English teachers' shaping of students' democratic attitudes in Taiwan

This study has several findings. English language teachers' multiple identities and 'guided democracy' educate students to be autonomous and tolerant of different cultures. A global curriculum enables students to negotiate 'Eastern' and 'Western' cultures. Communicative pedagogies have contributed to both solutions and problems. An integrated pedagogy is essential.

Native English speaking teachers and Taiwanese English teachers' professional identity

The study found that Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) helped Taiwanese English teachers define their weaknesses, strengths, roles and values through relationality. NESTs brought competing discourses to the profession. In addition, team teaching has become a site of tension threatening Taiwanese English teachers in activating their professional agency.

Becoming l(IT)erate : pre-service English teachers and ICTs

One of the recommended principles for classroom practice from the Digital Rhetorics Project is ‘Teachers First’, emphasising the need to prioritise the requirements of teachers in learning new technologies and in understanding their relationship to literacy education (Lankshear, Green and Snyder 2000, p. 121). While most of my pre-service English Education students use digital technologies for their own purposes and understand the benefits of doing so, it is not always straightforward regarding how technology can be effectively utilised in their classroom and for what purposes. This article reports work conducted with pre-service English Education teachers in an elective unit that focuses upon digital technologies in secondary classrooms. Using Green’s 3D model of literacy as a way of understanding the complex interrelationships between the cultural, critical and operational aspects of literacy, the students experiment with digital technologies such as mobile phones, wikis and blogs.

Reciprocal mentoring across generations: sustaining professional development for english teachers

This article draws on a collaborative research project entitled Teachers Investigate Unequal Literacy Outcomes: Cross-generational Perspectives, funded by the Australian Research Council 2002-2004 and awarded to Barbara Comber, University of South Australia and Barbara Kamler, Deakin University. The university researchers invited early career teachers in their first five years of teaching, and late career teachers with at least twenty-five years experience, to collaboratively explore the problem of unequal outcomes in literacy. Over a period of three years, the teacher researchers conducted audits of their classroom literacy programs and the effects on different children; case studies of students they were most concerned about; and redesigns of their literacy curriculum and pedagogy.  Bev Maney and Ivan Boyer collaborated as research partners in the context of their work together as English teachers at Portland Secondary College, Victoria. This paper is based on transcripts of their many conversations with one other and the research team and is represented as an interrupted conversation with the university researchers. Here they critique current models of professional development and the effects of standardised testing and argue for the importance of serious teacher conversations and ongoing school-based research.

P(ICT)ures of English : teachers, learners and technology

The increasing challenges presented by information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the need for English curriculum to prepare young adults for the digital world are raised in this work. Viewed from the standpoint of current theoretical debates on the subject among educators, it draws on a wide range of classroom and real-world experiences to explore how technology affects the instruction of English. Teachers' knowledge of these technologies and their practices in assimilating them into English curriculums are celebrated and exciting scenarios for the future are presented.

Knowing practice in English teaching? Research challenges in representing the professional practice of English teachers

This article problematises representations of professional practice. It investigates assumptions behind received accounts of professional practice, including professional standards that purportedly capture what accomplished English teachers “should know and be able to do”, “scientific” studies that construct accounts of classrooms from the standpoint of academic researchers, and narratives written by teachers that claim to explore dimensions of classroom teaching that elude outside observers. Especially significant are attempts by practitioner researchers to develop accounts of their professional practice vis-a-vis constructions of their work from other standpoints. We argue that it is timely for practitioner researchers to reflexively examine the conditions for producing such accounts, and to address the question of the validity of their knowledge claims. Yet this is also – crucially – more than an epistemological issue, but one that requires acknowledging the primacy of practice for engaging with the complexities of classroom settings. This article gives an account of our ongoing efforts to develop forms of representation that might begin to do justice to the complexities of practice in comparison with accepted accounts of what English teachers know and do. We intend it to be read as a position paper which outlines a framework for research on English teaching as a dynamic culture practice.

Emagining change : English teachers and technology

This textually playful study focuses on gaining a deeper understanding of teacher beliefs about English and the influence of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). Because English is in transformation, these insights into teachers' perpectives of their subject, technology and change will contribute to the productive rethinking of the profession. It employs narrative research, diaglogics and Actor Network Theory techniques.

Explaining ourselves (to ourselves) : english teachers, professional identity and change

This article discusses the professional identity of English teachers. It draws on discussions held at the International Federation for the Teaching of English conference. Issues addressed include professional standards formulated by teachers of English in the United States: the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and, in Australia: the Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australian (STELLA); the way in which the professional identities of teachers are crucially bound up with their disciplinary fields; and the need for English teachers to confront the conditions of their work.

Editorial : English teachers’ work in an era of standardisation

Of particular interest to us, as the editors of this issue of English Teaching: Practice and Critique, is the emergence of standards-based reforms, producing a situation in which English teaching has been subjected to standards at multiple levels – both professional standards that claim to map what teachers “should know and be able to do” (to echo the rhetoric that is typically employed to rationalise/vindicate the development of professional standards) and mandated learning outcomes, whether in the form of learning continua that purportedly capture outcomes that students are expected to achieve at each level of development or in the form of standardised literacy testing (see, for example, Zacher Pandya, 2011).