Developing teacher awareness and action plans for teaching English as an international language

Abstract

Researchers have made pedagogical suggestions regarding how to incorporate international varieties of English in teacher education, but the amount of research on how novice teachers develop such knowledge and pedagogies and put them into practice is noticeably inadequate. This study presents a two-part case study in order to address this concern. In the first part, the study reports how four pre-service teachers in a teacher education program developed their knowledge and awareness informed by an English-as-an-international language perspective in their curricula, materials, and classroom instruction. The second part reports how one of the four teachers implemented a pedagogical project with an aim to transform her students’ attitudes and knowledge toward various Englishes. The data were drawn from semi-structured interviews, teaching philosophy statements, written assignments, and reflective journals. The findings overall provide important insights into understanding the emergence of transformative pedagogical awareness, philosophies, and praxis in addressing the diversity of Englishes by pre-service teachers in teacher education programs.