Ross Thorburn
Is TEFL Recruitment Racist?

Sixty years since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Fifty-five years since Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”.  And, four decades after George Wallace said “I was wrong.” You might think, by now, we’d have racism under control. We don’t. In fact, the prevalence of racism in recruitment has not improved in the US since 1989 (Quilliana, Pagerc, Hexela & Midtbøenf, 2017).  Is TEFL recruitment racist? We know that our industry discriminates against “non-native English teachers”, but what about good old, garden-variety racism? 

Is TEFL Recruitment Racist?

Task Design in Online One-to-One Classes with Young Learners

Task Design in Online One-to-One Classes with Young Learners

This study investigated how effective four tasks were in supporting meaningful spoken language production between young learners and their teachers. The context of the study, online one-to-one lessons, is commonplace but largely unresearched. Transcripts from seventeen teacher-student dyads using four tasks were analysed using conversation analysis. These were then coded and the number of instances of meaningful communication counted. The number of instances of pushed output and negotiation of meaning were also noted. The most successful task was an open opinion-gap task, which motivated the young learners. Crucially, the task outcome (a plan of a shopping centre) allowed learners to check their teachers had understood them. Teacher misunderstandings gave learners opportunities to take control of the discourse and negotiate meaning. Aspects of task design which impeded meaningful communication included sentence stems, which resulted in drill-like interactions. Task topics familiar to learners but unfamiliar to teachers hindered meaningful communication. Also, tasks located near the end of a lesson sequence tended to result in less meaningful communication than those nearer the start.

Opportunities in online teaching with young learners

Opportunities in online teaching with young learners

As teachers around the world get used to teaching online, it’s easy to focus on the drawbacks; the things that we used to be able to do offline but can no longer do online. Far less attention gets paid to what we can do online that was never previously possible offline. In my experience as a trainer in an online language school, this context holds just as many opportunities as it does limitations. In this short article, I will discuss six opportunities inherent in online young learner classes that were never previously possible in face-to-face lessons and how to take advantage of these.

The contents of Pandora’s box: online teacher development and evaluation

The contents of Pandora’s box: online teacher development and evaluation

The proliferation of online teaching in the wake of the coronavirus has profound consequences for teacher development and teacher evaluation. If we are to improve online teaching it is vital that we take advantage of the opportunities this new medium affords us, while being alert to the potential ethical dangers.

How to motivate and retain young teachers (from the 2017 IATEFL Conference)

How to motivate and retain young teachers (from the 2017 IATEFL Conference)

Ask more or less anyone what motivates people and you will hear more or less the same answer: money. Without exception, every time I have a run a workshop about how to motivate teachers, the participants pick “salary” as the most important factor. The participants at this workshop at IATEFL 2017 were no different. Their answers to “What do you think motivates teachers?” collected at the beginning of the workshop, are shown in Figure 1. There is research to support this belief. In 2006, Andy Hockley surveyed 105 teachers about their motivations at work and found salary was one of the most commonly identified factors for teacher motivation (Hockley, 2006). But is that still true now?

Is TEFL Recruitment Racist?

Is TEFL Recruitment Racist?

Sixty years since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Fifty-five years since Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”.  And, four decades after George Wallace said “I was wrong.” You might think, by now, we’d have racism under control. We don’t. In fact, the prevalence of racism in recruitment has not improved in the US since 1989 (Quilliana, Pagerc, Hexela & Midtbøenf, 2017).  Is TEFL recruitment racist? We know that our industry discriminates against “non-native English teachers”, but what about good old, garden-variety racism? 

“Native” & “Non-native” English Teachers in China: Contrasting Opinions

“Native” & “Non-native” English Teachers in China: Contrasting Opinions

This article will investigate the attitudes of service and sales staff, parents, students and teachers towards native-speakerism in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) industry in China. It will briefly review literature on the subject, consider survey responses from 1123 respondents at a language teaching organization (LTO) in China and attempt to explain the results and consider the implications. I will argue that if we (as an industry) hope to change parents’ and students’ preferences for “native English teachers” we must first change the views of our own staff. Additionally, as they have a key role in setting customers’ expectations about language learning, sales and service staff are of paramount importance in any attempts to change consumer preferences. Yet, until now, these groups have not been part of our professional discourse on this matter nor have many attempts been made to better understand their beliefs.

Expatriate Teacher Recruitment in a Language Teaching Organization in China

Expatriate Teacher Recruitment in a Language Teaching Organization in China

This article will investigate teacher recruitment in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) industry in China. It will review literature on the subject, consider survey responses from 1220 teachers who either accepted or rejected offers of a job at a language teaching organization (LTO) in China and will attempt to explain the results and consider the implications for language teaching institutions.

Creating a Successful Induction Program for EFL Teachers Abroad

Creating a Successful Induction Program for EFL Teachers Abroad

As managers and trainers, we are usually well aware of the organizational need for training new teachers when they arrive in our schools. New teachers need to learn about the curriculum, need to understand the methodology of their school, need to be trained on how to manage the classroom. But what about the needs of the new teachers themselves? This workshop aimed to make participants more aware of the needs of teachers who move abroad to teach English as a foreign language, demonstrate a low-cost way to meet teachers’ needs and show the results of meeting these needs.

Training & Turnover: An Investigation into the Effects of Training on Staff Turnover

Training & Turnover: An Investigation into the Effects of Training on Staff Turnover

Have you heard the old joke about training?

The Chief Financial Officer asked: What if we invest in training our people and they leave?

To which the Human Resources manager replied: What if we don’t and they stay?

Many of us have heard similar arguments against training made by those who hold the purse strings in our organizations. We know training makes sense. But what truth is there to the Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO) argument? It is becoming increasingly common for trainers to be asked to prove their training programs deliver return on investment (ROI) (Virtual Asherage, 2013). As the CFO hints in the joke, if employees leave after receiving training, any ROI will be all but impossible. Furthermore, many companies worry that training may encourage employee turnover (Allen, 2008). So, what is the reality of training and turnover? And how does this relate to the language teaching industry?

English Language Teacher Motivation and Turnover in a Private Language Institution in China

English Language Teacher Motivation and Turnover in a Private Language Institution in China

Teacher turnover is a challenge across the world. In mainstream education, approximately half of all teachers leave the teaching profession within five years of joining (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). This creates a problem. Even during a time when there is a perceived move towards a reliance on technology in education, teacher effectiveness remains the most important in-school factor affecting student learning (Rivkin, Hanushek & Kain, 2005). Teachers who remain in the profession improve in effectiveness in their first few years (Henry, Bastian & Fortner, 2011). In short, teacher turnover harms student learning.