Abstract
While language teaching and learning in under-resourced contexts ought to be a critical issue to address due to the still uneven development of the world, insufficient insights have been revealed in the existing research (Kuchah, 2018). Motivated by such a gap, this edited book invites the International Research Foundation for English Language Education Doctoral Dissertation Grant awardees to report on English teaching and learning in challenging circumstances from diverse locations across all educational levels. Because it taps into topics such as policy connections, teacher preparations and practice insights, we believe this book will interest language teachers, researchers and policy-makers across the globe.
This book comprises 15 chapters, structured into two stage-setting chapters (Chapters 1 and 2) and three thematic parts on language policy, teacher preparation and classroom practice. Chapter 1, by the two editors, Donna Christian and Kathleen M. Bailey, offers an overview of the book, including the rationale, organisation and methodological considerations. In Chapter 2, Andy Curtis reconceptualises the term context and delineates the features and causes of diverse under-resourced contexts.
Part I (Chapters 3–6) presents the studies on the interplay between national language policies and English language education. In Chapter 3, Virak Chan examines the tension among the growing demand for English language proficiency, the limited resources and the desire to support the Khmer language in Cambodia. Chapter 4, by Thi Hoai Thu Tran, Rachel Burke and John Mitchell O'Toole, reports the challenges in implementing English-medium instruction in higher education in Vietnam, including limited English proficiency of the students and teachers, and lack of textbooks. In Chapter 5, Rooh Ul Amin finds out that while English language proficiency serves as a passport to success in Pakistan, students have inequitable access to learning it due to the school systems (i.e., public vs private) and locations (i.e., rural vs urban). Chapter 6, by Norbella Miranda, identifies the affordances (e.g., the provisions of textbooks) and constraints (e.g., the limited instructional time) in an appropriation of the National Bilingual Programme by English teachers in a targeted public school in Colombia. Altogether, these four chapters present three Asian countries and one South American country endeavouring to update their language education policies against the backdrop of Association of Southeast Asian Nations economic integration and the internationalisation of higher education.
Part II (Chapters 7–9) centres on teachers’ professional development. In Chapter 7, focusing on public schools in under-resourced areas in Turkey, Özgür Şahan and Kari Sahan categorise challenges faced by novice English teachers and their coping strategies. They find that the teachers could cope with the instructional challenges but not the challenges posed by professional communities and regional contexts. In Chapter 8, Leanne M. Cameron examines the role of teacher associations in promoting teachers’ professional development in Rwanda and suggests that the teacher associations could be more inclusive by providing more opportunities for those marginalised teachers. In Chapter 9, Anh Tran presents English teachers’ cognition and assessment practices in Vietnamese public primary schools and identifies contextual factors (e.g., large class size and increased workload) that impede teachers’ practices. Chapter 10, by Lara Bryfonski, examines the effectiveness of a task-based language teaching training programme on native and non-native English-speaking teachers in Honduras and suggests the necessity of including cultural responsiveness in the programme. While preparing good quality teachers remains a tough challenge in under-resourced contexts, the insights provided in the three chapters can offer useful information for language teachers and teacher educators to reflect and establish more creative and efficient ways that facilitate teachers’ professional development in such contexts.
Part III (Chapters 11–15) provides insights into classroom practice. In Chapter 11, Espen Stranger-Johannessen demonstrates how Ugandan primary school English teachers tackled the reading materials’ scarcity by incorporating stories into the curriculum to scaffold students’ language learning and literacy development. Chapter 12, by Tabitha Kidwell, showcases Indonesian English as a foreign language teachers in the under-resourced contexts of integrated unfamiliar cultural content by discussing texts, direct instruction and language contextualisation, to develop students’ intercultural competence alongside language skills. In Chapter 13, Yecid Ortega presents a feasible English curriculum embedded with social justice in Colombia that enhances the students’ language learning and their awareness of social problems and inequalities in their community, which consists of marginalised peoples with low socio-economic status. In Chapter 14, Shakina Rajendram explores the affordances of a student-led collaborative translanguaging pedagogy, in under-resourced Tamil-medium schools in Malaysia, which is sustainable as it does not require many physical resources. In the last chapter of this book, Chapter 15, Panjanit Chaipuapae reports on a local, teacher-made listening test in Thai universities and suggests that it can be used as an alternative to standardised testing, as it is less expensive and it contains accented speeches more relevant to the Thai context. All in all, the five chapters highlight the significance of cultural responsiveness for language teaching in under-resourced contexts, and showcase how language teachers can overcome the constraints and facilitate students’ language learning.
Overall, this book provides rich insights into English teaching and learning in under-resourced contexts and is laudable for two distinctive features. First, all 13 research-based chapters (Chapters 3–15) are organised in the same format by providing a detailed description of the research as well as intriguing takeaway messages for different stakeholders, making this book easy to follow. Second, most studies in this book were conducted in Asian countries, making it of great interest among Asian readers. For instance, in the People’s Republic of China, English teachers in under-resourced schools share similar challenges, including large class sizes, the lack of teaching materials and increased workload (Kong, 2021) . The coping strategies presented in this book will surely provide those teachers with good food for thought.
Despite the distinctive features, this book could be further enhanced if more contexts were to be included. All 13 studies were conducted in developing countries; however, under-resourced contexts not only exist in developing countries, but also in developed countries. To this end, it would be interesting if more information could be revealed about challenges and coping strategies in language teaching in such contexts. By doing so, we believe the readership of this book would be further widened.
In conclusion, collecting the wisdom of authors from different parts of the world, this book provides a window into the intricacies in language learning and teaching with limited resources and provides insights to meet those challenges. The rich information and reflexivity of the book enhances its readability and will encourage more teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy-makers to develop an interest in supporting English teaching and learning in under-resourced contexts around the world.
