Identity and emotion of university English teachers during curriculum reform in China

Stylistics offers a wealth of benefits to English teachers who wish to integrate aspects of language and literature together, and to engage their students in a text-driven, reader-response informed grammar pedagogy. Recently, there has been a growing interest in how stylistics can be re-contextualised to schools, with academics working collaboratively with teachers in teacher workshops, school curriculum reform and classroom-based research. In this paper, I aim to provide a picture of what this work looks like, and I argue that it presents an important moment in the history of stylistics, both as a discipline and as a pedagogical method. The re-contextualisation of stylistics to schools has the potential to further validate academic research findings, as well as offering English teachers an enabling and accessible toolkit for teaching about language and literature that is likely to sit comfortably with their own beliefs about the subject. However, there are various logistical and political complexities involved, such as access to training, teacher subject knowledge and teacher attitudes towards linguistics. In light of these complexities, I discuss the design and implementation of a training course about stylistics for teachers, and how course participants have taken the knowledge acquired and actualised it in their own practice. I also present some of the barriers that teachers have faced in trying to do so. I argue that stylistics is beneficial for teachers, and that the present moment presents an important and potentially fruitful time for the discipline.

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Bridging the implementation gap: an ethnographic study of English teachers' implementation of the curriculum reform in China

Ethnography & Education ◽

10.1080/17457823.2012.661585 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 1-19 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Chunmei Yan ◽

Chuanjun He

Keyword(s):

Curriculum Reform ◽

English Teachers ◽

Ethnographic Study ◽

Implementation Gap

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‘A2 is Normal’ – Thai Secondary School English Teachers’ Encounters with the CEFR

RELC Journal ◽

10.1177/0033688217738816 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 49 (3) ◽

pp. 322-338 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jens Franz ◽

Adisa Teo

Keyword(s):

Policy Change ◽

Language Proficiency ◽

Curriculum Reform ◽

English Language ◽

Language Teaching ◽

Labour Force ◽

Student Assessment ◽

English Teachers ◽

English Language Teaching ◽

Learning And Teaching

Thailand has seen several English language curriculum reforms over the last 20 years, all of which were found to have failed to lift Thai students’ standard of English language proficiency across all levels of study. In 2014, the Thai Ministry of Education announced the introduction of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), in combination with Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), as its latest policy to improve the standard of English learning and teaching in Thailand’s schools. The establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015 and concerns about the economic competitiveness of the Thai labour force were provided as the underlying rationale for this policy change. This case study, using Grounded Theory Methodology combining semi-structured in-depth interviews, a questionnaire and document analysis, addresses the question of how this education policy change was experienced and perceived by English language teachers at state secondary schools across four provinces in the south of Thailand. A marked divergence in individual teachers’ knowledge and appreciation of the policy plans was observed, with the majority of respondents displaying indifference to and ignorance of the policy. The Ministry had in 2015 tested all civil servant English teachers in a CEFR-referenced online placement test, where 94% had failed to reach the targeted proficiency level of B2. Consequently, the framework was perceived primarily as an English proficiency test for teachers, a European assessment scale which had been applied to them, but which had had no further application to either classroom teaching or student assessment. These findings are framed in the wider context of curriculum reform and English language teaching in Thailand. Comparisons with other English curriculum reform policies based on the CEFR are made, and the emphasis on testing teachers’ language proficiency is reflected upon through the wider debate on language teacher proficiency.

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