U.S.-educated and Taiwan-educated Taiwanese Teachers of English: Capital and Agency

• Pei-Chia Liao ^[1]
  1. [1] Feng Chia University

     Feng Chia University

     Taiwán

     
• Localización: Search and research [Recurso electrónico]: teacher education for contemporary contexts / coord. por Juan José Mena Marcos, Ana García-Valcárcel Muñoz-Repiso, Francisco José García Peñalvo, Marta Martín del Pozo, 2017, ISBN 978-84-9012-769-8, págs. 199-208
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A number of non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) have obtained their degrees abroad in English-speaking countries and have returned to their countries in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) contexts, working alongside NNESTs who have been educated domestically. However, many studies on NNESTs often portray them as one homogeneous group, overgeneralizing their diverse experiences in learning the English language as well as their various trajectories in becoming English teachers. Focusing on two Taiwan-educated and two U.S.-educated Taiwanese teachers of English, and drawing on concepts of capital and agency, this qualitative case study brings to the forefront the voices and perspectives of the Taiwanese English teachers. Through interviews, class observations, and document analysis, the study investigates the resources these teachers drew on to assert themselves as legitimate English teachers. The study also depicts the interrelationship of capital and agency. First, it shows how the teachers’ cultural capital and linguistic capital enabled their agency, which allowed them to turn the capital into their pedagogical successes, and second, it reveals how the teachers’ agency helped them acquire or accumulate capital. The study also examines why earning the highly-valued linguistic capital and using it pedagogically enabled the teachers to assert themselves as legitimate English teachers, in considering the contexts where these teachers worked. This study contributes to the NNEST literature by illustrating in-service NNESTs’ perceptions of legitimacy in an EFL context and identifying resources these NNESTs drew upon that helped them assert their legitimacy. Implications for pre-service language teacher education and ongoing professional development for NNESTs are discussed.