Research in language pedagogy often falls into the positivist trap of taking a desirable methodology as the ontological center and evaluating teachers’ teaching against it. Inspired by Snider et al.’s (1992) enactment approach to curriculum development, this article takes language teaching methodology as the lived experiences of students and teachers. From multiple roles and perspectives, the author recollects his personal history with different methodologies in English education in China from the 1980s to 2010s. Through this autoethnographic exploration, the author reflects on the shifting landscape of English education in China through the lens of his pedagogical lived experiences. The article also aims to rectify methodology as a theoretical construct in language education research, arguing that the gap between planned methodology and enacted methodology is the most fruitful space for pedagogical research in language education.
AdamsEJonesTEllisC (2014) Autoethnography: Understanding Qualitative Research. New York: Oxford University Press.
2.
AdamsonBMorrisP (1997) The English curriculum in the people’s republic of China. Comparative Education Review41(1): 3–26.
3.
AitchisonJ (1998) The Articulate Mammal: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London & New York, NY: Routledge.
4.
BaxS (2003) The end of CLT: a context approach to language teaching. ELT Journal57(3): 278–87.
5.
BellD M (2007) Do teachers think that methods are dead?. ELT Journal61(2): 135–43.
6.
BrownH D (2000) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.
7.
CanagarajahA S (2012) Teacher development in a global profession: an autoethnography. TESOL Quarterly46: 258–79.
8.
ChangH (2008) Autoethnography as Method. New York: Routledge.
9.
ClandininD JConnellyF M (2000) Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
10.
ClandininJ YRosiekJ (2007) Mapping a landscape of narrative inquiry: borderland spaces and tensions. In: ClandininJ (ed.) Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 35–77.
11.
ColesR (1989) The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
12.
ConnellyMClandininJ (1988) Teachers as Curriculum Planners: Narratives of Experience. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
13.
CookV (1996) Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
14.
DeweyJ (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
15.
EllisC (2004) The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek CA,: AltaMira Press.
16.
EllisCAdamsT E (2014) The purposes, practices, and principles of autoethnographic research. In: LeavyP (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research. New York: Oxford University Press, 254–76
17.
EllingsonLEllisC (2008) Autoethnography as constructionist project. In: HolsteinJ AGubriumJ F (eds) Handbook of Constructionist Research.New York: Guilford Press, 445–66.
18.
HallidayMAK (1975) Learning How to Mean. London: Edward Arnold.
19.
HollidayA (1996) Six lessons: cultural continuity in communicative language teaching. Language Teaching Research1 (3): 212–38.
20.
JohnsonM (1987) The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
21.
KrashenSD (1985) The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. London: Longman.
22.
KumaravadiveluB (2003) Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
23.
KumaravadiveluB (2006) Understanding Language Teaching: From Method to Postmethod. Mahwah, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
24.
Larsen-FreemanD (2000) Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (2nd Edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
25.
LiebermanAMillerL (2004) Teacher Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
26.
LiuW (2016) The changing pedagogical discourses in China, English Teaching: Practice & Critique15(1): 74–90.
27.
LiuW (2014) Living with a foreign tongue: an autobiographical narrative inquiry into identity in a foreign language. Alberta Journal of Educational Research60(2): 264–78.
28.
LiuWLinX (2018) Family language policy in English as a foreign language: a case study from China to Canada. Language Policy18(2): 191–207.
29.
LiuWWangQ (2019) Walking with bound feet: teachers’ lived experiences in China’s English curriculum change, Language, Culture and Curriculum, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1615077
30.
ManaraC (2017) ‘What should I call myself? Does it matter?’ Questioning the ‘labelling’ practice in ELT profession. In: YazanBRudolphN (eds) Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching: Issues and Implications.Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 125–40.
31.
McLaughlinM (1976) Implementation as mutual adaptation: change in classroom organization. In: WilliamsWElmoreR F (eds) Social Program Implementation. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 167–80.
32.
McNiffJWhiteheadJ (2009) Doing and Writing Action Research. London: Sage Publications.
33.
PennycookA (1989) The concept of method, interested knowledge, and the politics of language teaching. TESOL Quarterly23(4): 589–618.
34.
PrubhuNS (1990) There is no best method – why?. TESOL Quarterly24(2): 161–72.
35.
RichardsJC (1990) Beyond methods. In: RichardsJ C (ed.) The Language Teaching Matrix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 5–11.
36.
SnyderJBolinFZumwaltK (1992) Curriculum implementation. In:JacksonPW (ed.) Handbook of Research on Curriculum. New York: Macmillan, 402–35.
37.
Solano-CamposA (2014) The making of an international educator: Transnationalism and nonnativeness in English teaching and learning. TESOL Journal5: 412–43.
38.
SpadaN (2007) Communicative language teaching: current status and future prospects, In: CumminsJDavisonC (eds) The International Handbook of English Language Teaching1Norwell, MA: Springer Publications, 271–88.
39.
SwainM (1993) The output hypothesis: just speaking and writing aren’t enough. The Canadian Modern Language Review50(1): 158–64.
40.
ThompsonG (1996) Some misconceptions about communicative language teaching. ELT Journal50(1): 9–15.
41.
TsuiA B M (2007) Complexities of identity formation: a narrative inquiry of an EFL teacher. TESOL Quarterly41(4): 657–80.
42.
Van ManenM (1990) Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. London: The Althouse Press.
43.
WangQ (2007) The national curriculum changes and their effects on ELT in the People’s Republic of China. In: CumminsJDavisonC (eds) The International Handbook of English Language Education1Norwell, MA: Springer Publications, 87–105.
44.
WatersA (2007) ELT and ‘the spirit of the times’. ELT Journal61(4): 353–9.
45.
ZachariasNT (2019) The ghost of nativespeakerism: the case of teacher classroom introductions in transnational contexts. TESOL J10(4): e499.
