Exploring identity construction of student teachers practicing ELF pedagogy in a microteaching course

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative study that explored the experiences of a group of student-teachers (STs) in Indonesia as they undertook a microteaching course as part of their undergraduate teacher training program. Grounded in the notions of ‘teacher identity as the process of becoming’ (Britzman, 2003) and ‘identity in practice’ (Varghese et al., 2005), the present paper examines how participation in a microteaching course that oriented STs to ELF pedagogy affected the formation of teacher identities amongst one group of STs in Indonesia. Data were gathered from three post-mini lesson interviews with individual STs and STs’ mini lessons. The findings show a positive relationship between ELF pedagogy, STs’ perception of their teacher role and their identity construction. Many STs’ identity construction appears to be informed by their concerns of the hegemonic presence of English in the local community and their role primarily as a revival of Indonesian cultures. Although the majority of STs showed a general agreement towards the need to construct a teacher identity independent of native-speaker norms, a few STs continued to believe the importance of teachers to speak Standard English due to its marketability potential.

English language education in Indonesia: A review of research (2011–2019)

“…However, there were participants who stated that in teaching one of the varieties, they would also share information about the existence of other varieties with their students’ (p. 145). Zacharias (2016) also underlined the tendency among student-teachers towards ‘native’ English as the variety that should be taught, as ‘… many STs [student-teachers] in the present study continue to believe that credible teacher identities can only be projected through speaking native speaker's English … to establish their credibility as English language teachers’ (p. 336). Overall, the EIL approach itself is somewhat new to many student-teachers, with Zacharias (2014b) herself arguing: Students’ limited (lack of) representation of Englishes in their EIL materials point to the continued efforts that need to be done to expose students to these new Englishes so that student-teachers can be more informed on how linguistically and culturally diverse English has become today (p. 228).Researchers such as Mambu (2018) and Widiati and Hayati (2018) were also interested in the pluricentric approach to English language teacher education, seeing this rather differently through the ELF perspective.…”

“…This led Manara (2016) to argue that ‘Englishes are felt to be more acceptable in communicative settings (other than formal educational setting of a classroom)’ where ‘variations are welcomed, tolerated, and accommodated’ (p. 14). A study based on a microteaching course was conducted by Zacharias (2016). Data from interviews involving 12 prospective teachers in the study suggests that the participants held the belief that their identities were projected through having a native-like pronunciation.…”

“…Sukyadi, 2015;Sundayana, 2015;Putra & Lukmana, 2017;Widodo, 2016) and tertiary (e.g. Dewi, 2017aDewi, , 2017bRiyanti, 2017;Zacharias, 2014aZacharias, , 2014bZacharias, , 2016. This article will elucidate the current trends of English language teaching and learning in the country at the three levels of education as captured by rigorously selected recent studies.…”

Global Englishes and language teaching: A review of pedagogical research

“…Two (Cameron & Galloway, 2019; Galloway & Numajiri, 2020) were conducted with pre- and in-service teachers (mostly pre-service) on a UK-based master's programme and the other two Anglophone studies (Ates, Eslami, & Wright, 2015; Eslami, Moody, & Pashmforoosh, 2019) were conducted in the US, responding to the changing demographics in native English-speaking classrooms as a result of increased migration. The only other contexts included in this group are Italy (Vettorel & Corrizzato, 2016), Indonesia (Zacharias, 2016), Korea (Love, 2013), Thailand (Prabjandee, 2020), and Turkey (Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015; Biricik Deniz, Özkan, & Bayyurt, 2020). The lack of research in other regions of the globe is significant.…”

“…The lack of research in other regions of the globe is significant. Zacharias (2016) points out that research with pre-service teachers is under-represented, yet only two studies were conducted solely with in-service teachers (Love, 2013; Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015). However, in some studies, small numbers of participants had teaching experience (e.g.…”