Universalizing the particulars: neoliberalizing English language teaching (ELT) through outcome-based education (OBE)

Abstract

Universities, once regarded as places for producing organic intellectuals and critical thinkers, now are targets of neoliberalism, where managerialist discourses and lexis are dominant in various forms. Students and teachers are transformed into entrepreneurs, consumers and customers through such discourse and lexis. As a neoliberal variant used in education today, outcome-based education (OBE) – focus of the present study – can be viewed as one such discursive attempt on the part of the universities with an aim to perpetuate neoliberal market rationality. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with teachers at engineering universities in Pakistan, this study examines OBE-driven ELT pedagogy using Gramsci’s hegemony as a theoretical framework. We aimed to understand how OBE-based ELT tends to transform teachers’ subjectivities into neoliberal ‘selves’, the way it impacts pedagogy and learning of the English language, and how these subjectivities are resisted. It appears that OBE-based ELT circulates market logics in the ELT pedagogy and learning by viewing English language as a skill/commodity. Student learning and teachers’ pedagogical performance indicators are based on achievement of specific outcomes. Some teachers, however, argue that OBE-led ELT deprives them of their pedagogical experiences, freedom, and conceptualizations appropriate for their pedagogical approach. We therefore advocate de-centering and deconstructing neoliberal logics in pedagogy and suggest pedagogy of becoming, critical/dialogic language pedagogy and translanguaging as possible alternatives.