A Sociopolitical Agenda for TESOL Teacher Education

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Teaching English to the speakers of other languages (TESOL) sits at the nexus of constant change, which makes it vitally important for language teachers to engage in continuous development to survive professionally. Central to moving with the proverbial times, is keeping abreast with the sociopolitical milieu in which teachers are embedded. However, most teacher education activities are often associated with what is perceived as best practices that are expected to be adopted (often uncritically) for classroom application and practice, with the intention of training teachers to become technicians in their respective classrooms. However, in reality, TESOL practitioners often find themselves in situations that require them to be reflexive practitioners and to negotiate sites of political struggles and social injustice. Given that a socially situated understanding of TESOL teacher education is often overlooked, this volume highlights the sociopolitical dimensions of TESOL teacher education. In the first part of the volume, the chapters introduce the theoretical underpinnings of the sociopolitical agenda proposed by this volume. Building upon these theoretical underpinnings, the chapters in the second part of the volume subsequently realize the proposed agenda by situating it within actual TESOL teacher education contexts that are characterized by power imbalances and neoliberally-inflected educational injustices.

Author Bio

Peter I. De Costa is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Education at Michigan State University, USA. zgehan Ustuk is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.