The book addresses the issue of native-speakerism, an ideology based on the assumption that 'native speakers' of English have a special claim to the language itself, through critical qualitative studies of the lived experiences of practising teachers and students in a range of scenarios.

This book explores native-speakerism in modern language teaching, and examines the ways in which it has been both resilient and critiqued. It provides a range of conceptual tools to situate ideological discourses and processes within educational contexts. In turn, it discusses the interdiscursive nature of ideologies and the complex ways in which ideologies influence objective and material realities, including hiring practices and, more broadly speaking, unequal distributions of power and resources. In closing, it considers why the diffusion and consumption of ideological discourses seem to persist, despite ongoing critical engagement by researchers and practitioners, and proposes alternative paradigms aimed at overcoming the problems posed by the native-speaker model in foreign language education.

Despite unsubstantiated claims of best practice, the division of language-teaching professionals on the basis of their categorization as ‘native-speakers’ or ‘non-native speakers’ continues to cascade throughout the academic literature. It has become normative, under the rhetorical guise of acting to correct prejudice and/or discrimination, to see native-speakerism as having a single beneficiary – the ‘native-speaker’ – and a single victim – the ‘non-native’ speaker. However, this unidirectional perspective fails to deal with the more veiled systems through which those labeled as native-speakers and non-native speakers are both cast as casualties of this questionable bifurcation. This volume documents such complexities and aims to fill the void currently observable within mainstream academic literature in the teaching of both English, and Japanese, foreign language education. By identifying how the construct of Japanese native-speaker mirrors that of the ‘native-speaker’ of English, the volume presents a revealing insight into language teaching in Japan. Further, taking a problem-solving approach, this volume explores possible grounds on which language teachers could be employed if native-speakerism is rejected according to experts in the fields of intercultural communicative competence, English as a Lingua Franca and World Englishes, all of which aim to replace the ‘native-speaker’ model with something new.

Scholars throughout the world have come together again in a second book to share their most successful teaching practices and concerns in the areas of cross-cultural studies and international education. Many disciplines are represented and diverse subjects are discussed: science literacy and worldview perspective; second-language acquisition, student mobility, and international universities; teacher professional development and government programs for disadvantaged children; zoos, industrial paintings, and dress designs as cultural artifacts. Presentations on these topics are the result of papers given at the annual meeting of the Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture, founded 10 years ago in Rome, Italy. The organization regularly attracts some 100 scholars and practitioners in the fields of education, literacy, language learning, communication and (inter-)cultural studies from all five continents to its annual congress in Rome. These conferences, as well as this up-to-date compilation of multi-disciplinary academic papers, are meant to highlight the growing need for culturally sensitive education that draws on the strengths of both traditional teaching methods and technology-rich forms of instruction, as well as a host of national and international programs designed to empower teachers and students alike. Engaged educators, whose research and/or critical discourse in classrooms all over the world has given rise to the present volume, thus hope to share with a wider audience how they impart knowledge, foster skills, and nurture qualities in the next generation of global citizens that will enable them to negotiate their personal and professional lives in our modern world. Even though communities may no longer be characterized by physical distances as barriers to communicative interchanges, perceived and real rifts between different cultures are nevertheless coming alarmingly close to preventing meaningful communication from bringing about true understanding at the individual and societal levels. The ontogenesis of the Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture is seen here clearly in the perspectives and presentations of diverse academics who are dedicated to teaching and learning toward the greater goal, as Matthew Arnold said in Literature and Science, of “knowing ourselves and the world.”

Classroom Interactions as Cross-Cultural Encounters is about native English speakers teaching English as a global language in non-English speaking countries. Through analysis of naturally occurring dialogic encounters, the authors examine the multifaceted ways in which teachers and students utilize diverse communicative resources to construct, display, and negotiate their identities as teachers, learners, and language users, with different pedagogic, institutional, social, and political implications. A range of issues in applied linguistics is addressed, including linguistic imperialism, post-colonial theories, micropolitics of classroom interaction, language and identity, and bilingual classroom practices. Intended to help TESOL professionals of different cultural backgrounds, working in different sociocultural contexts, to critically understand how non-assimilationist, dialogic intercultultural communication with students can be achieved and built on for mutual cultural and linguistic enrichment and empowerment, this book: *emphasizes the sociocultural meanings and micropolitics of classroom interactions that reveal the complex realities of power and identity negotiations in cross-cultural interactions in ELT (English Language Teaching) classroom contexts; *revisits and reconstitutes the notion of native-speakerness and repositions the roles of native and non-native English teachers in the TESOL profession in the contexts of decolonization and globalization; *highlights the need to mobilize intercultural communicative resources for global communication; *addresses two major concerns of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom researchers and teachers: student resistance and learning motivation; and *examines and analyzes the changing ideologies (both explicit and implicit) of teachers and students about English learning in the context of a post-colonial society, and how these ideologies are being enacted, reproduced, but also sometimes contested in EFL classroom interactions. Each chapter includes Questions for Reflection and Discussion to promote critical thinking and understanding of the issues discussed. Tuning-In discussion questions are provided in the three chapters on classroom data analysis to activate readers interpretive schemas before they examine the actual classroom episodes. The data are from an ethnographic study in post-colonial Hong Kong secondary schools involving four native English-speaker teachers and two bilingual Cantonese-English speaking teachers engaged in intercultural classroom dialogues with their Cantonese Hong Kong students. The rich, naturally occurring classroom data and in-depth analyses provide useful pedagogical materials for courses in EFL teacher education programs on classroom discourse analysis from sociocultural perspectives.

The book addresses the issue of native-speakerism, an ideology based on the assumption that 'native speakers' of English have a special claim to the language itself, through critical qualitative studies of the lived experiences of practising teachers and students in a range of scenarios.

This book is the first systematic, large-scale study of the current situation of native-speakerism in the realm of China’s English Language Teaching (ELT). By extending the semantic scope of native-speakerism initially defined by Adrian Holliday, the book offers a critical examination of how this language ideology is enacted, reproduced, reinforced and legitimized in everyday ELT practice within the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to explore and interpret the attitudes and perceptions of students, teachers and administrators as the major stakeholders engaged in ELT practice, with a primary focus on English language varieties, cultural orientations, and teaching methodologies.