From Marginalisation to Celebration: Learning Journey of One English Language Teacher Reconstructing an EIL-Aware Practitioner Identity

The global reach of English has resulted in various paradigm shifts including Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL) that encourage a thorough examination of the traditional Anglo-centric ELT tenets. TEIL offers implications for classroom pedagogy, including paying attention to local contexts for making pedagogical decisions, staying away from the English-only classroom policy and utilising L1 in the most efficient way, setting the development of strategic intercultural communicative competence as a goal, neutralising the cultural content of language teaching, and exposing learners to a wide variety of Englishes. An issue as important as classroom pedagogy is teacher identity, for non-native teachers have been marginalised for long due to the privileged status of native speakers in the traditional Anglo-centric ELT. However, TEIL also aims at increasing non-native teachers’ self-confidence by highlighting their strengths. At this point, the burgeoning need to understand non-native English teachers’ stances and experiences arises. Thus, the aim of the current case study was to see whether an EIL-themed MA course served as a catalyst or inhibitor for a teacher, i.e., an MA degree candidate. To explore her 13-week-journey from the beginning till the end, she was asked to reflect upon the issues covered in the course immediately after each class session, and a content analysis was performed on those written reflections to identify her possible realisations, concerns, roles, and changes. The results highlight the teacher’s good grasp of the related terminologies and issues, increased EIL awareness and sensitivity, reflective, critical and creative thinking, and tendency to experience EIL-oriented teaching in her classes. Some pedagogical insights based upon that betterment in knowledge and attitude domains will be shared to offer EIL sensitivity pathways for teachers as well as suggestions for teacher educators to raise EIL-informed teachers.