “non-native” speaking teachers when it came to the perceived characteristics of an ideal English teacher. Varieties of English has also been another issue of interest. The students, teachers and lecturers participating in Dewi’s (2014b) study demonstrated mixed perceptions when it comes to the diversity of varieties of English. Although they did not perceive New Englishes as problematic, the participants noted the inferiority of New Englishes compared with BE and AE. One of the participants, for example, stated, “Singaporean English is probably in a similar position with British English, but Malaysian and China Englishes are, in my opinion, inferior” (p. 9). Indonesian teachers who had undertaken postgraduate studies overseas, on the other hand, demonstrated an increased awareness of the lingua franca ideology (Dewi, 2017). While their preference to teach either AE or BE was mainly due to textbook availability, the teachers were willing to develop learners’ awareness of other varieties. When teaching, they also placed an emphasis on intelligibility
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rather than accuracy. In her conceptual paper, Mukminatien (2012) calls for the inclusion of English varieties, in particular those used by the people within the ASEAN community, in English classrooms in Indonesia. She suggests that developing Indonesian learners’ oral communication means that they are not expected to mimic the native speaker model, but to be intelligible in their production of sounds and utterances. She further argues that “students need to be taught the communication strategies that aid successful cross-cultural communication” including “accommodation of different linguistic and sociolinguistic norms and range of repair strategies which can be used in the case of misunderstanding” (p. 229). Jayanti & Norahmi (2014) call for a revisit of the EFL perspective, which has placed unreasonable expectations on the part of the students and does not reflect the emerging view of the pluricentricity of English. But Manara (2013a, 2013b), Sakhiya et al. (2018) and Zacharias (2013, 2014, 2016) have taken the lingua franca perspective even further, to the realm of teacher education. Teacher educators’ approaches to problematise the pervasive ENL ideology in relation to the present-day role of English as an international language (EIL) is the central theme in Manara (2013a). In her study, teachers navigated themselves to challenge the conflicting discourses of professionalism resulting from the pervasiveness of the ENL ideology. Such a process is proven to be highly complex, as in another study Manara (2013b) captures the teacher educators’ “tensions, paradoxes, transformations and (re)negotiations of beliefs, values and conceptions of teaching self within overlapping dimensions of their teaching professional landscapes (historical, social, political and institutional)” (p. 1212). An interesting insight comes from Zacharias’ (2014) work on the integration of EIL in a teacher education programme. The teachers in her study seemed to continue favouring the ENL ideology, but they also demonstrated enthusiasm about implementing EIL pedagogy. They were proud that this approach could allow them to explore the richness of their cultures through English. Likewise, an EIL-aware approach to teaching is deemed psychologically useful, as shown by Zacharias (2013). Her study shows that teaching with EIL approaches was not necessarily more manageable, but had positive impact on increasing student teachers’ confidence. Prospective teachers attending a microteaching course in Zacharias (2016) believed in their teaching identities being projected through having a native-like pronunciation, although they agreed that learning ELF had no direct relationship with integration into the native English speaking community. As they practised ELF pedagogy in microteaching, the majority of the participants also appropriated their ELF pedagogy understanding with maintenance of cultural identity and promotion of local cultures. In their meta-analysis of curriculum documents, Sakhiyya et al. (2018) argue for an epistemological turn of English teacher professionalism that considers the use of ELF in Indonesia. They recommend for a greater emphasis to be placed on language proficiency that is parallel with the ELF perspective, and accordingly for a reconceptualisation of the knowledge base of teacher education. The studies above indicate more than the mere introduction of the lingua franca perspective into the classroom. More importantly, the studies suggest there is a shift in attitude among students, teachers and teacher educators in Indonesia
34 S. Zein regarding English, its roles, its speakers and the perspective underpinning its teaching and learning. This shift in attitude reveals the transitionary nature of the sociolinguistic landscape of English language in the country, as it moves from EFL to ELF. It remains to be seen how this transition unravels in the coming years. In any case, the transition brings implications for teacher education to cater for ELF pedagogy that is most appropriate to the local Indonesian context.
Implications for teacher education The implementation of the ELF approach in Indonesia requires a post-method pedagogical framing (Kumaravadivelu, 2006) to allow for a balance between a teachergenerated theory of practice (e.g. professional knowledge, personal experience, beliefs, values, and views about meaningful pedagogical practices) and contextual conditions (e.g. the local linguistic landscape, sociocultural and political particularities). This brings implications for teacher education for ELF in Indonesia as follows. First and foremost, a post-method pedagogical framing means that teacher education needs to develop ELF-aware teaching. Previous studies have demonstrated that the ideological impact of ELF has been quite immediate (see Dewi, 2014a, 2014b, 2017; Kramadibrata, 2016; Zacharias, 2014, 2016). With students now holding more inclusive view on “nativeness” and the use of English (Bradford, 2008; Dewi, 2014b; Kramadibrata, 2016), and teachers resorting to AE or BE primarily due to sociolinguistic factors (Dewi, 2017; Zacharias, 2016), teacher education no longer needs to be concerned with the issue of pedagogical models. Teachers might wish to implement a core syllabus based on common non-native usages such as an Asian corpus of English (Kirkpatrick, 2016b), or a hybrid approach that allows Indonesians to learn English varieties to harmonise national identity and international communication (Dewi, 2011). Or teachers might implement ENL as the primary pedagogical model alongside ELF, allowing learners to learn the forms of a given model of English prior to recognising the differences of their variety of English from ENL and or other varieties, and prior to developing their own variety (Sung, 2013). But overall, teacher education is held accountable for presenting the historical and sociolinguistic realities of the spread of English around the world (particularly within the ASEAN community) to teachers before they can make an informed decision. This is parallel to the transitionary nature of ELF within the English language education landscape in Indonesia as well as mainstream ELF research. As Jenkins et al. (2011, p. 306–307) argue: “the aim of ELF researchers has never been to propose an alternative model of English, let alone a monolithic version that should be taught in all contexts. Rather, ELF research provides insights into the heterogeneous nature of English as it is used in contact situations.” What teacher education must develop is teachers’ open-mindedness and abilities to critically challenge deeply rooted perspectives that have underpinned their pedagogy for many years (Hamied, 2012; Kirkpatrick, 2012b, 2016a). These include
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the importance of “standard” English, the role of “native speakers”, the negotiation of non-native speakers’ identities in intercultural communication, and the imperialistic approach permeating English to Speakers of Other Languages course design and pedagogy (Jenkins, 2006, 2007; Seidlhofer, 2004, 2011). Intelligibility within the ASEAN community as suggested by Hamied (2012) and Kirkpatrick (2010, 2012a), to take another example, is also a big concern that needs to occupy the teacher education curriculum. Thus, teacher education needs to concentrate on awareness raising of these ELF issues (Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2018) rather than the implementation of a pedagogical model. However, this does not mean that the role of teacher education is limited to awareness raising. A post-method pedagogical framing means that teacher education can play a pivotal role in the integration of an ASEAN curriculum where the use of ELF may become more prominent. For example, in their examination of the Pendidikan Profesi Guru (PPG) [Teacher Professional Education programme], Widiati & Hayati (2015) argue that “there needs to be more explicit integration of the ASEAN curriculum, so that the PPG students have adequate knowledge and skills on how to educate their future students about ASEAN identity and ASEAN integration through their English classes” (p. 138). A corollary to this assertion is the production and translation of local and regional literatures (Hamied, 2012), which is a move away from the international, universally (un) acceptable, bland coursebooks to more local solutions fitting to the Indonesian context for ASEAN-related communication purposes (Hamied, 2012; Kirkpatrick, 2016a). This will allow learners to focus on the cultures of ASEAN member states rather than the cultures that are traditionally associated with English, such as British or American culture (Kirkpatrick, 2011, 2012b, 2016a). For example, the use of Asian folktales has been argued as useful to promote intercultural awareness among English language learners in Asia (Lwin, 2016). Thus, in assisting the learners to recognise the inseparable relationship between language and culture, teachers can facilitate the examination of cultural assumptions present in folktales in different localities within the ASEAN region. Such an approach in itself would further help teachers to guide Indonesian learners to develop confidence in expressing themselves and in reiterating the local values that make up their identities, which is in line with the development of learners’ character building. This is how teacher education offers opportunities for learning about ELF while exploring and developing new and creative ways of integrating ELF into their own local context (Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2018). Given the multilingual context of Indonesia, teacher education must also create opportunities for teachers to utilise their linguistic repertoire. One problem that has been associated with the failure in teacher education is teachers’ low confidence in English proficiency (Musthafa & Hamied, 2014; Saukah, 2009). On the one hand, teachers feel burdened by the requirement to speak English because it is not their first language and they fear of making errors (Basalama, 2010). On the other hand, they generally argue that they speak Indonesian in order to help with students’ comprehension. However, a study by Yulia (2013) shows that students in fact prefer their teachers to speak in English, so that they can learn it as a language model.
36 S. Zein While improving teacher’s proficiency remains its main task (see Chapter 10), teacher education also needs to support teachers to move away from the monolingual view of language teaching that treats languages as separate entities. As García (2011, p. 7) argues, “language is not something that human beings have, but an ongoing process that exists in languaging”, that is, the language practices of people that often require multiple discursive resources. Teacher education therefore needs to help teachers to develop a pedagogy that utilises fluid, mobile and multiple discursive resources in Indonesian multilingual classrooms. This means Indonesian teachers of English need to move away from the monolingual pedagogy where the use of L1 should be entirely avoided, to a translanguaging pedagogy where L1s are valued and deliberately utilised (Rasman, 2018; Sugiharto, 2015b; Zein, 2018b). Although particular differences occur between the two (see Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018), translanguaging and the ELF perspective are complementary. They are in fact united by a common position to involve the construction of intersubjective norms according to changing situated practices involving various participants and contexts. Here, the focus of ELF and translanguaging is the situated practices that lead to meaning making (Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018). Translanguaging does not recognise linguistic boundaries. It entails a large speech repertoire that overlaps between administratively assigned languages, so that teachers can incorporate purposeful and systematic discursive modes such as code-switching and translating as part of their everyday way of meaning making. In translanguaging, linguistic differences can serve as resources to express one’s unique voice without devaluing linguistic conventions and established varieties (Canagarajah, 2013). Research in the Indonesian context shows that when implemented effectively, translanguaging allows learners to develop their own linguistic repertoire (Rasman, 2018), promotes teachers’ ability to develop a metadiscursive practice that fosters scaffolding (Zein, 2018b), and encourages the inclusion of language users’ identities, cultural values and rhetorical traditions (Sugiharto, 2015b). But promoting translanguaging in the Indonesian ELF context is not only a paradigm shift in pedagogy. It is also a challenging task to fight against the deeply rooted language ideology privileging “native speakers” that is still prevalent in the country. Teacher education needs to create a space for developing awareness that linguistic norms are fluid and negotiable ideological constructs, while broadening the conception of communication beyond the linguistic exchanges with the “native speakers”. As suggested by Dewey & Patsko (2018), such an endeavour should take place early in the teacher education trajectory, allowing for greater possibility for the practical relevance of ELF to feature in teachers’ pedagogical repertoire. This will require greater engagement between researchers and teachers for more salient involvement in teacher education.
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Basalama, N. (2010). English teachers in Indonesian senior high schools in Gorontalo: A qualitative study of professional formation, identity and practice. PhD thesis, Victoria University. BPS. (2011). Kewarganegaraan, suku bangsa, agama dan Bahasa sehari-hari penduduk Indonesia: Hasil sensus penduduk 2010 [Citizenship, ethnicity, religion and the daily language of the Indonesians: The 2010 People Census results]. Jakarta: Badan Pusat Statistik. Bradford, A. (2008). Motivational orientations in under-researched FLL contexts: Findings from Indonesia. RELC Journal, 38, 302–323. doi:10.1177/0033688207085849 Canagarajah, S. (2013). Literacy as a translingual practice: Between communities and classrooms. London: Routledge. Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33(2), 185–209. doi:10.2307/3587717 Dardjowidjojo, S. (2000). English teaching in Indonesia. English Australia Journal, 18(1), 22–23. Davies, A. (2003). The native speaker: Myth and reality. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Dewey, M. & Patsko, L. (2018). ELF and teacher education. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 441–455). London: Routledge. Dewi, A. (2011). English(es) for Indonesians: A review of literatures. Journal of English Language and Culture, 1(2), 143–155. Dewi, A. (2012). Is English a form of imperialism? A study of academic community’s perceptions at Yogyakarta Universities in Indonesia. Asian Englishes, 15(1), 4–27. doi:10.1080/13488678.2012.10801317 Dewi, A. (2014a). Perception of English: A study of staff and students at universities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Dewi, A. (2014b). Perception of English in relation to communication and identity: a study of Indonesian lecturers, teachers, and tertiary students. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 24, 1–20. doi:10.1075/japc.24. 1. 01dew Dewi, A. (2017). The English(es) to teach after study and life in Australia: a study of Indonesian English language educators. Asian Englishes, 19(2), 128–147. doi:10.1080/ 13488678.2017.1279762 Ehlich, K. (2010). What makes a language foreign? In K. Knapp & B. Seidlhofer (eds), Foreign language communication and learning, volume 5 of Handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 21–43). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ethnologue. (2017). Indonesia. Available at: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country. asp?name=id. Accessed 15 June 2017. Firth, A. & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse, communication and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal, 81, 285–300. García, O. (2011). From language garden to sustainable languaging: bilingual education in a global world. Perspectives, 34(1), 5–9. Hamied, F. A. (2012). English in multicultural and multilingual Indonesian education. In A. Kirkpatrick & R. Sussex (eds), English as an international language in Asia: Implications for language education (pp. 63–78). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Hamied, F. A. (2013). ELT intricacies within the Indonesian language policy. In T. W. Bigalke & S. Sharbawi (eds), English for ASEAN Integration: Policies and practices in the region (pp. 32–40). Bandar Seri Begawan: IELTS. Jayanti, F. G. & Norahmi, M. (2014). EFL: Revisiting ELT practices in Indonesia. Journal on English as a Foreign Language, 4(1), 5–14.
38 S. Zein Jazadi, I. (2000). Constraints and resources for applying communicative approaches in Indonesia. English Australia Journal, 18(1), 31–40. Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 157–181. Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a lingua franca: Attitudes and identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. & Dewey, M. (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44(3), 281–315. doi:10.1017/S0261444811000115 Kimura, D. & Canagarajah, S. (2018). Translingual practice and ELF. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 295–308). London: Routledge. Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a lingua franca in ASEAN: A multilingual model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2011). English as an Asian lingua franca and the multilingual model of ELT. Language Teaching, 44(2), 212–224. doi:10.1017/S0261444810000145 Kirkpatrick, A. (2012a). English as an international language in Asia: implications for language education. In A. Kirkpatrick & R. Sussex (eds), English as an international language in Asia: Implications for language education (pp. 29–44). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-4578-0_3 Kirkpatrick, A. (2012b). English in ASEAN: Implications for regional multilingualism. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 33(4), 331–344. doi:10.1080/ 01434632.2012.661433 Kirkpatrick, A. (2016a). English as a lingua franca and its educational impact in Asia. In G. Leitner, A. Hashim & H.-G. Wolf (eds), Communicating with Asia: The future of English as a global language (pp. 282–295). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107477186.019 Kirkpatrick, A. (2016b). The Asian corpus of English: Introduction to Special Issue. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 5(2), 225–228. doi:10.1515/jelf-2016-0017 Kramadibrata, A. (2016). The halo surrounding native English speaker teachers in Indonesia. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 282–295. doi: doi:10.17509/ijal.v5i2.1352 Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Towards a postmethod pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 537–560. Lamb, M. & Coleman, H. (2008). Literacy in English and the transformation of self and society in Post-Soeharto Indonesia. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11(2), 189–205. doi:10.2167/beb493.0 Larson-Hall, J. (2008). Weighing the benefits of studying a foreign language at a younger starting age in a minimal input situation. Second Language Research, 24(1), 35–63. doi:10.1177/0267658307082981 Lwin, S. M. (2016). Promoting language learners’ cross-cultural awareness through comparative analyses of Asian folktales. TEFLIN Journal, 27(2), 166–181. Madya, S. (2002). Developing standards for EFL in Indonesia as part of the EFL teaching reform. TEFLIN Journal, 13(2), 142–151. Madya, S. (2003). Education reform and its implication for EFL teachers competencies. TEFLIN Journal, 14(1), 1–13. Madya, S. (2007). Curriculum innovations in Indonesia and the strategies to implement them. In Y. H. Choi and B. Spolsky (eds), ELT curriculum innovation and implementation in Asia (pp. 1–38). Seoul: Asia TEFL.
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Manara, C. (2013a). The struggle of moving towards EIL: Competing and conflicting narratives of professionalism in an Indonesian context. In N. T. Zacharias & C. Manara (eds), Contextualizing the pedagogy of English as an international language: Issues and tensions (pp. 150–167). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Manara, C. (2013b). English language educators’ professional learning as a site of identity struggle. PERTANIKA Journals of Social Sciences and Humanities, 21(3), 1193–1212. Mistar, J. (2005). Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in Indonesia. In G. Braine (ed.), Teaching English to the world: History, curriculum and practice (pp. 75–85). Hoboken: Taylor & Francis. Mukminatien, N. (2012). Accommodating World Englishes in developing EFL learners’ oral communication. TEFLIN Journal, 23(2), 222–232. Mulder, J. & Marentek, A. (2016). The use of articles and plurals by Indonesian speakers of English in ELF interactions. Paper presented at the 39th National Conference of Japanese Association for Asian Englishes, Toyo Eiwa University, Yokohama Campus, 3 December 2016. Muñoz, C. (2008). Age-related differences in foreign language learning. Revisiting the empirical evidence. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 46(3), 197–220. Musthafa, B. & Hamied, F. A. (2014). Teaching English as a foreign language in Indonesian schools in the reform era: What do teachers have to say? New English Teacher, 8(2), 1–14. Nur, C. (2004). English language teaching in Indonesia: Changing policies and practical constraints. In H. W. Kam & R. Y. L. Wong (eds), English language teaching in East Asia today: Changing policies and practices (pp. 178–186). Singapore: Eastern Universities Press. Purwo, B. K.(1990). Pragmatik dan pengajaran bahasa: Menyibak kurikulum 1984 [Pragmatics and language teaching: Unravelling the 1984 Curriculum]. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius. Qoyyimah, U. (2016). Inculcating character education through EFL teaching in Indonesian state schools. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 11(2), 109–126. doi:10.1080/ 1554480X.2016.1165618 Rasman. (2018). To translanguage or not to translanguage? The multilingual practice in Indonesian EFL classroom. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(3), 687–694. Sakhiyya, Z., Agustien, H. I. R. & Pratama, H. (2018). The reconceptualization of knowledge base in the pre-service teacher education curriculum: towards ELF pedagogy. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(1). doi:10.17509/ijal.v8i1.11464 Saukah, A. (2009). Language teacher education in Indonesia. In Y. H. Choi & B. Spolsky (eds), English language teacher education in Asia (pp. 1–28). Seoul: ASIA TEFL. Seidlhofer, B. (2004). Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 200–239. doi:10.1111/1473-4192.00011 Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, B. (2018). Standard English and the dynamics of ELF variation. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 85–100). London: Routledge. Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10, 209–231. doi:10.1515/iral.1972doi:10.1-4.209 Setiawan, A. W. (2015). Attitudes towards Indonesian teachers of English and implications for their professional identity. Doctor of Education thesis, University of Adelaide.
40 S. Zein Sifakis, N. & Bayyurt, Y. (2018). ELF-aware teaching, learning and teacher development. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 456–466). London: Routledge. Sugiharto, S. (2014). The multilingual turn in Applied Linguistics? A perspective from the periphery. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 414–421. doi:10.1111/ ijal.12111 Sugiharto, S. (2015a). Disentangling linguistic imperialism in English language education: The Indonesian context. In M. Bigelow & J. Ennser-Kananen (eds), The Routledge handbook of educational linguistics (pp. 224–236). London and New York: Routledge. Sugiharto, S. (2015b). Translingualism in action: rendering the impossible possible. Journal of Asia TEFL, 12(2), 125–154. Sung, C. C. M. (2013). English as a Lingua Franca and its implications for English language teaching. JALT Journal, 35(2), 173–190. Widiati, U. & Hayati, N. (2015). Teacher professional education in Indonesia and ASEAN 2015: lessons learned from English language teacher education programs. In R. Stroupe & K. Kimura (eds), ASEAN Integration and the role of English language teaching (pp.121–148). Phnom Penh: IELTS. Widodo, H. P. (2016). Language policy in practice: reframing the English language curriculum in the Indonesian secondary education sector. In R. Kirkpatrick (Ed.), English language education policy in Asia (pp. 127–151). Basel: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3319-22464-0_6 Yulia, Y. (2013). Teaching challenges in Indonesia: motivating students and teachers’ classroom language. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1), 1–16. doi:10.17509/ijal.v3i1.186 Zacharias, N. T. (2013). One teacher’s struggles to integrate EIL approaches in a Microteaching class: an action research project. In N.T. Zacharias & C. Manara (eds), Contextualizing the pedagogy of English as an international language: Issues and tensions (pp. 134–149). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Zacharias, N. T. (2014). The relocation of culture in the teaching of English as an international language. In R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (eds), The pedagogy of English as an international language: Perspectives from scholars, teachers and students (pp. 129–142). Basel: Springer International. Zacharias, N. T. (2016). Indonesian teacher identity construction: insights from practicing ELF pedagogy. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 26(2), 321–339. Zein, S. (2018a). English, multilingualism and globalisation in Indonesia: a love triangle – Why Indonesia should move towards multilingual education. English Today. doi:10.1017/S026607841800010X Zein, S. (2018b). Translanguaging as a metadiscursive practice in the EYL classroom: Preparing prospective teachers. In S. Zein & R. Stroupe (eds), English language teacher preparation in Asia: Policy, research, and practice (pp. 47–62). New York: Routledge.
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Critical pedagogy in the ELF era An Indonesian-based English language teacher educator’s reflection Joseph Ernest Mambu
Introduction The ASEAN Community Vision 2025 (ASEAN, 2015) has been an important policy endorsed by the governments of South East Asian nation states, and English is supposedly the lingua franca to fulfill this vision. It entails not only the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint 2025, but also the ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint 2025 and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint 2025. As one of the member states in ASEAN, Indonesia is supposed to prepare its youth to use ELF to engage more actively in ASEAN. Widiati and Hayati (2015) have reflected on the implementation of a post-graduate teacher professional education (Pendidikan Profesi Guru, PPG in Bahasa Indonesia) program in Universitas Negeri Malang in 2014. It was intended to prepare its graduates to be professional English teachers in the era of ASEAN Community. However, they admit that the PPG in their study has not prepared its students to be aware of ASEAN and “promote equity and justice,” both of which are suggested in the ASEAN Curriculum Sourcebook (ASEAN, 2012, as cited in Widiati & Hayati, 2015, p. 139). Against this backdrop, this chapter fills a gap in the English as a lingua franca ELF literature by connecting sociocultural and critical perspectives of L2 teacher education in an elective course, Critical Pedagogy & Literacy, in an undergraduate English language education program in an ASEAN country, Indonesia. Using data elicited during a four-month autoethnographic study within the elective course, this chapter aims to explore how ELF, as an inherent part of a multilingual teacher-educator and his bi/multilingual student-teachers’ discourse, was manifested in discussing the AEC and social justice, both in class and through on an online learning management system. This chapter aims to exemplify an English language teacher educator’s reflection on his attempts to raise awareness of ASEAN, viewed through the critical pedagogical lens, by means of ELF in his class. To this end, relevant current ELF perspectives that frame this study will first be discussed. Stemming from the standpoint that ELF is not solely based on English linguistic analysis (but also on co-construction of sociocultural meanings through dialogue), the next section provides a short review of critical pedagogy in the ELT literature, with a brief overview of dialogue, power, and reflexivity. The
42 J. E. Mambu sociocultural perspective of L2 teacher education (Johnson, 2009) will specifically flesh out the process of dialogue that allows student-teachers to use and improve their cognition. Analysis of data from my Critical Pedagogy & Literacy class will shed light on ELF use in which critical dialogue on ASEAN and social justice in this region, especially Indonesia, transpired.
Recent ELF perspectives Jenkins (2015) suggests that ELF has undergone three phases. The first phase, in the 1980s and 1990s, focused on describing the typical lexicogrammar and pronunciation features produced by non-native English speakers who deviate from the standard English in inner-circle countries like Australia, the United States, and Great Britain, but are still intelligible or do not interfere with meaning in communication. While in the first ELF phase the emphasis was on typicality of phonological and lexicogrammar forms, in the second phase ELF researchers such as Seidlhofer (2009) initiated more attention to varying communicative intents and meaning negotiations or co-constructions that might account for different (linguistic) forms when ELF users having shared linguistic and socio-cultural repertoire communicate with each other. In ELF phase three, Jenkins (2015) situates ELF as part of multilingualism rather than the other way around, such that English is potentially (though not necessarily) used by interacting multilingual speakers. Jenkins also argues that ELF phase three pushes the research agenda even further by problematizing the notion (or assumption) that multilingual speakers since the very beginning of their encounter know they share the same sociolinguistic repertoire. As Jenkins puts it: “Rather, [multilingual speakers] may be involved in transient encounters in which … their ‘shared’ repertoire is particularly emergent rather than shared a priori” (p. 64). This is applicable to the current study where I, as a multilingual speaker, and my bi/multilingual student-teachers used ELF to discuss ASEAN and social justice in the Critical Pedagogy & Literacy class. We did not necessarily share the same understanding of the concepts, and yet there were “unequal power relations in ELF encounters,” to use Jenkins’ wording (p. 65), between myself and my student-teachers. In Jenkins’ view, there should be more theorization of such power relations. The present study can be framed within ELF phase three. Regular linguistic forms in ELF encounters (ELF phase one) and varying communicative intents that might lead to different forms (ELF phase two) have not yet been analyzed. Instead, the degree to which linguistic or sociocultural repertoires (e.g. of concepts) are emergently shared and creatively (co-)constructed among multilingual ELF speakers will be of the main interest here. Empirically, when an ELF user shares the same understanding of a context as others in a conversation, s/he can complete or latch onto others’ utterances (Cogo, 2011). It is also possible to have “a moment of negotiation of forms and meaning” (p. 101), especially when multilingual ELF users are not English native speakers. To illustrate, talking about her favorable working condition in the office,
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Nana (a Japanese) said tentatively, because she was not sure about the preposition: “… we are all on the same… on in… ah: what is it… on the same boat?” Isabel (a Portuguese) replied: “… on the same boat I think… on the bus on the train.” And Anna (an Italian) commented: “anyway we understand you,” followed by Isabel who said: “yeah… we are all foreigners.” Finally, Nana laughed (p. 101). Isabel’s utterance co-constructed Nana’s utterance in a creative and playful manner by extending “on/in the same boat” with “on the bus on the train.” A more sophisticated negotiation and co-construction of meaning was displayed in Hahl’s (2016) study wherein a number of international and local Finnish students studying in a teacher education program in Finland drew upon their cultural understanding or experiences to discuss ethics. Because the Finnish instructor did not discuss punishment (e.g. failing students) in relation to ethics, a Cameroon student pursued this issue. The instructor found it hard to understand the Cameroon student’s accent. Apart from negotiation at a linguistic level (i.e. to understand the accent), the lecturer also had to decipher the cultural meaning of punishment. A Finnish student pointed out that punishment in the local context of Finland was not common as it went to an opposite direction: “if you behave well you get better grades” (p. 99). Both Cogo’s (2011) example and Hahl’s (2016) study are illuminating as they provide a framework for analyzing co-construction of form and meaning in ELF encounters. However, they are not situated in an ASEAN context; nor are they devoted to exploring criticality and power relations between interlocutors, especially between a teacher educator and his/her student-teachers.
Critical pedagogy in the ELT context Criticality in ELT includes, and yet goes beyond, critical thinking. While critical thinking focuses on a cognitive realm in which one’s (or others’) beliefs and assumptions are interrogated, critical ELT from a critical pedagogical perspective attempts to raise students’ awareness that language learning cannot be separated from sociopolitical contexts that shape it and people’s ways of thinking (Banegas & Villacañas de Castro, 2016; Morgan, 2004). Critical pedagogy (CP) has also inspired English language teachers and teacher educators to be responsive to learners; encourage their students to use English to identify marginalized groups as well as power relations in society; envision social justice; and transform oppressive realities in their own communities (Abednia & Izadinia, 2013; Akbari, 2008; Crookes, 2013, Hawkins & Norton, 2009), as part of “the situated nature” English language teaching practices, through “dialogic engagement” and “reflexivity” (Hawkins & Norton, 2009, p. 36). In the context of critical language teacher education (CLTE), the situated nature of English language teaching practices, furthermore, means that language teacher educators take advantage of their and their student-teachers’ knowledge of culture and sociopolitical history in their local context (Hawkins & Norton, 2009). This is in line with the sociocultural perspective of L2 teacher education that I will touch upon briefly in the next section. A teacher educator is said to be
44 J. E. Mambu responsive to his/her learners when student-teachers’ linguistic, historical, and cultural backgrounds and experiences, as well as their passion or desires, are incorporated into their learning milieu. Student-teachers can collaboratively engage in dialogues as they make sense of, and reflect on, their knowledge, experiences, and desires. One of the important goals of dialogic engagement is for student-teachers, together with their language teacher-educators, to relate social justice issues (which address power distance at individual or institutional level, among others) to practices in education. Whereas dialogic engagement is collaboratively practiced between language teacher educators and student-teachers or among the latter themselves, reflexivity refers to teacher educators’ own attempts to reflect on their own pedagogical practices. These self-reflections contain analyses of what they have done (Hawkins & Norton, 2009). Another critical approach to ELT problematizes the place of powerful languages like English (Pennycook, 2016). English and national languages in education, including that in Southeast Asian contexts, have been so prioritized that they relegate local languages to a subordinate status. The multilingual approach to ELF (Jenkins’ [2015] ELF phase three) is hence a critical response to the centrality and domination of English in language education. Besides, ELF that is sensitive to the issue of power, which is still understudied (Pennycook, 2016), should explore power dynamics that transpires in interactions between a bi/multilingual teachereducator and his/her student-teachers, or among student-teachers themselves. Viewed through a Foucauldian lens (Pennycook, 2001), power is not solely ascribed to people in power (e.g. the U.S. president). Rather, it disperses in society such that anyone can exercise it to fulfil either a productive (e.g. to convince) or destructive purpose (e.g. to dispute, to manipulate) in an interaction with one or more interlocutors. There is a growing number of empirical studies on how critical pedagogical insights are introduced in English language teacher education in different parts of the globe (e.g. Lin, 2004; Pennycook, 2004; Sharma & Phyak, 2017; Villacañas de Castro, 2017), including Indonesia (e.g. Mambu, 2009). However, reflexive approaches to critical pedagogy in ELF encounters are still not well documented. Therefore, this study explores my reflection on how my student-teachers, with my facilitation, expressed their criticality in English.
The sociocultural perspective of L2 teacher education On the sociocultural perspective, Johnson (2009) suggests that “engagement in social activities” (e.g. students’ response to teacher’s facilitation) accounts for the formation of “human cognition” (p. 1). Based on the CLTE perspective, critical thinking and reflexivity are possible when fostered through dialogic engagement between teachers/teacher educators and their students/student-teachers (Hawkins & Norton, 2009). As teachers/teacher educators/experts and learners/student-teachers engage in social activities, the former facilitates the latter, and the latter attains “higher-level thinking” or more advanced cognition. Teachers’ and learners’ involvement in social activities inside or outside class, as well as in the
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online world, are embedded in “social relationships” wherein their interactions are mediated by “semiotic artifacts” or “culturally constructed materials, signs, and symbols” (Johnson, 2009, p. 1) such as curricular documents, learning materials, teacher’s talk, and students’ oral or written contribution in class in ELF encounters. From the sociocultural perspective (Johnson, 2009), teacher educators should become “learners of teaching” themselves; consider “language as social practice” (p. 3); mediate dialogues when teaching; and become aware of “macro-structures and the L2 teacher profession” (p. 5). In becoming learners of teaching, teacher educators need to learn how they understand theoretical concepts and how their understanding of the concepts develops over time (Johnson, 2009). Language as social practice from a sociocultural perspective means that language is utilized as “psychological” and “cultural” tool to understand one’s own experiences, share one’s experiences with others, and change one’s as well as others’ experiences to “cultural knowledge and understandings” (Johnson, 2009, p. 3). When teaching is regarded as dialogic mediation, it is supposed to endorse learners’ or student-teachers’ “contributions and discoveries.” The discovery and sharing processes among student-teachers need to be mediated by teacher-educators as “‘expert’ collaborators” in (the spirit of) dialogue (p. 63; see also Johnson, 2015). Dialogue in view of the sociocultural perspective is, in Johnson’s view, the backbone of learning as it unites cognitive processes at an individual level and social interactions. The sociocultural perspective of L2 teacher education also requires that English language teacher educators be aware of macro structures the L2 teacher profession. This means teacher educators need to know “sanctioned policies” and “curricular mandates” that “shape their work” (Johnson, 2009, p. 5). In the Indonesian context, to illustrate, it is necessary for English language teacher educators to be familiar with the issue of the ASEAN Community as a sort of regionally sanctioned policy (see Introduction).
Synthesis Though insightful, Johnson’s (2009, 2015) sociocultural perspective is limited in that it directs teacher educators’ attention to a sense of success (i.e. expertly mediating students to have more advanced cognition of one or more concepts). It is not very sensitive to tapping into teacher-educators’ reflexivity. Hawkins and Norton’s (2009) CLTE perspective complements the sociocultural perspective of L2 teacher education. The notion of teacher educators as learners of teaching can encourage teacher educators to be reflexive and responsive to learners’ backgrounds and experiences. Teacher educators are not solely the most authoritative source of knowledge. On the contrary, they need to learn how to reflexively examine the extent to which they are responsive to learners. Part of being responsive to learners is a teaching approach that demonstrates willingness to openly acknowledge that student-teachers can sometimes question teacher educators’ (powerful) stance on an issue or a concept, and in turn re-learn it. In other
46 J. E. Mambu words, teacher educators are likely to learn from their student teachers, too, not always the other way around. Recall Hahl’s (2016) ELF study in which a Somalian student questioned the instructor’s conceptualization of ethics in relation to punishment. (Critical) reflexivity provides space for teacher educators to humbly learn from their student-teachers as well. Furthermore, both CLTE and the sociocultural perspectives promote dialogue: the former concentrates on having dialogues on social justice issues; the latter provides a theoretical framework that allows researchers to investigate psychological and cultural tools (including language) for mediating thoughts and experiences in dialogue. ELF is the cultural tool that mediates bi/multilingual speakers when they interact with each other, co-constructing or negotiating forms and meanings in different forms of criticality (i.e. at a cognitive level, typically labeled as “critical thinking,” and in terms of “social justice,” one of the main concerns of CP). More broadly, employing CP in the context of ELF is a form of CLTE, and a manifestation of the sociocultural approach in (critical) second language teacher education is situating ELF in Indonesia within the (macro structure of) the ASEAN Community context.
The study Context To address the research question of how forms and meanings of CP-related concepts are negotiated or co-constructed when student-teachers and their teacher educator interact using ELF, I triangulated some data collected in my Critical Pedagogies & Literacy two-credit elective course between January and April 2016 in the English Language Education program at a university in Indonesia. I have offered the Critical Pedagogies & Literacy course since 2007 for undergraduate students, and yet it was in 2016 when I wanted to seriously document my course auto-ethnographically. Participants My data include a transcript of an audio-recorded class, my prompts in a task sheet and newspaper opinion articles used in a class session, excerpts of students-teachers’ and my own reflective journals, and dialogic exchanges on Schoology (an online learning management system), all of which are copied or transcribed verbatim. Thirty-four third- and final-year student-teachers on an undergraduate English language teacher education program were enrolled in my class. I use pseudonyms to refer to my student-teachers. Participants’ spoken utterances are broadly transcribed here. The focal participants are those whose voices are represented here (Table 3.1) and myself—an Indonesian national in his late thirties at the time of data collection, and a former debater himself when he was an undergraduate student.
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Table 3.1 Focal participants Participant
Place of origin
Involvement in students’ activities
Rego
Sulawesi
A functionary of the students’ body; a talented member of the university’s English Debating Society
Tania
Java
Unknown
Adit
Java
A talented member of the university’s English Debating Society
Siwi
Java
Unknown
Chen
Java
A functionary of the students’ body
Ester
Java
A functionary of the students’ body
Susi
Unknown
Unknown
Autoethnography as a research methodology Autoethnography employs a researcher’s own experiences when recounting and casting a critical gaze on “beliefs, practices, and experiences” (Adams, Jones & Ellis, 2015, p. 1.). Emphasizing “deep and careful self-reflection” or “reflexivity,” autoethnography is also useful to “name and interrogate the intersections between self and society” (p. 2), especially between myself and my student-teachers. Equally important is autoethnography’s commitment to social justice. The fifth principle of Pancasila (or Indonesia’s five foundational principles) is in fact social justice for all Indonesian people. Nevertheless, social justice is an understudied theme in my institution or even, to the best of my knowledge, over 300 similar English language education programs throughout Indonesia. Autoethnography enables me to see fruitful moments where students thoughtfully co-constructed knowledge together with myself and their peers (e.g. on the notions of ASEAN-awareness and social justice). On ASEAN-related themes, prior to the second class meeting on January 18, 2016, I asked my students to read several articles on AEC (e.g. Hutabarat, 2014; Siregar, 2013) that were published on The Jakarta Post, a leading English newspaper in Indonesia. In the class, I divided my students into three big groups, each consisting of 11–12 people. Guiding questions for discussion were also provided for each group. For the current analysis, I focus on Groups 1 and 3, who discussed Hutabarat’s (2014) and Siregar’s (2013) articles, respectively. The theme of social justice emerged when discussing Siregar’s article, as well as in subsequent talks related to the theme on February 15, 2016 (week #6) in class and postings on Schoology in early March 2016.
Data analysis In light of Hawkins and Norton’s (2009) CLTE, Johnson’s (2009) sociocultural perspective of L2 teacher education, and ELF perspectives on co-construction or negotiation of form and meanings, my auto-ethnographic reflexivity is focused on (1) exploring the situated nature of my own Critical Pedagogies & Literacy class
48 J. E. Mambu impacted by the discourse of AEC (especially prior to and during the second meeting of my class in January 2016); and (2) reflecting on how I attempted to have dialogues on social justice (in the sixth week in February 2016).
Findings and discussion Exploring the ASEAN Economic Community as a regionally situated issue ASEAN-awareness One of the guiding questions for Group 1 (on January 18, 2016) in my class was used as a scaffolding tool to illustrate critical thinking. This perspective of critical thinking is often associated with Bloom’s Taxonomy and its revised framework (e.g. Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) that characterizes a progression from the so-called lower-order thinking skills to higher-order thinking skills, ranging from remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The higher-order thinking skills were elicited by means of my statement and questions in Excerpt 1. First, I provided my evaluation after quoting Hutabarat’s (2014) statement. After that, in sub-questions (a) and (b), I asked my students to create their own (oral) text based on their background knowledge and common sense in relation to the quoted statement. [1] In the third paragraph from the last paragraph, the author says: “… increasing the number of people who are ASEAN-aware using more effective ways of communication is helpful to the AEC establishment.” However, he does not provide concrete examples of “effective ways.” a. What do you think are the “effective ways,” then? b. Do you agree that more people should be “ASEAN-aware”? Rego and Tania gave overlapping responses to sub-question 4(a). Rego listed social media and newspapers, while Tania said: “using technology.” According to Adit, the effective way should be education to compensate for what he described as “the lack of human resources” in Indonesia. I agreed with him, echoing Adit’s idea of “improving the quality of human resources” through education. The ensuing discussion was on whether my students agreed that more people should be “ASEAN-aware.” Being the first to respond to this, Ester concurred: “Yeah because we are part of ASEAN, so we should know what we are involved in first, to be involved.” A similar agreement was raised by Chen: “[ASEAN]’s going to be open market, then we [should] know their culture.” Interestingly, Adit opposed Ester and Chen, arguing: [2] I disagree that more people should be ASEAN-aware. Because this will be an open market, so it means mixings the identities of each countries. As Indonesian we see that our problem is closing our problems. Like for example like the Reog and other kind of local products is claimed by Malaysia. So if
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more people in Indonesia should be ASEAN-aware, the problems at hands when they’re not aware of their own identity. I attempted to make sense of his argument by asking him if his main argument is that we need to maintain our own identity as part of nation states like Indonesia. Adit agreed. I probed whether maintaining Indonesian culture was more important than being ASEAN-aware. To this Adit said yes again, on the grounds that we could sell the pride of our identity in the global market: “Like Batik you can sell internationally globally, and Reog.” Tania disagreed with Adit: [3] I disagree with Kak Adit’s argument. I think it’s a good thing if we become ASEAN-aware, because I’m just quoting from Kak Adit’s previous statement, he said that one of the things that is lacking in ASEAN-aware is that education, which mean if we become ASEAN-aware, we become a more educated person. … By becoming a more educated person, it means that we also able to compete. By competing, a smart person will know what to do in competition. After that, Rego contended that being ASEAN-aware meant being conscious that ASEAN countries are socio-culturally interconnected and likely to have similarities as well as uniqueness. As he put it: [4] we also include Indonesia as part of ASEAN-aware. So this is the awareness also for our own culture … So it does not mean that we are kind of like not maintaining our own culture, because we are learning other [culture], but it is strengthening our own culture. Because we can see the difference. Because we can see the link. And also, in some points we can see the connections between the nations. Rego also brought the issue of economy to the fore again: [5] when we are ASEAN-aware, it’s not only talking about social culture issues but this more deeper than that? As we know before that this ASEAN Economic Community is not only about free trade. But it is also about labor skills. About services investment. Closing the conversation, I said to my students that my personal take on this ASEAN-awareness is as follows: [6] critically we need to be aware of AEC. Or ASEAN-aware. Whether we like it or not, whether you agree with AEC or not, the discourse, or the wacana of AEC has been ongoing for years. Overall, critical thinking exemplified through the discussion about the concept of “ASEAN-aware” expands on, in light of Johnson (2009), the sociocultural
50 J. E. Mambu understanding of language as social practice. Some of my students and I, for example, used the theme of being ASEAN-aware as a discursive tool to build on or challenge each other’s views using our background knowledge and common sense. Also, in retrospect, my autoethnographic data verify Cogo’s (2011) argument that in using ELF, people whose first language is not English can use English “creatively in order to co-construct meaning and ensure understanding” (p. 99). As none of us were economics majors, our arguments on ASEAN-awareness in the context of AEC were mostly derived from our cultural background as ELT majors who were more conversant with (1) our involvement in ASEAN (Ester) and other [ASEAN] people’s cultures (Chen); (2) the notion of identity (Adit, Excerpt 2); (3) cultural artifacts like “Reog,” a traditional dance from Ponorogo, East Java (Adit, Excerpt 2); and the notion of “maintaining [one’s] own culture” at the same time we learn others’ cultures (Rego, Excerpt 4). I did mention that “the wacana [or discourse] of AEC” (Excerpt 6) has been around for some time. However, I did not explain the implications in a way better than Rego, my student-teacher, who expanded our horizon on the AEC as something that is related to “labor skills” and “service investment” (Excerpt 5), beyond cultural issues. Rego did not elaborate on these two phrases, but my sense of success in this classroom interaction is that my prompts (Excerpt 1) fruitfully elicited a discussion on ASEAN-awareness with my students. In terms of linguistic forms, the student-teachers’ English wording is creative, both from Adit who disagreed with ASEAN-awareness, and from other students who endorsed it. To illustrate, when framing his argument within the notion of “mixings the identities of each countries,” Adit further said “as Indonesian we see that our problem is closing our problems” (Excerpt 2). This is a creative wording in a spontaneous talk, although some might argue that this is not native-like in that it lacks in idiomaticity. From the context it can be interpreted that Indonesia has swept things (especially the problem of a weak sense of Indonesian identity) under the rug (i.e. the carpet, so to speak, of ASEAN identity). Student-teachers who agreed with ASEAN-awareness also used a creative expression, albeit repetitiously: “we should know what we are involved in first, to be involved.” In other words, to get involved in ASEAN, we need to know it first. Creative co-construction of meaning is also shown through appropriating an opponent’s argument. Tania (Excerpt 3), for instance, said “I’m just quoting from Kak Adit’s previous statement” that education is something which is lacking in Indonesia. Similar appropriation was also done by Rego, who discussed “identity,” a notion raised earlier by Adit. Whereas Adit thought of ASEAN-awareness as a threat to the national identity, Rego adeptly rebutted it, saying that learning other cultures would in turn reinforce “our own culture” and help us “see the connections between the nations.” Extending Jenkins’ (2015) perspective, especially in terms of ELF phase three, I can argue that bi/multilingual ELF users might have shared linguistic and sociocultural repertoire, but their understanding of a concept (e.g. ASEAN-awareness) might only be shared, if not also contested, emergently with such shared linguistic and cultural tools/repertoires as repetition and appropriation, among others. Furthermore, a dialogue on being ASEAN-aware initiated by the teacher educator
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is possible when (1) his/her question(s)/prompt(s) is/are open-ended (e.g. Excerpt 1); (2) s/he is responsive to a student-teacher, e.g. by paraphrasing and clarifying the student-teacher’s point (e.g. my response to Adit’s argument in Excerpt 2); and (3) student-teachers co-construct, or even challenge, the concept being discussed. Under these conditions, the power distance between a teachereducator and his/her student-teacher(s) is narrowed. Besides, power dynamics among student-teachers themselves are determined not necessarily by who they are (e.g. a debater), or accuracy in grammar, or being native-like, but more by how they employ linguistic repertoire (e.g. repeating words) and sociocultural repertoire (e.g. quoting others and, like the Finnish and Somalian students in Hahl’s [2016] study, using cultural background knowledge of an issue) to exert productive power (Pennycook, 2001) in making compelling and critical arguments. Thus far, the dialogue did not directly address social justice issues. However, CP is inextricably linked with the discussion of power relations in a teacher education context where student-teachers activate their critical thinking capacity to reason and dispute ideas. In the following sections, social justice is the issue being discussed in the class or through Schoology. AEC and access to English One of the questions I raised for Group 3, based on Siregar (2013), was to illustrate critical thinking in a critical pedagogical sense: The following phrase is copied from paragraph 4: “English for employment for national competitiveness.” Based on your observation as English language learners in Indonesia, who do you think have access to English? What I had in mind when asking the guiding question to Group 3 was that many Indonesian people were in the midst of fierce competition with other people from other ASEAN countries and even with their fellow Indonesians, especially in terms of English language proficiency. Susi from Group 3 responded to my guiding question: the one who can access to English, especially… the people or the student who are in school. And especially at the international school, they will have learned English more than the people in low-economic because they can afford to go to school. This is an interesting comment as she could recognize power relations in society between those who have either much or little access to English due to their socioeconomic status. The issue of access is essential in CP (e.g. Janks, 2010). Though not discussed further in my class, it can be argued that social justice might mean increased access to quality English instruction. The problem is that increased hours of English at
52 J. E. Mambu school might marginalize the learning of local languages. Besides, quality English instruction does not always have to be from school. For further dialogues in the future, it is essential to engage future student-teachers to “see ELT not so much as centrally about the promotion of English but rather as a process of working out where English can usefully sit within an ecology of languages” (Pennycook, 2016, p. 32) inside or outside English language classrooms. In this section, power is tied to English and people’s access to it. In the next section, I will touch upon power dynamics between myself (representing CP as a subject matter) and my student-teachers, as well as among student-teachers themselves when discussing a challenging concept like social justice. Reflecting on attempts to have a dialogue on “social justice” Discussing Akbari’s (2008) take on CP in ELT on February 15, 2016 (week #6), in one of my PowerPoint slides I included Zeichner (2011), who argues that [Social justice teacher education] aims to [prepare] teachers to teach in ways that contribute to a lessening of the inequalities that exist in school systems throughout the world between children of the poor and children of the middle and wealthy classes, and the injustices that exist in societies beyond systems of schooling—in access to shelter, food, healthcare, transportation, access to meaningful work that pays a living wage, and so on. (p. 7) I thought this quote useful as a scaffolding tool, especially because it uses everyday concepts such as “poor,” “wealthy,” and “access” to explain a more scientific concept like “social justice teacher education.” Why were some of my students silent? The problem was that many students were silent regarding my belief in social justice and other CP-related themes. A sense of frustration crept into my mind, culminating in my own reflective journal in week #8: The fact that some students decided to take this class for the sake of completing an elective course complicates things even more. Responding to highly advanced questions like those of Rego might leave the rest… who had low interest in CP and low English proficiency levels bewildered. It appears to me that the biggest irony is that while I attempted to address CP-related themes, especially social justice teacher education, head-on in my class, my efforts divided the class into at least two groups: those who were seemingly alienated as they saw intense dialogues between me and bright, critical students; and those, especially Rego, who were highly and critically engaged in class and on Schoology. This irony echoes Johnston’s (1999) concern over CP on at least two grounds. First, “unequal power relations are a permanent feature of educational settings”
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(p. 560). In my own classroom, power relations emerged in my relation to the students, and in the relationship between bright, critical students and those who were, or eventually decided to be, silent. Second, Johnston (1999) also bluntly stated that he was “put off by the language used by critical pedagogists” and found himself “excluded” (pp. 562–563). I presented concepts like neoliberalism, racism, and sexism in different classroom meetings, which might put off some students. Notwithstanding the problem of unequal power relations in my class and dealing with difficult concepts, too much pessimism over a (teacher-educator’s) commitment to practice CP is like throwing the baby (CP) out with the bathwater tarnished with dirt (a sense of failure in introducing difficult concepts). Reflexivity has allowed me to see what was still problematic in my CP class. Concurrently, reflexivity has also enabled me to see a ray of hope among a few students who were committed to having dialogues on social justice with me and their peers. Resistance in “moments of negotiation.” Extending Cogo’s (2011, p. 99) discussion about the use of ELF, here I exemplify how my students and I contested and co-constructed the notion of social justice in “moment[s] of negotiation” shared on Schoology as a follow-up on what had been hotly debated in the class earlier. Rego was adamant in his resistance to the notion of social justice by stating that “the notion of Social Justice DOES NOT exist!” He continued: We do bargain in our life, and always consider the notion of retributive justice and International humanitarian law as the solution to keep the balance in society and to preserve humanity. But still, all of them, all of that kinda constructions are not a Social Justice, it is only the agreement by the majority. Rego did not elaborate on the socially constructed notions like “retributive justice” (i.e. punishing criminals rather than rehabilitating them) and “International Humanitarian Law” which seeks to restrict war-related consequences. He did not explore the possibility that both the majority and the minority could benefit from both retributive justice and International Humanitarian Law, either. Rego’s resistance, however, pushed my thinking beyond my taken-for-granted assumption that students would easily believe in the social justice that I believed in. Responding to Rego’s argument, I was resolute in my belief that social justice exists, and yet I qualified my stance on social justice by including the likelihood that its conceptualization is subject to debate and its actualization does not reside in a powerrelational vacuum. As I said: “even the best intention to achieve ‘social justice’ can be stained by power imbalance, or even oppression in one way or another.” Interestingly, Ester was supportive of Rego’s response: “if Social Justice is being constructed by the majority, how can it be called Social Justice…?” A couple of days later I sensed that Rego still stuck to his earlier stance. Then I commented: “I believe in social justice, but Rego is right in terms of his questioning stance.”
54 J. E. Mambu Appreciating students’ (like Rego’s and Ester’s) questioning stance fosters humility on my part and a new understanding that as a teacher-educator I could not always be a person whose knowledge was to be imbibed without resistance. In turn, students’ challenges forced me as a learner of teaching to come up with more difficult questions, like the following in response to Rego and Ester: If you think that the notion of “social justice” has been defined by the majority, the question is who is the “majority”? What about the LGBT groups in Indonesia? Are they part of the “majority” or “minority”? As we co-constructed our understanding (especially my cognition) of social justice, I deconstructed an assumption that social justice was always determined by the majority. As a minority group in Indonesia, LGBT supporters also shout for social justice. This is another insight I had never thought before unless my students challenged my stance on social justice. My students’ defiance conditioned me to become a “learner of teaching” (Johnson, 2009, p. 5) who stretched my own mind over time to better understand social justice as something that is possibly constructed by both the majority and the minority. Furthermore, this dialogue on social justice challenges the hidden assumption (in recent theorization of the sociocultural perspective in L2 teacher education) that student-teachers are those who should (always) learn from the teacher educator. As a teacher educator, I provided a useful definition of social justice based on Zeichner (2011), but it is a cultural tool from a Western perspective that is not necessarily shared by my student-teachers, who can jointly exert their power to challenge their teacher educator and the body of literature on social justice s/he holds dear. As an extension to Jenkins’ (2015) view of ELF phase three, it can also be argued that what is seemingly a shared repertoire (e.g. that a teacher educator and his/her student-teachers have heard of the notion of social justice in English) at the beginning might end in radically different directions as a dialogue unfolds. This requires a spirit of humility on the part of the teacher-educator, in particular, to keep the dialogue going and to learn from the student-teachers.
Conclusion To answer the specific research question of how multilingual ELF users on a CP course in an Indonesian-based English language teacher education setting coconstructed or negotiated two focal concepts—ASEAN-awareness and social justice—the current and complementary theoretical lenses of ELF, CP, CLTE, and the sociocultural perspective of L2 teacher education have been utilized. First, scaffolding students in ELF encounters to learn difficult concepts, especially those related to CP, was pivotal. In line with Johnson (2009), I provided some mediation (e.g. paraphrasing a student’s argument, expressing further thoughts on Schoology) to my students so they had sustained dialogues with me or their peers when learning scientific concepts like ASEAN-awareness and social justice, which were initially viewed through the lens of related everyday concepts (e.g. “poor”
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and “wealthy” for the latter; see Zeichner, 2011). Furthermore, I explored how ELF was employed to negotiate the meanings of ASEAN-awareness (including the role of English in the Southeast Asian context, especially Indonesia) and social justice through emergently shared linguistic and cultural tools/repertoires (Cogo, 2011; Jenkins, 2015) like repetition and appropriation (e.g. quoting others) to improve critical thinking and increase sensitivity to social inequalities. Second, the autoethnographic methodology has allowed me to interrogate critically my own involvement in negotiating the focal concepts with my students. Expanding on the literature of teacher research (e.g. Boruah, 2015), this chapter argues that English language teacher educators working in Indonesia and elsewhere can develop their professionalism by turning a critical gaze on their own pedagogical practices. With a self-reflexive spirit, the current study complicates the sociocultural perspective of L2 teacher education by defying the simplistic assumption that student-teachers are those who are supposedly learn from their teacher-educator(s). My data suggest that student-teachers could exercise their power by displaying criticality through their more compelling arguments (e.g. on ASEAN-awareness) than those of a teacher-educator like myself. It also turns out that student-teachers might even challenge my belief (in social justice, for instance). Overall, this chapter has examined nuances of criticality and power dynamics between English and other languages, as well as between a teacher-educator and his student-teachers, and among student-teachers themselves (all of whom inherently use ELF), in an English language teacher education program. What’s next? English language teacher educators should envision praxes that bridge classrooms and the world outside them, thereby responding to Kubanyiova and Feryok’s (2015, pp. 441–442) recent call for “an ethical vision of language teacher cognition” in which there is a specific commitment to “serving underserved populations,” especially multilingual ELF users/learners from low social-economic status who also have the right to learn English in conjunction with, instead of being apart from, other (local) languages.
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Seidlhofer, B. (2009). Common ground and different realities: World Englishes and English as a lingua franca. World Englishes, 28(2), 236–245. doi: doi:10.1111/j.1467971X.2009.01592.x Sharbawi, S. & Bigalke, T. W. (eds). (2015). English for ASEAN Integration: Policies and Practices in the Region. Brunei Darussalam: University of Brunei Darussalam. Sharma, B. K. & Phyak, P. (2017). Criticality as ideological becoming: developing English teachers for critical pedagogy in Nepal. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 14(2/3), 210–238. doi:10.1080/15427587.2017.1285204 Siregar, F. L. (2013). Indonesia’s ELT and the ASEAN Economic Community. The Jakarta Post, February 24. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/02/24/indo nesia-s-elt-and-asean-economic-community.html Villacañas de Castro, L. S. (2017). ‘We are more than EFL teachers – we are educators’: emancipating EFL student-teachers through photovoice. Educational Action Research, 25(4), 610–629. doi:10.1080/09650792.2016.1215930 Widiati, U. & Hayati, N. (2015). Teacher professional education in Indonesia and ASEAN 2015: lessons learned from English language teacher education programs. In R. Stroupe & K. Kimura (eds), ASEAN Integration and the Role of English Language Teaching (pp. 121–148). Phnom Penh: LEiA (Language Education in Asia). Zeichner, K. (2011). Teacher education for social justice. In M. Hawkins (ed.), Social Justice Language Teacher Education (pp. 7–22). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
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Professional teacher in the making A case study of Indonesian pre-service teachers’ identity-agency in the context of English as a lingua franca Siti Nur’Aini, Laily Nur Affini and Ajeng Setyorini
Introduction In the Southeast Asian community, there has been an unwritten agreement that the people in this region adopt English as the language for society, and it has become the official language of ASEAN events (Kirkpatrick, 2010). It has been established that, regarding language use, the ASEAN countries are grouped into three different classifications, as elaborated in (Kachru, 1982). The first group is the inner-circle countries, where English has been traditionally spoken as the primary language, such as Brunei, Malaysia and The Philippines. The second group is referred to as outer-circle countries, where English plays an institutional role and is taught officially in schools and used as a second language, such as Myanmar. The third group is the expanding-circle countries, where English traditionally played no internal role. In this group, English is taught as a foreign language, such as in Thailand and Indonesia. In preparing the ASEAN Integration, other outer-circle countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia have prepared their citizens to be ready for the competition. They have set up a programme for pre-service teachers to have proper training and skills to become teachers in the context of ELF (Stroupe & Kimura, 2015). As the largest country in Southeast Asia, Indonesia needs to be ready for the integration and be like other countries in the region, especially when preparing English teachers through teacher education. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of research studies in teacher education in Indonesia (e.g. Gandana & Parr, 2013; Iskhak, 2015; Mukminin et al., 2017; Relmasira & Thrupp, 2016; Widiati & Hayati, 2015; Zein, 2015, 2017). Some studies such as Mukminin et al. (2017) are interested in unravelling the motivation to become a teacher, while others investigate the linguistic growth of teachers as a result of reader-response theory (e.g. Iskhak, 2015). Scholars such as Widiati and Hayati (2015) are interested in the curriculum domain, pointing out the need to combine teacher education in Indonesia with the ASEAN curriculum so that pre-service teachers can have greater scope of teaching. They argue that the interaction between altruistic, intrinsic and extrinsic motives should become a consideration for policymakers to create good standards of teacher education. The teacher education of primary school English teachers has become a major concern. Zein (2015) framed his research on the preparation
Professional teacher in the making 59 of teachers at pre-service level, while in another study he demonstrated the influential role of contextual factors in shaping in-service teacher education programmes (Zein, 2016). The issue of teacher identity has also become an area of interest. For example, Relmasira and Thrupp (2016) studied pre-service teachers by involving the teaching of ICT, emphasising the ways in which pre-service teachers created classroom identity. They implement the use of drawing to describe how pre-service teachers should look, feel and sound. Furthermore, Gandana & Parr (2013) showed how the introduction of new subjects, such as Intercultural Communication, have the potential to be useful in increasing the critical and complex understandings of culture and language among teachers, and in the development of their identity as a result, although constrained by the political context in which teachers operate. This variety of research has contributed greatly to the development of research in teacher education in Indonesia, but little research has been conducted on teacher education in the context of ELF, especially in the area of professional identity. This present study fills this gap by focusing on the development of pre-service teachers’ identity and agency as future teachers in the context of ELF. It is important to investigate the construction of teacher identity (Anwaruddin, 2012; Beltman et al., 2015; Hall & Gay, 2011) and exertion of self-driven actions, called agency. This study focuses on pre-service teachers, as often the discrepancies between teaching theories and practices can cause problems during their training programmes (Korthagen & Wubbels, 1991; Parsons & Stephenson, 2005). This chapter aims to answer the research question: How do pre-service teachers exert their agency to frame their identity as future teachers in the context of ELF? It explores the way pre-service teachers understand their professional identity development and how they exert their agency to shape their identity, within their roles as the future teachers in the context of ELF. The chapter begins by establishing the research question, followed by the conceptual frameworks that establish the roles of identity and agency in the professional development of pre-service teachers. Then, the methodology of the research is elaborated, followed by an explanation of findings and discussion. The final section is the conclusion and contribution of this research to pre-service teacher education.
Situating the conceptual framework The process of becoming a teacher is often long and arduous, and likely even harder than what the pre-service teachers envisaged. It is a process that extends more widely than the education and training a pre-service teacher has to go through, as it goes beyond the visible aspects of one’s development. Identity is shaped by both internal and external factors, as Gee (2000) proposes. In their earlier work, Holland et al. (1998) define identity as a concept that figuratively combines the intimate or personal world with the collective space of cultural forms and social relations. Their work contributes to the notion of how the shaping of a person’s identity depends on the society where they live, including the culture,
60 S. Nur’Aini, L. N. Affini and A. Setyorini society and contexts, and the influence of the relationships between individuals involved within that society. There is another factor that contributes to the shaping of one’s identity, known as the concept of agency. Rogers and Wetzel (2013) define agency as “socioculturally mediated capacity to act purposively and reflectively on one’s world.” However, Hitlin and Elder (2007) argue that agency is a “slippery concept” because of inconsistencies regarding its definition in various fields and depending on the type of researcher using the term. Regardless of the fact that they point out the vagueness identity concept, Hitlin and Elder (2007) categorise four types of agency: existential, identity, pragmatic and life course. Both studies emphasise the importance of society as the place where a person can grow and develop themselves, which is why the definition above places social context as an inseparable part of human development. From this point, this chapter adapts the categorisation of identity-agency from Hitlin and Elder (2007) to explore how participants employ their abilities to define their course of learning and professional identity development. This notion of agency is in line with the shaping of identity according to Holland et al. (1998), which recognises the important role of society in defining the identity and agency of individuals. Individuals’ willingness and determination to exercise their agency as they form their identity play an even more crucial part, as they are the one doing the acts of agency. To achieve the formation of identity through the exercise of agency, Bandura (2001) distributes four aspects of agency: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness (self-regulation), and selfreflectiveness (beliefs of efficacy). Bandura (2001) describes intentionality as the acts done when an individual plans future activities to achieve desired outcomes. Forethought is the agency that a person exercises when they motivate themselves to achieve a result and anticipate a foreseeable future. Self-reactiveness is seen when an individual consciously makes choices and plans their actions in response to their surroundings, events or regulation that influences their future actions. Lastly, self-reflectiveness is the ability of an individual to review their actions, consider their choices and contemplate their thoughts before making future decisions. These four aspects of agency are influential in pre-service teachers’ identity and professional development, and will be used as the ground of analysis. In terms of identity and agency of pre-service teachers, it is necessary for teachers to establish their position. Pre-service teachers in this research are individuals who are in the transition stage from being a student to becoming a professional teacher. Their professional identity develops along with their language proficiency. Bailey (2006) designed a quadrant that defines the category of teachers: There are four types of language teacher according to Bailey’s (2006) quadrant: teachers who fall into category 1 are professionally prepared as a language teacher. They join formal education providers to become a teacher. This type of teacher is also the one who is proficient in the target language. Category 2 is where teachers are enrolled in formal teacher education, but they do not possess the language proficiency required for their teaching. Category 3 is for teachers who are proficient in the target language, but are not formally trained to become teachers; in
Professional teacher in the making 61 Proficient in the target language
Professionally prepared as a language teacher
1
3
2
4
Not Professionally prepared as a language teacher
Not proficient in the target language
Figure 4.1 Continua of target language proficiency and professional preparation Source: Bailey (2006)
category 4, teachers are neither proficient in the target language nor professionally trained as language teachers. These categorisations help to identify which category the participants of this research fall into. The connection between the training that participants received and the things they did during the language acquisition stages will become the focus of this chapter. Research focusing on identity and agency of teachers has been around for a while. Some of the earliest research on teacher identity comes from the work of Ball and Goodson (1985), who describe how teachers perceive their identity based on the school where they work and the political situation at the time. This means that sociocultural aspects of the research are placed more prominently. This sociocultural aspect of teachers’ professional work is even more relevant in the context of ELF. The idea of a lingua franca is established as “any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice and often the only option” (Seidlhofer, 2001). Studies that focus on the use of ELF have been conducted in other countries, such as the one from Vietnam by Oanh (2012) that discusses the use of English in the global and local contexts from an economic point of view. Curran and Chern (2017) elaborated the changing view about ELF reported by participants, who became more appreciative towards the varieties of World Englishes. If previously they considered that accents different from “standard” English are unfavourable, they altered their view after being familiarised with the Englishes in context as a lingua franca. Works from Litzenberg (2016) and Curran and Chern (2017) are about comparing and contrasting the use of English by native and non-native speakers in the context of ELF. It is considered essential to change the perception of preservice teachers about English, as most speakers who are not from the inner circle or secondary circle of English consider that accents and dialects should not be present when someone is speaking in English (Snow et al., 2006). All these research studies mainly discuss perceptions of the neutrality of English used by people from regions such as East Asia or Asia in general (Oanh, 2012), although
62 S. Nur’Aini, L. N. Affini and A. Setyorini Kirkpatrick and Sussex (2012) emphasise the importance of English as a medium of communication within lingua franca contexts. This chapter fills a gap in the literature by focusing on the professional identityagency of pre-service teachers who teach in high school in the context of ELF in Indonesia. It will explore the experiences and opinions, the preparations, conditions and environment that influence participants in the developing process of their professional identity making (Bennett, 2013).
Research methods This qualitative research used a case-study approach (Creswell, 2013) to elaborate on how pre-service teachers framed their identity as future teachers in the context of ELF using an identity-agency framework. Research context The research was conducted in a teacher training university in Semarang, Indonesia. The data were gathered through written narratives and semi-structured group interviews (Creswell, 2013) from March to July 2017. Research participants There were two cohorts of pre-service teachers who were in the seventh semester of their studies. They completed teaching practice and passed subjects such as micro-teaching, curriculum and material development, student development, and syllabus design as compulsory subjects to take before conducting teaching practice. They were recruited using purposive sampling (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008) so that they could provide the information to answer the research problems. There were 58 participants for written narratives from Cohort A, and 60 participants from Cohort B. There were eight participants in the interview stages from both cohorts. Research procedure The participants were given the information sheet and consent form at the beginning of the research. The information sheet was given to make sure the participants understood what they were getting into before signing the consent form. The signed consent forms from the participants meant that they agreed to give the researchers access to information and voluntary participation (Maxwell, 2013). There were 150 consent forms distributed to the pre-service teachers, 119 forms were signed and returned, and 118 participants took part in the research. By returning the signed form, the pre-service teacher agreed to participate in the research and for the information they gave to be used as data. Consent and permission were also sought from the lecturers in the teacher training classes. Participants were not obliged to take part in the whole process, and they were allowed
Professional teacher in the making 63 to withdraw from research participation at any time. To maintain the anonymity of the participants, pseudonyms are used throughout this chapter.
Data collection After the first phase to gain consent and select participants, the next phase was the distribution of topics for written narratives. There were three written narrative topics given to the participants every other week; the results are summarised in Table 4.1. When the data collection stage through written narratives was complete, the next step was to conduct semi-structured interviews (Yin, 2014). The participants were invited to join interviews, and eight of them agreed. They were divided into two groups with four participants in each group and three interviewers. Each one lasted for about two hours. The interview was recorded and then transcribed verbatim.
Data analysis Data analysis began by reading all the written narratives and the audio transcription. Using the sociocultural approach (Block, 2007; Johnson, 2015), data were analysed to describe the context and environment where the participants grew up and lived. This approach was used to study the cultural and social aspects that helped them shape their identity and how they behaved (Wertsch, Tulviste & Hagstrom, 1993) and to establish the setting and contextualise the study. Data were then also analysed using a dialogical approach (Harvey, 2015; Sullivan, 2012), based on emergent themes. This approach aimed to learn how a participant perceived identity, exploring personal viewpoints and individual sensibilities, and emotions, values and feelings (Kayi-Aydar, 2015; Kitade, 2015). This approach also revealed participants’ relevant experience in employing their identity-agency and the ways in which participants were responsible for and active in their learning. This approach enabled the researchers to see the more human aspect of participants, that were not seen when the data were viewed only from a sociocultural approach point of view. These personal human aspects could not be separated from aspects of their development, such as their experience when conducting teaching practice in schools where they would be doing their work in the future, and the people who played essential roles in their decision making. Table 4.1 Summary of data gathering Topics
Cohort A
Cohort B
Relationship with English
20
30
Learning experience
25
14
Perception of English as a lingua franca
13
16
Total papers
58
60
64 S. Nur’Aini, L. N. Affini and A. Setyorini The themes from the narratives were read according to the topics given in the second stage of data collection. Any pattern of interest, activities, influential people and choices made were coded individually per participant. Their narratives worked as a showcase of how participants viewed their learning and how they perceived their identity. Some efforts could be seen in how they navigated their future as teachers in ELF contexts. After this was complete, the emergent themes were cross-referenced with other participants identify similar features. The meaning of each emergent theme was then discussed. This step was followed by an analysis of the themes based on those that appeared most frequently in the texts as well as in the interviews. The four features of agency from Bandura (2001) were used for analysis: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness. The data were coded as in Table 4.2. When a quote was coded (e.g. WN: T1.CA/P15), this means that data are taken from written narrative topic 1 from Cohort A participant number 15. For quotes coded (e.g. I: P1/M24), this means that the data are taken from the interview of participant number one in minute 24.
Findings and discussion The four features of agency After collecting all the evidence and analyses, results of this research indicate that participants separated the ways they shaped and discerned their developing identities. The first regards the way they saw themselves as an individual who was still striving and exerting their agency to learn English for their benefit. The second is on the way they perceived and prepared themselves to become future English teachers in the context of ELF. The records in the narrative reflected their journeys from the beginning of their learning stages, during their time in the university, and the time when they were doing their teaching practice. There were changes of ideas and opinion in the way participants perceived English and how they used the language over time. The emergent themes that appeared in both narratives and interviews showed the presence of others in the participants’ decision to learn English. Table 4.3 presents the results of the analysis. Table 4.2 Code description Code
Description
WN
:
Written narrative
I
:
Interview
C
:
Cohort
P#
:
Participant number
M
:
Minute
T#
:
Topic number
Unconfident
Curious, excited
I rarely use English in daily life. I prefer to talk using Javanese language to have conversation both with family and friends. (WN: CA. T3/P1-Gandhi
At first, when I knew what a word mean I felt it’s fun for me, and I wanted to try to learn every time, and everywhere. (WN: T2.CB/ P11-Dani)
I feel shy and afraid when I am talking with foreigners because I am still not good at speaking, but it is also challenging for me. (WN: CA.T3/P8-Theo)
Intentionality
Self-reactiveness
Self-reflectiveness
Shy, unconfident
Enthusiastic
When I graduated from senior high school, I went to Pare, Kediri in Kampung Inggris. After nine months I studied there I went back to my home and continue my study in this university taking English education major. From that, I can learn everything through English and I can build my own course at home. (WN: T1.CB/P2-Andrea)
Forethought
Emotions
Illustrative extracts
Identity-agency
Table 4.3 Example of identity-agency analysis
Foreigners
Teacher
Family, friends
Parents
Influential people
University stage
During the early learning stage
University stage
Transition from high school to before university stage
Time-space
Social interactions with foreigners
At school, in any social interactions
Home, out of learning context
Moving from home town to a new place to learn
Social context
66 S. Nur’Aini, L. N. Affini and A. Setyorini There were indications that participants had doubts, or were unwilling to take English as their major at the beginning of their learning trajectories. This related to the people in their life whose agencies were the driving force in their decision making. Parents or teachers particularly had a powerful influence on the participants. The feeling of responsibility to parents or teacher and a sense of familial duty made participants exercise their agency to obey them. As an active agent in their identity making, however, participants also planned and had intentions to do things to ensure that their learning was well-achieved and met the expectations of their parents or teacher. An example of this is quoted from the interview below: Honestly, English is so hard for me, but I don’t know why I am here to study English. When I was in elementary school until senior high school, I was not good in English. But with my hobby where I love to interact with foreigners by chatting, this way little by little I learned English even though my English is not good, I chose to keep trying to improve my English skills. So that’s why um, yes, whether I want or not, I must master English. I actually was confused about where to go to college because my interest was in the Japanese language, but my parents forbid me to take Japanese. (I: P3/M15-Sally). Sally had to give up her interest in learning Japanese language and culture, the thing she was so passionate about. Although her primary intentionality agency was to learn Japanese, her parent’s forethought agency in terms of the prospect of learning Japanese was the driving force of her changing choice. They thought the Japanese language had less impact and lowered her opportunity to expand herself and contribute to her future compared to that of English. The fact that her parents determined her major caused a rough start in her English learning. Although she decided to obey her parents, she eventually exercised her self-reactiveness agency and contributed to her learning, making conscious choices to do the activities she needed to achieve English proficiency. Sally acted on her decision to better herself by joining an online community and offline organisations where she had the chances to interact with people using English. She went to international conferences, and joined a youth exchange programme in Thailand where she met people from Asian regions, including from Japan. This kind of meeting was a platform where she used her language skills to meet and interact with people from Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and other Asian countries. Sally’s partaking in those activities made her a part of a society where English was used as a lingua franca. This is beneficial for her achievement in English mastery. Moreover, this also contributed to her professional identity development. As a future teacher in the context of ELF who was enrolled in a formal institution that trained teachers, Sally was trained to master the necessary skills to be a teacher. In the meantime, she had proven herself to be capable of using the language in direct interactions with people from the Asian region who also treated English as either a foreign language or a second language in their country. By mastering the English language, Sally proved to herself and her parents that with strong determination and support she could overcome even the most difficult hurdles.
Professional teacher in the making 67 Sally is an example of how participants struggle and exert their identity-agency (Bandura, 2001) in shaping how they want to be in the future. She adapted to her parents’ demands by adjusting her actions to meet their expectations. Sally’s narrative is an example of the emergent themes on how participants exercise their intentionality agency in directing their learning and achievement, how they plan their future, and what kind of personal expansion they wish to achieve through their English mastery. Having the opportunity to use English as a means of communication within the ELF contexts made her better prepared to teach because then she had the ideas of how to teach her students to use English for communication and for more than just to pass grades or graduate. Sally’s narrative and experience were in line with the work of Litzenberg (2016), who mentioned that a teacher cannot teach what they do not know; therefore Sally’s experience in using English in lingua franca context to communicate with fellow English users will make her a well-prepared teacher. When learning English in the classroom did not fulfil their needs, participants took different routes to develop their English skills and knowledge. They learned by reading more than required by their lecturers; they wrote blogs to express their thoughts and practise writing while at the same time gaining an audience and making friends within the international community where they shared an interest in bands, comics or artworks. They even gathered in events because they wanted to use their English, since they could not do this on the campus. Their friends did not use English for daily communication, while participants needed an outlet to practice their English. Therefore, they went online and joined a community where they had shared interests and interactions using English with foreigners. There were other actions that participants took to expand themselves, for example by pursuing training that was far away from home. The following example is a participant who exerted her agency of forethought: When I graduated from senior high school, I went to Pare, Kediri in Kampung Inggris. After nine months I studied there, I went back to my home and continued my study in this university taking English education major. From that, I can learn everything through English, and I can build my own course at home (WN: T1.CB/P2-Andrea). Joining the English course was not the only way they did this. Andrea joined English courses in Kampung Inggris (Eureka Tour, 2010), a dwelling where every month thousands of people come to learn English. It is located in Pare, East Java, Indonesia. In Pare, most of the language centres provide training for one language skill, for example listening. So, to master other skills, such as reading, speaking, writing or grammar, a learner has to register with different language course centres. Furthermore, learners were required to use English every day to communicate with their friends who came from different parts of Indonesia, and some from other countries such as Malaysia and Timor Leste. Andrea came from Pemalang, in the western part of Central Java, which meant she had to relocate to fulfil her desire to learn English, and be away from her
68 S. Nur’Aini, L. N. Affini and A. Setyorini family. She was willing to step away from her comfort zone by researching the Pare area when she graduated high school, and eventually went there. Andrea had the forethought that she was going to need to learn English in the future. She planned ahead of time, and she knew what she wanted to do with her English skills. Her self-reactiveness in knowing what she needed to do led to her way of improving herself. From Andrea’s data, during the nine months of her stay in Kampung Inggris, she joined multiple courses in different places. I took different courses, and every Monday and Thursday I practised using the vocabulary to retell stories and use the correct tenses with my friends. We did group discussion. I felt nervous and shy, but I believe that if I didn’t try to speak daily, I would not get better. So, I used English when I talked to my friends in the courses, in the dorm, and even when I bought something (WN: T1.CB/P2-Andrea). Andrea was an eager learner, she actively participated in a group conversation, practice her English on a daily basis with her fellows. Kampung Inggris also held competitions and contests such as speech contests and writing competitions. Andrea joined these activities to test her skills. She was showing her self-regulation agency as she managed which activities she needed to improve herself and how to prove her achievement. At the same time, during her stay in Kampung Inggris she demonstrated how her intentionality agency contributed to her improved English skills. She made friends and lived with people from different regions and cultures to understand their view of English and how they deal with cultural differences. Andrea was immersed in the English language because she thought the best way to learn a language was by living the language. Being a person who was trained to use English in the real situation provided Andrea with confidence as she became more proficient in her skills. Her dream was to become the owner and teacher of an English course at home, but she was not equipped with the skills to teach. Therefore, when she finished her training, she enrolled in a teacher training university so she could be appropriately trained to teach. Later in the semester, when she participated in the research, Andrea was a proficient user of English and a well-trained pre-service teacher, which made her fall into the first teacher quadrant in Bailey’s (2006) design (Figure 4.1). Although her identity as a teacher was not fully developed, she had all the skills and knowledge required to be a future teacher in the context of ELF. She had the experience of interacting and living with people from different countries. She also developed enough confidence and welcoming attitude to accept the different cultures, languages and ways of life, which were crucial features for becoming a teacher in the context of ELF. The kind of action choices that Andrea made during her stay in Pare and when she studied in university indicate how participants were willing to expand themselves. They were aware of the importance of English for their future. They knew they could go far by mastering the language, and the significant opportunities they
Professional teacher in the making 69 could gain by being good at English. As pre-service teachers, this kind of awareness in planning, then executing their plan, were essential parts of their professional identity development. In the case of Andrea, her exposure to international interaction provided her with an opportunity to use English where the language was treated as a medium of communication (Kirkpatrick & Sussex, 2012) which would help her to teach her students how to use English in real-life context interactions with foreigners. Challenges within the mindset Being pre-service teachers in a country where English is treated as a foreign language offered a challenge of its own. One of the challenges is that not everyone welcomes the presence of English in their society and learning context (AlSeghayer, 2013). Participants’ ideas about the use of English in their society are a little bit concerning as they are the learners of English: As a Javanese, I cannot imagine whether my indigenous language would survive in ten years to come. This sceptical thought comes with a reason. In my high school time, there was a vivid urge from educational stakeholders to eliminate Javanese language from the curriculum. I see English as lingua franca as imperialism in linguistics and has undermined the rights of other languages and marginalise the survival of the indigenous language (WN: CA. T3/P1-Gandhi). More people were using English because they saw more opportunities in their future if they knew how to use the language (Johnson, 2015). Unfortunately, the participants, although they were English learners who were preparing to be English teachers, had their own views. On one side, this kind of thinking was encouraging because this meant they had a concern about preserving their indigenous language and maintaining their identity as Javanese people. This, however, contradicted with their actions to become English teachers. The idea that English culture was considered as a threat to the local language was not in line with the reasons they chose to learn English and prepare themselves to be English teachers within the lingua franca contexts. Regardless of this emergent theme about the way participants viewed the English language, they had forethought about the future of English. They recognised that the language was an essential part of the world’s development. Their self-reflective agency was exercised in this new theme. Participants were aware of their situation as English learners and their identity as Javanese; they also had a concern about what would become of their mother tongue. These contrasting identities, and how they overcame this matter, involved an act of making their identity and choosing a decision about where they stood in this matter. Gandhi made a point of English as lingua franca as a form of imperialism, because when he saw this matter, he put his Javanese identity forward. He was expressing this thought and had this self-reflectiveness agency on the roll. This idea appeared as one of the most prominent themes in the written narrative.
70 S. Nur’Aini, L. N. Affini and A. Setyorini Strong opinion about the presence of English within Javanese society and educational context reflected how participants in general viewed the English language. They were worried that English would overcome their local language and culture. Participants considered that English language and culture were not in line with Javanese language and culture (Zacharias, 2012). As the lingua franca in the Asian region, English treats everyone equally by allowing users to use “you” as a term of reference for everyone, regardless of their social status and position. This is not the case in Javanese culture, whose people still have firm respect towards elders or people in higher positions. Therefore, the Javanese language uses a different register for different people depending on the position of the person towards the speaker. Participants saw this term of English reference, “you”, as disrespectful. They feared that as pre-service teachers they would be considered as a bad example to the students if they addressed everyone as “you”. Furthermore, from the Javanese perspective, where people tend to be more closed off, avoid confrontation and tiptoe around issues, instead of addressing issues head-on, English language and culture became something intriguing and challenging because it pokes around participants’ comfort zone regarding their communication strategies (Dwiyanto, 2012; Endraswara, 2010). This cultural gap in the way participants view both languages and cultures was addressed and bridged by combining the best of both worlds. This is one of the most prominent features of the participants’ ideas and narratives. In my school where I teach, there is a culture of salim (kiss hands) of the teacher, so I can’t change it even if I use the English culture because that’s the school culture. If we’re in the classroom, I make them call us not Bu or Pak or something like that, but Ms, Miss, or Mister, just to learn English, although the other teachers in the school are still called Bu or Pak.” (I: P6/ M55-Tony). The school context where participants conducted their teaching practice was the place where they executed the combination of these two contrasting cultures. Teachers in Indonesia are commonly are addressed as Bu for female and Pak for male teachers, followed by the mention of their name. In English culture, it is not common for students to kiss their teachers’ hands when they greet them, but it is something that the majority of Indonesian students do every day before they start the lesson. Participants used this habit to encourage respect from their students to their teachers. They were exercising their self-reactiveness agency as teachers to combine the two languages and culture within one context; in their classroom. While obedience and respect to teachers were encouraged in this manner, it was not entirely the intention of the pre-service teachers to do so. Participants were a part of the school culture that encouraged this kind of habit, which was considered as a positive attitude by the other teachers because it showed respect to elders. Pre-service teachers did not have the power to stop this habit, so they went on with this school culture. Nevertheless, their self-reactiveness agency also seeped
Professional teacher in the making 71 through this school culture regarding their English teaching. They wanted to introduce the idea that the manners of address in English culture were also acceptable. Therefore, they encouraged the use of Mr, Mrs or Miss before their first name whenever a student was addressing them. This is also a mix of English and Javanese culture. In English, Mr, Mrs or Miss is followed by the last name. However, in Javanese culture, there is no such thing as the last name. Therefore, participants encouraged the use the combination of the titles and their first name. It was interesting that participants were trying to introduce the English language manner and culture during their teaching practice. Although they saw the English language as a threat to their indigenous language, they still embraced it and encouraged the students to open their minds toward the cultural differences (Kirkpatrick, 2010). This positive aspect of learning and trajectory in professional development is shown in the narrative below: Even though we have a different culture and different values, I do think that how people are still eager to learn English is a positive sign. It means that they know that English can help their self-improvement like they can read many books and get the knowledge and also communicate with people from another country. (WN: CA.T3/P13-Dani). Dani was aware of how people perceived English in general. He recognised the different cultural values of English language and culture and that of Indonesian and Javanese. However, participants were confident that people were embracing the differences with open minds and awareness that English could be beneficial for their future. This foreign language is a gate to knowledge and access to modernisation and globalisation within their learning contexts. Dani used his self-reflectiveness agency in this kind of thought about English, and exerted his intentionality agency in this. The agency led him to learn English because he understood the importance of it. Improving himself by reading many books in English was a great way to get knowledge and information. He also did not miss the benefit of knowing the foreign language where people could interact with foreigners for business, for pleasure or for education. With a long-term view about English, participants decided to choose English to become English teachers, and executed this practice in their class: When I was teaching, I don’t think that all my students understand what I say when I explain all the thing using English. That’s why I need to use codemixing. Sometimes I use English then followed by the Indonesian language to make sure that the students understand the material. Because the bottom line of the teaching is I can deliver the material well (I: P6/M80-Theo). Theo exercised his self-reflectiveness and intentionality agencies. Theo initially taught his students using English, but unfortunately, they failed to understand the lesson. He became aware that his technique did not work, so he modified his approach by engaging with his students using both English and bahasa Indonesia. This way, he got the chance to introduce English as the medium of instruction for
72 S. Nur’Aini, L. N. Affini and A. Setyorini teaching (Murata, 2016) without exacerbating the local language use in the classroom context. Theo, representing participants who shared the same experiences, intentionally used the mix of languages to teach. The participants built their professional identity by recognising the importance of English language in the classroom, and they had an awareness of their students’ needs to learn the subject successfully. Students needed to be in a conducive environment where they could learn a new language within that local language milieu. It might look fancy regarding the use of English for teaching, but if the students failed to grasp the lesson, then the purpose of education itself would not be achieved. By mixing the language of instruction, they achieved both purposes: they delivered the lessons and accommodated their students’ needs by using code-mixing in their teaching to bridge the gap in their knowledge of English (Curran & Chern, 2017).
Conclusion This chapter has shown that the use of intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness (self-regulation) and self-reflectiveness agencies are evident in pre-service teachers’ professional identity making. They are exerting those agencies when the need arises and adapting them to the situation they are in. All participants fall into category 1 of the teacher quadrant (Bailey 2006; Figure 4.1); therefore they are ideal candidates to become teachers in the context of ELF as they are all professionally trained and are skilful in their English use. In their identity making, they deliberately made choices, considered their actions, and made the decision to achieve their ideal picture of being a teacher in the context of ELF. The preservice teachers aim to be moderately modern teachers in a fast-changing world. The participants, in exercising their agency and practising their skills in the context of ELF, shape their ideal teaching styles and methods for their classroom situation. This is a kind of optimism and hope that there are future teachers who care about their learners, so there will be more people interested in learning English, making this profession more than just a job (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2015). The participants are active users of EFL for both their professional and personal lives. If it were only for themselves, their mastery of EFL would suffice for them to be English users. However, the activities they did in their identity making and in achieving their goals to become English users in the ELF context were separate, individually scoped and unstructured, based on individual needs and urgency. Moreover, the implementation of their learning into their teaching practices varies from one case to another; not everyone can have the same opportunities to interact with foreigners as the participants. However, since they are preparing to be teachers of English in lingua franca contexts, they need to adapt to the demands. Their education in a teacher training institute is preparing them to be teachers, but the participants needed more than just the skills to teach English. Their teaching skills need to be contextualised for the teaching of English in lingua franca contexts. The combination of local identity and English culture can be seen in how the participants are flexible in adapting to the situation. They need to learn
Professional teacher in the making 73 the skills to adapt to the changes so they can bridge the cultural differences that might hinder them from achieving their best potential. Nonetheless, participants who are trying to lessen the perception that the English language is inappropriate for Indonesian culture are the agents of change. This leads to a conclusion that universities with English teacher training programmes need to see the importance of implementing an adaptable curriculum to match the needs of teaching in the context of ELF (Snow et al., 2006). Kirkpatrick and Sussex (2012) proposed a curriculum where pre-service teachers are taught how to include languages and cultures of the ASEAN countries in their teaching. A specified curriculum for pre-service teacher education in the context of English as a lingua franca in the ASEAN region would strengthen and encourage the growth of the language itself, enrich the culture and improve language diversity. With ASEAN Integration and the blending of language, people and culture in the ASEAN region, there will be more inter-nation interactions. In this case, the issue of ‘native-speaking’ standards as it is traditionally defined would be irrelevant. The nature of English in the context of ELF in the Asian region is different from that referred to by Dewi (2017), since ELF in the ASEAN region does not have a standard form. English as a lingua franca in the context of the ASEAN region is the standard, along with the cultural features and various accents. This notion makes it acceptable to use different variants of English in the ASEAN region, such as Singlish (Goh, 2016); Malaysian English (Wahid, 2016); and other variants of English within the region. Therefore, the education of pre-service teachers in the context of ELF needs to emphasise the importance of English as a means of communication and give an understanding that teaching in the context of ELF does not have a cultural identity and is neutral in nature (Baker, 2015). By implementing a curriculum that orients teacher education towards the contexts of ELF, learners of English will be motivated to acquire communication skills to use in real-life experiences and to interact with people from different nations. To implement the curriculum, it would be better if pre-service teachers have more practice in the context of ELF. For example, instead of inviting a native speaker to the university to teach them English, universities should conduct a preservice exchange program with a neighbouring country where English is used in the context of ELF. The university where this research was conducted already had this overseas teaching practice, although without the appropriate lingua franca approach in the implementation of the programme. Having this kind of programme, both universities gain benefits because their pre-service teachers are plunged into a reallife teaching experience in the context of ELF. This programme would develop their identity as a teacher more maturely, helping them to become more adaptable to a different teaching environment. The implementation of this programme should be evaluated periodically; careful assessment should be conducted to ensure that the aims of the programme are achieved thoroughly. Overall, by adjusting and narrowing down the context of English teaching to the ASEAN region, pre-service teacher education would be more appropriate, specified, culturally intimate and adaptable, as it will aid them to be better prepared to achieve their expectation of learning English within their own backyard in the ASEAN context.
74 S. Nur’Aini, L. N. Affini and A. Setyorini
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How well prepared are Indonesian pre-service teachers to develop their future students’ intercultural communicative competence? A study of English as a lingua franca Utami Widiati and Nur Hayati
Introduction Globalization and the English language seem to have created a complex picture of their relationship development in the past two decades. As Graddol (1997) has long predicted, economic interdependence among globalized nations can trigger the global spread of English, whereas the global spread of English leads to intensifying globalization. As globalization continues to bring nations and people closer, the spread of English has been evident in this globalized world, making this language a lingua franca, that is, a language being used for intercultural communication, a language of wider communication enabling people with different first languages and cultures to communicate with each other (Cogo & Dewey, 2012; Kirkpatrick, 2007). English appears to be bound up in various local as well as world activities involving people from various language backgrounds. Economics, education, history, politics, and other intellectual areas, according to Crystal (2003), have fuelled the global spread of English. Indeed, this language has been used by anyone as well as any nation wishing to access the global community. Meanwhile, in the context of the emergent issues of 21st century skills in general, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Community 20151 in particular, the state of English should be understood to have a number of implications reaching beyond the economic level to education-related policies, programs, and practices. On the one hand, the increasingly complex life and work environments in the 21st century, which require learning and innovation skills (Trilling & Fadel, 2009), imply the vital role a lingua franca plays in the achievement of the skills in order to live functionally in the 21st century. On the other hand, the commitment toward building the ASEAN Community by 2015 has resulted in one of the challenges concerning the use of English for governmental, educational, and business endeavors (Stroupe & Kimura, 2015, p. 1). In fact, English has been used as the medium of operation to minimize the unnecessary barriers faced by countries under the ASEAN Plus Three Forum, comprising the ten members of ASEAN and Japan, China, and South Korea, in implementing economic integration to ensure the success and growth of the
78 U. Widiati and N. Hayati ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) as well as of the East Asia community (Zein & Stroupe, 2017). It is apparent, then, that global as well as regional forces have positioned English as playing a key role in intercultural communication; English has become a lingua franca, a truly global language. English as a lingua franca (ELF) refers to English being used as a contact language by people coming from numerous linguacultural backgrounds (Cogo, 2012, p. 98). Consequently, English teaching in the Indonesian context should be designed towards the establishment of a socially responsible ASEAN community living in the 21st century. English teaching is thus supposed to integrate the development of intercultural competences among the community. For institutions preparing English teachers, therefore, this all implies the need for enabling pre-service teachers to develop their intercultural competences, as well as the need to build up a sense of awareness among their future students of different cultures, and to sharpen their skills in facilitating the growth of their future students’ intercultural competences. Siregar (2013) proposed an idea similar to the former need, that is, making intercultural communicative competence a goal of English teacher education in Maranatha Christian University, Indonesia, to enable their pre-service teachers to “become interculturally competent users of ELF” (p. 22), but the latter need, that is, sharpening the pre-service teachers’ skills as prospective teachers of ELF, seems to be out of concern. Empirical work, therefore, needs to be undertaken to investigate how well Indonesian pre-service teachers are prepared to develop their future students’ intercultural competences. In response to this, a research study was carried out among institutions preparing secondary English teachers in Indonesia. This chapter presents the results of the study, which investigates the cross-cultural courses in the curriculum of a number of teacher-education institutions in the country to examine the extent to which those courses help prepare pre-service teachers to facilitate the development of their future students’ intercultural competences. The chapter starts with a discussion of the intertwining concepts of language, culture, and ELF, followed by an analysis of their implications for teacher knowledge and teacher education. The next section presents the results of our research study on intercultural competences in teacher education institutions in Indonesia, covering the research procedures, findings, and discussion. Finally, the implications of the findings for the curriculum of teacher education are elaborated.
Language, culture, and ELF It has long been discussed in English pedagogy that English teachers need to consider the intertwining nature of language and culture in their classrooms. In Wintergerst and McVeigh’s words (2011), teaching culture in the language classroom seems to have virtually become classic practice. Teaching English, as reviewed by Olaya and Rodriguez (2013, p. 50), thus means not only preparing learners to learn linguistic structures and to become active users of the language, but also instructing them to become aware of the way of life of English culture.
Developing students’ intercultural competence 79 Olaya and Rodriguez (2013) further suggest that teaching English language structure without including the aspects of the language culture is not adequate. In other words, the job of a language teacher includes enabling learners not only to learn the linguistic structure and to use the language actively, but also to develop awareness of cultural boundaries and cross-cultural misunderstandings. Under the concept of ELF, English potentially bridges global communication and interaction. In Baker’s (2015a) term, ELF is viewed from a perspective of function (p. 11), and “the relationship between language and culture is best approached as situated and emergent” (p. 9). In other words, the rising influence of globalization has definitely internationalized English on the one hand, but localized itself to meet the needs of certain regions on the other hand (Cheng, 2012, p. 165). Indeed, principles grounded in ELF are to some extent connected with those of World Englishes. As Choi (2016) highlights, under the ELF concept, the “global status” of English seems to be more emphasized, whereas World Englishes sounds more like localized or indigenized Englishes. With the increased use of ELF, English language and culture should not be seen as the property of one culture or one community (Baker, 2009, p. 568); the conception of a plurality of Englishes should be accepted in this globalized world. Advocates of ELF such as Cogo and Dewey (2012), Dewey (2007), and Jenkins (2006, 2007) have indicated that ELF refers to the use of English to facilitate the dynamic nature of communication and interaction among multilingual and multicultural communities; ELF functions as bridging people with different first languages and cultures to communicate with each other. Considering this, Kachru’s model (1990), describing the various roles English serves in different countries of the world, be they in the inner circle, the outer circle, or the expanding circle, is likely to challenge the concept of standard English. Non-native speakers of English outnumber native speakers of English (Graddol, 2006): as reported by Sharifian (2013, p. 2), more than 80% of communication around the world using English takes place between the so-called “non-native,” confirming the fact that global interactions in English that involve native speakers are getting fewer. The tremendous growth in the number of non-native English users in the world has made the need to debate standards in English less necessary. Instead, the development of varieties of English should be welcomed; this has thus triggered the localization of the language, a process that Sharifian (2016) refers to as “glocalization” of English. This implies the need for shifting the paradigm of teaching English to teaching ELF, and that means not merely teaching the language, but also emphasizing the necessity of teaching global cultures (Tam, 2004, cited in Cheng, 2012, p. 164). As the concept of ELF appears widespread today, studies on ELF tend to have developed in a broader way than solely focusing on ELF as a concept. In regard to the English language teaching (ELT) industry, much ELF research has been concerned with the need to incorporate the ELF concept into ELT practice in various contexts, such as in Taiwan (Cheng, 2012), Korea (Choi, 2016), Colombia (Olaya & Rodriguez, 2013), and Greece and Turkey (Saricoban & Oz, 2014; Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015). Cheng (2012) examined how Taiwanese teachers’
80 U. Widiati and N. Hayati understandings of intercultural competence influenced their self-reported pedagogical practices in the classroom and found that the teachers’ understandings of intercultural competence seemed to remain at a surface level, so the teachers still had difficulty articulating them further. They might not have been well prepared to incorporate the principles of intercultural competence into classroom practices. In addition, Choi’s (2016) investigation revealed that Korean teachers who had understandings of ELF tended to change their practical classroom teaching from focusing on preparing tests to developing genuine communicative skills. In the Colombian context, Olaya and Rodriguez (2013) found that pre-service teachers were mainly taught elements of surface culture and thus lack full understanding of intercultural competence. In the Turkish context, however, Saricoban and Oz (2014) suggested pre-service teachers’ participating in study-abroad programs and taking intercultural education courses to promote intercultural communicative competence (ICC). The former suggestion might sound unrealistic for other ELT contexts, but the latter one seems feasible. While the other studies indicate teachers’ lack of understanding of ICC, a study by Sifakis and Bayyurt (2015) appears to inspire teacher education institutions in that the project they developed managed to minimize the gap between teachers’ understandings of ICC and their ability to put them into classroom practice. All in all, the findings of those research studies have contributed to our understanding of the need to develop ELF awareness among English teachers or teacher candidates, and the need to provide practical teaching models to transfer the awareness to actual teaching, which might help them better prepare what needs to be taught in their classrooms. Inspired by this understanding, the next section is devoted to discussing ELF and teacher education.
ELF, teacher knowledge, and teacher education It has been traditionally practiced that the main aim of ELT is the attainment of communicative competence (CC), a concept proposed by Hymes (1972), covering competences of the linguistic as well as the sociocultural features of English. ELT practitioners holding Hymes’ notion of communicative competence, in Sharifian’s (2013, p. 3) opinion, tend to view “competence” as the competence of native speakers of English. In other words, learners are encouraged to achieve linguistic and sociocultural norms of English associated with those of American or British English. The term “success in learning English” might thus be referred to as the ability to use the language at the level of native-like competence as the established norm. Such a concept of CC does not reflect or materialize the status of ELF in the 21st century, with global communication and interaction nowadays tending to be naturally intercultural and multicultural; CC is no longer sufficient for ELT (Larzén‐Östermark, 2009). In response to the phenomenon of the increased use of ELF, some scholars, as reviewed by Sharifian (2013, pp. 10–11) and Siregar (2013, p. 21), have proposed and suggested the inclusion of more appropriate competences in English classrooms, termed as “intercultural communicative
Developing students’ intercultural competence 81 competence,” “intercultural competence,” “cross-cultural competence,” or “global competence.” The necessity of mastering intercultural competence in education in general has been recognized worldwide so that tolerance and empathy towards others in this globalized world can be promoted. Sercu (2005) shows that intercultural competence comprises three essential elements: knowledge, attitudes, and skills. In other words, as also stated by Baker (2015b, p. 131), under ICC the view of CC in ELT is expanded to include the crucial and key feature – critical cultural awareness, where any representations of culture presented are treated critically and where the flexible and context-specific nature of cultural knowledge, attitudes, and skills is emphasized. In regard to the expansion of CC in ELT, English learners are expected to be interculturally competent, being able to accomplish communication appropriately and effectively (Cheng, 2012). It can then be predicted that, in addition to being equipped with ICC, pre-service teachers are supposed to be provided with knowledge and skills to facilitate their future students’ development of ICC. Essentially, then, pre-service teachers are to possess “culturally sensitive knowledge, a motivated mindset, and a skillset” (Bennett, Bennett & Allen, 2003, p. 244) as well as to achieve competences that enable their prospective students to survive in a more multicultural society appropriately, effectively, or mindfully. In other words, teacher education institutions are responsible not only for developing language-related and culture-related competences among their pre-service teachers, but also for practically modeling an intercultural approach in teaching. In short, as the growth of ELF requires English teachers to possess intercultural competences, institutions preparing English teachers are to develop among their pre-service teachers a sense of awareness of different cultures, as well as to sharpen their own knowledge and skills in facilitating the growth of their future students’ intercultural competences. As Li (2017) suggests, advances in ELF need to be followed by the question of how to prepare teachers for such shifts; in the context of globalized English, “it is important to consider what English teachers need to know and how they should be prepared to teach” (p. 252). The following section reports on a research study concerning ICC in Indonesian teacher education institutions, focusing on an examination of how the institutions prepare their pre-service teachers for ELF-oriented teaching competence.
Research methods As stated previously, this study was intended to provide empirical evidence concerning the extent to which Indonesian pre-service teachers are prepared to develop their future students’ intercultural competences. In regard to the ASEAN context, where AEC has been established, the ELF paradigm should receive more importance. In addition to equipping themselves, pre-service teachers need to be able to facilitate their prospective students in developing the skills and strategies needed to live among different cultures with different linguistic backgrounds.
82 U. Widiati and N. Hayati Research design Understanding how well Indonesian pre-service English teachers are prepared to be able to teach and develop intercultural competences is essential, as they will become English teachers dealing with the future generation, living in an age when access to information and technology is abundant and when intercultural communication is undeniable. For this purpose, we employed a qualitative research design, making use of documents of course profiles as a valuable source of information concerning elements of intercultural competences in cross-cultural courses in English teacher education institutions in Indonesia. According to Creswell (2008, pp. 230–231), qualitative researchers can obtain valuable information from public or private documents to help them understand central issues in qualitative research studies. Considering the characteristics of the documents that we examined, we followed the procedures modified from those suggested by Creswell (2008, p. 231): identifying the types of documents; considering the source of information; seeking permission; examining the documents for accuracy, completeness, and usefulness in regard to the research question; and recording relevant information from the documents. In order to obtain the necessary documents of course profiles, we personally contacted colleagues from 15 institutions preparing secondary English teachers throughout Indonesia through email or WhatsApp. These 15 institutions, located in various provinces in the country from the islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi, were targeted due to our good collaborative activities under TEFLIN (Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia); by doing so, we thus made use of a convenience sampling technique (Creswell, 2008, p. 155), sometimes called opportunity sampling (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011, p. 155), that is, selecting the universities due to their availability and accessibility for the research. Though not intended to represent all teacher education institutions in the country, the results of this study are expected to provide useful information for answering the research question; indeed, “the parameters of generalizability in this type of sample is negligible” (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 156). The 15 colleagues we contacted were either members of TEFLIN or members of the English education study-program group chaired by the Head of English Department of Universitas Negeri Malang. What we mean by personal contact is that all the communication was based on the convenience of our collegial relationship among English departments in the country under TEFLIN, particularly those with English education study programs. Such a descriptive survey tends to be epistemologically a posteriori – inductively data-driven (Litosseliti, 2010). Data collection Within the time frame we had set regarding the necessary documents, out of the 15 colleagues from whom we had requested the course profile, only nine responded to our request, making it ten altogether with our own institution. They sent us the soft copy of the course outline or the syllabus of cultural understandingoriented courses either through email or WhatsApp. We then printed them all to
Developing students’ intercultural competence 83 become authentic documents as sources of our data, categorized as public records instead of private ones according to the terms used by Creswell (2008, p. 230) and McCulloch (2011, p. 249). This categorization was made under the assumption that course profiles are commonly made public as the teaching and learning contracts between lecturers and students. The ten institutions comprised seven state universities that used to be institutions focusing on teacher training but had expanded their scope to include noneducation programs, and three universities with faculties for teacher training and education. We obtained a collection of outlines or profiles of cultural understanding-oriented courses from the English education study programs in the ten institutions. The study programs mainly work on preparing and training future English teachers. The majority (90%) of the programs name the course Crosscultural Understanding, and the rest Intercultural Communication. Data analysis The course-profile documents were qualitatively analyzed, focusing on the target competences or the learning outcomes. The data analysis started off with the first stage of content analysis as explained in Gillham (2000), that is, deciding the categories of data. The categories were derived from the main parts of the course profiles. The next step of the data analysis was to put the data into the appropriate categories. The analysis of the content was more meaning-focused than wording-focused, being more of a thematic analysis. From the course-profile documents, a learning outcome that was identified to have the same meaning was categorized under one meaning, even though the learning outcome was originally expressed in different words. Box 5.1 shows a sample of the results of meaning-focused analysis of the learning outcomes that we managed to identify from the course-profile documents; although the learning outcomes were originally expressed in different words, we categorized all of them under one category of meaning, that is, understanding the basic concepts of culture.
Box 5.1 Sample of meaning-based analysis Samples of original wording of the learning outcomes stated in the courseprofile documents:
To understand cultures of English-speaking countries Understanding culture To have knowledge of theory of culture To understand the basic concepts of culture Possessing knowledge of English-speaking countries’ culture Result of meaning-based analysis of the learning outcomes:
Understanding the basic concepts of culture
84 U. Widiati and N. Hayati Of the three general traditions that offer frameworks for analyzing documents – positivist, interpretive, and critical (McCulloch, 2011, 254), we took the positivist approach, ensuring the objective, systematic, rational, and quantitative nature of the study. The qualitative analysis was meant to explore the patterns of commonalities in the course profiles. The competences were then classified into two: main competences, when the competences are shared by all the teacher education institutions; and additional competences, when they are found only in certain institutions. The last stage in the data analysis involved drawing and verifying conclusions. The conclusions of the study were reached by triangulation, making connections between variables under study after they have been classified, by examining “regularities, variations and singularities in the data” and trying to find patterns (Dey, 1993, p. 47). As we were using the collected documents as the sources of information for our research, we were also aware of the various issues challenging documentary research. The first issue was that, as stated by McCulloch (2011, p. 253), documentary sources “have often been criticized for failing to engage with the … context … .” The next issue concerned understanding the underlying meaning of the document in regard to the principles of hermeneutics. Therefore, in interpreting the documents we examined the broader context and paid careful attention in theorizing them.
Findings and discussion The results of the data analysis reveal that the main competences found in all the course profiles from the ten institutions were as presented in Box 5.2.
Box 5.2 Main competences
Understanding the concepts of culture Understanding target language culture (English culture; American culture) Exploring the intertwining nature of language and culture Identifying the differences between target language/English culture and native culture (or Western culture and Eastern culture)
Box 5.2 reveals that all the institutions seem to agree that teaching English means teaching the culture, and that language and culture are mutually related: language and culture have traditionally become a part of English language pedagogy (Wintergerst & McVeigh, 2011). When the raw data resulting in those presented in Box 5.2 were observed further, two commonalities within the four main competences formulated in the course profiles of the ten teacher education institutions could be speculated. First, those main competences are meant for pre-service teachers as English learners, not yet as English teachers. The institutions might perceive that their main instructional goals were to equip their preservice teachers with the understanding of English culture to facilitate them in
Developing students’ intercultural competence 85 their process of learning English, as has been traditionally accepted in the English pedagogy. All the institutions appear to carefully prepare their courses to focus on how best to convey the concepts and implications of culture for their pre-service teachers as language learners. The competences seem to be intended to develop the awareness of pre-service teachers as English language learners of the possible challenges of communicating with someone from a different cultural background, particularly English culture or Western culture. Second, the target competences generally picture topics about a country’s (i.e., English-speaking country’s) holidays, its foods, its family types and tradition, etc. In one institution, for example, the course profile shows that the topics are made even more specific and explicit by mentioning a certain culture – American – resulting in such topics as American characters, American meals, American snacks, etc. Considering the main competences that have been identified, it seems that Western cultures are generally the established norms to be transferred to and understood by the pre-service English teachers, reflecting the traditional ELT practice. Such depictions of culture as reflected in the course-profile documents from the ten teacher education institutions might be partly caused by the overemphasis on linguistic proficiency and competence as part of CC. In many institutions in Indonesia, success in learning English is often defined as gaining an English native-like competence (Siregar, 2013). It is likely that the institutions under the present study still hold a belief that native speakers are the ideal English teachers (Holliday, 2006; Phillipson, 1992), a belief that is still dominant in many parts of Asia. Under this ideology, the cultural information to be provided to English learners tends to be that of native English speakers and users in the “inner circle” of Kachru’s (1990) model of categorizing countries in which English is used. Targeting the monocentric model of English language and culture implies disregarding the existence of other cultures. Therefore, it can be predicted that teaching English from an ELF perspective is not yet a general practice in the institutions under study. It is possible then that the pre-service teachers were not well prepared with the ELF concept, which is similar to the findings by Cheng (2012) in Taiwanese context and Olaya and Rodriguez (2013) in Colombian context, because the course profiles under study do not seem to develop the main competences regarding ELF, English as an international language (EIL), or World Englishes. Kirkpatrick (2012, p. 38) suggests that the significant implications ELF has for the ASEAN language-teaching classrooms have not been fully accommodated by policymakers and professionals of language education in the region, including those in the Indonesian context. In this regard, Marlina (2014, p. 7) indicates that English teacher educators in general still have minimal understanding of the concept. As the issue of ELF is becoming more significant, according to Baker (2009, p. 567), a richer understanding of the relationship between language and culture is highly needed. Within such an understanding the ELF concept does appear crucial. The ELF perspective necessitates a shift from monolingualism and monoculturalism to multilingualism and multiculturalism in English instruction (Li, 2017, p. 254). Therefore, as proposed by Kirkpatrick (2012), the so-called “lingua
86 U. Widiati and N. Hayati franca approach” to teaching English is recommended. Under this approach, Kirkpatrick (2012, p. 38) proposes redefining the way English should be taught throughout ASEAN or the ASEAN Plus Three Forum, that is, instead of teaching about the cultures traditionally associated with British or American English, the lingua franca curriculum of English needs to cover the cultures of ASEAN or the ASEAN Plus Three Forum. Integrating ASEAN cultures to the English curriculum can promote an ASEAN identity because the core cross-cultural component to be taught refers to Asian cultures, not Anglo-American ones. All this in turn affects the way English teacher education ought to be managed. Preferring standard English and disregarding other English varieties as the general norms in educating pre-service English teachers should be shifted towards embracing heterogeneity and developing awareness of and sensitivity to differences (Li, 2017; Matsuda, 2012). Courses and programs in teacher education institutions thus need to be designed to help pre-service teachers develop such awareness of, and sensitivity to, linguistic as well as cultural diversity. This is particularly relevant as the member countries of the forum are situated in “the most linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse region in the world” (Zein & Stroupe, 2017, p. 194). Regarding the main competences that have been identified, we need to be very cautious in presenting our speculative interpretation of our research findings, particularly because we did not complement our data with interviews for confirmation with the institutions under study. It is wiser therefore if we interpret the finding by referring to the concerns raised by Sifakis and Bayyurt (2015, p. 472) in that the instructors/lecturers in our study might have already been aware of the ELF concept, of the global function of English, of EIL or of World Englishes, and of the possible implications the concept brings to classroom practice, yet they probably still had difficulty realizing it in the actual manifestation in their teaching context. Therefore, besides referring to Kirkpatrick’s proposal of a lingua franca approach, we think that, as also suggested by Sifakis and Bayyurt (2015), it is beneficial to propose an intermediary framework of ELF-aware teacher education to be put into practice, engaging pre-service teachers with the ELF concept through more practical teaching activities. By doing so, possible confusion among pre-service teachers regarding the gap between understanding the principles of ELF and putting them into practice can be minimized, which may result in much better preparation of ELF teachers. Implementing ELF-oriented teacher education courses systematically seems essential, even though Marlina (2014) and Zacharias (2014) have revealed how challenging the implementation is. In addition to the main competences, the results of document analysis of the course profiles indicate a number of additional competences found in certain institutions. The description of the additional competences can be found in Table 5.1. As we can see in Table 5.1, five institutions place understanding diversity, multiculturalism, or cultural differences to develop appreciation or tolerance as an additional competence. It cannot be regarded as a main competence because not all ten institutions include such a competence in their course profiles. However, the large number of institutions sharing this competence in their course profiles suggests that this competence is one of the essentials. Providing learners with ICC
Developing students’ intercultural competence 87 Table 5.1 Additional competences Competences
Number of institutions
1. Developing appreciation or tolerance for diversity/ multiculturalism/cultural differences
5
2. Being able to apply strategies to communicate effectively in various cultural contexts
2
3. Being familiar with some specific patterns of (verbal and non-verbal) communication
2
4. Understanding popular culture
1
5. Getting involved in intercultural communication with people from English-speaking countries
1
6. Selecting proper language and manner for worldwide communication
1
7. Understanding concepts of cultural conflicts and adjustment
1
8. Using the target language appropriately
1
9. Building positive character
1
10. Implementing aspects of EIL in teaching and learning
1
is required in education today (Kaikkonen, 2001) to enable them to avoid conflicts resulting from differences and to develop understanding and tolerance. It is then evident that teaching ICC under the ELF concept should no longer be a choice, but rather a crucial part of ELT. What is even more crucial concerns the preparation of the teachers for this paradigm shift in English instruction (Li, 2017), because changing the way English should be taught cannot be implemented successfully without changing teachers (Matsuda, 2017). The next essential competences to be found appear to be applying strategies to communicate effectively in various cultural contexts, and being familiar with some specific patterns of (verbal and non-verbal) communication. The data in Table 5.1 reflect that behind such formulation of learning outcomes are understandings of the concepts of appropriateness and effectiveness in communication likely to be postulated. Such competences imply an ability to use the linguistic system in an appropriate and effective way. Referring to Cheng (2012, p. 166), accomplishing such ELT objectives can be facilitated by holding a view that “[C]ultural understanding of a language requires more than linguistic interpretation.” Similarly, Sharifian (2013) argues that successful intercultural communication calls for new notions of competence to include understanding of various cultural backgrounds. One of the significant tasks of language teachers is then to enable their learners to possess ICC. Pre-service teachers need to also be equipped with ICC, not only as learners of English but also of candidates as English teachers. Therefore, preservice teachers should have intercultural knowledge, attitudes, and skills which can facilitate their learning process and which can later promote the acquisition of ICC among their future students (Saricoban & Oz, 2014, p. 522). In a Turkish setting, overseas experiences or studies abroad have been proven to correlate with a high ICC level among pre-service ELT teachers (p. 529); this means that second
88 U. Widiati and N. Hayati language-learning contexts provide richer ICC input. If such programs are not affordable, however, international web collaboration projects are suggested. Similar to the main competences presented in Box 5.2, the additional competences in Table 5.1 show that the institutions do not yet consciously prepare their pre-service teachers to design teaching strategies for their prospective students to develop intercultural/cross-cultural competences. All the institutions seem to be lacking in preparing their pre-service teachers with the knowledge and skills necessary to facilitate their prospective students to develop the skills and strategies needed to live among different cultures with different linguistic backgrounds. The teacher education institutions appear to focus more on preparing pre-service teachers as ELF learners, not as ELF teachers, an element necessary in teacher education institutions. In other words, referring to Wintergerst and McVeigh (2011), all the study programs seem to orient their culture-related courses to the need for developing pre-service teachers’ understanding of English culture to help assist their process in learning English, not yet in teaching English. This might have been caused by their being concerned more with developing English proficiency. Pre-service teachers should be helped to start realizing that, since their prospective students tend to be digital natives of technology use as Generation Z, with easy access to technology, their future students can have immediate access to other languages and cultures both inside and outside class more easily (Liddicoat, 2017). Therefore, they need to be well prepared with the knowledge and skills to convey the concepts and implications of culture not only for themselves as ELF learners, but also for their future career as ELF teachers. Referring to this, the next section is devoted to discussing the implications of these findings for teacher education. Implications for teacher education The study we have reported should be considered very preliminary. The findings, which were based on document analysis, reveal that all the study programs orient their culture-related courses to the need to develop their pre-service teachers’ understanding of English culture to help facilitate their process in learning English, but not yet in teaching English. The documents analyzed also indicate a focus on learning of the cultures of English-speaking countries. Proponents of the ELF concept have emphasized that, considering the specific characteristics of ELF, the teaching of it should be targeted as such. Consequently, there is a need for integrating elements to develop ELF-aware teachers into the culture-related courses. The awareness should be essentially targeted at them as language learners as well as language teachers, who are supposed to facilitate their prospective students in developing the needed skills and strategies to perform everyday tasks among people of different cultures and linguistic backgrounds. Pre-service teachers also need to be equipped with clues as to how to teach ELF in the classroom. ELF awareness in the ASEAN context, including in Indonesia, can be realized by following Kirkpatrick’s (2014) lingua franca approach, which outlines six principles concerning how ELF should function in the region: mutual intelligibility over native-like English as the linguistic target;
Developing students’ intercultural competence 89 ICC over native speakers’ CC as the cultural target; suitably trained local multilinguals as the appropriate English teachers; a lingua franca environment as the language environment appropriate for lingua franca speakers; distinctive features of spoken and written language; and assessment relevant to ASEAN contexts. For this purpose, teacher education institutions in Indonesia need to revisit their curricula to reflect the need for integrating ELF-related course goals and objectives, materials, learning experiences, and assessments. As Kirkpatrick (2012, p. 39) has long predicted, the linguistic goals of ELT might be radically redefined in a lingua franca curriculum. This all means that the curriculum needs to be redefined in terms of both linguistic and cultural goals. More specifically, Kirkpatrick (2012, p. 40) summarizes the main points related to the ELF curriculum in ASEAN contexts as the need to emphasize the attainment of naturally sounding multilinguals rather than native speaker proficiency; the inclusion of regional and local cultures rather than merely standard English cultures; the use of English to discuss regional and local cultures and cultural values and interests; and the provision of materials that acknowledge speech styles and pronunciation other than standard British or American English. The Asian Corpus of English, for instance, provides excerpts illustrating cultural content popular in ELF in the ASEAN context. In addition to Kirkpatrick’s lingua franca approach, the curriculum can also be oriented towards the three-step cultural approach proposed by Li (2017, p. 259): the cultural reconciliation stage, the cultural translation stage, and the cultural transformation stage. In the cultural reconciliation stage, pre-service teachers can be invited to get to know themselves and others as cultural beings and reconcile linguistic diversity among them. During this stage, pre-service teachers are expected to gain a renewed sense of linguistic and cultural competence, integrating regional and local cultures in their English instruction to widen their cultural knowledge from that of the inner-circle countries (Kachru, 1992) to plurilingual teaching (Li, 2017, p. 261). According to Kirkpatrick (2012), this renewed linguistic as well as cultural competence should be seen from an asset perspective, not a deficit one, meaning that cultures other than English should be capitalized by teachers in the ELF context for continuous professional development and increased self-confidence as teachers (Canagarajah, 2012). In the cultural translation stage, pre-service teachers can be facilitated to make use of their renewed linguistic and cultural sense to gain skills and techniques for plurilingual education (Li, 2017, p. 261) and eventually to be able to identify differences between “standard English” and other English varieties. By having such skills and techniques, they will have an ability to help their future students make positive transfers of the linguistic and cultural repertoire. Finally, in the cultural transformation stage, pre-service teachers should be helped to focus on gaining skills to integrate language and cultural varieties into their curriculum as their everyday practice (Li, 2017, p. 263). The teaching of language skills and components should be designed and implemented from an ELF perspective that embraces heterogeneity and respects differences. To sum up, this study has revealed that teacher education institutions need to widen their coverage of the attainment of learning outcomes from merely
90 U. Widiati and N. Hayati providing their pre-service teachers with ICC as English learners, to developing their ICC as English teacher candidates to enable them to translate and transform their ICC into teaching practice. Indonesian teacher educators’ teaching strategies and techniques of developing ICC should function as role models for their preservice teachers, to be applied later in their own teaching contexts. Additionally, the development of ICC in teacher education institutions is supposed to embrace ELF concepts and approaches in order to enable their pre-service teachers to become ELF-aware teachers when embarking on their future teaching career, that is, teachers who acknowledge the existence of language and cultural diversity. For this purpose, Kirkpatrick’s lingua franca approach (2012) or Li’s three-step cultural approach (2017) might be taken into consideration by the teacher education institutions in revisiting their ELT study program curricula that can be empirically supported by research evidence from other countries, such as those by Saricoban and Oz (2014) and Sifakis and Bayyurt (2015). The process might be facilitated by TEFLIN as the main teaching association in Indonesia to ensure standard practice throughout the country, as also stipulated by Indonesia’s National Standards of Education and Qualification Frameworks.
Note 1 ASEAN Community is the integration of the ASEAN member states into one “community of opportunities under three community pillars: Political Security Community, Economic Community, and Socio-Cultural Community” (ASEAN Secretariat, 2015, p. 2)
Acknowledgements This chapter is based on a study supported by the Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang (UM), through the faculty research grant program in 2017. The authors would like to thank the Faculty of Letters, UM for the research funding. The authors are also very grateful to the book’s editor, Dr. Subhan Zein, for his helpful comments and suggestions and his support during the writing of this chapter.
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92 U. Widiati and N. Hayati Kirkpatrick, A. (2014). Teaching English in Asia in non-Anglo cultural contexts: principles of the ‘lingua franca approach’. In R. Marlina & R. Giri (eds), The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers, and Students (pp. 23–34). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-06127-6_2 Larzén‐Östermark, E. (2009). Language teacher education in Finland and the cultural dimension of foreign language teaching – a student teacher perspective. European Journal of Teacher Education, 32(4), 401–421. doi: doi:10.1080/02619760903012688 Li, G. (2017). Preparing culturally and linguistically competent teachers for English as an international language education. TESOL Journal, 8(2), 250–276. doi:10.1002/tesj.322 Liddicoat, A. J. (ed.). (2017). Language Policy and Planning in Universities: Teaching, Research and Administration. London: Routledge. Litosseliti, L. (ed.). (2010). Research Methods in Linguistics. London: Continuum. Marlina, R. (2014). The pedagogy of English as an international language (EIL): more reflections and dialogues. In R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (eds). Pedagogy of English as an International Language (EIL): Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers, and Students (pp. 1–19). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-06127-6_1 Matsuda, A. (ed.). (2012). Principles and Practices of Teaching English as an International Language. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Matsuda, A. (ed.). (2017). Preparing Teachers of English as an International Language. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. McCulloch, G. (2011). Historical and documentary research in education. In L. Cohen, L. Manion & K. Morrison. Research Methods in Education (7th edn) (pp. 248–255). London: Routledge. Olaya, A. & Rodriguez, L. F. G. (2013). Exploring EFL pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural communicative competence at three Colombian universities. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 15(2), 49–67. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Saricoban, A. & Oz, H. (2014). Research into pre-service English teachers’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in Turkish context. Anthropologist, 18(2), 523–531. doi:10.1080/09720073.2014.11891570 Sercu, L. (2005). Foreign language teachers and the implementation of intercultural education: a comparative investigation of the professional self‐concepts and teaching practices of Belgian teachers of English, French and German. European Journal of Teacher Education, 28(1), 87–105. doi: doi:10.1080/02619760500040389 Sharifian, F. (2013). Globalisation and developing metacultural competence in learning English as an international language. Multilingual Education, 3(7), 1–11. doi:10.1186/ 2191-5059-3-7 Sharifian, F.( 2016). “Glocalisation” of the English language: a cultural linguistics perspective. KEMANUSIAAN: The Asian Journal of Humanities, 23(Supp. 2), 1–17. doi: doi:10.21315/kajh2016.23.s2.1 Sifakis, N. C. & Bayyurt, Y. (2015). Insights from ELF and WE in teacher training in Greece and Turkey. World Englishes, 34(4), 471–484. doi:10.1111/weng.12150 Siregar, F. L. (2013). Making intercultural communication competence as the goal of English teacher education in a multicultural Indonesia: some thoughts. New English Teacher, 7(1), 17–29. Stroupe, R. & Kimura, K. (2015). Opportunities and challenges across ASEAN: Looking ahead to the ASEAN economic community. In R. Stroupe & K. Kimura (eds), ASEAN Integration and the Role of English Language Teaching (pp. 1–12). Phnom Penh: IDP Education (Cambodia) Ltd. doi:10.5746/LEiA/ASEAN_Integ_ELT
Developing students’ intercultural competence 93 Trilling, B. & Fadel, C. (2009). 21st Century Learning Skills. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Wintergerst, A. C. & McVeigh, J. (2011). Tips for Teaching Culture: Practical Approaches to Intercultural Communication. New York: Pearson Education. Zacharias, N. T. (2014). Integrating EIL pedagogy in a pre-service teacher education program. TEFLIN Journal, 25(2), 217–231. Zein, S. & Stroupe, R. (2017). English and language-in-education policy in the ASEAN Plus Three Forum. Asian Englishes, 19(3), 193–196. doi:10.1080/13488678. 2017.1389061
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A cyclical model of peer coaching for teacher professional development in the Indonesian ELF context Pande Made Sumartini
Introduction Teacher professional development (PD) has been a centerpiece of the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC)’s mission to improve low teacher quality. In the context of English language teaching in particular, English teacher quality improvement is linked with first, the increasing focus on the significance of English as an international language and specifically as a lingua franca in the ASEAN (Association of South East Asia Nations) region (Kirkpatrick, 2010; Stroupe & Kimura, 2015); and second, the vast development and rapid uptake of information and communication technologies, where English plays a major role. Reflecting on these purposes, teachers need to be able to prepare their students and themselves to communicate with other English speakers (native or non-native) in line with Indonesia’s modernization and participation in globalization. This need requires changes not only in practice, but also in the more morally charged and reflective notion of praxis – a notion that captures how teachers reflect on, question, and reorganize their practice in a process of relating to disciplinary knowledge and the moral/social/historical/political circumstances that contextualize how teachers engage with the consequences of their reorganized practice (Johnson, 2006; Kemmis et al., 2014). Unfortunately, the current PD approach has been shown to be insufficiently powerful to support this change. Research has demonstrated that the current PD programs do not solve the complex and dynamic problems in the local circumstances of the English language classroom (e.g. Halim, 2013; Korompot, 2012; Rahman, 2016). Perhaps, as suggested by Zein (2016) in the context of PD for primary English teachers, government-based PD has failed to address teachers’ needs related to the skills and knowledge needed for bettering classroom practice. This outcome may be because the PD programs are designed to teach about the reform of education policy rather than to develop teachers’ capacities to teach English effectively (e.g., de Ree et al., 2015; Halim, 2013; Rahman, 2016). Evidence supporting this interpretation can be found in how PD programs have been used to disseminate government authority through their focus on administrative tasks and teachers’ role as government employees (Bjork, 2003; Korompot, 2012; Rahman, 2016). This shortfall has occurred even though previous research has
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pointed out that for PD to be effective, it needs to pay attention to teachers’ needs (Zein, 2017) and teacher collaboration (Purwanti, 2017), even while it also acknowledges bureaucratic/policy refinement (de Ree et al., 2015). There are possibilities for a more local focus in PD in Indonesia. Other papers reporting on the Indonesian context (Chang, Shaeffer & Al-Samarrai, 2014; Purwanti, 2017; Sukyadi, 2015) have recommended that the established subject teacher working group (Musyawarah Guru Mata Pelajaran, MGMP) in the district and or province where teachers work could be a focal point for teachers’ learning, and ideally for collaboration. However, the PD practice in these groups has waxed and waned depending on available resources, particularly from government (Chang et al., 2014), and the groups have often been used as another form of government authoritarian control (Rahman, 2016). A wide range of studies elsewhere have documented the importance of collaboration in teachers’ learning. Kemmis et al. (2014), for instance, highlighted that collaboration through de-privatization of practice in teacher working sites leads to praxis. They argued that site-based collaboration allows teachers to deal with the particularities of their context. The work of Purwanti (2017), for instance, showed that teachers’ collaboration in their working group, when it is carefully facilitated by external experts, can provide teachers with many learning opportunities for both improving their content knowledge and creating effective pedagogies in their English language teaching. This local approach enables teachers’ learning to be directed to their own contextual needs, rather than to accommodate a context that is assumed to exist by distant others. Addressing local needs in the English teacher working group may be a way of generating a community of practice, where teachers’ practices are related to three dimensions of practice, as postulated by Wenger (1998). These dimensions include mutual engagement, a continuing mutual relationship which is not necessarily conflict-free; a joint enterprise, collectively driven goals; and a shared repertoire, any entities – concrete or abstract – that surround, support, and give meaning to the community of practice (Wenger, 1998). However, Ehrenreich (2017) offers an understanding that the use of a language (in this case English) may be assigned to different dimensions in different professional groups, either as a shared repertoire or as a joint enterprise, or as both. She points out that, while in a content-focused community of practice (e.g., an IT department in a health insurance company) English is most probably a part of a shared repertoire, in a language-focused community of practice (such as a professional group of English teachers) English is not just a part of a shared repertoire, it is also a part of their joint enterprise. This view raises an interesting question about how to understand the distinctive element of the English language as a shared repertoire and as distinct from a joint enterprise. Indeed, in the context where the English teachers share other languages (for instance, Bahasa Indonesia), the task of clarifying English not only as a shared repertoire but also as a joint enterprise, in a way that is meaningful, is therefore challenging. As a consequence, for English teacher PD to generate and contribute to a community of practice, the teacher working group (or any parallel peer-based
96 P. M. Sumartini collaboration), the design, and the conduct of PD need to engage teachers in a sustained mutual relationship to achieve a joint enterprise that is based on their local needs. The shared repertoire is, therefore, what the participants bring to the goal of locating and applying new learning to local practice (e.g., in the forms of concepts, ways of doing, stories, or concrete learning resources). Both locally, and to a greater extent across the ASEAN region, if this occurs English would become part of the shared repertoire between teachers contributing to enhancing their students’ English language learning via the related joint enterprise of building communities of practice and elaborating praxis. In light of this framing, and as a result of critically reviewing the drawbacks of the current PD, in this chapter I suggest that there is a need to redirect PD towards teachers’ collaboration and engagement with their peers in both external contexts (in teacher working groups) and within the school context to provide learning that develops praxis. The intention of this redesign is to enable teachers to learn not only from their own context with their colleagues at school, but also from other similar (but not identical) contexts of their colleagues in the district where they work and perhaps also beyond. In using the term English as a lingua franca (ELF), I will not rely exclusively either on the perspective that sees English as a language used as a means of communication in Kachru’s outer and expanded circle – where none of the communicators uses English as their first language (e.g., House, 1999); or on the perspective that has previously been embraced within the view of English as an international language, where at least one of the speakers uses English as additional or second language (Jenkins, 2015; Seidlhofer, 2004). Rather, what I am seeking to build on is a general insight derived from an overlap between these two perspectives (perhaps similar to Mauranen’s (2017) meso-perspective on ELF). What the perspectives have in common is a concern for mutually effective communication, entailing concern for engagement with the interlocutor, responsibility towards the interlocutor, and respect for what the interlocutor is doing/saying. Not only should these concerns with the other be embraced in ELF communication, they should also be embraced as a part of the enterprise of the PD and the teaching itself. Embracing these concerns in PD and in teaching practices reflects the view of praxis as a socially constructed endeavor (Johnson, 2006). This is to say that the moral commitment to the other (be they interlocutors, colleagues, or students) is what should affect teacher’s learning and practice. This becomes part of the joint enterprise. Additionally, in line with this endeavour, there is a need for critically engaged practice through which teachers take into account local practices and challenges and make decisions about how best to address their learners’ needs within the constraints of their own contexts (Kobayashi, 2017) – an aspect of mutual engagement. Then, part of their shared repertoire becomes ways of working with one another and reflecting back to one another what they have learned or attempted. I start by providing a view of praxis, followed by a description of the current situation of teacher PD in Indonesia. I then highlight that the principles informing praxis in ELF learning warrant a central place in teacher PD programs in
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Indonesia. I will argue that to achieve praxis-oriented PD, there is a need to change teachers’ attitudes toward English, their practice of using English, their practice of teaching, and the practice of PD. I then suggest how praxis can be promoted through a combination of top-down PD and an on-site collaborative PD, both with a focus on ELF-related goals.
The notion of praxis in PD and teaching ELF According to Kemmis et al. (2014) and Johnson (2006), practice should always be enacted as praxis. What they mean by practice is one’s actions and activities (doing), that can be understood though language and discourse (saying) and are related to human and non-human objects (relating). For these authors, the relating element is what positions practice as praxis, when the doer of the action is aware of and engaged with the purpose and consequences of their actions, historically, culturally, socially, and politically. When practice is performed as praxis, it means that it is performed as an action that is morally committed and informed by the traditions of a field intended to achieve a certain purpose (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 26). Kemmis et al.’s notion of praxis rests on a philosophical value that practice should be conducted to help people to live well in a world worth living in. This conceptualization of practice and praxis suggests that every practice has a notion of praxis attached to it. This includes the practice of English language learning in Indonesia, and the practice of PD for its teachers. Professional development and teaching practice as praxis should not be separated from the context and role of English in the Indonesian community itself. The context and the role of English are related to the reasons why students learn English, the potential interlocutors with whom students would use English, the content that teachers and curriculum teach to students, the strategies and content of PD in improving teachers’ capacity to teach English based on students’ needs, and the strategies and content of PD in improving teachers’ English proficiency. For practice to be conducted as praxis, Kemmis et al. (2014) suggest that professional learning needs to involve (1) cultivating a culture of care and collaboration; (2) agentic collegial responsibility; and (3) de-privatizing practice (pp. 130–140). This is in line with Wenger’s (1998) conception of mutual engagement, where the members of a community of practice work together to achieve certain collectivedriven goals/enterprises by making use of their shared repertoire. Furthermore, in line with Johnson (2006), Kemmis et al. (2014) also suggest that in order for PD programs to lead to professional learning, they should be conducted at the teachers’ work site because this will allow teachers to engage with their students, other people who they interact with, their resources, and their locations. For PD to provide space for developing the above three suggested features, its activities should engage teachers with their colleagues, their own classroom practice, their schools, and their students. These are the kinds of engagement that teachers need in order to achieve the goal of bettering their practice. Additionally, PD should have a clear goal to align with the goals of English language learning, and it should also support changes in teachers’ attitudes and practices to embrace
98 P. M. Sumartini meeting this goal through engagement with the others in PD activities and in their own professional practice.
Teacher professional development in Indonesia Currently, the teacher PD program conducted by MoEC in Indonesia, including PD for secondary English teachers, has three different threads: (1) certification programs (CP) in Education and Training for the Teaching Profession; (2) introduction of new curricula; and (3) a recently developed program, Continuous Professional Development for Teachers as Learners (TL) (MoEC, 2016a, 2016b, 2016d). The first and third threads are aligned with a Teacher Competency Test (TCT) that is used both as a pre-requirement to join PD as well as evaluation for PD programs. The following paragraphs briefly describe each of the three threads and the TCT. The CP are a part of national agenda to improve teacher quality. By attaining certification, teachers achieve an additional monthly allowance (de Ree et al., 2015). Certification program training has been implemented since 2008 after previously having been conducted through portfolio assessment (see Jalal et al., 2009). Currently, new guidelines for certification mention that to gain entry to the training, non-certified teachers need to score at minimum 55 out of 100 on the TCT (MoEC, 2017). If the participating teachers pass the assigned assessments during the training, they are awarded a professional educator certificate, which is followed by a “doubling” of their salary. Conducted over ten days, the CP focuses mainly on content and language teaching strategy enrichment, teaching instruments (administration), and peer teaching simulation, in which a teacher works with colleagues who take the role of students (Abdullah, 2015, p. 94). The CP structure is generally similar to the structure of the curriculum introduction program, but the modules have similar topics to the TL program. The CP modules have been developed in accordance with national standards for certification. However, the CP standards have been criticized for being insufficiently subject specific; being primarily for regulatory and control purposes; and lacking teacher authorship and ownership (Korompot, 2012). Nevertheless, a study by Abdullah (2015) found that teachers in Palembang perceived that CP provided a substantial learning experience for them. However, Abdullah’s finding may not be robust because the data were collected during CP training, rather than when the teachers had returned to their teaching routines. Other studies have reported that CP does not lead to changes in teachers’ practice or contribute to improvement of student outcomes (de Ree et al., 2015; Halim, 2013) The second thread of the teacher PD focusses on the introduction of a new curriculum. Since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, the national curriculum has been changed and revised over ten times. According to Rahman (2016), teachers have more chance to participate in PD when the curriculum changes. Rahman, in line with Korompot’s (2012) study of certification, found that PD programs in general, including PD for curriculum introduction, are used as a mechanism to reinforce the national education agenda and reform, rather than as a
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mechanism for development purposes. This condition also seems to apply to the current change from the 2004 competency-based curriculum to the 2013 Curriculum. Regarding this change, Ahmad (2014) argued that although teachers tend to see the curriculum change as positive, similarly to PD for certification, his findings do not show that teachers make a significant change in their classroom practice after the curriculum training and implementation. Teachers tend to change only the administrative tasks to conform with those required by the new curriculum; they dominantly continue teaching in the old ways. The final thread of the teacher PD program is through the TL program. This program was enacted following a government decision in 2014 to redefine teacher career progression and promotion processes to incorporate the TCT as well as a performance assessment by the school principal (UNESCO, 2015). The TL program provides teachers with ten professional modules focusing on content knowledge about what the curriculum requires teachers to teach, and ten pedagogic modules focusing on competencies that are claimed to improve teaching. Because TL is a newly enacted program, to date there has been no study of its impact. Although TL is claimed to be a continuous form of PD, after several conversations with secondary English teachers and teacher instructors, it seems to be the case that, for now, the TL training aims to help teachers achieve the minimum required score for maintaining their professional status in the TCT. The TL program has trained a limited number of teacher instructors at national level. These teacher instructors have conducted training for a few chosen participating teachers, but the program has not yet touched most English teachers. While the training for instructors covers all 20 modules, training for teachers is selective according to their TCT result, focusing on the modules they have failed. The TCT as part of both the TL and CP programs is claimed to have three functions: firstly it is a scheme to map teachers’ pedagogic and professional/content knowledge and competence; secondly it is a basis for determining what kind of training and further education teachers need; and finally it is a part of teachers’ evaluation that informs policymaking regarding teachers’ rewards and allowances (MoEC, 2015). The TCT is conducted via online tests, which require teachers to answer multiple choice questions on the ten professional competencies and ten pedagogic competencies (which are also what the modules for TL and CP are about). To be considered professional and later to maintain their certification remuneration, teachers should score 80 out of 100 points in this test. The TCT has been criticized for not being adequate to assess the complex range of teachers’ competence (Sakhiyya, 2015). There is no clear demonstration of how the score gained on the multiple choice test is a reliable indicator of teachers’ competence, and therefore practice. Like all the threads of the PD, this test did not take into account the locality of teachers’ practice. All the PD programs are conducted via a top-down approach known as the cascade model (Chang et al., 2014; Rahman, 2016; Thair & Treagust, 2003). This model, particularly for the curriculum introduction and the TL, employs several levels of training. It commences with a resource person and national instructors, who then train teacher instructors who are chosen from the district or
100 P. M. Sumartini provincial level. These teacher instructors are required to conduct the same training at the district or provincial level. The CP program, on the other hand, it is taught by university lecturers who also participate in national training before teaching in the CP programs. The cascade model has been implemented in Indonesian teacher PD programs since the 1970s (Rahman, 2016). Although its benefits include its low cost and ability to reach a large number of participants in a short time (Rahman, 2016; Thair & Treagust, 2003), the cascade model has a number of issues, which I will discuss in the next section.
Issues of goal and practice in the current PD How teacher PD programs for in-service English teachers in Indonesia are designed to develop teachers’ praxis to teach English, particularly in a lingua franca context, is not clear. What is more obvious is that the programs are designed as authoritarian control through the introduction of new policy, teacher evaluation, and provision of financial benefits. Teachers’ learning and efforts are geared toward prescribed routines chiefly associated with the administrative aspects of teaching (as in all PD threads); learning modules to pass various tests (as in TL and TCT); and passing training to earn or maintain additional income (as in CP, TL, and TCT). It is not evident how each program impacts teaching practice (de Ree et al., 2015; Halim, 2013; Korompot, 2012; Rahman, 2016), particularly because the goals of PD are top-down goals rather than what Ehrenreich (2017) and Wenger (1998) refer to as a joint enterprise, in which the goal is collectively built by members of the community of practice. The elements that are missing in the current PD are questioning and conceptualization of why students learn English; with whom and how they will use English; and whether teachers are proficient in using English. Fundamental knowledge that would be required includes what teachers teach; what the curriculum expects teachers to teach; what students expect teachers to teach; and how PD can help teachers to teach. The missing elements of PD to answer these questions show that the current PD has left the praxis of English language teaching and learning implicit and therefore unexpandable. What contributes to the neglect of praxis is related to the cascade approach and the content of the PD. Several studies support this argument. Chang et al. (2014) suggested that although the PD content and structure have been made nationally uniform, the cascade model risks having the messages at the bottom of the cascade resemble little of what is delivered at the top. Resource persons, instructors, and teachers might translate the content differently at each level of the cascade. Nevertheless, the locality features of practice, such as teachers’ characteristics, school conditions, and the kind of PD activities themselves, have been left implicit (Rahman, 2016). Additionally, it has also been indicated that the cascade approach has provided minimal support for teachers to discuss and collaborate with their colleagues (Rahman, 2016; Sari, 2012). Despite the fact that the cascade approach targets teacher working groups at its bottom level, these groups have been found to not
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function as forms of collegial networking and collaboration (Sukyadi, 2015). Rather, the cascade approach is used as another form of authoritarian control, which has been reported to be a typical characteristic of the cascade model’s focus on regulatory and control purposes through attention to teachers’ role and loyalty as government employees (Bjork, 2003; Korompot, 2012; Rahman, 2016). It is not evident how, in such bureaucratic control, teachers would be provided with space to have mutual engagement in the PD, where knowledge is not only passed down by trainers but also passed around among teachers themselves and passed up to the trainer. In light of these problems, I draw two major conclusions about the current PD programs. One, there is currently no evidence that the three threads of the PD programs have a clear goal of developing teachers’ praxis to teach English, particularly in the context of lingua franca where mutual responsibility is central. Two, the current PD approach and its content is not sufficient to develop teachers’ praxis in teaching ELF because it lacks engagement with others (be they colleagues, interlocutors, or even students).
Why English as a lingua franca? Kirkpatrick (2007) stated that English learning in Indonesia had a false assumption that the primary reason learners learn English is for them to be able to communicate with native speakers, or to read texts written by native speakers. This assumption is against the fact that English is now used more by non-native speakers than by native-speakers around the world, and specifically in ASEAN. This feature is one of the core reasons why ELF learning warrants a place in teacher education (Jenkins, 2012; Seidlhofer, 2004; Sifakis, 2007). Most Indonesian English learners will likely have little chance to use English outside the physical borders of their country. The opportunities that they might have to use English are when interacting with the others who visit Indonesia. Calculations based on recent statistics suggest that over 80% of these visitors are unlikely to have English as their first language (Statistics Indonesia, 2016). A more obvious interaction that learners might encounter is interaction with people through digital media (twoway or reciprocal interaction of people-to-people, for example, communication on the comments bar by Facebook or Youtube users, chatting, videocall); and/or interaction with digital or printed texts and media (mostly one-way interaction in which learners are actively processing the information in their minds, but do not make a ‘return’ written or spoken interaction). Additionally, with regard to the use of English, in interviews with Indonesian students, parents, other subject teachers, and English teachers, Setiawan (2015) found that English is perceived not only as an instrument for getting jobs, accessing knowledge, and gaining a certain social status, but also as an international language that is part of globalization. Setiawan’s (2015) study shows a two-way relationship between language and learners, with implications for what learners could do with the language and what the language could do for them. He argues that English ability will likely lead to greater opportunities. Thus, learners’ main
102 P. M. Sumartini concern is being able to communicate effectively and intelligibly in order to achieve certain goals or status. Setiawan’s findings also suggested that Kirkpatrick’s statement that learners’ orientation to using English to communicate with native speakers or read texts written by native speakers is already changing.
Attitudes toward English Despite the perception of learners, parents, and teachers of the use of English as a means of effective communication for certain purposes, a number of studies have indicated that many teachers in Indonesia, like many teachers from other countries where English is not the dominant language, are oriented to an idealistic native-speakerism view (Manara, 2012; Zacharias, 2003). Manara’s (2012) narrative about her own experience as a student, for instance, indicates that Indonesian English teachers tend to view native-like proficiency as preferable and as the goal of English language teaching. Like other students in Indonesia and elsewhere, Manara has been exposed to this native-speaker norm (Davies, 2003). When she spoke in English and “slipped” into her Sumatran accent, she would be corrected as if she had committed some kind of cultural misdemeanour. Manara’s experience resonates with what happens in the practices of many Indonesian English teachers, who were mostly trained to see native-like proficiency as the goal of language teaching. While this is not always the case (e.g, Gandana, 2014), considering why and with whom English is used, I argue that now there is a need to raise awareness of ELF in the PD programs. Thus, teachers would have a chance to rethink how the native-like idolization affects their practice. This is important because several studies have indicated that many English teachers in Indonesia use minimal English in their classroom and are reluctant to use English with their fellow English teachers (Abdullah, 2015; Balasama, 2010; Korompot, 2012). There are a number of reasons cited for this, including teachers’ low English proficiency (Korompot, 2012); negative attitudes toward speaking English by colleagues (teachers of other subjects or even fellow English teachers) (Balasama, 2010; Korompot, 2012); and a lack of opportunities to speak English (Abdullah, 2015). While these reasons are rational, reflecting on Manara’s experience, perhaps teachers’ own orientation to native-like proficiency is one of the obstacles that hinders them in using English because it makes them feel incompetent and insecure. In relation to shifting teacher attitudes, some studies have indicated that communicative confidence in language learning is a crucial element that is closely linked to communicative competence (Baran-Lucarz, 2014; Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986). Assuming that teachers might have anxiety about their language production, raising English lingua franca awareness (Jenkins, 2012, 2015; Kirkpatrick, 2010, 2014; Sifakis, 2007) may prove to be a crucial strategy to give teachers ways of reconceptualising their practice. This is to say that it is not about whether native-like proficiency should or should not be the goal of language learning, but how teachers’ preferences and attitudes affect communicative confidence and therefore competence.
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Changing teachers’ practice Seidlhofer (2004) suggests that the change of attitude and reconceptualization of EFL itself is not enough to change the practice. In addition to raising awareness about their attitudes toward English, there are other elements of ELF that need further attention in teacher PD programs. These include not only teachers’ practices as language teachers, but also their practices as language users themselves. Taking some suggestions from Seidlhofer (2004), PD needs to provide language practice opportunities directed to developing communication strategies and accommodation skills. These include not making assumptions about the interlocutors’ proficiency and their linguistic repertoire, adjusting to what speakers encounter during communication, supportive listening, signaling non-comprehension or comprehension through facial or body language, asking for repetition, making repetition, taking multiple turns, and the like. These practices can be embedded within a conversation about content- and teaching-related matters. So, what follows is not only a discussion about the content, but also about how teachers use the language in talking about the content (Seidlhofer, 2001). At another level, taking suggestions from other scholars (Jenkins, 2012; Kirkpatrick, 2010; Seidlhofer, 2004; Sifakis, 2007), PD can invite teachers to discuss linguistic and communication issues that appear within the English lingua franca discourse. These issues include lexicogrammar, pronunciation, and pragmatics. An example of these issues is a discussion about what are considered as errors in a traditional view of proficiency under standardized native-like norms, but do not affect intelligibility in communication. Professional development should encourage teachers to rethink how much time they need to spend on correcting these so called errors (Jenkins, 2015; Seidlhofer, 2004) and how much time they should devote to developing students’ skills to engage with their interlocutor and to conduct effective and intelligible communication. Nevertheless, this does not mean that PD and teaching English within a lingua franca view exclude standardized English. Teachers should be able to decide in what circumstance their students need standardized forms, and in what circumstance they can rely more on alternative ways of establishing mutual intelligibility. As argued in Ehrenreich’s (2017) paper, the use of English language is not only as a shared repertoire within the PD but also as part of the joint enterprise or goal of PD. In this context, the use of English is not only the means to convey content, but also the target of improvement itself. However, because changing teachers’ attitudes toward English and reconceptualizing their practice as both learners and teachers of the language are not accommodated in the current approach to PD, as suggested by Sifakis (2007), it is important that teachers engage in critical reflection regarding their beliefs, values, and assumptions as well as reflecting on their past learning experience and previous and current teaching. Such reflection could be accommodated when teachers deprivatize their practice, collaborate with their peers in and outside their working site, and nurture their agentic collegial responsibilities through the collaboration (Kemmis et al., 2014).
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Refocusing the external aspects of the current PD According to the framing of Kemmis et al. (2014), PD that supports the elaboration of praxis needs to be directed to activities that cultivate collaboration, teacher agency, and de-privatization of practice as well as being conducted in teachers’ work sites. This redirection needs to embrace two levels, both the PD practice level and the classroom practice level. To refer to the redirected PD, I will henceforth use the term external training to distinguish it from what is currently happening. The current PD focuses heavily on activities that dominantly involve knowledge passing down from trainers to teachers. For the current PD to offer transformative changes in teachers’ learning, I suggest that the new PD be directed to activities that involve more time for knowledge passing around among teachers, and knowledge passing up from teachers to trainers. Taking problems in the current PD, the program guidelines show that most of the training time is used to enforce new teaching techniques that are expected to be presented in teachers’ lesson plans and in peer teaching during training; to work on completing administrative papers related to teaching; and to pass down knowledge for pedagogic and professional competence improvement (MoEC, 2016b, 2016c, 2017). Rather than spending so much time on delivering rhetorical knowledge and making administrative teaching documents, I propose that the external training needs to provide more space for teachers to share their best practices and problems, considering how that might affect students’ learning of ELF. For example, they might share how they have successfully taught one topic in the textbook or one of the competencies in the syllabus. They can share, discuss, and reflect on how such a lesson or series of lessons that they believe was successful was planned; what approach was used in class; what other supporting materials were used; and what kind of assessment was used. Similarly, they can share authentic teaching-related problems that would allow them to seek solutions that might have been practiced by their colleagues, or to be given suggestions by other experts involved in the external training. They can further discuss what each lesson really means for students, whether they gain benefits of developing language and communication skills. In sharing their successes and problems, teachers can practice their English in the discussions by using various communication strategies and accommodation skills, as suggested earlier. Therefore, teachers could not only discuss their success and problems, but also reflect on and analyze how the communication among them went during the discussion. This kind of reflection is necessary not only in their own use of English, but also in how they share/ transfer the strategies and skills to students.
On-site collaboration through peer coaching In addition to improving teaching quality through external training, quality improvement is also needed at the classroom practice level. In an attempt to
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improve classroom practice, the current PD training, particularly the certification and curriculum introduction programs, applies peer teaching as a way for teachers to perform micro-teaching. Teachers are required to teach their peers (who play roles as students) based on one of the lesson plans they have designed during the PD (MoEC, 2016b, 2017). While peer teaching might have benefits in providing examples of how a topic is taught, it has a major weakness because it does not engage with the real context of teaching where teachers are faced with a number of particularities: particular students, particular facilities, particular classrooms, and particular problems (Kemmis et al., 2014). The problems with this form of PD are also aggravated by the absence of continuing support in the current PD programs in applying/translating the knowledge learned in the training into teachers’ classroom practice (Supriatna, 2011). What is needed is continuing external training support both outside and inside teachers’ work sites. However, due to the characteristics of many Indonesian teachers, who take less initiative in developing their professional life at school and are loyal to autocratic PD from the government (Evans et al., 2009; Rahman, 2016), there is a need to introduce peer coaching carefully through external training. In this refocused external training, trainers can help establish and guide the pairs involved in peer coaching. There is also a need to have continuous follow-up support in external training for teachers to discuss issues and successes in their peer coaching practice and other issues related to ELF learning. The overall mechanism of the proposed model is presented in Figure 6.1. The construct has two levels, each of which has different aims. First, the external training content and activities will need to be repurposed so that they foster collaboration, teacher agency, and de-privatization of practice. Second, at the school and classroom level, Figure 6.1 shows how cyclical peer coaching can be used to complement the external training. Peer coaching involves three phases: pre-conference (planning); observation (observing each other’s class); and post-conference (reflections and revisions), where each element of practice (saying, doing, and relating) appears in different proportions in each phase. Working collaboratively in these three phases not only allows teachers to build higher awareness of their practice elements, but also offers
Peer coaching at school
External training
Pre-conference
Observation
Figure 6.1 External training and peer coaching
Post-conference
106 P. M. Sumartini benefits of a shared understanding of the working context and potential for continuity. In sum, having both external training and peer coaching at the school level would allow teachers to engage with a professional community of practice that fosters inquiry and reflections on practice, from both insider and outsider perspectives. In this way, teachers will be provided with opportunities to engage with the multiple relationships between practice and praxis of ELF learning. Nonetheless, it does not mean that this collaborative practice should be romanticized as a way to solve every problems in PD. Ehrenreich (2017) has warned that mutual engagement and communication in a community of practice is “not per se collaborative in the sense of conflict free” (p. 40). In the context of the proposed combined external training and peer coaching, there are issues that need to be confronted as challenges. These issues include provision of competent trainers, school/managerial support, continuity, and issues affecting pairing of teachers such as seniority, gender, timetables, vulnerability, communication, and teachers’ own aspirations to de-privatize their practice.
Praxis, practice, peer coaching, and external training The external training and its combination with peer coaching allow teachers to engage with the relationships between practice and praxis at both individual and collective levels. Kemmis et al. (2014) and Johnson (2006) have indicated that both practice and praxis could be either individual or collective endeavors. This duality needs to be echoed in the proposed external training that has been designed to promote and embrace peer coaching. I refer to the individual level of practice and praxis as pc and px, and the collective practice and praxis as PC and PX, respectively. I present the dynamic relationships between individual and collective practice and praxis in Figure 6.2. It is important to note that each notion is not separate from the others, meaning that pc, PC, px, PX could be engaged with at the same time or in the same space depending on where teachers project themselves, either as an individual or as groups of colleagues. The arrows in Figure 6.2 indicate how this transformative learning can originate in either individual practice (the inner circle) or collective praxis (the outer circle) and move respectively out through individual praxis and collective practice, or inward through collective practice and individual praxis. In other words, sometimes the learning originates with the individual teacher and is engaged with by the group, but at other times the learning originates at the group level and is then taken up by individuals. As indicated previously, the cascade model has focused extensively on passing down knowledge and prescribed routines to prepare teachers with a restricted form of individual practice (pc). The current PD has left the praxis part of teachers’ professional life implicit, unexaminable, and therefore unexpandable. The proposed combined model therefore seeks to provide room for teachers to engage with and expand px by building greater awareness of their practice (saying, doing, and relating) through collaborative collective practice (PC) in peer coaching and
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PX
px pc
PC
Note: External training and peer coaching
Figure 6.2 Practice and praxis in association with individuality and collectivity
in external training. Through peer coaching, teachers reorganize their understanding of themselves and their practice when they propose, accept, or reject ideas in the discussion and in reflection on their practice with their peer(s) as well as in their language-focused activities. When teachers become involved in the revised external training, they are provided with opportunities to extend their PC and px across a larger community of practice where they can relate both PC and px with the disciplinary knowledge of English language teaching and of ELF; their own practice and others’ practices; the goal of their practices; and the moral, social, and political view of the consequences of their practices. In this way they are engaging with collective praxis (PX). As shown in Figure 6.2, teachers could reflect on their own practice, find issues, and start relating them to PX (either from their disciplinary knowledge, others’ practice/s, the moral/social/political/historical view of their practice, or the combination of all these). On the other hand, teachers could start with PX, reflect, relate it to their personal practice, and make necessary changes. To end, I present an illustrative example of how the relationships between the individual and collective practices and praxes might emerge through peer coaching under this new model. A teacher, when teaching alone, has been barely using English in his teaching (pc) because he has a “local accent,” perceives himself as having “not good” pronunciation, and is not very fluent in his English. However, when being observed by his peer as part of the proposed peer-coaching initiative, he manages to use a little more English, because he would be ashamed if he used no English in his class (px). Although he realizes that he changes his practice in the presence of his colleague in the peer coaching (PC), he and his colleague may not discuss the issue of language of instruction in the peer coaching, because they
108 P. M. Sumartini may fear that they might make each other feel bad about their English proficiency and accent or pronunciation. In other words, his individual practice is shaped by his sense of what others and he believe is appropriate in a class. His pc is shaped by his own px and his perception of the broader PX that occurs in the shared practice (PC). Another example was mentioned earlier in the external training section about teachers sharing their best teaching and problems – and, in doing so, practices – using features of ELF through communication strategies and accommodation skills. This sample shows two directions in the practice–praxis relationship. One, from collective praxis to personal practice [PX–(PC–px)–pc] where teachers are informed by other’s practices and learn from them. Two, the other way around: from collective praxis to individual practice [pc–(px–PC)–PX] where teachers project their own practice to inform others and are given feedback about it.
Recommendations To conclude, these reflections suggest that the current PD programs should make the praxis part of teachers’ professional life more explicit and expandable by building teachers’ engagement with the other. This reinforces that the PD should remain committed to the main goal of English teaching and learning – to enable learners (teachers included) to engage with their interlocutors in effective and intelligible communication. Second, the approach of the current PD programs needs to be changed to a model that promotes on-site collaboration, agentic collegial responsibilities, and de-privatization of practice. One way to facilitate the change is by endorsing external forms of training combined with peer coaching. This can be accomplished through involvement of universities in providing continuing PD for teachers. While at present the PD from the government only involves universities in the ten days of certification training, ongoing external training facilitated by lecturers/professors could be made part of both PD programs and universities’ certified programs. A number of studies in Indonesia have shown that universities’ involvement in teacher PD offers an opportunity to bring research and researchers in the universities closer to classroom English language practice and vice versa (Gustine, 2014; Purwanti, 2017). Such engagement of theories (as in research by university academics) and practice (as in teachers’ practice) opens a potentially transformative lens on teachers’ classroom teaching (Johnson, 2006). University involvement with teacher PD not only would help teachers to engage with their peers in their local context, but also would bring opportunities for collaboration with other English teachers in the ASEAN countries, including the purposeful and integral use of ELF. The opportunities for wider collaboration result from universities in Indonesia having a means for collaborative practice with universities in other ASEAN countries (Sirat, 2017). Like lecturers and university students, teachers too should be provided with opportunities for exchange. Perhaps teacher-exchange programs (to visit or be visited by English teachers in/from other ASEAN countries) could be incorporated as a part of post-certification
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training when teachers have earned additional financial support as a result of being certified teachers. So, the exchange program would be tied to a system of gaining/maintaining financial benefit post-certification. Nonetheless, provision of such ongoing training by universities as well as a teacher-exchange program could only happen with a careful refinement of policy and bureaucracy surrounding PD through negotiation with local and national Departments of Education.
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110 P. M. Sumartini Jalal, F., Samani, M., Chang, M. C., Stevenson, R., Ragatz, N. B. & Negara, S. D. (2009). Teacher Certification in Indonesia: A Strategy for Teacher Quality Improvement. Washington DC: World Bank. Jenkins, J. (2012). English as a lingua franca from the classroom to the classroom. ELT Journal, 66(4), 486–494. doi:10.1093/elt/ccs040 Jenkins, J. (2015). Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca. Englishes in Practice, 2(3), 49–85. doi:10.1515/eip-2015-0003 Johnson, K. E. (2006). The sociocultural turn and its challenges for second language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 235–257. doi:10.2307/40264518 Joyce, B. & Showers, B. (1996). The evolution of peer coaching. Educational Leadership, 53(6), 12–16. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/ Kasper, G. & Kellerman, E. (2014). Communication Strategies: Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P. & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing Practices, Changing Education. Singapore: Springer. Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). Teaching English across cultures. What do English language teachers need to know to know how to teach English? English Australia Journal, 23(2), 20–36. https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/58563/ 74009_1.pdf?sequence=1 Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual Model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2012). English as an international language in Asia: Implications for language education. In A. Kirkpatrick & R. Sussex (eds), English as an International Language in Asia: Implications for Language Education. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Kirkpatrick, A. (2014). Teaching English in Asia in non-Anglo cultural contexts: Principles of the ‘lingua franca approach’. In R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (eds), The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers, and Students (1st edn). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International. Kobayashi, Y. (2017). ASEAN English teachers as a model for international English learners: Modified teaching principles. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27(3), 682–696. doi:10.1111/ijal.12173 Korompot, C. A. (2012). Giving teachers their voices: Indonesian EFL teachers’ perspective on professional teaching standards in the context of teacher certification programs in Indonesia. PhD thesis, University of New England. https://e-publications.une.edu.au/ vital/ access/manager/Repository/une:17195 Manara, C. (2012). Intercultural dialogue and English language teaching: Indonesian teacher educator’ narrative of professional learning. PhD thesis, Monash University, Australia. https://figshare.com/articles/Intercultural_dialogue_and_English_language_tea ching_Indonesian_teacher_educators_narratives_of_professional_learning/4597606 Mauranen, A. (2017). Conceptualising ELF. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker & M. Dewey (eds), The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. London: Taylor & Francis. MoEC. (2015). Pedoman pelaksanaan uji kompetensi guru [Implementation guidelines for teacher competence test]. Jakarta: Kemendikbud. $MoEC. (2016a). Guru pembelajar: Pedoman program peningkatan kompetensi [Teacher as learner: Guidelines for competency enhancement program]. Jakarta: Ministry of Education and Culture. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxQ13q4Vor5hU0dEd FAzZktCRFk/view $MoEC. (2016b). Materi pokok pelatihan implementasi Kurikulum 2013 SMA mata pelajaran Bahasa Inggris [Training material for the implementation of Curriculum 2013 for
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112 P. M. Sumartini Supriatna, A. (2011). Indonesia’s issues and challenges on teacher professional development. Africa-Asia University Dialogue for Educational Development, 4(2), 29–42. http://aadcice.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/e/publications/sosho24_22-04.pdf Thair, M. & Treagust, D. F. (2003). A brief history of a science teacher professional development initiative in Indonesia and the implications for centralised teacher development. International Journal of Educational Development, 23(2), 201–213. doi:10.1016/S0738-0593(02)00014–00017 UNESCO (2015). Teachers in Asia Pacific: Status and Rights. Bangkok: UNESCO. unes doc.unesco.org/images/0023/002347/234756e.pdf Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Zacharias, N. T. (2003). A survey of tertiary teachers’ beliefs about English Language Teaching in Indonesia with regard to the role of English as a global language. Master’s thesis, Assumption University of Thailand. http://asian-efl-journal.com/thesis_N_Za charias.pdf Zein, M. S. (2016). Government-based training agencies and the professional development of Indonesian teachers of English for Young Learners: perspectives from complexity theory. Journal of Education for Teaching, 42(2), 205–223. doi:10.1080/ 02607476.2016.1143145 Zein, M. S. (2017). Professional development needs of primary EFL teachers: Perspectives of teachers and teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 43(2), 293–313. doi:10.1080/19415257.2016.1156013
Part II
ELF pedagogy in teacher education
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EIL pedagogy in an initial teacher education program in Indonesia The case of an academic writing class Nugrahenny T. Zacharias
Introduction With the lingua franca role of English today, there is a growing call to appropriate the way English is represented, taught, and learned in the classroom. This is particularly because publication on English as an international language (EIL) pedagogy continues to be “the exception rather than the rule” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 158) and remains at the theoretical level. Even if studies on classroom implementations of EIL pedagogy are growing, they are mainly conducted in, using Kachru’s term, the inner- and outer-circle countries. Although nowadays the number of publications on the pedagogical implementation of EIL in expanding-circle countries is growing, they continue to be limited and focus on more developed countries such as South Korea, China, and Japan. To my knowledge, publications on EIL pedagogy in Indonesia, where the use of English might be different from other countries in the expanding circle, continue to be scarce. When discussing EIL pedagogy as an innovation in English language teaching and learning, initial teacher education programs might be at the forefront in determining the effective implementation of this pedagogy (Dogancay-Aktuna & Harman, 2012; Matsuda, 2017). It is during their education that teacher-learners (TLs) start constructing their understanding of what effective teachers and teaching look like. Therefore, integrating EIL pedagogy where TLs are asked to critically reflect on and re-evaluate the way knowledge of English teaching and learning has been theorized and presented to them is necessary. Bayyurt & Sifakis (2017) warned that when implementing EIL pedagogy, teachers should not seek for an overnight change. They suggested two ways in which EIL pedagogy can be initiated: first, “by providing comprehensive information about the current role of English worldwide” (pp. 7); and second, by “incorporating an element of change in teachers’ perspectives about the role and the implications it can have for their own teaching contexts” (pp. 7). The present chapter is inspired by Bayyurt and Sifakis’ second suggestion. The purpose of chapter is to illustrate how a group of TLs in an Academic Writing (EIL-AW) course in an initial teacher education program in Indonesia were guided to write their first academic paper with a writing theme drawn from EIL pedagogy. Following scholars such as Matsuda (2017) and Bayyurt & Sifakis
116 N. T. Zacharias (2017), in this chapter I use the term “EIL pedagogy” as “an umbrella term that incorporates orientations about the different roles of English around the world” (Bayyurt & Sifakis, 2017, p. 6), including English as a lingua franca. The writing theme selected for the article was “Who is the most effective English teachers? Native- or non-native English teachers?” This chapter particularly focuses on exploring the impact of carefully planned scaffolding activities in facilitating TLs’ argument towards the nativeness construct in English language teaching. The study was guided by the following research question: Do the perceptions of TLs change after participating in scaffolding activities aimed at increasing awareness of issues in teacher nativeness? The chapter hopes to contribute to existing and growing discussion on the different ways in which EIL pedagogy can be integrated into existing academic writing courses in initial teacher education programs.
Literature review Critical English for Academic Purposes as the pedagogical framing of the EIL-AW course The EIL-AW course was designed based on Benesch’s (2001) critical English for academic purposes (CEAP). Benesch makes a distinction between CEAP and mainstream or traditional English for academic purposes (TEAP) classes. The general purpose of TEAP is to study the genres and rhetorical conventions of the academic community so students can later reproduce them in their academic papers. While CEAP shares many activities found in TEAP, the main difference lies in the way these two academic approaches position the students. Benesch believes that TEAP views students as “accommodationists” (Benesch, 2001, p. ix), whose role is limited to reproducing mainstream academic genres. In this perspective, students are positioned as subordinate to disciplinary knowledge and practices. They need to study the disciplinary discourses and reproduce them in their writings. Consequently, the role of TEAP teachers is to facilitate students to appropriate their writing into those of the discipline. By contrast, in the CEAP classroom, in addition to studying mainstream academic genres, students are positioned as active learners who “shape academic goals and assignments rather than passively carrying them out” (Benesch, 2001, p. xiv). Students are expected to approach the content demand with a questioning attitude which sees learning as “problematizing practice … that have become naturalized” (Pennycook, 2004, p. 341) or “interrogating assumptions on which theory and practice are based” (Benesch, 2001, p. xvi). Underlying the knowledge presented in CEAP classroom is the belief of CEAP teachers that “students have the right to interrogate the demands they face” (Benesch, 2001, p. 53). Banegas & de Castro (2016) assert that this does not mean finding fault or “being negative about other people’s assumption” (p. 455), but rather seeing an issue from multiple perspectives to “evaluate evidence and issue logically” (p. 455). For Barnet & Bedau (2011), criticality is not only challenging taken-for-granted assumptions, but also “questioning your own assumptions” (p. 4), or self-critique.
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I adopted CEAP, rather than TEAP, to frame the EIL-AW course because the role students are expected to play in CEAP are in many ways similar to those of EIL pedagogy. Both schools of thought expect learners to consume the knowledge presented to them with a certain degree of skepticism or a questioning attitude. By choosing teacher nativeness as the object of inquiry in the writing class, students are given an opportunity to evaluate, question, and challenge this somewhat common belief. Teacher nativeness as the writing theme Although CEAP scholars have a well-intentioned aim to position students as critical learners, the course design needs to allow for such criticality to take place. One issue in EIL pedagogy that recently has been widely debated is the construct of native English-speaker teachers (NESTs) as the best teacher, or what Phillipson (1999) called “the native speaker fallacy.” are Just some of the questions that students could think of under the theme of teacher nativeness were: Which teachers are the best model for English teaching and learning? Should teacher nativeness be a factor in evaluating teaching effectiveness? What is teachers’ nativeness and how can it be defined? Is there a division of labor between native and non-native English teachers? Should there be? The issue of teacher nativeness was important to address in this particular context because the EIL-AW course was situated in an initial teacher education program where graduates would become teachers at primary and secondary levels in Indonesia. The department was well-known for hiring NESTs, although some of these teachers might not have proper education in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), an existing practice that is relatively common in non-English-speaking countries (Öztürk, 2017). Despite the department’s policy to hire a few NESTs to give students rich exposure to native English-speakers’ Englishes, issues surrounding teacher nativeness were rarely brought to the forefront as an object of inquiry in the department. I often wondered if students were aware of the existing power dynamics between non-NESTs (NNESTs) and NESTs. Most importantly, I wondered if the native speaker fallacy (Phillipson, 1992) affected the way these TLs perceived their competence and emerging identities as English teachers. The native speaker fallacy has provided a static and perpetual framing or “caste system” (Bernat, 2008, p. 11) to the way one’s ethnicity/nationality contributes to the quality of language mastery and teaching competence. By not discussing the native speaker fallacy openly, I was worried TLs in the department would internalize this fallacy voluntarily and believe that their non-nativeness was a valid and natural reason for positioning themselves and/or being positioned by others as second-class English teachers and users. Although the EIL-AW course might not be the most appropriate course to introduce TLs to this issue, as it was essentially a writing course, selecting teacher nativeness as the writing theme provided students with the opportunity to see it as “an open issue … that a group of writers can explore together” (Harris, 2006, p. 9).
118 N. T. Zacharias One might argue that framing the writing theme about teacher nativeness rather than teacher characteristics might perpetuate a dichotomic view of NNESTs and NESTs. While I fully acknowledge that teacher nativeness should not be a factor in perceiving teacher quality, I am also aware that this misconception continues to exist, particularly in Indonesia. By selecting teacher nativeness as a writing theme, I agree with Medgyes (2001) that the NEST/NNEST dichotomy, while it has many shortcomings, should not be ignored or rejected completely but “rather subjected to close scrutiny” (p. 429). As good questions are the core for CEAP (Morgan, 2009), I presented and framed the writing theme as a question to direct and stimulate students’ thinking. Presenting the writing theme as a question also offered alternative ways of seeing the topic. In terms of criticality, questions position students as knowing learners who are able to give potential responses to the problem at hand. As I was an NNEST myself, I was careful when presenting the writing theme so students did not falsely assume I preferred one position over another.
Methods Context The current study took place in a mid-size private university in Central Java, Indonesia in an initial teacher education program. Most TLs were Indonesians although there were a small number of students from South Korea and Japan. The medium of instruction and practice in the program was primarily English, although Indonesian, the de-jure lingua franca of the country, was used in informal meetings as well as student activities. Many teachers in the department were Indonesian nationals. There were several teachers from English-speaking countries, primarily Australia and the US. Participants The participants were TLs seeking a bachelor of education (Sarjana Pendidikan, S.Pd) degree to be English teachers at primary and secondary levels. The EIL-AW course was a required course in the department, offered in the third year as the culminating writing course in the department. The ELF-AW course ran for four credit-hours per week (200 minutes) over the span of 15 weeks. Prior to taking Academic Writing courses, students have completed two other separate writing courses such as Narrative and Expository Writing, and Argumentative Writing. The students taking the course were aged from 19 to 22 and have English language proficiency ranges from high intermediate to advanced levels. Scaffolding activities in the EIL-AW course One important factor affecting students’ developing understanding of the writing topic is the scaffolding activities (Ates, Eslami & Wright, 2015; Liu & You, 2008).
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The scaffolding activities implemented in the EIL-AW course consisted of three in-class learning activities focusing on developing students’ content and language knowledge to rhetorically argue about teacher nativeness. The first activity was Reading-to-Write Journals. At the beginning of each class, students spent 20 minutes on a Reading-to-Write Journal about their reaction to a teacher-selected reading list, with the following prompt: Write an approximately 250-word journal entry about the article you chose. Start with writing the title and author of the article you read. Then, write 3–4 sentences summarizing what the article is about. End your journal with 5–6 sentences describing one thing you learn from the reading. Underlying the Reading-to-Write Journals activity was the assumption that in order for students to be critical of the writing theme, they needed to be given an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the issues surrounding teacher nativeness. The second activity was what I called an autobiographical argument. In short, “autobiographical argument” or autoethnography (Canagarajah, 2012) is using one’s personal experience as a launching pad for developing an argument. Underlying this approach is a social constructivist view of learners’ knowledge as mainly constructed through interaction with their social environment and through reflection on their experiences (Simina & Hamel, 2005). Differently from previous Academic Writing classes, where students developed their arguments by reading materials related to their topics as a starting point, I urged students to develop their arguments by selecting a personal experience relevant to the writing theme and using that as a basis to develop their critical position. I would like students to understand that their arguments about teacher nativeness were never neutral, but situated in the way they constructed stories around native/non-native accumulated through their personal experiences and observations, as well as stories they have heard. The purpose of the third activity, linguistic tools to express possibilities, focused on developing students’ rhetorical skills in representing an argument as a possibility (Morgan, 2009) or an alternative way of seeing things. To serve this purpose, it is essential for the teacher to teach the linguistic tools students can use to embody alternative stances. As Hyland (2000) illustrates, generic move structures provide writers with a powerful tool for rhetorical persuasion. In the classroom, I did this in two ways. First, by asking students to consider their positions with regard to 5Ws questions (what, when, where, why, and who):
In what aspect might NNEST/NEST be the best English teacher? When might NNEST/NEST be considered the best English teacher? Where might NNEST/NEST be considered the best English teacher? Why might NNEST/NEST be the best English teacher?
Who thinks NNEST/NEST might be the best English teacher?The questions also helped students to avoid seeing their arguments as an absolute truth. The
120 N. T. Zacharias second way was by teaching hedges (a word or words showing the writer’s level/ degree of certainty, e.g., could, might, is more likely) as a way to frame students’ alternative stances about the writing theme. Data collection On the first day of the study, the researcher who also happened to be the course instructor talked about the project and stated that participation in the study was voluntary. I also told the students that I would remove all identifying information and only use pseudonyms. Of 23 students registered in the class, 19 gave me permission to use their data. Those who did not give permission were excluded from the data bank. Although TLs were aware of the purpose of the project as it related to the writing theme selected for the AW course, I believe they did not know how I was examining changes in their writings, particularly how they used (scholarly) evidence to support their critical stances. The primary data for the current study was collected through two writing assignments: initial position essays and final papers. The initial position essay was written on the first day of class, where learners were given 30–45 minutes to free-write 250–500 words to document their initial position related to the class theme: “Who is the best teacher of English? NESTs or NNESTs?” and support their position with reasons. Asking the students to write down their initial thoughts and positionality about the class theme helped me to understand the lived experiences students brought into the classroom. Collectively, the initial position essays allowed me to understand where the students were in terms of their understandings and knowledge with regard to issues related to nativeness. The initial position essay also aimed to position students “as having authority” (Hanson, 2004, p. 198) about the writing theme, and that their voices mattered. The initial position essays were not graded. The second data source consisted of an autobiographical paragraph written as part of the final paper. At the end of the course, students needed to write a 2000– 2500-word academic paper with the following structure: 1 2 3 4
5
An introductory paragraph with an explicit thesis stating their position about the class theme; A definition paragraph—here students needed to discuss the definition of native and non-native English teachers; An autobiographical paragraph—here students needed to write relevant incident(s) that support their position; A literature review paragraph—students provided evidence for their position by synthesizing sources drawn from the class readings as well as other readings they found on the internet; A concluding paragraph.
Some may argue that requiring students to organize their essays based on a predetermined structure is overly prescriptive (Cotterall & Cohen, 2003) and may hinder students’ creativity. However, since this was the first time students had
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written in an academic context, many of the processes were unfamiliar. Also, a predetermined essay structure enhances “learners’ sense of security” (Cotterall & Cohen, 2003, p. 163) since it gives a sense of direction and they were able to visualize the goal text. For the purpose of the study, data collected from the autobiographical paragraphs were used. Data analysis The quantitative data analysis for the current study was done by quantitatively comparing learners’ explicit thesis in initial position essays and final papers. It needs to be noted here that in both initial position essays and final papers, students were asked to underline their thesis, although some underlined thesis did not contain any explicit position/argument. However, all the final papers had appropriately underlined thesis. In addition to quantifying students’ thesis, students’ stated reasons for their arguments in both initial position essays and final papers were also calculated. Quantifying students’ stated reasons allowed me to see the extent to which students’ arguments were informed by their current understanding of issues related to teacher nativeness and if their positions showed a shift of perceptions. The qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis (McKay, 2006) of students’ autobiographical arguments written in the introduction. The first stage of the data analysis procedure was reading and rereading the participants’ autobiographical arguments to become familiar with the data and identify emerging themes (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber, 1998). For each theme, I assigned a different color. Each time I identified narrative utterances relevant to the research question, I highlighted them accordingly. The result of this analysis was reported and compared across participants.
Results and discussion The best English teachers: students’ changing positions Table 7.1 gives a quantitative comparison of students’ initial position essays (column 2) and final positions written in the final paper (column 3). The stated reasons for each position are depicted in Table 7.2. Prior to discussing students’ final positions as written in the final paper, it is important to discuss their initial stances written in their initial position essays. From Table 7.1, 11 learners (57.9%) preferred NESTs as the best English teachers. The fact that more learners preferred NESTs over NNESTs was expected because it reflects a favoritism toward NESTs, a common phenomenon among English learners (Braine, 2010; Kirkpatrick, 2010; Öztürk, 2017). What is worth discussing here is that the number of learners who preferred NESTs was not higher. In fact, the number of students who preferred NESTs compared to NNESTs was not significantly different. Also, the two reasons for preferring NNESTs (Table 7.2)—learning models, and the ability to use students’ mother
122 N. T. Zacharias tongue/culture—illustrate two common pedagogical benefits of NNESTs in the literature (Kirkpatrick, 2012). From a teacher point of view, this is an unexpected yet welcoming realization. I was aware that my job as a teacher would be much more challenging if the majority of the students preferred NESTs. What initial position essays did for me as the class teacher was to allow me insights concerning students’ positions toward issues of nativeness, the reasons leading to a particular position, as well as the existing misconceptions they have toward NNESTs/NESTs. The quantitative data comparing learners’ positions at the beginning and at the end of the course demonstrate students’ changing positions toward teachers’ nativeness. If at the beginning of the course only 36.8% students thought NNESTs were the best teachers of English, in the final paper the number significantly increased to 84.21% (Table 7.1). In the final paper, the most cited reasons for preferring NNESTs were the use of students’ mother tongue and culture, and appropriate teaching credential (Table 7.2). These reasons indeed reflected the pedagogical benefits of NNESTs mentioned by many EIL scholars. Kirkpatrick (2012), for example, mentioned that the “appropriate” English teachers should be local teachers “with a good comparative knowledge of regional cultures and knowledge” (p. 41). In fact, Kirkpatrick further argued that since English is the ASEAN lingua franca, it is the “only natural … that the Asian multilingual provide Table 7.1 Students’ positions in final essay (1) Guided inquiry question: Who are the best English teachers?
(2) Initial position
(3) Final position
Number of students
%
NESTs
Number of Students
%
11
57.9
3
15.7
NNESTs
7
36.8
16
84.21
Not responding
1
5.3
–
–
Table 7.2 Students’ stated reasons for their argument Stated reasons
Initial position NESTs
1.
Learning models
2.
Pronunciation models
3.
Teaching style
4.
Ability to use students’ mother tongue/culture
5.
Appropriate teaching credentials
6.
Diverse, novelty
3
7.
Length of using English
8
8.
Research evidence
Final position
Non-NESTs
NESTs
6
Non-NESTs 10
4
4
10
2 6
4 9 6 1
1
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the teaching force” (p. 42). The quantitative data in Tables 7.1 and 7.2 illustrate how selecting teacher nativeness as an object of inquiry helps TLs to identify the ways local English teachers can be effective English teachers. Grammar-centered criteria for NNESTs’ teaching effectiveness Among students who opted for NNESTs as the most effective teachers in the final papers, ten of their arguments were contextualized in the teaching of grammar. The following are some examples of theses students wrote in the final papers: The present paper is specially written to support the idea that NNESTs have a greater opportunity to be successful grammar teachers (Dewi, final paper) Despite the common belief that NESTs are the best model in teaching grammar, I believe NNESTs are better when explaining grammar for ESL learners (Hani, final paper). The purpose of the paper is to argue for NNESTs as the best English teacher because they make English learners aware of their grammar when speaking English (Ella, final paper). The fact that many students considered NNESTs as better grammar teachers seem to reflect the way the ETE department structures the teaching assignment as pointed out by Sita’s and Adi’s narratives below: Surprisingly, since I have entered the faculty of language and literature in 2011 until now 2013, there was no native English speaker teacher who teaches grammar. […] It means that non-native English speaker teacher might teach grammar … better than the native English speaker teacher (Sita, final paper). … there are three types grammar courses in my faculty […]. Surprisingly, all lecturers that teach grammar is a NNEST. Why? Is it the implicit belief that NNESTs is better in teaching grammar? I don’t think the head of the department will place the wrong people in the right place. (Adi, final paper). Using local contexts as evidence for preferring NNESTs as the better grammar teachers demonstrates the crucial role of the academic environment as a model of acceptable behavior (Ferenz, 2005). The fact that only NNESTs taught grammar in the department was interpreted by these students as indicating they have better competence in teaching grammar than NESTs. The use of the word “surprisingly” by both students might indicate that they were aware of this when they were asked to write their critical incidents. Adi’s narrative, in particular, seems to point out that the department practice of assigning NNESTs to teach the grammar class is a well-thought move. Although the literature on ELF focuses on communicative effectiveness rather than grammatical correctness and accuracy (Matsuda, 2017), the high number of students evaluating the notion of best teachers based on their skills in teaching
124 N. T. Zacharias grammar might reflect the continued significance of grammar in speaking English, as written by Sita and Roho below: Grammar is an important aspect to be focused on because by learning grammar, we can use language …. that is understandable by other. […] By having an accurate and comprehensive understanding of English grammar, we will feel more confident as a teacher and learner of English (Sita, final paper). rules of grammar play an essential role and cannot be separated from English. … mastering grammar is very important for our confidence … to communicate each other (Roho, final paper). For Sita and Roho, grammatical accuracy and correctness positively contributed to their confidence as both English teachers and speakers. The place that Roho and Sita give to grammar accuracy, rather than appropriacy, is of course contrary to the literature on World Englishes, where comprehensibility has little to do with correct and accurate English use but rests upon one’s intercultural skills (Selvi & Yazan, 2013), communicative strategies (Matsuda, 2017), and familiarity toward other English varieties, among others. The fact that more than half the TLs’ arguments contextualize their arguments in the teaching of grammar more than in other aspects is, indeed, crucial to the way we understand students’ increased understanding of NNESTs’ issues. The arguments about the best English teachers being better grammar teachers might reflect how these students continue to perceive grammatical competence as crucial to becoming better English teachers and speakers, as pointed out by Sita’s and Roho’s narratives above. The fact that many students believed NNESTs were better grammar teachers, and drew evidence from the practice in the department, points to the significance of the crucial role of the academic environment as a model of acceptable behavior (Ferenz, 2005). Since the department employed both NNESTs and NESTs, I wonder what happens in departments where all the teachers are NNESTs, and to what extent this academic environment would change students’ arguments.
Developing critical reflexivity of nativeness issues through autobiographical arguments One piece of significant evidence in students’ final papers was the way TLs were able to demonstrate a degree of reflexivity and criticality in the way they supported their arguments through selecting and framing critical incidents. When arguing for an NNEST as a better English teacher in EFL contexts, Sita described a critical incident in an Academic Reading course with Mr. John, an American teacher. When they were studying a text about The Hunger Games, one student asked the meaning of the word “dystopian future” used in the text. Mr. John first answered by giving the antonym of “utopian future.” In her essay, Sita wrote that this strategy was ineffective since “[a]ll students including me still couldn’t understand it.” After witnessing this, Mr. John moved to the second
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teaching strategy “by describing it using English,” another ineffective attempt since students still did not understand it. Finally, Mr. John said that they could guess the meaning from the context by inferring the meaning of the words surrounding it. To this, Sita reflected: However, I […] am poor at vocabulary. I need the meaning of the difficult word so that I could understand the text. […] As a result, I did not grasp the lesson well because I could not understand the text. What impresses me from Sita’s narrative is the way she painted Mr. John, a NEST from the US, as an incompetent teacher. Sita’s narrative shows the need for appropriating one’s teaching strategies to the students. Although Mr. John employed different strategies to facilitate students’ understanding of the phrase “utopian future,” these strategies were ineffective since students could not grasp the meaning of “utopian future.” What I found surprising is the way Sita was able not only to identify Mr. John’s teaching strategies, but most importantly, to evaluate them against students’ comprehension. Mr. John might be a good teacher since he was able to experiment with different teaching strategies. For Sita, however, he was an ineffective teacher because all the strategies he used did not result in her understanding the meaning of “utopian future.” In addition to evaluating the teacher’s teaching strategies, Sita was able to give an appropriate reason why the most common reading strategy of “predicting from context” might not work for students with a lack of command in vocabulary, such as herself. A somewhat similar incident was put forward by Dewi to support her argument for NNESTs as successful grammar teachers. She started her narrative by writing the enthusiasm she felt when she was able to register for Mr. Jason’s class. She believed that NESTs were “the master of English” and “experts.” After a few weeks in Mr. Jason’s class, she was disappointed. She witnessed several incidents where “he seemed to struggle very hard in teaching the rule of tenses” and she “caught him looking at the [course] book several times.” On one occasion, when they were practicing the use of the past perfect tense, Dewi asked him questions because there were several numbers where her answers were different from Mr. Jason’s. Rather than explaining the conditions of those two tenses, Mr. Jason replied she “should be able to sense … when it was the time to use either the past perfect or past perfect continuous form.” This response made Dewi doubt Mr. Jason’s teaching competence: I did not know whether he actually knew the answer to my question but did not know how to explain it or he truly meant to say that I should have “that sense” in producing a good grammatical sentence. She further challenged Mr. Jason’s expectation for English learners to produce good grammatical sentence based on a sense of grammar appropriacy:
126 N. T. Zacharias I am a non-native English speaker who is in the process of learning English, and I do not have “that sense” yet. Therefore, I think I need to know the exact rules of forming that sentence instead of just relying on my “sense.” Dewi’s narrative indeed reflects one of the core distinctions between NESTs and NNESTs. If NNESTs learned English in school settings, NESTs acquire English in “a natural setting from childhood as first or sole language” (Kachru and Nelson, 1997, p. 81) and thus are born with grammatical intuition (Kramsch, 1997). In responding to Dewi’s questions, rather than attempting to explain the structure of these two tenses, Mr. Jason resorted to his grammatical intuition or what Dewi called “sense.” It is interesting to note that rather than accepting Mr. Jason’s explanation, Dewi effectively argued that for beginning English learners, like herself, who might not yet have developed a sense of grammatical appropriacy, teacher explanation might be more beneficial. The ways Sita and Dewi are able to evaluate NESTs should not be taken lightly. One of the impacts of the native speaker fallacy is cultivating an unquestioning attitude of NESTs as “the” model English speaker and teacher. Additionally, in Indonesia and many other Asian countries, teachers, locally known as guru, have a privileged status and serve as an exemplary model of society. Students are expected to show respect to the teacher by listening attentively to their teachings and obediently following the lesson. Through autobiographical narratives, Sita and Dewi were able to challenge the authoritative discourses of native-speakerism. In supporting their arguments for NNESTs as the better English teachers, they were able to construct a narrative of incompetent NESTs who “failed” to effectively appropriate their teaching strategies to multilingual English learners. In presenting evidence for their positions, these students were able to present narrative details demonstrating their contextual knowledge of teaching. From this section, we also learn the benefit of requiring students to frame and support their positions through autobiographical arguments. When students are asked to support their arguments using autobiography or personal narrative, it provides them with the ability to re-envision native or non-native English teachers “based on their experiences first …. [and then] … rewrite their initial interpretation of the story from new perspectives, incorporate … [what] they have read to help them see from new perspectives” (Lu, 1998, p. 240). In selecting evidence to support her argument, Dewi, who initially believed NESTs to be experts, was able to rewrite this belief by framing Mr. Jason as an incompetent English teacher.
Conclusion and implications for teacher education The present chapter reports an initial attempt of one teacher in an Academic Writing course in initial teacher preparation in a private university in Indonesia. It aims to explore the effectiveness of using a writing theme drawn from EIL pedagogy to raise students’ awareness and understanding of issues in teacher nativeness. Hopefully, TLs were able to perceive their non-nativeness in a more positive
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light and were informed of ways to frame teaching effectiveness in criteria other than teacher (non-)nativeness. The findings from both quantitative and qualitative data are promising, and corroborate earlier studies conducted by Kubota (2001); Ates et al. (2015); and Zacharias (2013, 2014) illustrating the role of carefully planned instructional activities in the effectiveness of EIL pedagogy implementation. At the beginning of the course, the majority of students’ arguments were leaning towards favoring NESTs. Many stated reasons supporting this position illustrated a common misconception of a positive correlation between the ability to speak English as a mother tongue and teaching ability. At the end of the course, the majority of students’ arguments in the final paper (Table 7.2) shifted toward favoring NNESTs. Most importantly, students were able to support their arguments with reasons supported by EIL literature. Brown & Peterson (1997) and Matsuda (2017) stated that evidence of transformation as a result of exposure to EIL-related issues might be “a slow process” (p. xv). Brown & Peterson (1997) note that a brief exposure to EIL issues is “unlikely to bring about the kind of paradigm shift called for.” For TLs to develop a deeper and richer understanding of EIL-related issues, TLs need a longer and sustained engagement of EIL-related issues even though they did not elaborate what “longer and sustained engagement” here means. Although Brown & Peterson’s (1997) suggestion might be ideal for any innovation to take place, the reality is that not many classroom teachers have the privilege to sustain an innovation beyond their classroom context. The present study challenges Brown and Peterson’s, and shows that it is possible to make TLs aware of EIL-related issues by integrating EIL issues with existing courses, provided that classroom teachers select appropriate methodology and scaffolding activities to contextualize EIL pedagogy. It is also important to point out that in the present study, EIL pedagogy was not integrated in TESOL content courses where TLs can be exposed to other EIL-related issues, leading to a more nuanced and richer understanding of nonnative teachers. Here, EIL pedagogy was integrated into an existing course, Academic Writing, where there was a limited time to give an explicit instruction on, for example, the history of NNEST movement and pedagogical benefits and challenges of NNESTs. The content-knowledge related to NNEST/NEST issues was presented through teacher-selected reading materials which were the topic for the weekly reading journals. In fact, many students cited evidence from Readingto-Write Journals when writing their final papers. To this end, together with Macalister (2010) and Park (2015), the current study points to the need to integrate an extensive reading approach, particularly if teachers are interested in integrating EIL pedagogy in existing courses where opportunities for explicit learning on EIL issues and pedagogy might be limited. However, the present study would emphasize that selecting a sequence of teaching activities alone is not sufficient if the teacher does not select an appropriate pedagogical framework. In the current study, CEAP was chosen to guide the selection and design of the learning activities. One principle drawn from the
128 N. T. Zacharias CEAP approach to writing is the way it suggests teacher present knowledge as a possibility rather than an absolute truth (Morgan, 2009). This principle has helped me to frame the writing theme as an object of inquiry and also selected learning activities, such as teaching students to use hedges and contextualize their thesis, that facilitated students to be aware of the limitations of their arguments in writing. The current study, in particular, is a response to the call made by many EIL pedagogy scholars. Matsuda (2017), for example, rightly notes that the implications of EIL perspectives are relatively unexplored in teacher education, and that there is a need to examine how EIL perspectives can be incorporated into teacher education programs. She further argues that teacher education programs must inform teachers of the current use and status of English and help them to overcome the native-speaker bias. While I agree that teacher education has a pivotal role in exposing TLs to the complexity and pedagogical implications of the current status of English, how to realize this attempt is an equally important question. Drawing on findings discussed in the present study, language teacher education programs are encouraged to provide teachers with greater opportunities to explore the construct of nativeness as both a linguistic construct and a social practice. Such programs should encourage multilingual TLs to teaching effectiveness and professional identity construction harnessed in the social and cultural capital that they already possess, and to better navigate their non-nativeness to be a teaching resource rather than a liability. Even though the findings strongly suggest the effectiveness of writing themes drawn from EIL pedagogy to develop writing ability and criticality, the results should be interpreted with some caution. Benesch (2001) cautioned us that CEAP is context-sensitive. This means the applicability and success of a particular course design “may not hold up when applied to situations outside the one in which they were generative” (p. xvi). The pedagogical decisions discussed in this paper were made in particular institutions with a particular group of students during a specific moment, and should be interpreted in that light. Needless to say, more research is required along these lines so as, among other things, to design an Academic Writing course in which other ELF potential topics can be used to guide students’ inquiry.
References Ates, B., Eslami, Z. R. and Wright, K. L. (2015). Incorporating world Englishes into undergraduate ESL education courses. World Englishes, 34, 485–501. doi:10.1111/ weng.12149 Banegas, D. L. and de Castro, L. S. V. (2016). Criticality. ELT Journal, 70(4), 455–457. Barnet, S. and Bedau, H. (2011). Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument (7th edn). Boston, MA: Bedford. Bayyurt, Y. and Sifakis, N. (2017). Foundations of an EIL-aware teacher education. In A. Matsuda (ed.), Preparing Teachers to Teach English as an International Language. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
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Benesch, S. (2001). Critical English for Academic Purposes: Theory, Politics and Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bernat, E. (2008). Towards a pedagogy of empowerment: The case of “imposter syndrome” among pre-service non-native speaker teachers in TESOL. ELTED, 11, 1–8. Borg, M. (2004). The apprenticeship of observation. ELT Journal, 58(3), 274–276. Braine, G. (2010). Nonnative Speaker English Teachers: Research, Pedagogy and Professional Growth. New York: Routledge. Brown, K. and Peterson, J. (1997) Exploring conceptual frameworks: framing a word Englishes paradigm. In I. E. Smith and M. I. Forman (eds), World Englishes 2000 (pp. 32–47). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Canagarajah, A. S. (2012). Teacher development in a global profession: an autoethnography. TESOL Quarterly, 46(2), 258–279. Cotterall, S. and Cohen, R. (2003). Scaffolding for second language writers: producing an academic essay. ELT Journal, 57(2), 158–166. Dogancay-Aktuna, S. and Hardman, J. (2012). Teacher Education for EIL: working toward a situated meta-praxis. In A. Matsuda (ed.), Principles and Practices of Teaching English as an International Language. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Ferenz, O. (2005). EFL writers’ social networks: impact on advanced academic literacy development. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4, 339–351. Harris, J. (2006). Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. London: Longman. Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 157–181. Kachru, B. B. & Nelson, C. L. (1996). World Englishes. In S. L. McKay & N. H. Hornberger (eds), Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching (pp. 71–102). New York: Cambridge University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual Model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2012). English as an international language in Asia: implications for language education. In A. Kirkpatrick and R. Sussex (eds), English as an International Language in Asia: Implications for Language Education, Multilingual Education (pp. 29–43). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Kramsch, C. (1997). The privilege of the nonnative speaker. Publications of the Modern Language Association, 112(3), 359–369. Kubota, R. (2001). Teaching world Englishes to native speakers of English in the USA. World Englishes, 20(1), 47–64. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R. & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative Research: Reading, Analysis and Interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Liu, Y. and You, X. (2008). Negotiating into academic discourses: Taiwanese and U.S. college students in research writing. International Journal of English Studies, 8(2), 152–172. Lu, Min-Zhan (1998). Reading and writing differences: the problematic of experience. In S. C. Jarratt and L. Worsham (eds), Feminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words (pp. 239–251). New York: MLA. Macalister, J. (2010). Investigating teacher attitudes to extensive reading practices in higher education: why isn’t everyone doing it? RELC Journal, 41(1), 59–75. Matsuda, A. (2017). Introduction. In A. Matsuda (ed.), Preparing Teachers to Teach English as an International Language (pp. xiii–xxi). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
130 N. T. Zacharias Medgyes, P. (2001). When the teacher is a non-native speaker. In M. Celce-Murcia (ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (pp. 429–442). Boston: Heinle and Heinle. McKay, S. L. (2006). Researching Second Language Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Morgan, B. (2009). Fostering transformative practitioners for critical EAP: Possibilities and challenges. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 86–99. Öztürk, G. (2017) NEST trainers training NNESTs: Do we really need them? NNEST Newsletter, February. http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolnnest/issues/ 2017-01-23/4.html Park, J. (2015). Integrating reading and writing through extensive reading. ELT Journal, 70(3), 287–295. Pennycook, A. (2004). Critical moments in a TESOL practicum. In B. Norton & K. Toohey (eds), Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 327–345). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Selvi, A. F. & Yazan, B. (2013). Teaching English as an International Language. Alexandria, VA: TESOL Publications Simina, V. and Hamel, M. (2005). CASLA through a social constructivist perspective: WebQuest in project driven language learning. ReCALL, 17(2), 217–228. Zacharias, N. T. (2013). One teacher’s struggles to integrate EIL approaches in a Microteaching class: an action research project. In N. T. Zacharias and C. Manara (eds), Contextualizing the Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Issues and Tensions (pp. 134–149). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Zacharias, N. T. (2014). The relocation of culture in the teaching of English as an international language. In R. Marlina and R. A. Giri (eds), The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers and Students (pp. 129–142). Switzerland: Springer International.
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Multimodal communicative competence of Indonesian secondary school teachers and pre-service teachers Implications for teacher education in ELF Didi Sukyadi and Budi Hermawan
Introduction The position of English as a lingua franca (ELF) and as an official language of ASEAN has important implications for language policy and language education (Kirkpatrick, 2010, p. xi). Adopting English as the first international language of Indonesia poses increasingly complicated challenges. At present, there is a high tendency on the part of the Indonesian Government to internationalize the national language, making it the second language of ASEAN. Some efforts have been made to achieve this goal. Firstly, the status of the agent for the development of languages was increased from the Center for the Development and Fostering Languages to the Agency for the Development and Fostering Languages, which is directly responsible to Minister of Education and Culture (MoEC). Secondly, MoEC has reduced teaching hours for English at secondary levels and stopped early introduction of English at primary education level, but allowing its inclusion at schools’ own expense. Thirdly, the provision of scholarships, managed by the Directorate General of Science and Technology Resources, Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education, to hundreds of undergraduate students of 111 participating countries to study Indonesian language and culture at more than 54 universities in Indonesia (Suharti, n.d.) has resulted in more and more opportunities for young international communities, mainly from ASEAN countries, to learn Indonesian language and culture. It is not surprising that since 2015, when the ASEAN Economic Community was established, the Indonesian language has been the most popular language of ASEAN in Thailand, followed by Vietnamese and Burmese (ASEAN Information Center, 2016). However, the impact of exposing the national language to the international level does not seem to reduce the role of ELF in ASEAN. On the one hand, the more the Indonesian language is promoted internationally, the more English is needed. For example, an interview between an international student candidate and Indonesian embassy staff is in English. When such students arrive in Indonesia, begins their life on campus, interact with people around them, and attend classes, they must have English at their fingertips. The same is true for students and
132 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan faculty members of universities involving in inbound and outbound exchange activities like attending conferences, sandwich programs, community engagement, visiting scholars, or research collaborations. On the other hand, as a consequence of the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, ASEAN countries are getting more integrated. Each ASEAN country is becoming more open to ASEAN member visitors. The tourism industry is becoming the main sector prioritized by ASEAN countries to boost their economies. International flights between ASEAN countries are increasing rapidly, connecting not only big and popular cities like Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, and Manila, but also smaller cities in such countries. In the next two decades, ASEAN countries are predicted to buy 10% of the total aircraft in the world, and in 2017 Indonesia became the tenth contributor to the total world passengers. English is more frequently heard in trade centers and tourist destinations in Indonesia together with national, local, and other foreign languages (ASEAN Secretariat, 2008; Stroupe & Kimura, 2015, p. 3). As ASEAN countries are becoming more economically integrated, information exchange is also growing. Almost in every Indonesian airport, we can find Periplus Bookstores where international books, magazines, and newspapers can be easily accessed. Both cheap and expensive textbooks by international publishers are often available at international conferences organized by universities or government institutions. The ease of cable TV subscription and improvement of the communication infrastructure have made communication opportunities unlimited, timeless, and borderless. We see in many cases that the members of Facebook, Line, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp groups come from many different countries with different languages and cultures. To this end, we see that direct face-to-face communication, indirect communication through conventional media, and modern communication through e-books, online media, messaging systems, and social media involve multimodal semiotic resources in verbal, visual, gestural, or spatial modes (Kress, 2000, p. 337). When English is used as a lingua franca in ASEAN and in a wider scope, the nature of its use tends to rely on more than one modality. However, the issue of multimodality has not made its way into the mainstream literature on ELF, primarily because the issues revolve around teaching models, the issue of native-speakerism, and language features that warrant inclusion in teaching. Here we argue that multimodality should be placed within the wider construct of ELF. This chapter will first discuss the concept of multimodality and how it relates to the notion of ELF. Then, it develops the multimodality concept to multimodal communicative competence, the conception of ELF-based multimodal communicative competence, and the reasons why studies in this area should be done from teachers’ perspectives. After discussing the subjects, instruments, and data analysis involved in the study, the chapter continues with a discussion on multimodal competence awareness of English teachers, undergraduates, and graduate students; a comparison of multimodal communicative competence awareness across subjects; and the implications of the findings for English teacher education in Indonesia. Finally, an ELF multimodal communicative competence is proposed and discussed.
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Literature review Multimodality As a general term, multimodality can simply refer to how people communicate using different modes at the same time. The term, as observed by Jewitt, Bezemer & O’Halloran (2016), was first coined and used in the 1990s and has since been widely used in a myriad of conferences and academic discussions. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001, p. 20) defined multimodality as “the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event.” Multimodality can also be understood as the diverse ways in which multiple semiotic resources (language, visual images or sounds, etc.) are both co-deployed and co-contextualized in the making of a text-specific meaning (Thibault, 2001). In its most basic sense, multimodality is the mixture of textual, audio, and visual modes in combination with mediums and materiality to create meaning (Murray, 2013). It is not a theory but rather a field of application (Jewitt, 2009, p. 2); and as a field of application, multimodal research makes use of different theories on how we represent our experiences, and exchange them with others in an interaction we are building and involved in. According to Mills and Unsworth (2017), specific examples of modes from a social semiotic perspective include speech, gesture, written language, music, mathematical notation, drawings, photographic images, or moving digital images. Understanding the multimodal nature of communication and the ability to employ various semiotic resources to make meanings is significantly important for communication in an ELF context. In this case, Mori (2003) noted that participants make relevant social categories in an intercultural conversation by shifting gaze, using gestures, and switching their styles of speech to show their alignment. Sangiamchit (2017) proved that in an online ELF communication context, communicative meanings were not represented and constructed only through languages, but also with the support of the multimodal features of the online medium. Multimodal features in an online communication such as visual, voice, and video modes will be a great help when there is a communication breakdown caused by both language and cultural problems. Hanamoto (2016) showed that understanding disparities among students having a lower proficiency level when communicating in an EFL context can be improved by “employing multimodal resources other than language when they encounter difficulty in expressing themselves verbally” (p. 1). In a similar vein, Pietikäinen (2017) also reported that ELF couples used a vast array of understanding–enhancing practices, similarly to ELF speakers in other contexts, but they also resorted to extra-linguistic means such as drawing and onomatopoeia. It is quite clear that in ELF contexts, multimodality plays a central role in the success of meaning-making and meaning-understanding processes. Classroom interaction is heavily multimodal. Takahashi & Yu (2016) summarized that gestures could be used to promote simultaneous shared knowledge, show trouble in understanding, engender repair, promote memorization, display
134 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan co-engagement in interaction, and create teaching and learning opportunities. In their summary, Takahashi & Yu (2016) also indicated that hand gestures, gaze, and postures/body orientations were used by students in explaining pedagogical activities, while head movement was used as part of the repair strategies. Teachers allocated turn taking through the use of multimodal resource combination such as address terms and gaze, invitations and commands to respond, head nods and gaze, pointing gestures and gaze. Students allocated turn taking through handraising, non-lexical pre-speech signals, gaze and changes in body posture, indicating their interest in pursuing class participation (p. ii). Research on ELF contexts has also revealed the same phenomena. Matsumoto (2015) revealed three patterns that ELF users in writing classrooms used to resolve miscommunication among them, namely enhanced explicitness (employing gestures that visualize and concretize abstract components, and combining information on PowerPoint slides and worksheets with verbal speech), laughter and humor, and voluntary help by the third party involved (p. iv). Multimodal interaction in an ELF classroom or a classroom preparing students to communicate in ELF contexts will be more complex, as it involves other intricate variables such as varied language ability, different beliefs, identities, shared knowledge and cultural background of both students and teachers. Visual, gestural, and spatial modes are different from culture to culture, and interlocutors participating in an ELF communicative action will exploit those semiotic resources differently. Consequently, multimodal communication in ELF contexts will be apt to more misunderstandings than those in second or foreign language contexts. A classroom favourable for the development of multimodal communicative competence workable in an ELF context should be facilitated by teachers with multimodal communicative competence and ELF context awareness, and these should be made explicit. Multimodal communicative competence Communicative competence models available so far were developed with the assumption that we communicate mainly through verbal modes, whether in oral or written mode, in productive or receptive skills, undermining other communication modes (Royce, 2002). In this multimodal world, we need to extend the notion of communicative competence to include other modes such as facial expression, gestures, gaze, postures, images, spaces, and actions. For this purpose, Royce (2007) coined the term ‘multimodal communicative competence’ and urged language-teaching practitioners to move away from a primary focus on communicative competence as it relates to verbal and purely linguistic communication, to a more developed view which focuses on multimodal communicative competence. Royce (2007, p. 376) reiterated that multimodal communicative competence is concerned directly with the ways that the two modes interact semantically on the page or screen, the skills and awareness that students and teachers need to
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be able to address the fact that the two modes co-occur, that they project their meaning in concert, and that these combined meanings often realize a visual–verbal synergy (Royce, 2007, p. 376). While Royce emphasizes that multimodal communicative competence is mainly the interaction between verbal and visual modes, for Heberle (2010), multimodal communicative competence “involves the knowledge and use of language concerning the visual, gestural, audio and spatial dimensions of communication, including computer-mediated-communication” (p. 102). In this chapter, multimodal communicative competence refers to the ability of a language user to encode and decode meanings using various semiotic resources appropriate to the demand of the contexts, whether at the level of ideational, functional, or textual meanings (Halliday, 1978, 1985). As Royce has claimed (2007), to represent ideational meanings multimodally, interlocutors need to identify participants (who or what is involved in any activity); activity (what action is taking place, events, states, types of behavior); circumstances (where, who with, by what means the activities are taking place); and attributes (the qualities and characteristics of the participants). To represent interpersonal meanings, interlocutors address their viewers/readers, express degrees of involvement, and realize various power relations; articulate degrees of social distance between the participants in the interaction; express meanings related to modality (degrees of possibility, probability, and certainty); identify and use the various ways of intersemiotically relating the reader/viewers and the text through various forms of address (offers, commands, statements, questions) and attitude (modality, whether the ideas are real or unreal, true or false, possible or impossible, necessary or unnecessary); and draw on an understanding of how both modes may maintain the same forms of address to viewers/readers. To represent textual meanings, interlocutors need to know the ways that both the visual and verbal modes can combine to produce coherent meanings on the page or screen; to be aware of the various ways that multimodal texts map the modes to realize a coherent layout or composition and indicate degrees of information (use of salience principles and intervisual synonymy to develop skills for moving from the most important information to the least important, and to identify multimodal discourse patterning such as past-present-future, given and new). As has been mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, classroom interaction tends to be multimodal. Both students and teachers should have multimodal communicative competence (Royce, 2002), which, according to Bezerra (2011), involves “the knowledge and use of language concerning the visual, gestural, audio and spatial dimensions of communication, including computer-mediatedcommunication (in Heberle, 2010, p. 102) besides the other communicative competences described by Hymes (1972) and Canale and Swain (1980).” Royce (2007) argued that teachers as professionals should begin to focus on and develop students’ abilities in visual literacy, and to develop a pedagogical metalanguage to facilitate these abilities when images co-occur with spoken and written modes. The availability of multimodal texts and multimodal technology in the classroom
136 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan requires students and teachers to have sufficient multimodal communicative competence with ELF awareness in mind. We call this ELF-based multimodal communicative competence (ELF-MCC). Only when equipped with this competence will they be able to nurture their students’ 21st century communication skills. As ELF-MCC is necessary for both students and teachers, studies to understand how students and teachers make meaning multimodally in classroom settings should be done simultaneously. Unfortunately, studies on multimodality as seen from the students’ angle can be more easily found than those seen from the teachers’. Multimodal communicative competence studies with the emphasis on students’ multimodality have been done, for example, by Ciekanski and Chanier (2008); Jaen & Basanta (2009); Manoli (2013); Salbego, Heberle & da Siva Balen (2015); Carcamo et al. (2016); Zhang (2016); and Ganapathy and Seetharam (2016), while studies seen from the teachers’ angle have been done by Marquez, Izquierdo & Espinet (2006); Grushka and Donnelly (2010); Bezerra (2011); Rowsell & Walsh (2011); and Wandera (2016). In the Indonesian context, not many studies on multimodality have been reported, although multimodal texts and multimodal communication in Indonesian ELF classroom settings are enhanced by the introduction of the 2013 Curriculum, in which the textbooks suggested by the Government are more multimodal than before. We find Hermawan & Noerkhasanah (2012), who explored the traces of cultures in English textbooks for primary education; Ena (2013), who studied the visual analysis of e-textbooks for senior high school in Indonesia; and Damayanti (2014), who studied textual analysis of four English language textbooks used in Indonesian primary schools. The only work discussing multimodal communicative competence from teachers’ perspective is the one reported by Sukyadi, Hermawan & Dallyono (2016), which explored the processes of transduction and transformation of semiotic resources in an English classroom. The present study aimed to examine secondary English teachers’, undergraduates’, and graduate students’ ELF-MCC awareness.
Method Subjects There were three groups of subjects involved in this study. The first was 45 senior high school teachers consisting of eight male and 37 female teachers with the range of teaching experience between two and 38 years. They were members of English Special Interest Group of Bandung City. The second consisted of 48 undergraduate pre-service teachers with 11 male and 37 female students who had attended Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) classes. SFL classes were considered because multimodality development in some ways cannot be separated from SFL, such as the application of SFL theory to analyze visual modes. The third group was 32 postgraduate students consisting of ten male and 22 female students; some were fresh graduates, while others were not teachers but had teaching experiences both when they were students and a couple of years after
Multimodal communicative competence 137 graduation. Both undergraduate and postgraduate students involved were registered as active students at a state teaching university in Bandung. Senior high school teachers were selected to reveal whether or not they were aware of and had dealt with multimodality in their daily professional practice. Undergraduate and postgraduate students were chosen to find out whether the SFL course had equipped them with knowledge and awareness about multimodality, whether they could put the knowledge into multimodal data analysis, and whether their awareness and ability were influenced by length of study. Systemic functional linguistics is a fundamental basis for the knowledge and awareness of multimodality as many of its theories, especially the metafunction theory, serves as the underlying theory of multimodal, hence multimodality, research. Instrument Three instruments developed based on the multimodal communicative competence framework were used in this study. The first was designed to reveal teachers’ awareness, knowledge, and practice about multimodality, with 24 questions, mostly open-ended ones. Questions 1–10 explored respondents’ general teaching competence, such as the concept of teaching competence, teaching stages, and teaching techniques. Questions 11–24 were to reveal teachers’ knowledge and experiences in dealing with multimodal resources in the classroom, such as multimodal textbooks, body language, and classroom space. The second instrument was developed to reveal undergraduate and graduate students’ knowledge and awareness about multimodality. It had 44 statements covering nonverbal grammar competence (24 questions), sociocultural competence (five questions), actional competence (three questions), strategic competence (seven questions), and discourse competence (five questions). This questionnaire was distributed to undergraduate and graduate students, who responded to it by selecting one of the five scales indicating their familiarity (rather familiar, familiar, more familiar, very familiar, very-very familiar) with each statement. The higher the scale they chose, the more familiar they were assumed to be with the concept stated. The final questionnaire consisted of a picture with the background of a rice field, rice sacks, and a car for transporting the rice to the distribution system. On the left side of the picture were two persons with black uniforms, while on the right were also two persons, a male farmer and a female government official. One of the men on the left was offering money to the farmer, the official in uniform was looking at the buyer holding the money but her fingers point to the farmer, urging the farmer not to accept the money. A big note in capital letters was printed in the picture asking the farmer not to sell the paddy then: “Wait, don’t sell it now.” On the right were 15 multimodal analysis statements derived from multimodality theory. The participants responded by selecting one of the five scales supplied in every statement, which could be about verbal, visual, spatial, and gestural mode (see Figure 8.1). This questionnaire was intended to reveal the respondents’ competence in multimodal text analysis.
138 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan Data analysis The first instrument was analyzed qualitatively by examining every answer of the respondents to each question using content analysis technique. All answers were then categorized and used as the bases for drawing conclusions. The second and third questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively using frequency and descriptive data to reveal multimodal communicative competence and multimodal analysis awareness of both undergraduate and graduate students. In addition, a t-test was used to compare multimodal communicative competence awareness between undergraduate and graduate students.
Results In-service teachers’ multimodal communicative competence Based on the questionnaire results, we found that many of the teachers incorrectly believe that language communicative competence includes the ability to select effective teaching aids (22 responses), the ability to choose teaching techniques and methods (16 responses), the ability to design lesson plans (eight responses), and the ability to select and use appropriate assessment (seven responses) among the skills and knowledge that constitute language communicative competence. The analysis also shows that the knowledge/skills the teachers believe to constitute language communicative competence are: (1 response) using effective teaching aids; (2 responses) using appropriate gestures in communication; (3
Figure 8.1 A multimodal text excerpt from the Ministry of Agriculture, Human Resource Support and Development Agency Source: Ministry of Agriculture (2016) Retrieved from: http://cybex.pertanian.go.id/ materipenyuluhan/detail/11084/iklan-layanan-masyarakat-sebagai-alternatif-media-penyuluhan, with permission
Multimodal communicative competence 139 responses) using correct grammatical rules; (4 responses) using appropriate cohesive devices to organize ideas; (5 responses) being able to speak English fast; (6) using context appropriate words and expressions; (7 responses) being able to design lesson plans; (8 responses) being able to choose and select appropriate assessment tools; and (9 responses) being able to select and use teaching techniques and methods. It is interesting to note that being able to speak English fast is also included as a skill constituting language communicative competence. As the result shows, teachers do not have a good theoretical understanding of what constitutes language communicative competence. In fact, theoretical understanding often serves as a guide for practitioners in one field to carry out their practice. That teachers do not have a clear understanding of what constitutes language communicative competence may mean that their teaching practices are not theoretically well-guided. Most of these teachers (32 responses) realized that the English textbooks they use as the main learning source contain more pictures compared to the textbooks they used in the past. This may be understood as sign of awareness among the teachers of the increasing use of pictures as a mode to convey meanings beside the verbal text as the main mode to convey English content subject; that English textbooks are becoming more multimodal. Nevertheless, many of the teachers do not understand how these pictures relate to the teaching topics presented in the textbooks. They are of the opinion that the pictures are there to motivate students to learn, as the pictures can be attractive in appearance, which may facilitate students’ understanding of the topic discussed. Regardless of the fact that the teachers do not completely understand how the pictures may relate to the teaching topic, almost all of them will discuss the pictures and how they may connect with the topic every time the pictures appear together with a reading passage or with the material being discussed at the time. The teachers would ask the students what is in the pictures, what elements or features of the pictures are related to the topic being discussed. Some teachers would also ask students to work in groups and share their impressions with the members – basically, what can they say about the pictures? This is an interesting phenomenon: if, as they themselves say, they do not completely see the relevance of the pictures to the teaching topic/material, then how can they discuss the connection of the pictures with the students? This needs further investigation that is beyond the scope of our present discussion. When asked further about the possible meaning relation or the logico-semantic relation between the picture and the verbal texts that appear on the same page in their textbook, such as in Figure 8.2, many of the teachers (33 responses) believed that the picture and the verbal text ideationally relate to each other. However, they lack the vocabulary to describe the meaning relation between the co-present modes. That teachers are quite aware of the increasing use of pictures in language textbooks, and that these pictures may ideationally relate to the verbal text, are good signs. Teachers need to be equipped with the skill and knowledge to deal with textbook as multimodal texts – texts that call for the discussion that all modes are co-present and are used to convey the content of the subject. Teachers need to
140 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan
Figure 8.2 A multimodal text excerpt from a secondary English textbook, When English Rings the Bell, p. 2 Source: Ministry of Education and Culture (2014)
learn how to “read” to understand pictures as they usually read to understand verbal reading passages. They need to learn the metalanguage to describe how pictures and the verbal text interact or collaborate to carry the messages of the subject. This skill and knowledge are of course aimed at facilitating students to learn the material more effectively. This is further translated as the need to increase teachers’ language competence and “upgrade” it to teachers’ multimodal competence. Undergraduate in English education students’ awareness of multimodal communicative competence In the present study, we examined multimodal communicative competence awareness of undergraduate and graduate students studying English in an ELF context. Multimodal communicative competences investigated include grammatical competence, sociocultural competence, strategic competence, actional competence, and discourse competence. We conceptualize that in order to be able to use different modes effectively, one should be competent in all communicative competence components. With this in mind, the data reveal that for undergraduate students, strategic competence and sociocultural competence are what they are most aware of (3.99), followed by grammatical competence (3.98), discourse competence (3.85), and actional competence (3.60). In grammatical competence, gestural mode (4.06) is the most widely recognized, not visual mode
Multimodal communicative competence 141 (3.80), while in sociocultural competence, visual mode is more easily recognized than spatial and gestural modes. Then, in actional competence, visual mode is the most easily seen, followed by spatial and gestural mode. In strategic competence, the most widely recognized is spatial mode, followed by gestural and visual modes. Their familiarity with multimodal text analysis statement is 3.90, while the total mean score of undergraduate multimodal communicative competence awareness is 3.88, which is considered as high (see Figure 8.3). When we see the frequency, the respondents were mainly familiar with the multimodal communicative competence mentioned in every statement of the questionnaire. However, there are three statements to which the respondents showed lower familiarity. The first one concerns visual grammar seen from the gestural mode. To the statement, “As a suggestive gesture, an open palm suggests giving or receiving, usually of an idea, while a shrug of shoulders indicates ignorance, perplexity, irony,” 35% answered very familiar, 33.3% more familiar, and 27.1% very-very familiar, while 4.2% answered rather familiar. The second question is on actional competence seen from the perspective of spatial mode. To the statement, “When someone is too close to our space and we respond slowly by moving away to maintain ideal space, we invite him to keep approaching,” 39.6% responded very familiar, 25% more familiar, 16.7% familiar, 12.5% very-very familiar, and 6.3% rather familiar. The third statement indicating lower familiarity is question number 31, “Seeing the students dozy, the teacher dismissed the class.” To this statement, 42.6, 21.3, 19.1, and 12.8% were, respectively, more familiar, very familiar, familiar, and very-very familiar. However, 4.3% of the students were rather familiar with the statement.
4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Grammatical Competence
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Figure 8.3 Multimodal communicative competence awareness of undergraduate English education students
142 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan Graduate English education students’ awareness of multimodal communicative competence Descriptive analysis of the data revealed that respondents’ awareness of multimodal knowledge is 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 5. In the scale, 1 is interpreted as very low, 2 low, 3 average, 4 high, and 5 very high, so the familiarity of the respondents with multimodal basic concepts is high. These results indicate that the participants are familiar and agree with the statements concerning concepts and understanding about multimodal communicative competence which include verbal, visual, spatial, and gestural modes. The data also indicate that the respondents’ most familiar competence starts with sociocultural competence (4.12), followed by nonverbal grammar competence (4.00), strategic competence (3.92), discourse competence (3.83), and finally actional competence (3.71) as the least known component. The data may indicate that the respondents’ focus when communicating was firstly on sociocultural competence, followed by nonverbal grammar competence, strategic competence, discourse competence, and finally on actional competence. If we take a look at every component in each competence, we see that in grammatical competence, spatial grammar (3.19) is the most widely known, while visual grammar is the least known (3.18). In sociocultural competence, gestural aspect is the most recognized, while spatial is the least identified. In strategic competence, spatial mode is the most recognized, while visual is the least recognized. Finally, in actional competence, visual mode is the most recognized, while gestural mode is the least recognized. In actional competence, we see that respondents do not consider “students’ drowsiness” as part of body language that may lead a teacher to dismissing a class (see Figure 8.4). Comparison of multimodal communicative competence revealed that as a whole, there was no significant difference in multimodal communicative competence awareness (t(71) = 1.72, P = 0.08) between undergraduate and graduate students. However, when comparison was made at component levels, differences were found in multimodal grammar competence (t(77) = –2.012, P = 0.048), and multimodal actional competence (t(76) = 2.846, P = 0.006). Based on the observed means, multimodal grammar competence of graduate students (4.09) is better than that of undergraduate students (3.93), while multimodal actional competence of graduate students (3.17) is lower than that of undergraduate students (3.60). This may indicate that exposure to SFL experienced by graduate students when they were in their undergraduate and graduate classes may contribute to some extent to their higher awareness in multimodal grammar competence. The fact that it is not the case for multimodal actional competence may be because it is not explicitly addressed in undergraduate or graduate classes, and therefore it was considered as a new concept by both undergraduate and graduate students. Further analysis shows that no differences in multimodal communicative competence awareness were found in sociocultural competence (t(75) = –1.605, P = 0.113), strategic competence (t(77) = 0.16, P = 0.105), and discourse competence (t(76) = 0.194, P = 0.84) (see Figure 8.5).
Multimodal communicative competence 143 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Grammatical competence
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Figure 8.4 Multimodal communicative competence awareness of graduate English education students 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Graduate
Undergraduate multimodal grammar multimodal strategic multimodal discourse
Multimodal communicative competence
multimodal sociocultural multimodal actional multimodal analysis
Figure 8.5 Comparison of multimodal communicative competence awareness between undergraduate and graduate in English education students
Undergraduate and graduate English education students’ awareness of multimodal text analysis When a multimodal text in instrument 3 was exposed to graduate students and they were asked to indicate their degree of familiarity towards 15 statements of multimodal text analysis, their average familiarity was 3.53 on a 1 to 5 scale, indicating that their multimodal understanding is above average. The highest familiarity was on statement 6 (“The body language of the lady in uniform suggests confidence and power”) with an average of 4.28, while the least familiar was on number 13 (“The yellow dress the lady is wearing indicates that she wants to make the farmer next to her happier”) with an average of 2.68. It is interesting to
144 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan note that there are three statements in which the percentage of least familiarity is above 10%. The first statement is about represented participants. Around 12.5% of the participants indicated least familiarity when it was stated that there were at least seven represented participants in the picture. This may indicate that the concept of represented participants was still unclear for the participants. In functional grammar, represented participants can be people, places, or things (people, a car, sacks of paddies, a paddy field). The participants may think that represented participants were only people. The second statement was concerned with the concepts of actor and goal among represented participants. In the picture, the man in a black uniform offers money to the farmer as a sign of his willingness to buy the farmer’s paddy. Therefore, the origin of the action is the buyer, while the goal is the farmer. Familiarity on statement “The man which is offered money is the goal” indicated that the respondents were still confused about the terms actor, goal, offer, and demand. This would lead them to have difficulty when understanding multimodal texts related to the topic. The third-least agreed statement was the use of colour to represent particular moods of feelings (“The yellow dress the lady is wearing indicates that she wants to make the farmer next to her happier”). Colours have symbolic meanings depending on the contexts. Yellow, for example, in Western culture may indicate happiness, cheerfulness, caution, decay, or sickness. When the yellow dress worn by the government official was interpreted as suggesting the farmer should not sell his paddy right after the harvest, 14.6% of the participants indicated their least familiarity. This lowest familiarity may indicate that the participants in the present study did not have a strong grasp to the role of colour in representing mood of feelings. The rest of the statements were well agreed by the participants with a familiarity around scale 3–5 with a percentage above 25%. There are four statements with a familiarity on scale 4 more than 50%: “The lady extending her hand and wearing a uniform is the reactor” (54.2%); “The body language of the lady in uniform suggests confidence and power” (52.1%); “The visual weight of the image is on ‘tunggu jangan jual sekarang’ or ‘wait, don’t sell it now’” (54.25); and “The picture exhibits occurrences of the process of doing or happening” (50%). In addition, there was one statement with familiarity at scale 5 above 50%: “The picture employs verbal, visual, spatial, and gestural modes” (54.2%). This high level of familiarity indicated that the participants agreed and were familiar with the multimodal text given. The average familiarity of undergraduate students with multimodal text analysis is 3.9 or above the average, with statement number 2 (“There are at least seven represented participants in the pictures”) as the least familiar, and number 6 (“The body language of the lady in uniform suggests confidence and power”) as the most recognized statement. When the familiarity of multimodal text analysis between undergraduate and graduate students was compared, it was revealed that the average of the multimodal analysis awareness for undergraduate students is 3.90, while that for graduate students is 3.53, which is significantly different (t(77)
Multimodal communicative competence 145 = 3.376, P = 0.001). In other words, undergraduate students have higher awareness in analyzing multimodal texts (3.90) than graduate students (3.53). From the curriculum of undergraduate students, it is seen that in addition to taking a course in SFL, the undergraduate students were also exposed to courses related to functional grammar and multimodality such as advanced grammar, pragmatics, semantics, research projects, or seminars in TEFL. We may speculate that undergraduate students experienced more practice in multimodality through those courses, but not all graduate students participating in this study took functional grammar classes when they were at their undergraduate programs. They were introduced to functional grammar in their graduate education, where they were rarely exposed to the practice of analyzing multimodal texts.
Discussion Based on the findings above, senior high school teachers participating in this study seem to confuse communicative competence and teachers’ competence. When the respondents were asked to describe skills that constitute language communicative competence, their lists were filled with pedagogical content knowledge, such as selecting effective teaching aids, choosing teaching techniques and methods, designing lesson plans, selecting and using appropriate assessments, and using effective teaching aids. However, communicative competence components also appear in their lists, such as using appropriate gestures in communication (multimodal competence), using correct grammatical rules (linguistic competence), using appropriate cohesive devices to organize ideas (discourse competence), and using context-appropriate words and expressions (social competence). It is interesting to note here that using appropriate gestures is considered as part of communicative competence, indicating that the respondents are aware that gestures play a significant role in the success of communication. In other words, although the respondents may not yet be familiar with the term multimodality, they see that teaching activities can be realized through various modes, including verbal and gestural modes. Their awareness of modes other than verbal modes would lead to multimodal representation, including in giving instruction in the classrooms. In this context, Teledahl (2012) revealed that teachers’ recognition of different ways of expressing mathematical ideas has a great impact on students’ choice of mode of representation. Emergent awareness of the respondents on multimodality can also be seen in their evaluation that the present secondary English textbooks include more pictures than the previous books. They see that pictures in a textbook have some roles and functions, even though they are not explicitly aware of the relations between visual and verbal modes existing in the book. They indicate that pictures in a book could attract the students’ attention, motivate the students to learn, and increase their understanding of the teaching materials, which is a good sign of possibility for the improvement of their teaching performance. When the respondents were exposed to pictures in their teaching and learning process, most of them tried to discuss them, and connected them to the topic of the lesson. They
146 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan commonly asked the students to reveal their understanding about represented participants in the pictures, how they interacted with the topic being discussed, and even shared their understandings with each other. They mostly manipulated the pictures by asking what the picture was about, who were in the pictures, and how the pictures related to the theme of the lesson. The respondents’ emergent awareness of multimodality appeared when they believed that verbal and visual modes in a textbook were ideationally related, although they could not state explicitly the nature of the relations in multimodal technical terms. Their discussion on both verbal and visual modes tended to be superficial and limited to what they could observe through the naked eye. However, although they were not aware of the multimodal nature of classroom teaching and learning explicitly, multimodal representation on the part of teachers and students was reported to take place. Kress (2003), and Sukyadi et al. (2016) found that the teacher they observed used five types of semiotic resources in conveying her teaching materials, including verbal, written, visual, gestural, and actional modes such as seating arrangement and groupings. In a rather different environment, teachers used varied communication modalities in the instruction of learners with hearing impairment (Nsereko, 2010). Sukyadi et al. (2016) asserted that changes in modality in the form of transduction and transformation also took place in the classroom. Meanwhile, the questionnaire designed and distributed to reveal their degree of familiarity towards multimodality key concepts indicated that both undergraduate and graduate students had a sufficient familiarity towards the statements, indicating that they may have good knowledge and understanding about multimodality theory and concepts. It can also be a sign that multimodal communicative competence also persists in the respondents’ multimodality knowledge structure. In addition to having good knowledge about multimodality, the respondents also have good knowledge concerning how to read and make sense of a multimodal text. When the respondents are exposed to a multimodal text, they may be able to discuss it using multimodal metalanguage. This may be because they have already had a one-semester course in SFL, which is the basis for multimodal text analysis. The present findings are in accordance with previous ones highlighting that prospective teachers have already dealt with and had some understandings about multimodality (Ajayi, 2010; Bustos, 2015). When we compare the multimodal communicative competence of secondary school English teachers and that of graduate and master’s in English education students, it is clear that secondary school teachers need a metalanguage to be able to acquire, talk about, and use multimodal communicative competence and its related issues in English language teaching (ELT) more effectively, while graduate and postgraduate students need more practice in understanding, analyzing, and using multimodal resources to make the teaching and learning process more effective. However, because multimodal communicative competence will be used in ELF contexts, metalanguage related to basic concepts and understanding of ELF is also necessary. In order to be able to talk about multimodality, English teachers need to have basic understanding about SFL, grammar of visual design,
Multimodal communicative competence 1
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and multimodality. In short, secondary teachers should have the understanding that images can be read as texts, and the way we read images is similar to the way we understand verbal texts in SFL. Texts are represented by process types, mood, perspective, social distance, lighting, color, modality, salience, reading path, vectors, and compositional axis, aided by the use of gestures, spaces, and distance. To this end, recognizing the concepts per se would not be sufficient. English teachers should be exposed to reading multimodal texts critically and also producing multimodal texts together with the students. Metalanguage needed by English teachers to be able to communicate multimodally in the context of ELF is more complex. Firstly, although the present-day English teachers’ perspectives on ELT were mainly nurtured by the inner-circle native norms of English (Deniz, Özkan & Bayyurt, 2016), they have to deviate from a monolithic framing of language competence in terms of native speaker norms and practices” (Jenkins & Leung, 2017; Fang 2017). The reason is that the pedagogic model derived from the native speaker-based notion of communicative competence, with its standardized native speaker norms, is found to be a dream, impossible, and confining in relation to English as an international language (Alptekin, 2002). While it is impossible for non-native speakers of English to reach the same level of fluency as that of native speakers of English, native speakers of English themselves do not speak the same variety of English, and in real communication we cannot stick to one native variety of English. They should derive and frame their teaching model based on competent users of English. Ur (2010) correctly stated that the model for teachers in the context of ELF should be the “fully-competent ELF user, without defining whether such a speaker was or was not originally a ‘native speaker.’ It is not the ‘native-speakerness’ of the model speaker which interests teachers: it is simply the level of proficiency” (p. 87). They should aspire to become competent English users and become the model for their students. They also should respect and appreciate competent non-native English speakers in the same way they respect native users of English. Secondly, English teachers teaching in an ELF context need to be aware of the intricate relations among language, culture, multimodality, and language teaching. Multimodal communication in ELF contexts should be treated case by case, the main concern being the cultural background of whom we are communicating with. When representing meanings through verbal, visual, gestural, and spatial modes, teachers should be aware of cultural aspects in multimodal communication. Different interlocutors will have different first languages, cultures, and world experiences that will differentiate how they employ semiotic resources to make meanings. English teachers should differentiate, for example, how they communicate with colleagues from Western countries and with those from Middle East because the way they claim space is different. Representing meaning through the visual mode is also culturally distinguished. For South African, red is a mourning color, while for Indonesian people it is a color of courage. The same case is applied for the gestural mode. Japanese people will bend down their body to show respect or deep thanks, while Thai people will press their two arms and put them on their chest accompanied by head nod. Those differences influence how verbal,
148 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan visual, spatial, and gestural modes are deployed in meaning negotiations. English teachers teaching in an ELF context should not only nurture their students to acquire a good command of English, but also introduce them to various types of semiotic resources and how they are used in different parts of the world to represent meaning. Thirdly, English teachers should underpin their multimodal communicative practice in teaching and non-teaching contexts with an ELF concept in mind. Deploying multimodal resources in the classroom needs to be accompanied by the awareness that the learning outcomes to be acquired will be used both in EFL and ELF contexts. Kohn (2015) has emphasized the need for ELT to create a pedagogical space for ELF. He has argued for ELT to embrace the non-native speakers’ own English, guided by their (weak) Standard English orientation, pushed by their communicative needs and identity aspirations, and being fueled by their own creativity. In the context of ELF in ASEAN, principles of a lingua franca approach to teaching English in ASEAN were offered by Kirkpatrick (2014) and modified by Kobayashi (2017). The principles mainly outline that: (1) native speakers’ language is not the linguistic target, but mutual intelligibility; (2) native speaker’s culture is not the cultural target, but intercultural competence in relevant culture; (3) local multilinguals who are suitably trained provide the most appropriate English language teachers; (4) lingua franca environments provide excellent learning environments for lingua franca speakers; (5) spoken is not the same as written; and (6) assessment must be relevant to the ASEAN context. This lingua franca approach should be followed up by adequate teaching material development as indicated by Jenkins (2012) and Cogo (2015), and ELF-aware teacher education starting from preparation, from extensive education courses for preservice teachers to smaller training programs for in-service teachers (Sifakis and Bayyurt, 2015). Teacher education underpinned by ELF awareness, according to Sifakis and Bayyurt (2015): (1) engage with the principles of ELF; (2) be prompted to form their own understanding of what these may mean for their own teaching context; (3) design whole lessons or individual activities on that basis; (4) teach these lessons or activities; and (5) evaluate the impact of the lessons or activities for their learners, themselves, and other stakeholders. Finally, teacher-education universities should not treat multimodal communicative competence development in ELF context with a business-as-usual approach. Teacher educators should play an active role in preparing their students to be able to communicative in ELF contexts through active intervention in the classrooms (Sifakis, 2008). The intervention may start with the introduction of a lingua franca approach to the teaching of English (Kirkpatrick, 2014), followed by the introduction of multimodal texts in the teaching and learning activities (Dimitriadou, Tamtelen & Tsakou, 2011). Hands-on experience in multimodal communication can be accelerated through global online learning activities. Student teachers are exposed critically to online multimodal texts available on the web. Then, online communication through email, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and other platforms is established as part of school or university projects. Such learning activities require the central government and
Multimodal communicative competence 149 teacher education university management to provide extra resources to extend their global networks through students and faculty exchanges, which can be in the form of overseas teaching practicum and community engagement, cultural performances, conferences, double degrees, credit transfers, joint research, international contests or competitions, in-country training, apprenticeships, and so on. With more and more international students and visiting staff, the opportunities of both students and faculty staff to be exposed to real interculturally multimodal communication will be more frequent, and this in turn will improve our student teachers’ ELF multimodal communicative competence.
Conclusion and recommendations To this end, we have shown that undergraduate and graduate students in English education already had awareness about multimodality knowledge and skills and seemed to be ready to deal with multimodal resources both inside and outside the classroom. They already had metalanguage to talk more academically and more comprehensively about the multimodality phenomena they found in their teaching activities. On the other hand, experienced teachers seemed to be aware of, and be able to detect, multimodal resources they found in their teaching environment, such as textbooks and the internet. Experienced teachers also used different, changed, and transformed modalities in different phases of their teaching to achieve their teaching objectives. However, their understanding was still implicit. They lacked metalanguage to talk about it in a more structured way based on certain theoretical frameworks. Consequently, available semiotic resources in the textbooks, in classrooms, and on the internet have not been explored and used comprehensively to enhance teaching and learning processes. If we want to equip students with the skills needed to live in the 21st century in the context of ELF, it is necessary for prospective teachers and experienced teachers to have explicit understanding and observable skills in multimodality and multiliteracies as part of their communicative competence in ELF contexts. As a pathway of integrating multimodal communicative competence into knowledge and skills of teachers teaching in the ELF context, we propose a multimodal communicative competence. In this model, multimodal communicative competence is divided into verbal communicative competence as modelled by Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei & Thurrell (1995) and Celce-Murcia (2007), and nonverbal communicative competence. Although Knapp (1978) included environmental factors, proxemics, kinesics, touching behavior, physical characteristics, paralanguage, and artefacts into types of nonverbal language, in this chapter we focus our attention on visual, proxemics (spatial), and gestural (kinesics) modes because these three modes are widely studied in the context of multimodality. The visual mode, as suggested by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), has its own grammar, “visual grammar design”. This notion is applied to spatial and gestural modes. However, the term “grammar” we use is not as strict as the application of SFL to the visual mode as suggested by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006). Rather, grammar is understood as a set of rules. To be able to use visual, spatial, and
150 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan gestural modes successfully, a meaning maker should be aware of the rules of how to use them. We call these rules nonverbal grammar competence. In addition, visual, spatial, and gestural modes also have sociocultural, actional, and strategic competences like those of the verbal mode. For discourse competence, we put it into intra-cohesion and intermode cohesion. Both verbal and nonverbal modes are used in the context of ELF, as a tool of communication among individuals of different language backgrounds and cultures. The multimodal communicative competence of English teachers in the ELF context is described in Figure 8.6. The Indonesian education system can incorporate this model through its present subsystems such as national education policy, pre-service teacher education, continuous professional development of teachers, curriculum and materials development, teaching and learning process, and education assessment. At national level, it is timely to redefine literacy not only as being able to read and write per se (KBBI, 2016), but also as being able to read and write using various modes in various intercultural settings, including ELF contexts. Pre-service teacher education, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate levels, should introduce not only knowledge about multimodality, but also skills in using multimodal resources to make their teaching more effective. Curriculum and materials developers need to include multimodal competence into teacher education learning goals and learning materials they produce. Workshops, seminars, and conferences dedicated to developing teachers’ competence should put multimodal communicative
English as a lingua franca
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D
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i s
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Figure 8.6 The multimodal communicative competence model of teachers in the context of English as a lingua franca Source: Adapted from Celce-Murcia et al. 1995
Multimodal communicative competence 151 competence into their discussion agendas. Finally, the teacher competence test (Uji Kompetensi Guru), the exit-level test for undergraduate and postgraduate student teachers, needs to include multimodal competence as part of its testing items. The multimodal communicative competence model should be inherent in every part of a modern teacher education, either at the input level (curriculum, teaching materials, teachers, infrastructure, funding); in the process of teaching and learning (approaches, methods, techniques, teaching aids); or at the output level (assessment). In terms of English teacher education, multimodal communicative competence will play a role in cross-curricular content. It is awareness, skills, and knowledge that should be nurtured in every subject, whether related to language skills or language aspects. Teachers with sufficient multimodal communicative competence will communicate with multimodal awareness, knowledge, and skills in mind, so that they will be able to avoid miscommunication caused by intercultural differences of verbal, visual, spatial, and gestural modes. In this way, multimodal communicative competence should be the concern not only of Indonesian teacher education, but of all teacher education systems in the world.
Note 1 Definitions of the aforementioned fields and their related concepts can be found easily on the web. For example, a brief explanation about SFL can be found at http://www. isfla.org/Systemics/definition.html, while a summary of grammar of visual design is available at http://didisukyadi.staf.upi.edu/2017/12/14/grammar-of-visual-design/ and https://www.englishliteracyconference.com.au/documents/item/1119. In addition, definitions and descriptions of key terms and concepts in multimodality can be examined at https://multimodalityglossary.wordpress.com/.
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Multimodal communicative competence 153 Jenkins, J. (2012). English as a lingua franca from the classroom to the classroom. ELT Journal, 66(4), 486–494. doi:10.1093/elt/ccs040 Jenkins, J. & Leung, C. (2017). Assessing English as a lingua franca. In E. Shohamy & N. H. Hornberger (eds), Language Testing and Assessment, Vol. 7 of Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd edn. New York: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02326-7_7-1 Jewitt, C. (2009). Introduction: Handbook rationale, scope and structure. In C. Jewitt (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. New York: Routledge. Jewitt, C., Bezemer, J. & O’Halloran, K. (2016). Introducing Multimodality. New York: Routledge. KBBI (2016). Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Republik Indonesia. KBBI Daring. https://kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id/ Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. (2013). Bahasa Inggris: When English rings the bell. A student book for SMP Kelas VII. Jakarta: Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual Model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2014). Teaching English in Asia in non‐Anglo cultural contexts: Principles of the ‘lingua franca approach’. In R. Marlina & R. Giri (eds), The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers, and Students (pp. 23–34). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Knapp, M. L. (1978). Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Kobayashi, Y. (2017). ASEAN English teachers as a model for international English learners: modified teaching principles. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27, 682–696. doi:10.1111/ijal.12173 Kohn, K. (2015). A pedagogical space for English as a lingua franca in the English classroom. In: Y. Bayyurt & S. Akcan (eds), Current Perspectives on Pedagogy for ELF (pp. 51–68). Berlin/Munich/Boston: Walter de Gruyter Mouton. Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality: challenges to thinking about language. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 337–340. doi:10.2307/3587959 Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Edward Arnold. Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images. London: Routledge. Manoli, P. & Papadopoulou, M. (2013). Greek students’ familiarity with multimodal texts in EFL. International Journal of Literacy, 9(1), 37–46. Marquez, C., Izquierdo, M. & Espinet, M. (2006). Multimodal science teachers’ discourse in modelling the water cycle. Science Education, 90(2), 202–226. Matsumoto, Y. (2015). Multimodal communicative strategies for resolving miscommunication in multilingual writing classrooms. DPhil thesis, Pennsylvania State University. https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/11276 Mills, K. A. & Unsworth, L. (2017). Multimodal literacy. In Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Education. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/ 9780190264093.013.232 Ministry of Agriculture. (2016). Iklan layanan masyarakat sebagai alternatif media penyuluhan. Jakarta: Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Human Resource Support and Development Agency. Retrieved from: http://cybex.pertanian.go.id/materipenyuluha n/detail/11084/iklan-layanan-masyarakat-sebagai-alternatif-media-penyuluhan with permission.
154 D. Sukyadi and B. Hermawan Ministry of Education and Culture. (2014). Buku Bahasa Inggris (Untuk SMA/MA/SMK/ MAK Kelas X Semester 1): When English Rings the Bell. Jakarta: Ministry of Education and Culture, Center for Curriculum and Books. Mori, J. (2003). Construction of interculturality: a study of initial encounters between Japanese and American students. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 36, 143–184. doi:10.1207/s15327973rlsi3602_3 Murray, J. (2013). Composing multimodality. In C. Lutkewitte (ed.), Multimodal Composition: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Nsereko, H. (2010). Multimodal communication in the instruction of learners with hearing impairment. MPhil thesis, University of Oslo, Norway. Pietikäinen, K.S. (2007). English as a lingua franca in intercultural relationships: Interaction, identity and multilingual practices of ELF couples. PhD thesis, University of Helsinki. Rowsell, J. & Walsh, M. (2011). Rethinking literacy education in new times: Multimodality, multiliteracies & new literacies. Brock Education Journal, 21(1), 53–62. doi:10.26522/brocked.v21i1.236 Royce, T. (2002). Multimodality in the TESOL classroom: exploring visual-verbal synergy. TESOL Quarterly, 36(2), 191–205. doi: 10.2307/3588330 Royce, T.D. (2007). Multimodal communicative competence in second language contexts. In T. D. Royce & W. L. Bowcher (eds), New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse (pp. 361–403). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Salbego, N., Heberle, V. M. & da Silva Balen, M. G. S. (2015). A visual analysis of English textbooks: multimodal scaffolded learning. Calidoscópio, 13(1), 5–13. Sangiamchit, C. (2017). English as a lingua franca for online intercultural communication among Thai international students in the UK. PhD thesis, Southampton University, UK. Sifakis, N. (2008). Towards a transformative framework for the professional preparation of ELF teachers. ELF Forum Conference, Helsinki. Sifakis, N.C. & Bayyurt, Y. (2015). Insights from ELF and WE in teacher training in Greece and Turkey. World Englishes, 34(3), 471–484. Stroupe, R. & Kimura, K. (eds) (2015). ASEAN Integration and the Role of English Language Teaching. Phnom Penh: IELTS. Suharti. (n.d.). Darmasiswa Indonesian Scholarships. http://darmasiswa.kemdikbud.go.id. Accessed 5 December 2017. Sukyadi, D., Hermawan, B. & Dallyono, R. (2016). Transduction and transformation of semiotic resources in an English classroom. Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 12(1), 60–72. Takahashi, J. & Yu, D. (2016). Multimodality in the classroom: an introduction. Teachers College, Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, 16(2), i–vi. Teledahl, A. (2012).What counts as signs of learning – teachers’ recognition and interpretation of multiple forms of representations in the mathematics classroom. In J. Bezemer & C. Jewitt (eds), Abstracts of the 6th International Conference on Multimodality. Centre for Multimodal Researcfh and MODE: Multimodal Methodologies for Researching Digital Data, 22–24 August 2012, Institute of Education, London. ThibaultP. J. (2001). Multimodality and the school science textbook. In C. Taylor-Torsello & N. Penello (eds), Corpora testuali per ricerca, tradusionee apprendimento linguistico (pp. 293–335). Padua: Unipress. Ur, P. (2010). English as a lingua franca: a teacher’s perspective. Cadernos de Letras (UFRJ), 27, 85–92.
Multimodal communicative competence 155 Wandera, D. B. (2016). Teaching poetry through collaborative art: an analysis of multimodal ensembles for transformative learning. Journal of Transformative Education, 14(4), 305–326. doi:10.1177/1541344616650749 Zhang, Y. (2016). Multimodal teacher input and science learning in a middle school sheltered classroom. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(1), 7–30. doi:10.1002/ tea.21295
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Learning from a teacher’s classroom discourses to re-modify the ELF framework in the ASEAN context A possible way forward? Ribut Wahyudi and Sumti Chusna
Introduction The teaching of English in primary schools in Indonesia has attracted a great deal of research interest. Existing studies relevant to the teaching of English in the Indonesian primary school context have covered topics such as the impact of English instruction (Rachmajanti, 2008), teachers’ competence (Asriyanti et al., 2013), access policy for elementary English education in Indonesia (Zein, 2017a), the role of teachers’ knowledge and beliefs (Hawanti, 2014), and the link between out-of and inside-school English literacy (Setiasih, 2014). In terms of teacher education, research topics have included the preparation of elementary English teachers (Zein, 2015), policy on pre-service education (Zein, 2016a), government-based agencies and the professional development of Indonesian English for young learners teachers (Zein, 2016b), factors affecting professional development needs of elementary English teachers (Zein, 2016c), and professional development needs of primary EFL teachers (Chodidjah, 2007; Zein, 2017b). Nevertheless, none of these previous studies operates within the English as a lingua franca (ELF) framework. This is unfortunate given the potential rise of English teaching in primary schools in Indonesia to be an outlet for the emergence of ELF, which is defined as “a contact language by speakers from varying linguacultural backgrounds, where both the community of speakers and the location can be changing and are often not associated with a specific nation” (Cogo, 2012, p. 98). This argument holds more importance given the fact that ASEAN member countries have committed to using English for economic integration (Stroupe & Kimura, 2015), allowing for the greater need for ELF communication. Our chapter addresses this lacuna by firstly examining a teacher’s teaching practice in an English classroom using Kirkpatrick’s (2014) and Kobayashi’s (2017) ELF frameworks. In doing so, we examine the extent of the teacher’s discourse resonating with either the traditional monolingual approach paradigm or the currently existing ELF frameworks. We employed Foucault’s framework of power relations by referring to Gallagher’s (2008) work as well as Gore’s (1995) technique of power as an analytical discourse procedure. We define teachers’ discourses as understood in Foucault’s concept. Discourses for Foucault are
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employed to make a ‘theory’ which addresses the relationship between knowledge and social control (Walshaw, 2007). Foucault defined discourses as “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak … discourses are not about objects, they do not identify objects, they constitute them” (Foucault, 2010, p. 49). In that definition, discourses are assumed to have the capacity to make objects. In the classroom context, such as in this study, the teacher’s appreciation, the teacher’s effort to normalize or discipline students, suggests that she created particular discourses to achieve particular goals. Disciplining the students in the school is to make them into the desired ‘good,’ ‘useful,’ and ‘docile’ subjects (Grant, 1997).
Current studies on ELF English as a lingua franca has gained global recognition, such as in Europe, America, and Asia (Bowles and Cogo, 2015). It is also recognized in various fields such as linguistics, business English, and academic English (see Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey, 2011) as well as intercultural communication (Wahyudi, 2016), second language acquisition, and English as a foreign language (Jenkins, 2015). In the ELF research trajectory, Jenkins (2015) described three periods of development, with the pioneer research in the 1980s concerned to examine pronunciation and lexico-grammar. The second period was the redefinition of ELF communication characteristics, that is “English that transcends boundary” (p. 55). And the third is the ongoing period of the ELF project, which deals with multilingualism. Here we examine ELF studies in both the global and ASEAN contexts which resonate with the purpose of our study. In the global context, we will discuss Sifakis (2007), Bayyurt & Sifakis (2015), Deniz, Özkan & Bayyurt (2016), Dewey (2012) and Blair (2015); and in the ASEAN and Asian contexts we will discuss Kirkpatrick (2014), Kobayashi (2017), and Sung (2014). ELF studies in the global context Sifakis (2007) and Bayyurt & Sifakis (2015) employed transformative perspectives toward ELF-aware pedagogy. Inspired by Mezirow’s transformative learning, Sifakis (2007, pp. 366–370) proposed five phases of educating teachers of English in the ELF framework: preparation, identification of the core issues in ELF discourse, raising awareness of secondary issues, ELF and pedagogy, and designing an action plan. Bayyurt & Sifakis (2015) discuss ELF-aware teacher education and teacher reflection through several steps with participants from Turkey and Greece. The first step was teachers’ exposure to ELF literature, and the second step was teachers designing ELF-informed lessons or activities. In the third stage, the teachers were required to teach and record their teaching, and in the final stage the teachers were required to make reflections. Deniz et al. (2016) explored “preservice language teachers’ perceptions on ELF related issues” (p. 144). These scholars found that even though the large number of participants “accepted the realities of ELF”, their views and practices where significantly constructed by the
158 R. Wahyudi and S. Chusna standard of inner circle English (Deniz et al., 2016, p. 144). This finding suggests that ELF works remain possible at the theoretical level but remain constrained in practice. Dewey (2012) provides useful and systemic guiding questions which he called “a post normative approach” (p. 166) in teaching English through an ELF framework. The questions ask about the contextual conditions of language use; the suitability of a ‘normative’ approach within a particular context; and the most relevant model and ‘norms’ to be adopted along with their “relative level of importance” and the “additional pragmatic strategies” to be used (Dewey, 2012, p. 166). These questions are helpful to make teachers aware that there are other forms of English varieties outside the dominant category, that is, inner-circle Englishes. The questions are also useful to accommodate the local context which may shape the language use. However, this post-normative approach seemed to focus on the teacher as the primary subject in the classroom, neglecting the other subject, that is, students. Therefore, this approach also does not reflect the aspect of the relations of power between teacher and students in the classroom. If Dewey provided systematic guiding questions on ELF awareness for classroom teaching, Blair’s (2015) work appeared to be contradictory. He merely listed nine points related to ‘post-native’ sociolinguistic and ELF positions” (p. 98) without making connections as to how those different points relate to each other. While Blair (2015) noted that students have a role in and influence on English language teaching (ELT) policy and practice, this work does not discuss the way in which teacher and students relate to each other in terms of power operation. Overall, while previous studies provide helpful steps in creating ELF awareness and implementation, they did not address how the classroom dynamics can be captured in terms of relations of power. This leads to our next argument—that relations of power have the potential to transform ELF research, which tends to separate teachers and students in the pedagogical context. ELF studies in ASEAN and Asian contexts Kirkpatrick (2014) and Kobayashi (2017) are two pioneers of ELF frameworks in the ASEAN region. Kirkpatrick (2014) proposed the following ‘Lingua Franca Approach’ to teach English in Asia, with special mention of the ASEAN context. In this approach, he proposed six principles. The first two principles propose mutual intelligibility and intercultural competence as the goals, rather than orientation to native-like and native-speaker culture. The third principle stresses that suitably trained multilinguals are idealized English language teachers. The fourth principle argues that lingua franca settings provide outstanding learning exposure for lingua franca speakers. The fifth principle highlights the division between spoken and written. The final principle underscores the need for the relevance of assessment in the ASEAN context. Kobayashi (2017, p. 12) modified Kirkpatrick’s (2014) principles due to different respondents:
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“Principle (1) the native speaker is not the only linguistic target. Mutual intelligibility is nothing less than a goal. Principle (2) the native speaker culture is not the only cultural target. Intercultural competence in relevant culture is nothing less than a goal. Principle (3) local multilinguals who are suitably trained provide more appropriate English language teaching than English teachers lacking teacher training and empathy with English learners. Principle (4) Lingua franca environments provide excellent learning environments for international English learners.” Kirkpatrick’s and Kobayashi’s ELF frameworks in the ASEAN context focused on ELF and its pedagogical practices rather than ELF and power. The discussion of power has also been absent from Kobayashi’s (2011) and Sung’s (2014)’s articles. To achieve our aim, we will now discuss Foucault’s concept of power in relation to ELF. (emphasis in original)
Power and ELF The issue of power has not been addressed in mainstream ELF. This is ironic as “power is everywhere because power comes from everywhere” (Foucault, 1981), including from language use or discourse (Walshaw, 2007). Power relations exist, for example, through conversations between interlocutors with a significant age gap, such as adult teacher and primary school children, and also occur in the conversations of people with different cultural backgrounds in diverse ELF contexts. Power does affect teachers’ discourse of language teaching in the classroom. It is through the teacher’s exercise of power that he/she makes students subjected and the subject of their own learning. That students are subjected means that the teacher exercises power over students. That students become the subject of their own learning means that the teacher shares or distributes power to his/her students. Walshaw (2007) described the process of making students as subjects as subjectification. In the latter case, the teacher distributes power to his/her students. Therefore, the teacher’s discourses in the classroom are very important because they affect how learning takes place. ‘Power’ is critical in the ELF context. ELF empowers those whose first language is not English in that they do not have to be bound rigidly to “standard” British or American English, as mutual intelligibility is the goal (Kirkpatrick, 2014; Ur, 2010). In the ELF classroom setting, teachers and students can use English with their own accents so that they do not need to be frustrated if they cannot achieve ‘native-like’ pronunciation as preached by the monolingual approach to ELT. In that regard, the ELF classroom liberates and empowers, as well as representing teachers’ and students’ own identities. Blommaert (2009) describes that in postmodern realities, someone can speak many languages with different degrees of proficiency and that the use of these languages represents particular identities and
160 R. Wahyudi and S. Chusna social categories. For example, the use of English in ELF interactions suggests that someone is “more civilized” (p. 418). The operations of power in the ELF classroom context will help teachers to be well informed on how to make students become the subjects of their own learning using ELF teaching principles. This does not mean that teachers cannot exercise more asymmetrical power over students, as becoming authoritative is sometimes needed (see Riyanti, 2017; Wahyudi, 2018). But through understanding power and ELF, teachers can exercise different subject positions (Walshaw, 2007), for example, to be authoritative, or as the one who makes students the subject of their own learning, which can be adjusted to meet learning needs and create a particular learning environment. We use Foucault’s concept of power relations as proposed by Gallagher (2008) and Gore’s (1995) technique of power as an analytical discourse procedure to guide our analysis. Foucault’s concept of power relations Gallagher (2008) proposed six features of Foucault’s concept of power. Those are: 1 Power exists in the form of actions 2 This principle suggests that power is something that is exercised not owned by somebody. 3 There are multiple forms of power 4 This principle shows that there are different types of power as exercised by different types of peoples such as teacher, student, and manager and so on. 5 Power is distributed and is always in relations with other networks 6 This principle means that power is distributed rather than concentrated. It circulates in the networks of relations. 7 Power works from the smallest point 8 This principle means that power does not only circulate from top down but also bottom up. Power does not only circulate from teacher to students but it can also work from students to teachers. 9 Effects are the foci of investigations, intentions are not the priorities 10 Foucault is interested on the unpredictable effects of power rather than its intensions. Intentions and effects may have little relation but may also contradict. 11 Power as self-government 12 Foucault is more interested in how individuals governs themselves, rather than in hierarchical and formal forms of government. Informed by Foucault’s concept of power, Gore (1995) proposed eight categories of techniques of power in classroom pedagogy: 1 Surveillance 2 This technique of power includes observing, supervising, and watching. 3 Normalization
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4 This technique is defined as “invoking, requiring, setting or confronting to a standard –defining the normal” (p. 171). 5 Exclusion 6 This technique is “to mark the reverse side of normalization” and is used as “a way of pathologizing particular practices” (p. 173). 7 Classification 8 This technique is used to differentiate groups or individuals among their peers. 9 Distribution 10 This technique includes arrangement, isolation, separation, and ranking. 11 Individualization 12 This technique deals with “giving individual character to oneself or another” (p. 178) for example through the repetitive use of “I”. 13 Totalization 14 This technique is exercised by giving “collective character” such as through the use of the word “we.” 15 Regulation 16 Regulation means to control, restrict, and invoke rules including “sanction, reward and punishment” (p. 180).
The current study Context This research was conducted at a private school in East Java, Indonesia. The following aspects may shape the power relations between teacher and students in the classroom (see Wong, 2016). The students are from mixed cultures (Javanese, Madurese, and Arabic descendants). Arabic descendants tended to be actively criticizing the teacher, while the others tended to be silent and obey the teacher’s instruction. Students’ behavior was reported in daily, mid-term, and final evaluations. The school applies and cultivates Islamic values as the obligation of wearing veils for both female teachers and students, practicing praying at the opening and closing courses, and surah recitation before going home. The teacher enacted both teacher-centered learning and student-centered teaching methods. Two school subjects—civic education and character building—were given to teach moral values to students as mandated by the school-based curriculum (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan, KTSP) (Qoyimah, 2016). The teacher directly reprimanded students who misbehaved in the classroom. The data collection took place in October 2014, involving a 28-year-old female teacher. A Moslem and Javanese, the teacher gained her undergraduate degree from teacher training education in 2011. She had been teaching English in the primary school for five months. Prior to this, the teacher had taught English for two years at another Islamic primary school. The teacher was purposively selected because she was recommended by the School Principal. The recommendation was
162 R. Wahyudi and S. Chusna made because the teacher was the only one who had gained a bachelor’s degree in English. Purposive sampling is the most appropriate method if the participants are limited (Patton, 2002). The selection of this teacher is relevant in this study because both teacher’s and students’ first language is not English. It is in this context that teacher’s and students’ interactions in the classroom can be categorized as ELF interaction (Cogo, 2012). Data collection A classroom observation was conducted on one session of the English course. The learning activity was videotaped using a Canon Camera IXUS 185. The teacher then was interviewed twice (one interview and one stimulated recall) through semi-structured interviews with open-ended answers in the Indonesian language. This type of interview is “useful when collecting attitudinal information” (Fox, 2009, p. 6). The Indonesian language was used to create a relaxed situation and to make it easier for the respondent to express her feelings. All the interview questions were made by the first author. The stimulated recall interview questions were made after the second author transcribed the videotaped data. Before conducting the interviews, the first author explained the list of questions to the second author, and the second author was given a chance to clarify the questions and was given the relevant references on Foucault’s works. Further data were collected through short phone calls and WhatsApp chats using a Samsung Galaxy J1 Ace J110 H recorder. The list of interview questions was made by referring to the above studies of Foucault’s works such as, among others, Gallagher (2008) and Walshaw (2007), to explore the issue of power relations. The questions related to ELF were made by referring to, among others, Kirkpatrick (2014) and Lauder (2008). The teacher’s understanding of ELF was clarified through phone calls or WhatsApp chat by the second author. The interview questions covered the teacher’s educational background, pedagogical knowledge, the explanation of teaching method in the classroom, the reasons why the teacher did what she did in the classroom, the teacher’s understanding about ELF, why the teacher corrected students’ pronunciation, and what variety of English the teacher taught in the classroom and school context. To explore the information about school contexts, Wong’s (2016) article was used as a guidance by the second author to ask questions of the teacher. Data analysis The first author read the data transcripts and watched the videotaped classroom observation several times. Then he highlighted the key words (see Walshaw, 2007), which indicate power operation by using the six features of Foucault’s concept of power proposed by Gallagher (2008) and by carefully referring to the eight techniques of power proposed by Gore (1995). Furthermore, the first author examined the transcript to identify the part where teacher oriented herself, if available, toward British or American English because these two varieties are dominant in Indonesian ELT (Dardjowidjojo, 2000; Lauder 2008). The finding
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of this analysis is used to propose Foucault’s concept of power to complement Kirkpatrick (2014) and Kobayashi (2017).
Findings and discussion The hegemonic inner-circle English The dominance of American and British English was evident in the teacher’s teaching practices, as can be seen from the following excerpts. (All transcriptions refer to the Cambridge Online Dictionary; Cambridge University Press, 2017). Excerpt 1: Let’s follow me. Orange juice /ˈɔːr.ɪndʒ dʒuːs/ Orange juice /ˈɔːr.ɪndʒ dʒuːs/ TEACHER: Orange juice /ˈɔːr.ɪndʒ dʒuːs/ is es jeruk. STUDENTS: Orange juice /ˈɔːr.ɪndʒ dʒuːs/ is es jeruk. TEACHER: Good job. TEACHER:
STUDENTS:
Excerpt 2: TEACHER:
Coke /koʊk/ is minuman bersoda. Coke /koʊk/ is minuman bersoda. Good job.
STUDENTS: TEACHER:
Excerpt 3: Now, segelas susu is a glass of milk /ə ɡlæs ɑːv mɪlk/. segelas susu is a glass of milk /ə ɡlæs ɑːv mɪlk/. TEACHER: a glass of milk /ə ɡlæs ɑːv mɪlk/. STUDENTS: a glass of milk /ə ɡlæs ɑːv mɪlk/. TEACHER: a glass of segelas and milk is susu. TEACHER:
STUDENTS:
The teacher’s pronunciation of “a glass of” suggests the use of an American accent. Furthermore, the teacher stated that she asked each of the students to pronounce each of the words taught in the class “to correct each of the students’ pronunciation, if there is something wrong [with the pronunciation], they get embarrassed. Biar semua bisa [so that all students can do it ” The teacher’s preference for using an American accent resonates with Deniz et al.’s (2016) study on the prevalence of American and British Englishes. Correcting students’ pronunciation the way the teacher did suggests that there is ‘standard’ English (e.g. American English). However, there seems to be a contradiction in the teacher’s answer because in the stimulated recall she said she preferred British English. In that case, knowledge about pronunciation she learned from British or American English was used as a technique of power to control students’ pronunciation (Gore, 1995). That the teacher sustained American English by making it only the only legitimate pronunciation knowledge (see Walshaw, 2007) would only sustain the hegemonic norm of American English and was not in line with ELF principles. We do not judge that it is wrong, given the fact that
164 R. Wahyudi and S. Chusna English was firstly introduced to students. But, if using ELF teaching principles, the teacher could be more tolerant of students’ wrong pronunciation because under the ELF framework, mutual intelligibility is the target (Kirkpatrick, 2014) and “no one variety is appropriate as a model for ELF” because “each has its own local peculiarities” (Ur, 2010, p. 88). But tolerating students’ local accent could also be problematic. This is because the teacher may still think that teaching an American or British accent represents a “credible teacher identity” as evidenced by many student teachers in Zacharias’ (2016, p. 336) study. Lim’s (2016) study in Cambodian schools also suggests that, even though teachers have a desirable attitude to intelligible pronunciation teaching, which is the characteristic of ELF, teachers are still bound by a native speaker norm. The teacher’s use of an American/British accent suggests that British and American English have become a disciplinary power—the teachers discipline themselves toward them (see Walshaw, 2007). The teacher’s disciplining herself to use American English needs to be seen as the effect of the history of ELT approaches/methods for secondary schools adopted in Indonesia, such as the grammar translation method, the oral approach, and the audiolingual and communicative approach (from 1945 up to 2012). These ELT approaches/methods were reported to have been shaped by ELT training and the provision of MA and PhD scholarships to US universities for English teachers by the Ford Foundation, a US-based institution (see Dardjowidjojo, 2000; Mistar, 2005). Other actors, such as the British Council, Australia and New Zealand, were reported to have a role in contributing to ELT history in the country, but the emphasis on the role of the Ford Foundation seems to be more significant than the others, as reported in Dardjowidjojo’s (2000) study. Therefore, we would argue that the role of the Ford Foundation has had a very significant effect in disseminating American English through the adopted ELT approaches/methods to which the teacher might have been exposed in the past. Hence, the teacher’s correction of students’ pronunciation using the American pronunciation standard needs to be seen as her alignment with the competing effects of her exposure with the ELT approaches/ methods she had been exposed to and the possibility of the teacher’s aspiration for a credible teacher identity, as revealed in Zacharias’ (2016) study.
Situating the teacher’s teaching in the existing ELF framework When asked about ELF, the teacher clarified what ELF is to the second author. Excerpt 4: How did you teach English as lingua franca? What is it?
INTERVIEWER: TEACHER:
This excerpt suggests that the teacher did not have access to the ELF discourse. This fact may suggest that, even though the ELF discourse has been widely discussed (see Jenkins, 2015) in the expanding circle, such as in Indonesia, the ELF discourse seems not to have reached the teacher’s awareness. It appears that the
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ELF discourse in Indonesia still takes time to penetrate the ELT landscape in the country, with a notable transition currently taking place in other contexts in the country (see Chapter 1 in this volume). The teacher still taught English using the traditional monolingual approach, where inner-circle English (e.g. British and American English) continued to be the target. Power circulates from the teacher to students Excerpt 5: Let’s try again, coffee kopi Koffe Kopi TEACHER: Koffe Kopi TEACHER: Come on honey the foot should not be placed on the chair. If not, the mark for the male students is zero. TEACHER:
STUDENTS:
The teacher’s act to remind the students to not place their foot on the chair and her reminder that students would get zero is a sign of the teacher’s exercise of different techniques of power. The teacher’s statement “come on honey” suggests that teacher watched what a student did. This watching activity is categorized as surveillance (see Gore, 1995). The teacher’s statement “the foot should not be placed on the chair” means that the teacher required the student to be normal, to behave like other normal students. This is categorized as normalization (Gore, 1995). The teacher’s statement “if not, the mark for the male students is zero” shows that the teacher controlled students by giving punishment. This is classified as regulation (Gore, 1995). Excerpt 6: Yes, a hundred. Now boys come to the front. Come to the front don’t be shy, come to the front don’t be shy, come to the front don’t be shy. TEACHER: Hasan stop, be quiet honey. STUDENTS: *quiet* (all names are pseudonyms) TEACHER:
FEMALE STUDENTS:
The teacher’s statement “Yes, a hundred” shows that the teacher gave rewards to students. This is a part of regulation (Gore, 1995). The next statement, “Now boys come to the front” shows that the teacher distinguished between male and female groups. This grouping is called the classification technique of power (Gore, 1995). The next statement, “Hasan stop, be quiet honey” shows that the teacher watched Hasan playing around and asked him to be quiet. The teacher was conducting surveillance of Hasan (Gore, 1995). The school context has a role in shaping teacher and student power relations. For example, in excerpt 6, the teacher asked Hasan to be quiet and then he became quiet. The three school contexts (Islamic culture, assessment of behavior, character education) may function as a network (Gallagher, 2008), which might encourage Hasan to be quiet as he might not want to be reported to his parents.
166 R. Wahyudi and S. Chusna However, the operation of power does not always come from top to bottom, it can also be from the smallest scale (Gallagher, 2008), from student to teacher. In our study, we tried to examine teacher–student power relations from teacher’s use of student-centered learning to explore the possibility that power circulates from student to teacher. Wong (2016) documented that curriculum reform has constructed teacher–student power relations to “feature more student power” (p. 255). Power circulates from student to teacher through resistance Excerpt 7: (This conversation takes place in the whispering games. As the boys’ group loses, one of the boys protests to the teacher.) TEACHER: OK the score is four hundred. An Arabic male student: It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s invalid score, it’s invalid score. TEACHER: It’s okay sweetheart. This is just a game. Everyone, please sit down. A MALE STUDENT: Teacher, the girls cheated on game. It’s not fair. Invalid score. TEACHER: It’s okay kids. It’s just a game.
The example of students’ resistance was when the teacher whispered different words to the female and male student groups. The teacher whispered a word to a female student. This student then whispered the same word to another female student. This continued until all the female students had the chance. The final female student in the group matched the whispered word with the desired picture. This game happened five times for female students. At the end, the teacher gave 500 scores to the female students as their answers were all correct. When it came to the male students’ turn, one student took the available picture before teacher whispered a word to the student. The teacher reprimanded the male student because of doing the task before teacher’s instruction. The teacher asked the male students to do it again. After starting the whispering game again, the male student in the last line uttered an inappropriate word. Responding to this, the teacher asked them to redo the activity. However, some other words were incorrect. At the end, the male students scored 400. When saying “OK the score is four hundred”, the teacher was giving a reward to the male students. This is a technique of power in the regulation category (Gore, 1995). The Arabic student’s statement “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s invalid score, it’s invalid score” is a sign of resistance. Gallagher (2008) classified the student’s resistance as a form of exercising power, that is from the smallest scale. The student who is supposed to have a lower position than the teacher in the Indonesian social academic context exercised power through resistance. Foucault (2000) said that “in power relations, there is necessarily the possibility of resistance because if there were no possibility of resistance … there would be no power relations at all” (p. 292). It might be possible that the Arabic student’s culture in the family encouraged him to be a brave student, although this needs further
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investigation. Furthermore, the teacher’s teaching approach, which combined both teacher- and student-centered learning (as shown in the video and as observed by second author), might also have an impact on this a male Arabic student to protest the result of the game. In student-centered learning, learning occurs in a desirable environment, interpersonal relationships are maintained, and learners are “acknowledged and respected” (McCombs & Whisler, 2007, p. 10). The examples above complement Dewey’s (2012) and Blair’s (2015) studies, as neither discussed power in their works. Furthermore, we would propose power relations to be integrated in Kirkpatrick’s (2014) and Kobayashi’s (2017) ELF frameworks. We argue that the ELF framework in the ASEAN context and beyond needs to incorporate relations of power because it would provide more nuanced understanding and dynamic interaction where the teaching of English is embedded in. We argue that it can be extended beyond the ASEAN context because “relations of power are everywhere because it comes from everywhere” (Foucault, 1981, p. 93). This proposal to integrate power into the existing ELF frameworks extends on Sifakis’ (2007) and Bayyurt & Sifakis’ (2015) works on teacher education in ELF. Our study did not discuss the students’ identities in ELF communication, as has been discussed by Sung (2014), but did discuss the teacher’s possibility to have a credible English identity through her use of an American/British accent. Above all, our significant contribution to the study of ELF is the incorporation of power relations between teacher and students in an ELF classroom, which is underrepresented but crucial in the ELF pedagogic setting.
Implications Proposing our power-informed ELF framework for teacher education policy at primary school level is tricky as English is considered ‘optional’ (Zein, 2017a) in Indonesia. This is because the Indonesian Government has a concern to preserve the teaching of local languages (Kirkpatrick, 2012). Therefore, we second Zein’s (2017a) argument when proposing at least “a minor” unit on elementary English education for English teacher education. Through this minor unit, our proposal for an ELF framework can be introduced. More specifically, our new proposed ELF framework could be possibly accommodated in a two-semester English Language Teacher Professional Development Program (PPG) as Widiati & Hayati (2015) discussed. Widiati & Hayati (2015) explained that in 2010 the Indonesian Government required a one-year PPG program with 36–40 credits to improve teacher quality. Furthermore, these scholars explained that the program goal is to “develop professional English teachers for secondary school level who have four types of competencies: pedagogical, professional (subject matter), social and personality” (p. 129). Further, they describe that the curriculum for the PPG program covers: “(1) Subject-Specific Pedagogy workshop; (2) micro-teaching and or peer teaching; (3) subject matter and or pedagogical knowledge enrichment programs; and (4) teaching internships and action research” (p. 136). These scholars explained that
168 R. Wahyudi and S. Chusna the PPG program for 2013 has nationally been implemented in 10 universities, and the same program in 2014 was still in progress. They argue that the content of the PPG program conforms to the ASEAN Work Plan for Education and the roadmap for the ASEAN Community, as it has the ASEAN Curriculum Sourcebook (ASEAN, 2012) as one of its key references. This curriculum source book consists of five themes: “knowing ASEAN, valuing identity and diversity, connecting global and local, promoting equity and justice and working together for a sustainable future” (p. 5). Widiati & Hayati’s (2015) report shows that there has already been an effort from the Indonesian Government for teacher education in Indonesia to engage in ASEAN Integration through the teaching of English. This report was not designed to examine how the PPG program fits with the existing ELF theoretical framework in the ASEAN context. It is within this program that our proposal for ELF framework could be also integrated. Widiati and Hayati’s (2015) report and Stroupe & Kimura’s (2015) discussion and foreword for ASEAN Integration and the role for English language teaching have laid a good ground for the ELF framework to be examined. In that regard, our ELF framework proposal, along with Kirkpatrick (2014) and Kobayashi (2017), could be considered and adapted to teachers’ own local contexts in other ASEAN countries. These three ELF frameworks can also sit well with other recommendations made by Dudzik & Nguyen (2015), who proposed regional English teacher competency and teacher training curricula, and the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for teaching purposes (Hoo & Gwee, 2015). Through these, the teaching of English at primary school or higher levels may have supported the common goal of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, which is “free movement of goods, services, investment, skilled labour, and freer flow of capital” (ASEAN, 2008).
Concluding remarks The teacher’s use of American and/or British English needs to be seen in the light of several factors, such as the need to be a credible English teacher (Zacharias, 2016); or the effect of her past exposure to the ELT curriculum in Indonesia where American and British Englishes are valued (Dardjowidjojo, 2000); or the strong indication that American and British Englishes have become a disciplinary power (Walshaw, 2007). It was not wrong, but it may not be in line with the theoretical terrain of the ELF framework (Kirkpatrick, 2014; Ur, 2010). Under the ELF framework, the teacher is expected to be more tolerant of students’ “wrong” pronunciation. The future ELF framework has a promising space to be adopted in, for example, the teacher education program in Indonesia. The recent PPG program in Indonesian teacher education (starting from 2013) has integrated ASEAN regional economic integration (Widiati & Hayati, 2015). Our ELF framework proposal could possibly be incorporated into that program. Furthermore, our modified framework, along with other ELF frameworks such as those of Kirkpatrick (2014) and Kobayashi (2017), could be accommodated in other
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regional recommendations, underlining the need for regional teacher competency and curricula (Dudzik & Nguyen, 2015) and ICT in teaching (Hoo & Gwee, 2015). While this may pose another challenge, more work needs to be done. This chapter has shown that it is possible to use teachers’ classroom discourses to remodify the ELF framework in the ASEAN context. The incorporation of the relations of power into the framework, as shown in this study, has provided a promising step in the field.
Acknowledgement We would like to thank the editor of this volume for his constructive and insightful feedback, and the teacher respondent in this study.
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Part III
Epilogue
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10 Enhancing the quality of Indonesian teachers in the ELF era Policy recommendations Bachrudin Musthafa, Fuad Abdul Hamied and Subhan Zein English is now used as a lingua franca by many countries around the world, including the members of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). Since the inception of ASEAN in 1967, in their own unique ways, ASEAN member states have been trying to move closer to integrate themselves by way of engagement in various activities of mutual interests in different domains of social life, including economy, politics, linguistics, culture, and education. The intention for integration has been made manifest with the recent adoption of English as ASEAN’s sole official language (Stroupe & Kimura, 2015), allowing for wider use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) for international communication among people with different national, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds within the ASEAN community (Kirkpatrick, 2012, 2014). The official adoption of English as ASEAN’s working language has major ramifications for ASEAN member states’ educational systems. One major concern has been the production of skilled laborers for the expanding market within the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Broadly translated, this means that the need for a qualified teaching force to support ELF has risen considerably over the past few years. Initiatives have been undertaken by ASEAN member states to revamp English language teaching. Take, for instance, what has happened in Thailand in anticipation of the AEC. At the national level, the majority of the Thai population invest in English, propagating the idea that proficiency in English will lead them to a more successful life. The Thai Government devised strategic plans to support English teaching and learning through recruitment of proficient and competent teachers. Professional development programs such as coaching, mentoring, and professional learning communities are provided, while the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is implemented to evaluate the proficiency of teachers and students (Sermsongswad & Tantipongsanuruk, 2013). Similarly, the socio-economic development of Vietnamese society has been a driving factor for the Government to strengthen English language education. Vietnam has developed the National Foreign Language 2020 Project to equip its citizens with English proficiency, and it is preparing a strong cadre of teachers for it (Phuong & Nhu, 2015). A phenomenon of similar nature is also observed in Brunei. The government of this country has designed a five-year, $25 million Brunei–US English Language Enrichment Project in a series of intensive English-
176 B. Musthafa, F. A. Hamied and S. Zein language courses for teacher trainers and government officials jointly managed by Universiti Brunei Darussalam and the East-West Center in Hawaii, USA. The purpose of this project includes the improvement of communication skills in speaking and writing. What is particularly noteworthy here is that the Government of Brunei provides all of the funding. This US–Brunei program intends to place English-Language Fellows in remote areas in all ten ASEAN countries, where they work with universities and schools in underprivileged locations to help expedite capacity building. In addition, the Brunei Government also organizes customized workshops with ELT organizations such as such as the Singapore-based SEAMEO-Regional English Language Center, while local organizations such as the Brunei English Language Teaching Association hosts regular workshops and programs that aim to nurture interest in the English language (Karim & Sharbawi, 2013). While other ASEAN member states appear to be serious in their preparation of English teachers for ASEAN Integration, it is unclear where Indonesia, as one of the founders of ASEAN, currently stands. Several years ago, educational policymakers in Indonesia made a breakthrough by giving priority status to training and certification of teachers as well as to better management regarding the size and distribution of the teaching force. The overall strategy devised by the Indonesian Government in raising the quality of teachers has been clearly shown in the budget allocation for various different measures in the education sector at the national level; for example, by increasing teachers’ salaries. However, increasing teachers’ salaries does not automatically bring about the expected results, especially when the monitoring mechanism is not easy to implement in practice. The questions become critical of what specific aspects to assess and who should accomplish the assessment, and what “stick-and-carrot” actions could be used to encourage teachers to keep improving their professional performance. Tobias et al. (2014) state that “evidence from recent evaluations of Indonesia’s teacher certification programs suggests that it is unlikely that salary increase alone will lead automatically to improvements in teachers’ performances—there is a need for incentives to be closely linked to demonstrated competence” (p. 21). With the absence of governmental policy directives, the grim picture is the recurrence of Hamied’s (2011) findings. As reported by Hamied (2011), during 2007 and 2008, more than 27,000 teachers and school administrators from approximately 500 schools were assessed. Only a little more than 5% of them were categorized at the basic working proficiency level and above, a level expected of teachers in order to assist their students in reaching intermediate level. The rest of the teachers (95%) are still at intermediate level. Recent studies provide further evidence to Hamied’s (2011) study, demonstrating that the proficiency level and teaching skills of Indonesian local teachers are far from adequate (Asriyanti et al., 2013; Sukyadi, 2015; Zein, 2016). This background gives the impetus to this chapter. The chapter discusses policy recommendations on enhancing the quality of local Indonesian teachers in the ELF era. It starts with the need for a reorientation of the overall purposes of the teaching of ELF to respond to international communication. Then it continues
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with an argument for more systematic efforts to empower teachers and students as both learners and users of the English language. The chapter offers policy recommendations on the quality enhancement of English teachers. Finally, it argues for policy innovations to support teacher education in the ELF era that is responsive to changing needs and contextual demands.
Recommendation 1: Reorientate the objectives of English language education Historically, English in Indonesia was assigned an official role as the first foreign language through Presidential Decree No. 28/1990 (Dardjowidjojo, 1998). The term generally applied when it comes to English language education in the country is English as a foreign language (EFL). As a foreign language, English does not have much social function in people’s day-to-day activities; and as a result, Indonesians’ treatment of the English language has been less than functional. It is this attitude, it seems, that has made the English language so foreign to majority of Indonesian people, including teachers of English in schools. However, over the past decade the use of English has increased dramatically in Indonesians’ day-to-day life (Hamied, 2013; Lamb & Coleman, 2008; Zein, 2018). English is already a compulsory subject in the secondary curriculum; and even though it is only optional in primary schools, nearly all primary schools offer English (Zein, 2017). This is not to mention the proliferation of private English courses (Lamb & Coleman, 2008). Meanwhile, a high value on English proficiency is evident in the labor market. Many employers require applicants to demonstrate strong command of English proficiency, and those graduating from a university overseas are prioritized, being offered a much higher salary than local graduates. Aircraft unanimously announce in English along with Indonesian. Furthermore, national radio and television selectively broadcast in English, while many local television companies fill their program schedules with Hollywood movies and English songs. In the public domain, new products, from soaps to instant noodles, from clothes to novels targeted at young adults, are labeled and promoted in English (Hamied, 2013; Lamb & Coleman, 2008). By the same token, English has recently been adopted as the sole working language of ASEAN, of which Indonesia is a founding member together with Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand (Kirkpatrick, 2012). This adoption in the 2015 ASEAN Charter is a valid international commitment for many Indonesians. This gives rise to a heightened emphasis on the use of English to communicate, work, and trade with its ASEAN counterparts such as Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, The Philippines, Vietnam, and others. Clearly there is an urgent need for Indonesians to be able to communicate successfully in the regional context, that is, with their ASEAN counterparts (Kirkpatrick, 2010, 2012). The increasing use of English in Indonesians’ daily life and the need for English for ASEAN Integration means that the status of English as EFL in Indonesia may no longer serve the purpose. Within the landscape of English language education
178 B. Musthafa, F. A. Hamied and S. Zein in Indonesia, there has been a shift towards ELF in recent years. Various studies have shown how ELF awareness enters the mainstream of English language education (see Dewi, 2014, 2017; Zacharias, 2014, 2016) (see also Chapter 1). Teachers of English in Indonesia have been socialized into the idea that native speakers of English, such as Americans and British people, are the references to whom we should turn when talking about learning English. This is the English as a Native Language (ENL) ideology that has been pervasive throughout the country. Although favoritism towards this ideology persists, teachers are now actually open and enthusiastic about implementing pedagogy with ELF orientation for cultural exploration (Zacharias, 2014). There is also a tendency that teachers are now more willing to develop learners’ awareness of English varieties and emphasize intelligibility rather than accuracy (Dewi, 2017). Furthermore, an ELFaware approach to teaching was deemed useful to boost teachers’ confidence (Zacharias, 2013). It is apparent that the status of English in Indonesia is no longer a “dysfunctional” EFL, where its success has been lamented and adoption of methods to teach it has been widely scrutinized (see Ariatna, 2017; Dardjowidjojo, 2000, Jazadi, 2000). Rather, English is now seen as the language for international communication that can serve as a lingua franca with other ASEAN member states. This is where the ELF approach fits into the Indonesian context. Positioning English as a lingua franca brings with it some significant implications, including the approach, contents of the curriculum, and overall aims of the teaching of ELF (Kirkpatrick, 2012). In this new ASEAN commitment-related orientation, Kirkpatrick (2012: 40) makes the following points:
The goal of the approach is to enable learners to use English successfully in the ASEAN context with other multilinguals. Teachers and students of English in the ELF context by implication do not have to sound like English native speakers; this new orientation would reduce the unnecessary burden (and time to learn) to sound like somebody else. The contents of the curriculum need to include topics of interest to ASEAN/ Asian cultures. This can serve as a locus to develop intercultural competence— the kind of emphatic capacities necessary for sincere communication. In this way, intercultural understanding among students learning English in the ASEAN context would improve, and the learning context could enhance the relevance of using English among people coming from different mothertongue backgrounds’ The curriculum must therefore be designed to allow students to be able to critically engage in discussion about their own cultures, cultural values, and interests in English; this would make the learning and use of English more functional and can lead to their better understanding of themselves as cultural beings. The curriculum needs to include listening materials that familiarize students with the speech styles and pronunciation of their fellow Asian multilingual users of ELF. This would create opportunities for development of learning materials, in which students and teachers from ASEAN member countries may want to participate in a more active and productive way.
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Within this line of reasoning, the focus of classroom teaching is to provide students with exposure to various English accents relevant to the ASEAN context and to develop students’ intercultural competence. These are our proposals for the new objectives of English language education in Indonesia. Potentially, the adoption of the lingua franca approach to the teaching of English provides additional benefits, including making the English language closer to the lives of teachers and learners of English. The teaching and learning of ELF, that is to say, would create a sense of relevance to both local teachers and students alike.
Recommendation 2: Empower teachers and students as ELF users As suggested above, ELF emphasizes a working knowledge of the English language for communicative competence in multicultural environments. Given this thinking, our educational system should pay more attention to providing exposure to intercultural competence. However, this is a major challenge, given the fact that most schools in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, simply do not have the educational resources to empower their students in learning English. Inadequate resources and budget, large class sizes, and low proficiency levels of teachers and students pose some real challenges to achieving high levels of English use across Southeast Asian society (Crocco & Bunwirat, 2014). Considering that many challenges may hinder the effort to improve teachers’ capacity building, pre-service teacher education in the ELF context should be designed and managed with empowerment ideas in mind. Upon completion of their pre-service teacher education program, Indonesia’s teachers of English in the ELF context should be able to manage their own professional development using intellectual and strategic resources available at their disposal. First of all, teacher empowerment is vital. Empowerment occurs when prospective teachers learn what to do and how to do it. Empowering instruction then covers at least two things: conceptual knowledge (of what should be done); and procedural knowledge (of how it should be done). In order for teachers to be able to empower their students, the teachers should first of all experience the situation in which they need to do things and thus learn how to do them. Indonesian teachers of English generally believe that exposure is indeed essential and that practice is a crucial element of proficiency development (Musthafa & Hamied, 2014). They also believe that communication plays a vital role as both a means to and an end of language learning, and that learning English should involve communication using the language. This implies that teachers should be led to view the idea of learning a language (and ELF for that matter) as a lifelong enterprise. Learning ELF is, indeed, a lifelong development. This means that learning English has shifted to the ELF domain by bringing to the fore utilitarian values of learning English (Musthafa & Hamied, 2014), especially those that are relevant to the use of English in the ASEAN context and materials that contain cultures from the ASEAN member states (Kirkpatrick, 2012, 2016). From this experience, teachers are then in a position to reflect on what they have learned and to examine if the way they did things has served the purpose of using English as a lingua franca.
180 B. Musthafa, F. A. Hamied and S. Zein To reiterate the idea at a more concrete level of articulation, we can say that teachers should first of all develop themselves into independent, strategic learners and users of the English language in the lingua franca context. Familiarity with the Asian corpus of English (Kirkpatrick, 2016) would possibly build teachers’ awareness to a higher level, as they build up experience on the use of ELF in Asia. With this experience, teachers can devise tangible and observable ways of developing a sense of independence in learning, and how this practice can be explicitly formulated into a set of actionable strategies. The implication is that teacher education should capture this shift of paradigm. Curricula at teacher education institutions need to move away from the dire conditions that hinder the progress of EFL. Pre-service teacher education must prepare teachers through exposure to the varieties of English used in the ASEAN context, and show that communication can be accomplished without adherence to the native-speaking norms. The new generation of English teachers in the ELF context should first of all be prepared in an empowerment-committed system, where each individual prospective teacher experiences first-hand how they learn functional English strategically with specific purposes in mind. Prospective teachers, like their senior counterparts, should learn within the community of practice through social interaction and collaborative construction of meanings (Richards, 2008). During this learning session, prospective teachers should have the opportunity to observe a demonstration from their teacher (as a more knowledgeable member of the culture) of how this teacher functions in a real-life context, and then the prospective teachers should follow the demonstrated examples in a similar context. After practicing what they have observed from demonstration, the prospective teachers should be provided with feedback, so that they learn what to keep and what to change. Prospective teachers need to experience this constructive nature of knowledge acquisition and development: they observe and engage in practicing what has been observed, and receive feedback from colleagues or more knowledgeable members of the community of practice. After some repeated sessions, the prospective teachers can later become ready to perform the task independently (Darling-Hammond, 2010). On the other hand, providing learners with exposure to English in the ELF era means a reorientation of the contents of the curriculum and teaching materials. Teaching can be done without necessarily using ENL-based materials that promote Western cultures from the USA, England, or Australia. Rather, exposure to English can be made through the incorporation of ASEAN-based locally embedded teaching materials. Teachers can then use textbooks that promote folklore, songs, and recent trends occurring within the ASEAN community. Coursebooks must be developed in alignment with the development of intercultural competence within the ASEAN context. This is how teachers could develop ASEAN literacy that is vital in the development of critical pedagogy (see also Chapter 5). Furthermore, it is also important to empower students to become independent, strategic learners. Musthafa & Hamied (2014) argue that learning autonomy is a vital condition for successful English learning in Indonesia. To this end, teachers
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should make an explicit effort to encourage every individual learner to take ownership to their own learning, and in so doing they provide a real model for the students to observe and learn from. This implies that teachers will need to create opportunities for students to use English for communicative purposes in lingua franca situations, such as when they talk with peers from Vietnam or Malaysia. Then teachers could create opportunities to practice what they learn both inside and out of the classroom within the community of English learners. Other activities are also needed, such as educational exchanges and summer camps, where Indonesian students could participate along with their counterparts from The Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and other neighboring countries in Asia and use ELF for various communicative purposes. Building on purpose-driven learning activities where they are collectively involved in negotiation and decision-making using English, learners can then be asked to review their collective experiences, and verbally formulate “lessons learned” they can draw from the experiences.
Recommendation 3: Develop policy on English teachers’ proficiency As suggested by Dewey & Patsko (2017), the English language teaching profession is laden with monolingual English native speakers with no particular training, while at the other end of the spectrum there are many non-native English speakers with good qualifications but insufficient language skills. This case also applies to Indonesia. Empirical studies have been carried out and commentaries have been voiced, lamenting the fact that although Indonesian teachers of English have spent literally thousands of hours learning English both on campus and outside, their English proficiency is still inadequate for the purpose of teaching English to their students (e.g. Asriyanti et al. 2013; Chodidjah, 2007; Hamied, 2011; Sukyadi, 2015). Hamied (2011), for example, reported that the proficiency of senior high school graduates (from both general and vocational streams) mostly (more than 90%) falls under the category of novice and elementary levels—way below the targeted proficiency, which is intermediate level. This phenomenon of low proficiency of English teachers should be put to an end, as this would otherwise create a vicious circle: low-proficiency teachers will produce low-quality graduates, and low-quality graduates make weak human resources. To break this chain of problems, we should deliberately make a specific policy to improve the proficiency of English teachers in the ELF era. By proficiency we mean “a specialized subset of language skills required to prepare and teach lessons” (Freeman et al. 2015, p. 129). This is bounded on what teachers know about teaching, while identifying classroom language they need in order to teach. Teaching—as both theoretical construct and practical activities—should be placed at the central point of what prospective teachers think, do, and reflect on in their day-to-day experiences and activities. This new way of thinking challenges the tradition of English teaching; how to address these challenges should reshape what happens in classroom teaching, so that most learners develop usable knowledge of and skills in English (Freeman et al. 2015). In this way, the new
182 B. Musthafa, F. A. Hamied and S. Zein generation of English teachers will come to class with their already established beliefs about what to do and what not to do to develop high proficiency in the English language. Bearing this in mind, the orientation of the teacher education program is to make pre-service student teachers familiar and conversant with English for teaching. This pivotal point is motivated by the thinking that teachers in the ELF context should ensure that their proficiency is high enough to successfully discharge various important jobs embedded in their roles as instructors. Four important roles of the English teacher are presented here: (1) as a model language user for students to observe and learn from; (2) as a model language learner; (3) as a task designer; (4) as a learning facilitator. As a language user, teachers of English in the ELF context should serve confidently when engaged in both spoken and written communication activities. As expected of good language learners, teachers should demonstrate to their students how to use English “diligently” in all contexts—despite occasional difficulties. For the sake of their own learning and—at the same time—setting a good model for their students, English teachers in the ELF context should make every possible effort to communicate in English and learn from that communication. English teachers should comment on what they are going through along the way, to share their “internal processes” of using English to communicate with their students. What teachers of English are doing in this case is engaging in metacognitive talk— that is, talking about their thinking and communicating processes so that their students can “see” the thinking processes behind the teachers’ communication activities. This kind of talk can practically be done on any aspects of thinking and using the language for communication—including controlling grammar, selecting appropriate words, monitoring speech, attending to form, and attending to meaning. In this way, the teachers of English can “model” how to use the English language for communicating with others in a way that can be transparently observed and studied by their students both in terms of not only product (in the form of “utterances”) but also process. Students would observe and learn from how their teachers use English for real-life communicative purposes. This “transparent model of learning and teaching” would require a great degree of confidence on the part of teachers and students, and this would also require teachers and students to use metalanguage. After using this method of teaching for one semester or so, the teachers’ proficiency in ELF could improve. To accomplish this, we should redesign the curriculum to focus more on the development of the macro-skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) and micro-skills (grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation). But the development of the macro- and micro-skills needs to be framed within the goal of preparing prospective teachers to function effectively in multilingual contexts using an ELF framework. This is where teachers and learners use English to communicate in various communication environments (mostly verbal) and with mostly non-native speakers of English. With their high English proficiency in all four linguistic macro-skills, our new generation of English teachers would play a crucial role as model of users of the
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language. To successfully act in this role, English teachers should be familiar and conversant with the necessary knowledge and skills related to their position as a role model, which they will learn through experience during the pre-service teacher education program. Along the process of pre-service teacher education, this new generation of teachers not only will learn conceptually what they should know and be familiar with, but also will experience it empirically and then internalize and externalize it. They will do this together in a community of practice in a series of stages of activities. These include seeing activities being modeled by instructors, understanding related concepts from explanations provided by the resource persons, participating in the social processes by empirically experiencing them directly, discussing what they have collectively experienced, and then reflecting on the experiences together and with informed feedback from more knowledgeable members of the group. Since learning a language is a lifelong enterprise, teachers of English would also demonstrate to their students how they perform as language learners from one activity to another. These sets of teaching-learning activities will be made “transparent” to the learners at least in five forms of modeling: direct demonstration, conceptual explanation, procedural demonstration, step-by-step guided practice, and collective formulation of strategies into verbal statements. From day-to-day engagement with their teacher, students would observe and draw lessons from how their teacher learns the English language. What teachers of English should do in this case is to demonstrate what they usually do, how they do it, and why. Once in a while, the teachers need to show and explain to their students why certain strategies do not work as expected and what to do to correct them. Within the community of practice, guided by their teachers, students empirically verify which strategies work and which do not work for a certain purpose, and why. If done correctly and repeatedly, the students would acquire a number of useful and proven strategies and would develop a sense of familiarity with the logic of strategic learning. Along this process of learning about the nature of strategic learning, the students would also acquire the necessary vocabulary to talk about strategies and their pragmatic values. Another important role that teachers can play is being a task designer (Harmer, 2010). Accomplished teachers of English in the ELF context are aware that students need to experience and do things related to English before they can acquire some English knowledge and skills; and these activities need to be designed well to ensure learning happens. From courses taken and language-acquisition activities experienced, pre-service student teachers of English could learn about the strategic nature of task design. Among educationists and educational practitioners alike, the term “task” is a familiar one, albeit defining what it means exactly might create some difficulties. The idea here is that teachers of English and prospective teachers of English in the ELF context should learn and be conversant with various forms of tasks and what functions they serve in facilitating students’ learning of English. As Lee (2000) has suggested, accomplished English teachers are good at creating situations which require students to comprehend, manipulate, and/or produce the target language
184 B. Musthafa, F. A. Hamied and S. Zein as these students perform some set of workplans. In order to achieve useful knowledge of and skills in designing tasks to facilitate learning, prospective teachers of English in the ELF context should systematically be taught to the extent that they can differentiate “learning tasks” from “non-learning tasks”, place appropriate task demands, and structure tasks in such a way that every item of learning activity positively impacts on students’ development as language learners and users. With proven command of task design and skills in creating a learning context to facilitate students’ production of English, teachers of English in the ELF context can lead classroom discussions relatively easily. The use of English for real-life needs, such as classroom discussions, will benefit teachers and students alike; and this will make English more useful to them and hence increase their motivation to use English more and learn more from the language. If this can be done frequently enough in English classes in Indonesia, expectations about an improvement in English proficiency will not be too remote to meet. It is, indeed, this instructional skill that the majority of English teachers in Indonesia lack. With newly trained pre-service teachers of English in the ELF context, it is hoped that the new generation of English teachers and the students they teach will develop better as learners and users of the language. Both teachers and their students will develop together in the community of learners and the community of practice. The mingling between teachers and students in the context of learning through authentic communication activities can lead to mutual facilitation. Teachers can facilitate students in various ways, such as through direct demonstrations of how to use English for real-life communication, engagement of students in functional use of the English language through real communication, and provision of support in the form of direct as well as indirect feedback at various levels of English use in real-life activities and social communication. Teachers of English in the ELF context should also be taught how to facilitate learning. First, they should be positioned at the receiving end, in the sense that these prospective teachers should be facilitated in their learning of various aspects of English teaching and learning, including how to acquire new knowledge, how to learn new skills, and how to develop positive attitudes toward English and its users in multilingual contexts. In this way, the prospective teachers experience first-hand how it feels to be facilitated in their learning. With systematic experiences in being facilitated, these teachers-in-the-making will internalize these heartwarming experiences. Once in a while, teachers of English in the ELF context should intentionally bring this facilitation and/or being-facilitated experience into the open, as a topic of discussion in English, and see what lessons can be drawn from these. Ask students to verbally formulate what it feels to be facilitated and, at the same time, try to contemplate how it feels to be a facilitator of learning. This kind of experience-based discussion can lead to discussion of values and—if wanted—can also extend to teaching philosophies. To make it even more productive, teachers of English in the ELF context can prepare formal presentations on what “facilitators” of learning means, and what they can do to facilitate student learning. Again, using real-life experiences as a
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point of departure, the discussion can be steered toward the development of facilitation-oriented pedagogy. What “facilitation-oriented pedagogy” means, and what kinds of knowledge and skills are required to become “facilitation-oriented teachers”, becomes an open-ended and real-life discussion. This multifaceted knowledge base about and skills in enhancing English proficiency should serve as a training ground for prospective teachers of English so that they could bring to the teaching force proven competence in their ELF classes. A specific policy needs to be developed in order to realize this proficiency objective.
Recommendation 4: Develop policy innovations to support teacher education As suggested in the earlier parts of the chapter, currently English has the status of the first foreign language, but a transition towards ELF is underway. While this is occurring, as of now English is a compulsory school subject for grades 7–12. In junior secondary school, English is taught four times a week, with each lesson lasting for 45 minutes. At the senior high schools, English is taught four times a week in years 1 and 2; in year 3 differential offerings are given to different program streams. More specifically, in the third year of senior high school, English is taught five times a week in the natural science study stream, seven times a week in the social study stream, and 11 times a week in the language stream. During English lessons generally, English language is used as a medium of instruction, either American or British English (Hamied, 2010). English textbooks are usually provided by the central government and/or made available commercially by printing houses endorsed by the government, with content consistent with curricular guidelines determined centrally. Supplemental readings are available mainly in more privileged schools, and coursebooks in English are extremely scarce nationwide. Managing a centralized system of education, like the one currently working under the Ministry of Education and Culture in Indonesia, is never an easy enterprise. To make it even more complicated, under the President Joko Widodo administration, the task of managing education has been divided into two separate ministries. The Ministry of Education and Culture administers primary and secondary education (from primary to senior high schools), while the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education administers tertiary education (colleges, polytechnics, and university). Within this dual ministerial division of labor, pre-service teacher education and in-service teacher development are the responsibility of Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education, but the recruitment and deployment of school teachers are exclusively managed by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The two ministries are tasked with managing education for a vast number of Indonesian students. In primary schools alone, the system provides education to approximately 26 million students (Zein, 2017). At the secondary level, there are over 18 million students, and at the university level we have a student body amounting to 4.5 million students (Hamied, 2012). But the teaching force
186 B. Musthafa, F. A. Hamied and S. Zein currently available in Indonesia has been a matter of concern, for various reasons. For one, to teach English as a compulsory subject in over 10 million junior secondary school students (BPS, 2015a) and 4 million senior secondary school students (BPS, 2015b) under the educational ministry, we have a less than ideal teacher–student ratio. That is, on the average nationwide, one English teacher has to serve 150 students. The second reason for concern is related to quality. As discussed above, by and large English teachers who are currently in the workforce do not have sufficient English proficiency to handle real-life communication using the language (Hamied, 2012). Considering the complex system and its complicated division of roles and responsibilities, thinking about neatly drawn lines of command and flows of financial support is daunting. Concerted efforts, however, should be made if the overall system is expected to grow, and a flow of support for systematic development is to reach the targeted beneficiaries. In what follows, general recommendations will be put forth. First, an inter-ministerial agreement is needed to tackle the complex educational realm in Indonesia. Current research has established that the development of science and theories in humanities, including teacher education, are context-specific (Kitchen & Petrarca, 2016; Korthagen, 2016). Given this thinking, teacher-training activities and theoretical models, as well as empirical verification of models of teaching and pedagogy, should be supported financially with guaranteed availability of the necessary budget every year. This is where an inter-ministerial agreement plays its role. Headed by the Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia, this inter-ministerial coordination should be established to administer teacher preparation, teacher development, and deployment. Members of the inter-ministerial coordination may include, but not be limited to, the following: Ministry of Education and Culture; Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Finance, National Board of Planning and Development. The inter-ministerial coordinating body is responsible for developing criteria for basic as well as applied research topics and assigning relative “priority” for each item of identified topics. Once a topic is identified as “urgent”, the needed budget should be made available. The sources of funds can be drawn from an annual budget made available for national development priority research and development activities. In this way, all urgent research and development budgetary needs would be covered and the activities could be carried out with the best support from both national and international experts. Such ministerial coordination is expected to assist the implementation of teacher education in Indonesia, which is currently provided through two channels. One is in the form of formal pre-service and in-service education programs carried out by teacher training colleges and universities; and the other through informal occasional short-term skills-development training and workshop sessions organized by teachers’ professional associations such as Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia (TEFLIN). The inter-ministerial coordination could help ensure continuous financial support to be made available to support research and
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development activities with regard to teaching, learning, and researching education and pedagogy through these two channels of teacher education. The interministerial coordination could also help facilitate the involvement of a board of university professors, a panel of experts in various ministries, and research coordinators from various research centers in district-level and provincial-level government offices. Second, the Indonesian Government should invest time and monetary resources to establish a national-level board of teaching and certification of teachers. This national-level board is needed to ensure that teacher development is heading to the right direction; that the concept of good teaching is well-supported theoretically and empirically; and that criteria for good teaching are drawn from established research-base resources (Kitchen & Petrarca, 2016; Korthagen, 2016). Given the intellectual nature of its duties, this national board of teaching and teacher certification should be manned with well-selected professionals and/or intellectuals capable of working through complicated issues and tough problems. These intellectuals should also be able to formulate complicated issues in simple and straightforward language. Under the coordination of the national board of teaching and teacher certification, there should be established one national-level center that specifically manages assessments. This center is responsible for developing assessment tools capable of measuring relative merits of certain models of teaching and learning (Hamied, 2010). The center can also be tasked with developing a “merit system” for teacher pay scales, and also with devising formal assessment tools to check English teachers’ proficiency from one level to another, and from one period of time to another. This can later be tied up with remuneration—when appropriate and desirable.
Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that providing English language education to the Indonesian population is a highly conscientious task. It occurs amidst the transition from EFL to ELF characterized by the increasing use of English in Indonesians’ daily life and the need for English for ASEAN Integration. With ELF awareness making its way into the mainstream of English language education in Indonesia (see Chapter 1), it is only logical that teacher education provides an appropriate response. This chapter has argued that such a response needs to start with a reorientation of the overall purposes of the teaching of ELF to respond to international communication. This implies that the focus of classroom teaching is to provide students with exposure to various English accents relevant to the ASEAN context, and to develop students’ intercultural competence accordingly. Second, more systematic efforts to empower teachers and students as both learners and users of the English language are necessary. It is necessary to bring to the fore utilitarian values of learning English for both teachers and students (Musthafa & Hamied, 2014). Tasks that are relevant to the use of English in the ASEAN context, and materials that incorporate the cultures of other ASEAN member states, are integral to this
188 B. Musthafa, F. A. Hamied and S. Zein purpose (Kirkpatrick, 2012, 2016). The chapter has also argued for the need of a policy on quality enhancement of English teachers. The focus of quality enhancement is on language proficiency in both macro- and micro-skills, and using the language for effective teaching purposes. However, it is framed within the goal of preparing prospective teachers to function effectively in multilingual contexts using an ELF framework. Finally, the chapter has also shown the need to support teacher education in the ELF era in order to respond to changing needs and contextual demands. This could be accomplished through the establishment of an inter-ministerial coordinated body and a national board of teaching and certification of teachers. Both are meant to help facilitate teacher education at pre-service and in-service levels.
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Freeman, D., Katz, A., Gomez, P.G. & Burns, A. (2015). English-for-teaching: rethinking teacher proficiency in the classroom. ELT Journal, 69(2), 129–139. doi:10.1093/elt/ ccu074 Hamied, F. A. (2010). EFL assessment in Indonesia: National exams and quality education. In Y.-i. Moon & B. Spolsky (eds), Asia TEFL Book Series: Language assessment in Asia (pp. 99–120). Seoul: Asia TEFL. Hamied, F. A. (2011). English as a lingua franca: an Indonesian perspective (Keynote Address). In The Fourth International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute of Education. Hamied, F. A. (2012). English in multicultural and multilingual Indonesian education. In A. Kirkpatrick & R. Sussex (eds), English as an International Language in Asia: Implications for Language Education (pp. 63–78). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Hamied, F. A. (2013). ELT intricacies within the Indonesian language policy. In T. W. Bigalke & S. Sharbawi (eds), English for ASEAN Integration: Policies and Practices in the Region (pp. 32–40). Bandar Seri Begawan: IELTS. Harmer, J. (2010). The practice of English language teaching (8th edn). London: Longman. Jazadi, I. (2000). Constraints and resources for applying communicative approaches in Indonesia. English Australia Journal, 18(1), 31–40. Lee, J. (2000). Tasks and Communicating in Language Classrooms. New York: McGraw-Hill. Musthafa, B. & Hamied, F. A. (2014). Conditions for English language learning in Indonesia: What Indonesian teachers of English have attempted to do to enhance students’ English learning. In B. Spolsky & K. Sung (eds), Conditions for English language Teaching and Learning in Asia (pp. 63–76). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Karim, H. S. b. H. A. & Sharbawi, S. (2013). Overview on the state of English policy and practice in Brunei Darussalam. In T. W. Bigalke & S. Sharbawi (eds), English for ASEAN Integration: Policies and Practices in the Region (pp. 69–77). Bandar Seri Begawan: Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual Model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2012). English as an international language in Asia: implications for language education. In A. Kirkpatrick & R. Sussex (eds), English as an International Language in Asia: Implications for Language Education (pp. 29–44). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-4578-0_3 Kirkpatrick, A. (2014). Teaching English in Asia in non-Anglo cultural contexts: Principles of the ‘lingua franca approach’. In R. Marlina & R. Giri (eds), The pedagogy of English as an international language: Perspectives from scholars, teachers, and students (pp. 23–34). Charm, Switzerland: Springer. Kirkpatrick, A. (2016). English as a lingua franca and its educational impact in Asia. In G. Leitner, A. Hashim & H.-G. Wolf (eds). Communicating with Asia: The Future of English as a Global Language (pp. 282–295). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107477186.019 Kirkpatrick, A. (2017). The development of English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN. In J. Jenkins, C. Baker & M. Dewey (eds). Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (pp. 138–150). London: Routledge. Kitchen, J. and Petrarca, D. (2016). Approaches to teacher education. In J. Loughran & M. L. Hamilton (eds). International Handbook of Teacher Education (pp. 137–186). Singapore: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0366-0_4
190 B. Musthafa, F. A. Hamied and S. Zein Korthagen, F. A. D. (2016). The pedagogy of teacher education. In J. Loughran & M. L. Hamilton (eds). International Handbook of Teacher Education (pp. 311–346). Singapore: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0366-0_8 Lamb, M. & Coleman, H. (2008). Literacy in English and the transformation of self and society in Post-Soeharto Indonesia. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11(2), 189–205. doi:10.2167/beb493.0 Luciana. (2006). Developing standards for language teacher education programs in Indonesia: professionalizing or losing in complexity? TEFLIN Journal, 7(1), 19–28. Phuong, L. N. T. & Nhu, T. P. (2015). Innovation in English language education in Vietnam for ASEAN 2015 Integration: Current issues, challenges, opportunities, investments and solutions. In R. Stroupe & K. Kimura (eds). ASEAN Integration and the Role of English Language Teaching (pp. 104–120). Phnom Penh: IELTS. Richards, J. C. (2008). Second language teacher education today. RELC Journal, 39(2), 158–176. Sermsongswad, U. & Tantipongsanuruk, C. (2013). English language education in Thailand. In T. W. Bigalke & S. Sharbawi (eds), English for ASEAN Integration: Policies and Practices in the Region (pp. 46–51). Bandar Seri Begawan: Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Stroupe, R. & Kimura, K. (eds) (2015). ASEAN Integration and the Role of English Language Teaching. Phnom Penh: IELTS. Sukyadi, D. (2015). The teaching of English at secondary schools in Indonesia. In B. Spolsky & K. Sung (eds), Secondary School English Education in Asia: From Policy to Practice (pp. 123–147). New York and London: Routledge. Tobias, J., Wales, J., Syamsulhakim, E. & Suharti. (2014). Towards Better Education Quality: Indonesia’s Promising Path. London: Overseas Development Institute. Zacharias, N. T. (2016). Indonesian teacher identity construction: insights from practicing ELF pedagogy. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 26(2), 321–339. Zacharias, N. T. (2014). The relocation of culture in the teaching of English as an international language. In R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (eds), The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers and Students (pp. 129–142). Charm, Switzerland: Springer International. Zacharias, N. T. (2013). One teacher’s struggles to integrate EIL approaches in a Microteaching class: An action research project. In N. T. Zacharias & C. Manara (eds), Contextualizing the Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Issues and Tensions (pp. 134–149). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Zein, S. (2018). English, multilingualism and globalisation in Indonesia: A love triangle – Why Indonesia should move towards multilingualism. English Today, 1–6. doi:10.1017/ S026607841800010X Zein, M. S. (2017). Elementary English education in Indonesia: Policy developments, current practices, and future prospects. English Today, 33(1), 53–59. doi:10.1017/ S0266078416000407 Zein, M. S. (2016). Pre-service education for primary school English teachers in Indonesia: policy implications. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 36(S1), 119–134. doi:10.1080/ 02188791.2014.961899
11 From EFL to ELF The time is right Andy Kirkpatrick
Introduction: A culture-based English course In 2002, I worked with a number of Indonesian colleagues to produce an English language textbook for Indonesian university students. This was called Culturebased English for College Students and was published by Grasindo. The authors of the textbook, E. Aminudin Aziz, Dadang Sudana and Rd. Safrina Noorman were from the Indonesian University of Education. The editor was Bachrudin Musthafa, co-author of the previous chapter in this volume. I shall start this chapter by quoting excerpts from the introduction which I wrote for the book. An English course that takes an innovative and possibly controversial approach to the teaching of English needs a few words of introduction and explanation. In fact, the reasons for the development of these materials are relatively straightforward. First, it is no secret that the teaching of English in Indonesia has not been a great success, although there have been outstanding exceptions. By and large, however, the number of Indonesian students who experience year upon year of English language teaching is extremely high. The number who complete this experience and who are able to use English in any meaningful way, remains relatively small. One potentially important cause for this failure is that students often appear to lack motivation in learning English, especially if they live outside the cities and have never had any dealings with English speakers and probably feel they never will. But we may need to alter the way we present English to students, and not just in Indonesia, but also in other parts of Asia. In the past, we have presented English as a communicative tool to use with native speakers of English. The models we have introduced to the students have been native speaker models, and we have assumed that these are the best models for our students to learn. In summary, we have assumed that the primary reason for Indonesians learning English is so that they can communicate with native speakers. However, and this is the crucial point, talking to native speakers is not the primary role of English in Indonesia or Asia. On the contrary, the primary role that English plays through Asia is as a lingua franca, as a language of communication, for Asians themselves. For example, English is the de facto
192 A. Kirkpatrick language of ASEAN. It is the de facto language of business throughout Asia. When Indonesian bankers sit down to discuss business with their Philippine or Thai counterparts, they will probably use English. When Japanese, Vietnamese and Indonesians meet to discuss projects, they will probably speak English. In fact, English is now more commonly used as a language of communication between non-native speakers of English than between native speakers of English. This has two important implications for the teaching of English in the region: the first concerns which cultures to teach through English; the second concerns which variety of English to teach. 1. Which cultures to teach through English? If English is used primarily for communication between so-called nonnative speakers of English, the cultures and backgrounds of those people become more important than any culture traditionally associated with native speakers. For example, as it is most likely that an Indonesian will need to use English in order to communicate with someone from the region, say a Thai or Korean or a Vietnamese, then the Indonesian will need to learn about the cultures of those people in order to be able to talk to them in a knowledgeable and courteous way. Similarly, Indonesians will warm towards a person who can discuss with them, in English, aspects of Indonesian culture. They may not warm to people who can only discuss aspects of American and English cultures when speaking in English. This means that the ELT curriculum in Indonesia and other parts of Asia needs to change. Instead of giving students information about the cultures of native speakers, the curriculum should include information about the cultures and people of the ASEAN and Asian region. This is the major reason we have developed an ELT course that takes ASEAN and Asian cultures as its primary focus. 2. Which variety of English to teach? If English in Indonesia and Asia is used primarily for communication with non-native speakers of English, the way those people speak English becomes more important than the way native speakers speak English. In other words, instead of using native speaker models, we need to consider the use of regional varieties of English in the classrooms. After all, if the primary role of English in the ASEAN and Asian region is to be a lingua franca between people of the region, we need to legitimise the English varieties that people in the region speak. A number of Asian varieties of English have achieved the status of being a standard. These include Singaporean, Malaysian, Filipino and, of course, the varieties of the Indian sub-continent. Given Indonesia’s linguistic and cultural closeness to Malaysia, it would seem sensible that the Malaysian variety becomes a model in Indonesian classrooms. It is important to stress that we should not completely disregard native English speaking cultures and varieties. However, as the major role of English in the region is as a lingua franca between the people of the region, the fulfilment of this role should be the primary goal of English language teaching in the region. And by showing learners that their main reason for learning English is to allow them to communicate with other people of the region, the
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motivation of the learners will be stimulated as they see a real and personally useful need for English. An English curriculum based on ASEAN and Asian cultures and which takes a regional variety of English as its model (Malaysian is the one suggested) will be more useful for Indonesian students, and this more motivating for them.” (Aziz, Sudana & Noorman, 2002) There are some ideas from this introduction I would now oppose. For example, I would not suggest that Indonesians adopt a Malaysian variety of English as the classroom model. Notwithstanding the potential political difficulties in promoting a model of Malaysian English within Indonesia, I have now altered my position and now advocate adopting what I have called a lingua franca approach to the teaching of English in the region. Many of the authors of this volume also advocate the lingua franca approach. As noted above, the book was called Culture-Based English for College Students. In the original grant application (the funding for the seminar and resultant book was made possible through a grant from the Australia-Indonesia Institute), I had proposed a textbook which would use the cultures of ASEAN as the core materials through which to teach English. The plan was that we would establish a team of local Indonesian writers to write the materials and they would then send them to me. When the team of writers started to write the units, however, I soon noticed that they were choosing to write about aspects of Indonesian culture rather than ASEAN cultures as a whole. The titles of the 15 units which comprised the book show this focus on Indonesia: Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Unit 4 Unit 5 Unit 6 Unit 7 Unit 8 Unit 9 Unit 10 Unit 11 Unit 12 Unit 13 Unit 14 Unit 15
Our Capital City (Jakarta) Becak We Love Dangdut Harmonious Life (about Hinduism meeting Islam on Bali) Students and Brawls (about student violence in Jakarta) Preserving the Traditions: Textiles Rendra The World of Mysticism (a story about the Ninithowong Doll) Business Matters (about doing business in Indonesia) Traditional Wedding Ceremony Traditional Arts: Wayang Wanted Urgently; Are you the Right Person? The Top Five! (about the reform movement, Reformasi) Caring for Fauna Indonesian Cuisine: Ayam Taliwang.
These units all focus on aspects of Indonesian culture, celebrating its diversity. What was particularly interesting for me was how many of the units dealt with negative aspects of Indonesian life. In addition to the unit about student violence in Jakarta, for example, Unit 1 notes that ‘On almost all fronts, life in Jakarta has
194 A. Kirkpatrick become unbearable these past five years.’ This is in the context of the then Governor of Jakarta, Sutiyoso, seeking a second five-year term. The authors of this unit clearly felt that he should not be re-elected. Unit 12, ‘Wanted Urgently: Are You the Right Person?’, mourns the dearth of statesmanship among the political elite. Analysts Komaruddin Hidayat and Fachry Ali are quoted as saying that a ‘lack of statesmanship has left Indonesia in a rut, struggling to overcome its homebred vices of corruption and political opportunism’. And in Unit 13, ‘The Top Five!’, a businessman is quoted as complaining, ‘Before reformasi you knew the price of corruption, whom to pay and what you got from it. Nowadays, you never know the price, whom to pay and whether you will get it in the end.’ So, a textbook that was originally conceived as containing material about the diverse cultures of ASEAN, ended up as a textbook containing material about the diverse cultures of Indonesia, including portrayals of negative aspects of Indonesian life. When the textbook was trialled with a group of university students, they rated the material very highly. They also approved of the materials portraying negative aspects of life and, interestingly, they reported that they found it easier to talk about these negative aspects in English than in Bahasa Indonesia. So it was that a textbook originally designed to inform students about the cultures of ASEAN ended up informing students about the diversity of Indonesian cultures, warts and all. I think this has strong messages for all of us involved in materials development. Students want materials that describe lives and cultures that are relevant to them; but they also want real life, not some bowdlerised, sugar-coated and anodyne material. From this experience I also learned that the locals know best. When the units started to arrive and I noted they all dealt with Indonesian rather than ASEAN cultures, I asked the writers to include material about ASEAN cultures. They politely agreed to do so, but continued writing units about Indonesian cultures. I eventually (and wisely) decided to let the writers write what they wanted to write about. I have started this concluding chapter with this account of my experience of being involved with the production of a culture-based textbook for Indonesian college students to illustrate that a small group of Indonesian colleagues were thinking along the same lines as the authors of the chapters in this volume. It is extremely exciting and gratifying to see how much progress has been made, in that a volume dedicated to promoting an English as a lingua franca (ELF) approach to English language teaching (ELT) in Indonesia is considered both important and timely. One reason I believe that an ELF approach to ELT is perhaps more readily accepted and being promoted in Indonesia is linked to the diversity of cultures and languages within Indonesia itself. If we consider the role of Bahasa Indonesia as the national lingua franca, we can perhaps draw some parallels with the use of ELF.
Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia and lingua francas Indonesia is the most culturally and linguistically diverse of the ASEAN group with more than 700 languages listed by Ethnologue.1 It is also ASEAN’s most
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populous nation with some 260 million people. During the time of colonisation by the Dutch and the following Japanese occupation, Malay became associated with the language of liberation and independence (Alisjahbana, 1976). Malay was an interesting choice, as the language with most speakers was (and is) Javanese. But this was considered inappropriate as a potential national language, partly because it is a complex language and one in which several degrees of hierarchy are realised linguistically (Alisjahbana, 1976). Those pursuing independence wanted a more ‘democratic’ language and one which did not represent a powerful group. Being spoken as a first language by only a very small percentage of the population made Malay a candidate. At the same time, the fact that it had previously been used as a regional lingua franca gave it a further advantage and it was adopted as the national language under the name of Bahasa Indonesia in the 1945 Constitution. This appeared to be a popular choice. As Montolalu and Suryadinata note ‘It appears that the selection of the Malay language as the Indonesian national language as quite smooth as other languages … were not widely used by other ethnic groups … there has never been any opposition to the language’ (2007, p. 42). Bahasa Indonesia is now indisputably the national language and the medium of instruction throughout the education system. It is the national lingua franca and, significantly, has more second-language speakers than native speakers. It is this phenomenon – the presence of so many million second-language speakers of Bahasa Indonesia – that may account for why English is more likely to be accepted as a lingua franca in Indonesia than in other more linguistically homogeneous countries. With so many second-language speakers of the national language, Indonesians are used to variation in the national language and have developed a tolerance for such variation. They are therefore likely to be tolerant of variation in English and understand its use as a lingua franca, based on their knowledge of the use of their own national language as a lingua franca.
ENL to ELF Nevertheless, as many of the authors of this volume point out, Indonesia has traditionally adopted a native-speaker model of English as its classroom model. But, as has also been pointed out, English language teaching has, to date, not been a successful enterprise in much of Indonesia. One major motivation for a shift from the teaching and learning of English as a native language (ENL) – and the baggage that this inevitably brings with it, such as adherence to the belief that the native speaker should provide the classroom model and that the native-speaker teacher is the most appropriate teacher – for adopting a lingua franca approach to the teaching and learning of English has been the failure of the ENL approach. A second motivation, however, has been the role that English has historically played and now plays within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN was founded in 1967 with the Bangkok Declaration. There were only five founding members of ASEAN, namely Malaysia, Singapore, The Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia itself. As Severino (2008, p. 3) noted, ASEAN was formed at a time of great political uncertainly. The Cultural Revolution in China, which
196 A. Kirkpatrick represented an extremely violent challenge to the established order, was in full swing. The Vietnam war was raging and there was a fear that communism would spread through Southeast Asia. The one-time Foreign Minister of Singapore, Rajaratnam, summarised the situation in the following way. ‘Regional countries were faced with managing the effects of decolonisation, confrontation with the forces of communism and separatism. These newly independent countries were also pre-occupied with building their economies and national identities’ (cited in Kesavapany 2005, p. vii). One might have expected the Bangkok Declaration to make some mention about which languages were to be used as languages of ASEAN communication. But no mention of language was made. Instead, it was simply assumed that English would be the de facto working language of the group (Okudaira, 1999). This benefited the three countries of the original ASEAN grouping which had been colonised by English-speaking nations, namely Singapore and Malaysia by the British, and the Philippines by the USA. It benefited them because English had, after independence, assumed an institutional role in each of these countries to the extent that country developed its own variety of English (Kirkpatrick, 2007, 2010). These became what Kachru, in his famous ‘circles’ classification, called outer-circle countries. It is perhaps worth quoting Kachru on this issue: The current sociolinguistic profile of English may be viewed in terms of three concentric circles … The Inner Circle refers to the traditional cultural and linguistic bases of English. The Outer Circle represents the institutionalised non-native varieties (ESL) in the regions that have passed through extended periods of colonisation … The Expanding Circle includes the regions where the performance varieties of the language are used essentially in EFL contexts. (Kachru, 1985, pp. 366–367) Kachru here also make the traditional distinction between English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL), both of these to be distinguished from ENL (English as a native language). Inner-circle countries are those where English operates as a native language exists; outer-circle countries are where English operates as a second language; and expanding-circle countries are where English operates as a foreign language. Expanding-circle countries use native-speaker or inner-circle varieties of English as their classroom models. Outer-circle countries pass through several stages of development in establishing new, so-called non-native varieties (Schneider, 2007). Thailand, which was never colonised, and Indonesia, which was colonised by the Dutch, would be, in Kachru’s classification, expanding-circle countries where the role of English is as a foreign language. This implied that, as an expandingcircle nation, Indonesia depended upon native-speaker varieties of English as classroom models. However, much has happened since the 1980s when Kachru formed his classifications. First, ASEAN has expanded to comprise ten nations, with Myanmar, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam joining the group. Second, the de facto role of English as the working language of ASEAN has been officially
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recognised in the ASEAN Charter of 2009, where Article 34 of the Charter states that the working Language of ASEAN shall be English (Kirkpatrick 2010, p. 7). Third, the remit of ASEAN has widened. Far from being an organisation created to act as a bulwark against the spread of communism, ASEAN is now aiming at regional integration by reinforcing three ASEAN ‘pillars’: the ASEAN political security community; the ASEAN economic community; and the ASEAN sociocultural community (Widiati & Hayati 2015, p. 121). English is seen as an essential tool for this integration (Stroupe & Kimura, 2015). The crucial role of English in this enterprise was emphasised by the Secretary General of ASEAN himself, Le Luong Minh: With the diversity in ASEAN reflected in our diverse histories, races, cultures and belief systems, English is an important and indispensable tool to bring our Community closer together. […] Used as the working language of ASEAN, English enables us to interact with other ASEAN colleagues in our formal meetings as well as day-today communications. […] In order to prepare our students and professionals in response to all these ASEAN integration efforts, among other measures, it is imperative that we provide them with opportunities to improve their mastery of the English language, the language of our competitive global job market, the lingua franca of ASEAN. (ASEAN, 2013) As Musthafa, Hamied and Zein (this volume) note, “the official adoption of English as ASEAN’s working language has major ramifications on ASEAN member states’ educational systems.” The fourth major change that has taken place since Kachru’s circle classifications is that the role of English inside the so-called expanding-circle countries, where English operated as a foreign language in many of these countries, has increased significantly. For example, English is increasingly being adopted as a medium of instruction in higher education throughout East and Southeast Asia (e.g., Barnard & Hasim, 2018; Fenton-Smith, Humphreys & Walkinshaw, 2017). In Indonesia itself, given the increasing roles of English, there are three reasons why the classifications of either EFL or ESL may not be appropriate labels for describing the roles of English (see Zein, Chapter 2 in this volume). The first is that, while classroom hours for teaching English may be limited, advances in technology and the use of social media mean English is playing a more important role outside the classroom. Zein quotes Hamied, ‘with the tremendous advancement of information and communication technology exposure to English is a daily phenomenon’ (Hamied, 2013, p. 37). Indonesians now have easy access to English – and crucially, different varieties of English and English as a lingua franca – through the internet and other computer-aided technology and social media outlets. The second reason noted by Zein why English is playing a more predominant role in Indonesian society is the increasing demand for English in the Indonesian workforce, triggered by a ‘shift towards a free market economy and the increase in foreign investment’. As noted above, English is now not only the de facto but also
198 A. Kirkpatrick the de jure sole working language of ASEAN, and this is the third reason why the labels EFL and ESL are no longer appropriate, as English is the lingua franca of the group. It also provides a timely moment to radically alter the way English has traditionally been taught in Indonesia, and to move from an ENL approach to the lingua franca approach. I shall now turn to considering the ELF approach and reiterate, in part, the reasons the authors of this volume are advocating the adoption of this approach for Indonesia. If an ELF approach to language teaching and learning is to be adopted, teacher education and professional development programmes will be needed. A common theme running through the chapters in this volume is thus the need for professional development and teacher education programmes to be redesigned to accommodate the lingua franca approach. As Widiati and Hayati argue in Chapter 5, instead of teaching the cultures traditionally associated with British or American English, professional development programmes need a shift in emphasis to a lingua franca curriculum in which the cultures of ASEAN or the ASEAN plus three (i.e. plus China, Japan and Korea) are covered. In an earlier article, Widiati & Hayati (2015) reviewed teacher education in Indonesia and suggested that ‘there needs to be more explicit integration of the ASEAN curriculum so that inservice and pre-service teachers have adequate knowledge and skills on how to educate their future students about ASEAN identity and ASEAN integration through their English classes (p. 138); and they recommend the ASEAN Curriculum Sourcebooks as providing examples of relevant materials. A similar argument is made by Wahyudi and Chusna in Chapter 9 when they call for teaching practices in primary school to better accommodate ELF for integration with ASEAN. What these chapters have in common is the need for programmes that cater for contexts where English is learned for ‘meaning making in local and global conversations and where English is practiced not in largely monolingual contexts but in diverse multilingual and multicultural contexts’ (Zein, Chapter 1 in this volume). Resources should therefore be prioritised towards the development of such courses for the education of local teachers. Any resources that are currently spent on the employment of native speakers might be better spent on the training of local teachers. That such teacher education programmes can indeed make a difference to teachers’ beliefs is shown by Zacharias’ study (reported here in Chapter 7) of an academic writing programme which promoted an ELF-like pedagogy. Zacharias elicited the views of the course participants, both before and after the course, on whether native or non-native speakers made the best teachers. At the beginning of the course, the participants indicated that they felt native speakers made the best teachers. By the end of the course, however, the majority had shifted their position and favoured non-native teachers. Importantly, they were able to justify their changed position with arguments provided by the relevant literature. Mambu (Chapter 3 in this volume) also shows how teacher education programmes can develop a critical and questioning approach to accepted and established pedagogy. Clearly, teacher education programmes are key to changing attitudes and altering approaches to English language teaching. Practical examples of how this can
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be done are provided in a recent volume of ELF pedagogy edited by Sifakis & Tsantila (2018), where an ELF approach to teacher education courses in places such as Brazil, Turkey, Portugal and Greece is described. Below, I revisit the six principles of a lingua franca approach I proposed in 2014, which is reviewed in this volume in Chapter 9 by Wahyudi and Chusna. The original six principles were: Principle (1) the native speaker of English is not the linguistic target. Mutual intelligibility is the goal. Principle (2) the native speaker’s culture is not the cultural target. Intercultural competence in relevant cultures is the goal. Principle (3) multilinguals who are suitably trained provide the most suitably trained provide the most appropriate English language teachers. Principle (4) lingua franca environments provide excellent learning environments for lingua franca speakers. Principle (5) Spoken is not the same as written. Principle (6) Assessment must be relevant to the ASEAN context. More recently (Kirkpatrick, 2018) I have deleted principle 5, as this is more of a caveat to indicate that I am considering the use of English as a spoken lingua franca. Kobayashi (2017) reviewed these principles and refined them to come up with the following four principles: Principle (1) the native speaker is not the only linguistic target. Mutual intelligibility is nothing less than a goal Principle (2) the native speaker culture is not the only cultural target. Intercultural competence in relevant culture is nothing less than a goal. Principle (3) local multilinguals who are suitably trained provide more appropriate English language teaching than English teachers lacking teacher training and empathy with English learners. Principle (4) Lingua franca environments provide excellent learning environments for international English learners. The basic difference is that Kobayashi’s principles are more flexible. I would stress, however, that, in proposing these principles, I had in mind the vast majority of English learners across the region, the students in government-run primary and secondary schools; whereas Kobayashi’s context was private language schools. However, I agree that any ELF approach to English language teaching and learning must be open, inclusive and flexible. As Kohn notes (2018), ELF communication depends on the context, the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the speakers, and the ways in which the speakers negotiate meaning when in ELF communication. In this it exemplifies a social constructivist understanding of language use in which people learn and use a language ‘by creating their own version of it in their minds, hearts and behaviour’ (Kohn 2011, p. 80). As Kohn also notes (2018), ELF users ‘certainly want to be understood, but they may also want their
200 A. Kirkpatrick performance to be accurate and fluent, or an indicator of professional competence’. One principle that Kobayashi did not address was the sixth, that assessment must be relevant to the ASEAN context. In some ways, this is probably the most important principle as the washback effect of the curriculum on the nature of the assessment is well-known. Teachers will teach to the test. Learners in government school systems will expect to be taught in such a way that will give them the best chance of passing the assessment and exams. The nature of the assessment is therefore critical. And developing assessment tasks that are loyal to the principles behind the ELF approach to language teaching is not an easy task (Newbold, 2018).
Concluding remarks To conclude this final chapter, I reiterate the recommendations made by Musthafa, Hamied and Zein in Chapter 10. It will be recalled that they made four recommendations. The first was that the objectives of English language education in Indonesia be re-oriented. This would involve switching the focus of the classroom from inner-circle varieties to regional varieties of English and the use of ELF. It would also involve developing intercultural literacy with regard to regional cultures in the students (and, of course, their teachers). Their second recommendation was to empower students and teachers as ELF users. ‘Pre-service teacher education must prepare teachers through exposure to the varieties of English used in the ASEAN context, and show that communication can be accomplished without adherence to the native-speaking norms.’ They suggest that becoming familiar with the Asian Corpus of English is one way of achieving this, as ACE is a corpus of naturally occurring English being used as a lingua franca among Asian multilinguals.2 To help accomplish this for their students, teachers need to ensure that students are provided with opportunities to engage in lingua franca communication. Today’s technology means that it is easy enough to set up communicative activities with fellow students from other countries within ASEAN. Communicating with these students in English would represent an excellent example of lingua franca communication through English. At the same time, modern technology should allow students to develop into independent learners who take responsibility for their own learning of English. Musthafa, Hamied and Zein’s third and fourth recommendations are the need to develop a policy on English teachers’ proficiency, and to develop policy innovations to support teacher education. The authors also underline the necessity of adopting an overall and coordinated approach in developing these policies. To this end, they call for across-ministry participation to be headed by a Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia and for the creation of a national-level board for the teaching and certification of teachers. To this I would only add that such a board should also work in consultation with similar boards across ASEAN. Ideally, an ASEAN-wide board should be created to establish expected levels of teachers’ proficiency and qualifications (see Dudzik & Nguyen, 2015). This would also allow for more English teacher mobility across ASEAN.
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The world is changing and the role of English in the world is changing. Far from being a language spoken solely by native speakers, it has become a language that has far more second-language speakers than native speakers. It is becoming reshaped by its new speakers. A major role of English within ASEAN and Asia is as a lingua franca. This is the use of English most likely to be of most importance and relevance to Indonesian learners of English. As the authors of this volume show, the time is right for a radical shift of focus in the teaching of English in Indonesia. Rather than focusing on native-speaker varieties of English and asking students to achieve native-like proficiency, the focus should shift to a lingua franca approach where the use of English is measured by how successfully people can use it in relevant multilingual contexts, such as interactions with fellow multilinguals from the region. Adopting a lingua franca approach means that learners are presented with the use of English which is relevant, real and useful for them (Seidlhofer & Widdowson, 2018). This would allow learners to be able to express their own cultural values in the way they present themselves as English users regionally and internationally. For example, in some pesantren (schools attached to mosques) English is now being taught for Islamic purposes (Fahrudin 2013). Adopting a lingua franca approach to the teaching and learning of English should also enhance the employability of Indonesians and facilitate their participation in ASEAN, and regional and international forums. In 2002, in the foreword to the culture-based English course, I noted that the need for a new approach to ELT in Indonesia needed some explanation. The chapters in this volume all eloquently provide the explanation and reasons for why a new ELF approach to ELT in Indonesia is now urgently needed. Future research needs to look into how an ELF approach is developing, and the extent to which any new English language curriculum promotes local and regional cultures in such a way that allows Indonesians to express themselves and their values in English in regional and international communication.
Notes 1 https://www.ethnologue.com/country/ID 2 ACE is freely accessible at http://corpus.ied.edu.hk/ace/
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202 A. Kirkpatrick Dudzik, D. & Nguyen, Q. T. N. (2015). Vietnam: building English competency in preparation for ASEAN 2015. In R. Stroupe & K. Kimura (eds), ASEAN Integration and the Role of English Language Teaching (pp. 41–70). Phnom Penh: IDP. Fahrudin, D. (2013). English language teaching material development in pesantren institutions: a transcultural flow experience in Indonesia. Paper presented at the 5th COTEFL Conference, Purwokerto, Indonesia, 11–12 May. Fenton-Smith, B., Humphreys, P. & Walkinshaw, I. (eds) (2017). English Medium Instruction in Higher Education in Asia-Pacific: From Policy to Pedagogy. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Hamied, F. A. (2013). ELT intricacies within the Indonesian language policy. In T. W. Bigalke & S. Sharbawi (eds), English for ASEAN Integration: Policies and Practices in the Region (pp. 32–40). Bandar Seri Begawan: IELTS. Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism. The English language in the Outer Circle. In R. Quirk & H. Widdowson (eds), English in the World (pp 11–30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kesavapany, K. (2005). Foreword. In R.C. Rodolfo (ed.), Framing the ASEAN Charter (pp vii–viii). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Kirkpatrick, A. (2018). Concluding chapter. In N. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (eds), English as a Lingua Franca for EFL Contexts. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Kirkpatrick, A. (2014). Teaching English in Asia in non-Anglo cultural contexts: Principles of the ‘lingua franca approach’. In R. Marlina & R. Giri (eds), The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspectives from Scholars, Teachers, and Students (pp. 23– 34). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-06127-6_2 Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual Model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kobayashi, Y. (2017). ASEAN English teachers as a model for international English learners: Modified teaching principles . International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27(3), 682–696. doi:10.1111/ijal.12173 Kohn, K. (2018). Towards the reconciliation of ELF and EFL: Theoretical issues and pedagogical challenges. In N. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (eds), English as a Lingua Franca for EFL Contexts. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Kohn, K. (2011). English as a lingua franca and the Standard English misunderstanding. In A. De Hower & A. Wilton (eds), English in Europe Today: Sociocultural and Educational Perspectives (pp. 71–94). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Montolalu, L. R. & Suryadinata, L. (2007). National language and nation-building: The case of Bahasa Indonesia. In Lee Hock Guan & L. Suryadinata (eds), Language Nation and Development (pp. 39–50). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Newbold, D. (2018). ELF in English language tests. In N. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (eds), English as a Lingua Franca for EFL Contexts. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Okudaira, A. (1999). A study on international communication in regional organizations: the use of English as the “official” language of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Asian Englishes, 2(1), 91–107. Schneider, E. (2007). Postcolonial Englishes: Varieties around the World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Seidlhofer, B. & Widdowson, H. (2018). ELF for EFL. A change of subject? In N. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (eds), English as a Lingua Franca for EFL Contexts. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
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Glossary
AE AEC ASEAN BE CC CEAP CEFR CELTA CLT CLTE CP DELTA EFL EIL ELF ELT ENL ESL GTM ICC IELTS KBK KTSP L1 L2 MoEC MoNE NEST PD PPG SFL SLA TCT
American English ASEAN Economic Community Association of South East Asian Nations British English communicative competence critical English for academic purposes Common European Framework of Reference Certificate of English Language Teaching for Adults communicative language teaching critical language teacher education critical pedagogy Diploma of English Language Teaching for Adults English as a foreign language English as an international language English as a lingua franca English language teaching English as a native language English as a second language grammar-translation method intercultural communication International English Language Testing System Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi [Competence-Based Curriculum] Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan [Local Education Unit Curriculum]. first language second language Ministry of Education and Culture Indonesian Ministry of National Education native English-speaker teacher professional development Pendidikan Profesi Guru [Teacher Professional Education programme] Systemic Functional Linguistics second language acquisition Teacher Competency Test
Glossary TEAP traditional English for academic purposes TEFLIN Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages TLs teacher-learners TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language
205
Index
action research 167 Asia / Asian xi–ii, xvi, 2, 8, 13, 14, 27, 30, 34–5, 66, 70, 73, 122, 126, 157–8, 178, 180–1, 191–3, 201; East Asia 61, 78, 85–6; Northeast Asia xv; Southeast Asia / Southeast Asian xv, 1, 41, 44, 55, 58, 179, 196–7 Asian Corpus of English (ACE) 34, 89, 180, 200 Association of South East Asian Nations / ASEAN xiv–vi, 1–4, 8, 9, 10–4, 28, 30–1, 33–5, 42, 45–51, 54–5, 58, 73, 77, 81, 85–6, 88–9, 90, 94–96, 101, 108, 148, 156–9, 167, 169, 176–80, 187, 192–6, 198–201; ASEAN Economic Community / AEC; 21, 41, 48–9, 78, 131–2, 168, 175, 197; ASEAN Integration 2, 21, 28, 35, 58, 73, 168, 176–7, 187, 197, 198; ASEAN Plus Three 77, 86, 198; Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) 176 assessment 13, 73, 89, 98–9, 104, 138–9, 145, 148, 150–1, 158, 165, 176, 187, 199–200 classroom observation 11, 162 collaboration 8, 88, 95–6, 101, 103–5, 108, 132 culture xi–ii, xiv, 3, 8, 10, 12–3, 29,30, 32–3, 35, 43, 48–50, 59, 66, 69–73, 77–81, 83–9, 97, 122, 131–2, 134, 136, 144, 147–8, 150, 158–9, 161, 165–6, 175, 178–80, 187, 191–194, 197–201; intercultural/ intercultural communication (ICC) 8, 10, 13, 23, 35, 59, 77–83, 85, 87–9, 124, 133, 148–51, 157–9, 178–9, 180, 182, 187, 199, 200; multicultural 4–5, 10, 80–1, 85–7, 179, 198
English as an International Language / EIL xii, 5, 33, 96, 115, 147 English as a Lingua Franca / ELF xi–ii, xiv–v, 1–14, 21–36, 41–55, 58–73, 77–90, 94–109, 131–51, 156–169, 175–88, 191–200 English as a Foreign Language / EFL 2–3, 9, 21, 23–9, 31, 33–5, 72, 103, 124, 133, 148, 156, 177–8, 180, 187, 191, 193, 196–8 English as a Second Language / ESL xi–ii, 2–4, 9, 24–6, 28–9, 31, 123, 196–8 in-service level / in-service education / in-service teacher education / in-service training; in-service teachers 4, 8, 13, 59, 100, 138, 148, 185–6, 188 Jenkins, J. 1, 3, 5–6, 12, 25, 28, 29, 31, 34–5, 42, 44, 50, 54, 55, 79, 96, 101, 102–3, 115, 147–8, 157, 164 Kachru, B. 1, 58, 79, 85, 89, 96, 100, 115, 126, 196, 197 Kirkpatrick, A. xii, xiv, xvi, 2–5, 7, 9–10, 13, 14, 28, 30–1, 34–5, 58, 62, 69, 71, 73, 77, 85, 86, 88–90, 94, 101–3, 121–2, 131, 148, 156–9, 162–4, 167–8, 175, 177–9, 180, 188, 191, 196–7, 199 knowledge 12, 43–5, 47–8, 50–1, 54, 67, 71–2, 81, 83, 87–9, 94–5, 99, 100–1, 104–7, 115–7, 119–20, 122, 126, 127–8, 133–5, 137–9, 140, 142, 145–6, 149, 151, 156–7, 162–3, 167, 179–81, 183–5, 195; knowledge base 4, 7, 33, 185; teacher knowledge 78, 80 micro-teaching / microteaching 33, 62, 105, 167
Index 207 native speakerism / native speaking standards / native speaking norms xiv–v, 3, 32, 73; 102, 126, 132, 180, 200; native English speakers / native speakers of English / 4, 9, 32, 85, 117; native speaking countries 10; English as a native language (ENL) xi, 2, 25, 178, 195, 196; native-like / native speaking proficiency 3, 11, 28, 31, 33, 50, 51, 80, 85, 88, 102–3, 158–9, 201; non-native English speakers / non-native speakers of English xii, xiv–v, xv, 4–5, 32, 42, 147, 181; non-native speaking / non-native English speaking teachers 32
77–8, 80–1, 84–90, 131, 136, 184, 198 professional development 4, 8, 11, 13–4, 26, 59–60, 71, 89, 94, 97–8, 103, 150, 156, 167, 175, 179, 198, policy xvi, 4, 8, 13, 27, 41, 45, 94–5, 100, 109, 117, 131, 150, 156, 158, 167, 175–7, 181, 185, 188, 200; policymaking / policymakers 58, 85, 99, 176
Pendidikan Profesi Guru (PPG) 35, 41, 167–8 pre-service xiv, xv–i, 4, 8, 10–1, 13–4; pre-service curriculum 10; pre-service education / pre-service level/ pre-service teacher education 10, 13–4, 59, 73, 150, 156, 179–80, 183, 185, 200; pre-service teachers xv–i, 10, 58–60, 62, 69–70, 72–3,
Seidlhofer, B. 1, 2, 5–6, 25, 28–9, 31, 35, 42, 61, 96, 101, 103, 201
reflection / reflexivity / self-reflection/ self-reflectiveness 8, 11, 41, 44, 46–7, 52, 60, 64–5, 69, 71–2, 94, 103–8, 119, 157; reflective teachers 8
TEFLIN 26, 82, 90, 186 translanguage / translanguaging 8–9, 36 TESOL 117, 127 World Englishes xii, 5–6, 61, 79, 85–6, 124