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?
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.
