From western TESOL classrooms to home practice a case study with two ‘privileged’ saudi teachers

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Critical Studies in Education
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From western TESOL classrooms to
home practice: a case study with two
‘privileged’ Saudi teachers
a

b

Osman Z. Barnawi & Phan Le Ha
a

Royal Commission Colleges and Inst it ut es, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia

b

Depart ment of Educat ional Foundat ions, College of Educat ion,
Universit y of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
Published online: 21 Aug 2014.

To cite this article: Osman Z. Barnawi & Phan Le Ha (2014): From west ern TESOL classrooms t o
home pract ice: a case st udy wit h t wo ‘ privileged’ Saudi t eachers, Crit ical St udies in Educat ion,

DOI: 10.1080/ 17508487.2014.951949
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Critical Studies in Education, 2014
/>
From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: a case study with
two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers
Osman Z. Barnawia and Phan Le Hab*

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a

Royal Commission Colleges and Institutes, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia; bDepartment of Educational
Foundations, College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

(Received 3 April 2014; accepted 1 August 2014)
This article is located in the debates concerning the continued problems underlying the
cultural politics of English-speaking Western countries’ Teaching English to Speakers
of Other Languages (TESOL) programmes and ‘Western’ pedagogies. It examines two
Saudi TESOL teachers’ pedagogical enactments in their home teaching contexts after
returning from their Western-based TESOL programmes. It aims to obtain insights into
questions of knowledge construction, pedagogy and training in Western TESOL
programmes and their impacts on these teachers’ teaching in Saudi settings. We
argue that these teachers have never been passive in the entire process nor have they
been naïve about the cultural politics of TESOL. They have appeared to proactively
take advantage of being trained in the West to teach effectively and to appropriate their
given privileged status in the home contexts. They have also appeared to do so with
awareness and with a strong sense of agency. This very aspect of agency, as we argue,
deserves substantial scholarly attention in future research. We also argue that to move
beyond the mindset that positions periphery teachers at the receiving end of Western
TESOL training and as the recipient of Western TESOL pedagogical experiments, it is
no longer valid to assume the enlightening and educating role of such training.
Keywords: English; pedagogy; TESOL; Western-trained; Saudi Arabia; periphery
contexts

Introduction
The growing global demand for competent English language users as well as the
increasing global demand for English-medium courses has turned the Teaching English
to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) enterprise into ‘a successful global industry’
(Walker, 2001, p. 187). At the same time, the commercialization, the cultural politics and
geopolitics underlying the worldwide spread of English and the TESOL industry has been
well discussed (Chowdhury & Phan, 2014; Kubota & Lin, 2009; Pennycook, 1998;

Phillipson, 1992; Widin, 2010). These discussions question the ethics and effectiveness
of Western TESOL degrees and training. These discussions also demonstrate how TESOL
as a commercial cultural product and how colonial discourses including racial discrimination and the sustained Self-Other dichotomy continue to embed and inform the pedagogy
and practice of English language teaching around the globe, which has been actively
created and shaped by both the Self and the Other.
At a more specific level, the debates surrounding post-method pedagogy (which will
be defined in a later section of this article) in the post-Enlightenment period in the TESOL
sphere play an important role in understanding teachers’ everyday classroom practice.
*Corresponding author. Email:
© 2014 Taylor & Francis


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While the construct of method has been problematized in the literature (e.g., Pennycook,
1989), to date few studies have been conducted to specifically explore and document how
teachers use post-method pedagogy and its macro-strategic framework in English language classrooms, particularly those in countries where English as a Foreign Language
(EFL) is taught. Canagarajah (2002) argues that the paucity and absence of explicit
research into post-method pedagogical practices in EFL classrooms resulted from the
fact that these practices ‘simply have not been documented in the professional literature’
(p. 148). What is clear in the post-Enlightenment period is, as Kumaravadivelu
(Kumaravadivelu, 2006) articulates, a ‘laudable transition from awareness to awakening’
but ‘what is not clear is how this awakening has actually changed the practice of everyday
teaching and teacher preparation’ (p. 76) in EFL contexts. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
is one such context, in which the association of English and English language teaching
(ELT) to ‘Western’ values has long been controversial (Mahboob & Elyas, 2014); and as

such it deserves more scholarly attention.
Informed by the above debates and discussions, this article examines in depth the
educational and pedagogical experiences of two Western-trained Saudi TESOL male
language teachers to obtain insights into questions of knowledge construction, pedagogy
and training in Western TESOL and their impacts on these teachers’ teaching in Saudi
settings. The article investigates the extent to which such experiences have equipped these
teachers with pedagogical underpinnings and criticality regarding post-method pedagogy
and practices in their home classrooms.
The cultural politics and recent developments of Western TESOL
It can be argued that the TESOL industry is still largely shaped by the growing marketization and commercialization of education, ethnocentrism, colonial remnants, racial
discrimination and by the neo-colonial relations of power embedded in its curriculum,
ideology and practice evident in numerous TESOL programmes in North America, Britain
and Australia (NABA) (Canagarajah, 2002; Inoue & Stracke, 2013; Kubota & Lin, 2009;
Kumaravadivelu, 2003; Mahboob & Golden, 2013). These programmes in various ways
continue to reproduce images of ‘the superior Self’ over ‘the inferior Other’ (Pennycook,
1998).
At the same time, despite the quest for the internationalization of higher education,
most NABA TESOL programmes often give little recognition to international students’
intellectual capabilities and to their academic and professional identity construction
journeys. These programmes often demand international TESOL students to discard
their prior knowledge in exchange of more advanced teaching methodologies and pedagogies, criticisms that were raised by Liu (1998) and Auerbach (1995) nearly 20 years
ago. What is more, Auerbach (1995) argues that NABA TESOL are ‘often controlled not
by the structure or objective of the program but by the specific and sometimes incidental
interest of the faculty’ (p. 86). Recent studies such as Chowdhury and Phan (2014), Inoue
and Stracke (2013), Ilieva (2010) and Ilieva and Waterstone (2013) continue to show the
persistence of native speaker ideology in the curriculum, pedagogy and practice of
TESOL programmes. Specifically, Ilieva and Waterstone (2013) investigate the curriculum discourses circulating in a Western TESOL programme for international students in a
highly reflective manner. In questioning their own practices as teachers teaching in NABA
TESOL programmes, these authors conclude that the discourses and practices existing in
these programmes are still informed by Western superiority. They raise several critical

questions in their article, which include ‘Is a critique of native speaker ideology and


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embracing the discourse of multi-competence truly a route to disrupt existing power
relations or could these be another iteration of Center [NABA] domination of TESOL
programs? [; and] Are we advancing academicentrism?’ (p. 34) (see also Ilieva, 2010 for
similar accounts). Several studies document international students’ reflections on their
exposure to critical theories introduced in their NABA TESOL programmes (Chowdhury
& Phan, 2014; Matsutani, 2012; Phan, 2008). Through such exposure the students become
more aware of the cultural politics and the discourses of colonialism underlying TESOL
and thus develop a more complex professional identity; however, the students also reveal
that there is often only one course in their entire programme that gives them space for
developing critical understanding of the field. This calls for a more consistent and
collectively critical approach in TESOL pedagogy and curriculum.
Given all the above discussions, we are not claiming that Western institutions, teachers
teaching in NABA TESOL programmes and courses in TESOL programmes are not aware
of international students’ pedagogical needs at all or do not provide any room for critical
engagement with critical theories; neither are we assuming that international students are
passive recipients of Western TESOL and are unreflectively adopting Western-generated
approaches such as communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based learning
(TBL) in their home settings. Instead, we are interested in how international TESOL
students appropriate, critique and put in practice what they have obtained in NABA
TESOL, particularly in this era of post-method pedagogy. This is because post-method
pedagogy should all in all invite teachers and students to call into question the cultural

politics, ethics and appropriateness of teaching regardless of contexts.

Post-method pedagogy in TESOL and its predicament in EFL contexts
We would like to start this section by highlighting Kachru’s (1986, 1996) premier work
that captures the spread of world Englishes, in which he coined and discussed the three
circle model of English, the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle. In
this model, the Inner Circle constitutes the traditional bases of English, largely referring to
native-English-speaking countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, the USA and the UK). The
Outer Circle includes countries where English is used as a second and/or an official
language. Many of these countries were former colonies of Britain (e.g., Singapore, India,
Nigeria and Ghana). Finally, the Expanding Circle contains countries that use English as a
foreign language (for instance, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Korea and Thailand). However, it is
important to note that the borders of these circles are not always clear-cut.
The Inner Circle in Kachru’s work is also referred to as the Centre, while the Outer
Circle and the Expanding Circle are grouped under the Periphery (Pennycook, 1998;
Phillipson, 1992). Throughout the article, these terms are used, and we fully acknowledge
the limitations associated with them.
Numerous criticisms of method particularly its embedded ‘marginality’ on the part of
the Other and the hegemony of the Western Self’s worldview in the forms of unequal
power relationships with the Other (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Kumaravadivelu, 2003;
Pennycook, 1989; Phillipson, 1992) have given ways to the development of post-method
pedagogy in TESOL. A fundamental shift from method to post-method is seen as an
attempt to decolonize Western-based pedagogies. According to Kumaravadivelu (1994,
cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2003), post-method means ‘a search for an alternative to method
rather than an alternative method’ (p. 544). He contends that ‘any attempt to discover a
new or a better method within the existing methodological framework is bound to be


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O.Z. Barnawi and P. Le Ha

conditioned by the construct of marginality’ (p. 544), hence is subject to pedagogical
inappropriateness, among other things.
Post-method presupposes that periphery teachers will devise their classroom pedagogy
in ways that are compatible with local intellectual conditions. They have to have ‘a desire
to challenge the debilitating effects of method’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 545) introduced to them as a marginalizing tool. To put such endeavours into practice, they need to
comply with the framework of post-method pedagogy that is based on the three fundamental parameters identified by Kumaravadivelu (1994 cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p.
544): ‘particularity’, ‘practicality’ and ‘possibility’. The ‘parameter of particularity’ indicates that language teaching should respond to the local, individual, institutional and
socio-cultural needs of a particular group. The ‘parameter of practicality’, on the other
hand, refers to language teachers’ awareness of the reciprocal relationship between theory
and practice. The ‘parameter of possibility’ offers learners space for critical reflection on
their life experiences and their socio-cultural and historical background in order to
appropriate the English language in line with their own values and visions
(Kumaravadivelu, 2003). Indeed, these three parameters are not mutually exclusive, but
rather, they complement each other in helping periphery language practitioners to develop
a conceptual rationale vital for constructing a post-method pedagogy as a move towards
decolonization.
Nevertheless, the successful construction of such notions is often associated with
challenges, particularly when the discursive formation of the colonial concept of method
is not critically discussed in TESOL courses. Like the postcolonial predicament, postmethod pedagogy derives from a colonial history ‘characterized by a particular discursive
formation called method which has been shaped by the form of orientalism’
(Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 546). This colonial concept of method will continue to affect
pedagogic practices in periphery ELT classrooms, particularly when periphery TESOL
teachers are not aware of and are not meaningfully engaged in critiquing those assumptions of mainstream institutions. As Kumaravadivelu (2003, p. 546) warns us, the postmethod pedagogy predicament is manifested in ‘two dimensions’: (1) the ‘process of
marginalization’ and (2) the ‘practice of self-marginalization’.
The ‘process of marginalization’ is produced and upheld through what Kachru (1996)
called ‘paradigms of marginality’ that consist of ‘paradigm myopia’, ‘paradigm lag’ and

‘paradigm misconnection’ in Kumaravadivelu’s (2003, p. 547) words. These three paradigms articulate the existence of flawed research practices in Centre applied linguistic
circles: i.e., ‘monolingual speakers and societies’ are treated like the norms ‘for forming
hypotheses about bilingual development’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 547); the ‘scientific
theory’ status of ethnocentric-oriented hypotheses is perpetuated by the mainstream
literature, and investigative processes of hypothesis formation, testing and confirmation
are disassociated from the sociolinguistic and historical realities of language used in
periphery classrooms. Kachru (1996) also discusses the ways in which the aforementioned
paradigms are implemented as ‘a very effective strategy of subtle power’ (p. 242). One
consequence of this myopic vision of mainstream institutions is that international TESOL
students are subjected to constricting and exclusionary practices which may adversely
affect their professional endeavours (Chowdhury & Phan, 2014).
It is this practice of subtle power in Western TESOL that maintains the dominance of
Western knowledge over local knowledge. For example, the macro-strategic framework
that derives from the post-method pedagogy requires periphery teachers to localize their
classroom pedagogic practices through bottom-up strategies. Yet the pivot of post-method
pedagogy is based ‘on the theoretical insights that originated from an already documented


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Western knowledge base’; it would be much more preferable for the theoretical support
for this pedagogy to have been derived ‘from the findings of empirical research conducted
and documented in and by periphery communities where English is learned and taught as
a second/ foreign language’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 547). In the face of a paucity of
documented local knowledge based on post-method pedagogical practices, international
students may unintentionally transfer those ethnocentric-oriented pedagogic practices to

their contexts. Worse still, they might unknowingly argue for the validity of these
Western-based instructional strategies.
The practice of self-marginalization by language teachers and academic administrators
in periphery contexts can be seen in different ways. It is common practice, for instance,
for institutions in many EFL and ESL countries to post job advertisements stating that
they require teachers with recognized NABA TESOL certificates and qualifications,
especially native speakers (Mahboob, 2010; Mahboob & Golden, 2013). Such selfmarginalization practices would further endorse NABA programmes to perpetuate their
dominance ‘by exploiting the practice of self-marginalization on the part of the subaltern’
(Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 548; Widin, 2010).
With regard to Saudi Arabia, the academic relations between the Saudi government
and many Western countries reinforce this hegemony across the country. In 2004, the
Saudi government put billions of dollars into Western-style higher education by launching
a scholarship programme called the King Abdullah Scholarship (KAS) that helps Saudi
citizens to complete their further education at Western universities. Accordingly, parents
are encouraging their children to apply for the KAS to pursue their education overseas,
and local universities are competing (i.e., by launching different job-incentives) to recruit
Saudi manpower with Western qualifications. For instance, King Saud University, one of
the largest and most prestigious universities in the country, offers four monthly stipends
for Saudis who are studying at the top 100 universities in the USA. Such country-wise
trends have introduced a strong discourse of the privilege of Western qualifications and
led Saudi higher education authorities to normalize the effectiveness of Western pedagogies and accept often without questioning the pedagogical outcomes of NABA TESOL.
Saudi teachers without Western qualifications have been labelled a subordinate group of
language educators across the country. The high importance attached to Western qualifications could be described as a form of hegemony perpetuated ‘through social practices,
social forms and social structures produced in specific sites such as the church, the state,
the school, the mass media, the political system and the family’ as McLaren (2003, p. 76)
puts it.
Given the above discussions, this article examines how Western-trained Saudi teachers
of English perceive post-method pedagogy introduced in their NABA TESOL courses and
the extent to which such courses have prepared them to develop meta-pedagogical and
critical awareness, and how this preparation has been translated into their everyday

classroom practices.
The context: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
English in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is not a ‘neutral’ language. It is loaded with
political, religious, social, and economic overtones and is a topic of heated debate. While the
influence of globalisation and modernisation policies adopted in KSA has led to an increase
in the use of English in the country; there are processes of resistance to English that question
its validity and contribute to a shift in the language to suit local beliefs and practices.
(Mahboob & Elyas, 2014, p. 128)


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O.Z. Barnawi and P. Le Ha

In the midst of such resistance and the tendency to self-marginalise as discussed above,
the pursuit of English as a desirable form of social, linguistic, political, cultural, intellectual and economic capital has also been central at all levels in the KSA, the largest country
in the oil-rich Gulf States of the Middle East. The Ministry of Education and Ministry of
Higher Education have been investing enormously in ELT across the country. The past
two decades has witnessed several major government initiatives to promote mass literacy
in English nationwide (see Mahboob & Elyas, 2014 for more details). What is more, the
geopolitical reality of the globalization of English, the impacts of the 9/11 event on the
Islamic countries’ education systems (Rizvi, 2004), and the recent ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings
(i.e., a series of protests, demonstrations and civil wars took place in the Arab world in
mid-December 2010) have all played major roles in accelerating English education policy
reforms in the KSA.
Together with offering scholarships to Saudi citizens to obtain Western education
overseas, the Saudi government has been boosting the internationalization of higher
education in the country. With direct financial and logistic supports from the government,

local universities have been adopting top-down internationalization policies to promote
national, institutional and individual competitiveness in response to the increasing globalization of English. Universities and colleges are revising their mission statements to
ensure a commitment to internationalization, franchising international educational providers to their local people, cultivating partnerships with foreign institutions, launching joint
TESOL (e.g., MA TESOL, Diploma in TESOL) and adopting international curricula,
among other endeavours. English is now considered a medium of instruction in Saudi
higher education contexts, especially in engineering, medicine, business and information
technology. At post-secondary education, topics of accreditation, international partnerships, joint ventures, English as the medium of instruction and the internationalization of
higher education are highly regarded in university communities as well as at senior
official talks. Possessing Western training/education in the Saudi contexts is considered
to possess a form of capital.
With awareness of the complexity of English and ELT in the KSA, we now present
our research project conducted with two Western-trained Saudi TESOL teachers to obtain
more insights into the questions raised in the article.

The study
The study adopted a qualitative research approach with the aim to obtain rich descriptions
of data, comprising highly detailed accounts of the participants’ personal experiences,
beliefs, attitudes and everyday teaching practices. It examines the extent to which NABA
TESOL have prepared Saudi EFL teachers for their teaching back home with a particular
focus on how they are able to devise context-sensitive and institution-specific classroom
pedagogies and to develop their own sense of plausibility. A qualitative approach makes it
possible to understand such complex issues as it helps not only reveal the participants’
experiences, but also connect their experiences with wider social contexts (Creswell,
2007; Park, 2013).
Males and females are segregated in the Saudi education system; therefore, the first
author who was the one who conducted the study had access to male participants only.
The data presented in this article were part of a larger project collected from male Saudi
teachers of English in a period of six months. Multiple data collection methods including
a questionnaire, observation of lessons and semi-structured interviews were employed. We

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7

will report the data from two teachers from whom we have collected the most data using
all the above-mentioned techniques. The participants’ pseudonyms are Ali and Refat.

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Participants Age Gender Educational background
Ali

37 Male

Refat

40 Male

Qualifications

Teaching Currently
experience teaching at

BA in English Literature MA TESOL/Applied 12 years
& Linguistics
Linguistics, UK
BA in English Literature MA & PhD TESOL, 13 years
USA

University
University

The data collection process consisted of three phases; each phase informed the one
that followed. The researcher first distributed a questionnaire to obtain data about the
participants’ educational and professional backgrounds. They were also asked to voice
their opinions about the concept of post-method pedagogy and to state whether their
pedagogical needs had been met with regard to teaching materials and the pedagogical
strategies that informed their classroom practices, and who was responsible if such needs
had not been met. Based on their responses to the questions, semi-structured interviews
were designed to obtain more details and insights.
Classroom observations were then conducted to explore how the participants’ classroom pedagogies were realized in their everyday classroom practices. The teachers were
informed that the primary purpose of these observations was to capture the general
pedagogical strategies they employed in their classrooms to meet their students’ needs. In
order to overcome any problems arising from power relations and conflicts of interest
between teachers and students, we obtained the consent of each party separately. The
students’ consent form was written in Arabic while the teachers’ form and survey were in
English. The semi-structured interviews were conducted in both English and Arabic.
Classroom observations began in week three of the spring semester, which meant that the
learners were familiar with the purpose of the researcher’s presence, and also with their
teachers and their classroom teaching styles. All classroom observations were scheduled
with each participant in advance to ensure that tests and other forms of examination were not
being observed. Both participants had given the researcher their teaching schedules in
advance and at the same time highlighted the examination or test weeks/days. Based on
the data obtained from the classroom observations, interviews were subsequently conducted
with both participants, concentrating on the teaching strategies they employed in their
classrooms and the rationale behind these practices. All interviews were conducted in a
quiet place, audio-recorded with the consent of both participants, and transcribed verbatim.
The process of data analysis commenced before the end of the data collection. We also
used the constant comparative method to identify themes related to (1) the participants’

perceptions of obtaining Western TESOL qualifications, (2) their opinions about the
concept of post-method pedagogy, (3) their views on whether their pedagogical needs
had been accommodated in NABA TESOL and who was responsible if such needs had
not been met and (4) their classroom pedagogies and the rationale behind those practices.
Western TESOL qualifications as capital, privilege, marginalisation and authority
The participants viewed their Western TESOL qualifications within the Saudi context in
various ways, ranging from seeing them as monetary and tangible resources to seeing


8

O.Z. Barnawi and P. Le Ha

them as an advantage which would have a beneficial influence on all aspects of their
professional lives. For Ali, his TESOL qualification had transformed him into a ‘great
resource’ compared to his co-workers who held degrees such as MAs in English
Literature or Linguistics obtained from Saudi universities:
I consider myself as a great resource because of my experience in the past as an international
student who studied at one of the top-notch universities in the UK, and currently a teacher
who holds a major that does not exist at Saudi universities (survey).

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Ali further described other forms of accumulated capital that had been bestowed on him
by his Western education:
Yes, there is a big demand for MA TESOL holders across the country, with high salary. Thus,
I had a one-year study leave from my secondary school and went to the UK to complete my
Master's degree. I thank God for the fact that my current qualification has given me a
rewarding job at university level. It helped me to become the coordinator of the Applied
Linguistics track within one semester. In the university community and Saudi society, I have

been perceived as a model language teacher who had a Western education, linguistic and
cultural practices. Of course, I am extremely happy to be treated in this way. (Interview 1, 16
February 2013)

Similarly, Refat stated that although his TESOL MA and PhD qualifications from the
USA had made his professional journey rather complex, they had empowered him within
the Saudi context. Throughout his teaching career, he had experienced various types of
privilege:
It was so sad. I was planning to complete my degree in English literature. Surprisingly, my
university approved my scholarship for a TESOL degree because there was a high need for it.
After graduation I realized that I had been given more space to take decisions such as
introducing new, changing course structures, and leading various departmental committees,
despite the fact that there are some senior co-workers who hold PhD degrees from nonWestern universities. My authority has never been questioned. (Survey)

These attitudes experienced by Refat at his university are evidence of the dominant
discourses of privilege attached to Western qualifications which have not only been
normalized and remain unquestioned (Park, 2013) at Saudi universities, but have also
contributed to the marginalization of other Saudi language teachers who hold locally
obtained qualifications. Refat elaborated on these ‘disrupting’ normative discourses as
follows:
To be honest with you, I sometimes feel that my everyday practices are not right. Yet both
co-workers and administrators, unknowingly, attach more credibility and legitimacy to my
decisions because of my Western qualifications. This scenario has put me under a lot of
pressure. (Interview 1, 21 February 2013)

The complex feelings experienced by Refat may be attributed to the fact that Saudi
educational authorities often uncritically accept the assumptions of second language
acquisition theories and pedagogy imported from Western TESOL, thus in effect legitimizing their own marginalization. These self-marginalization practices (Kumaravadivelu,
2003) were also reported by both participants, who noted that Saudi language teachers
perceived degrees from Western universities to be ‘golden’, ‘the mainstream’ (Refat,

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9

Interview 2, 11 March 2013) and ‘the house of knowledge and research’ (Ali, Interview 2,
20 March 2013). In contrast, they considered local universities as places of academic
cliques, and described local degrees as ‘survival degrees’ (Ali, Interview 2, 20 March
2013), ‘local knowledge’, ‘easily attainable’ and ‘not prestigious’ (Refat, Interview 2, 11
March 2013). The use of such terms by these teachers is also an indication of how the
cultural politics underlying NABA TESOL shapes language teachers’ perceptions and
practice in the field.

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From inferiority complex to critical awareness and critiquing
In expressing their viewpoints regarding post-method pedagogy they experienced in their
TESOL courses, Ali and Refat described how they positioned themselves as they were
progressing in their studies in Britain and in the US respectively.
Notably, the participants’ experiences of post-method pedagogy and its macro-strategic framework in NABA TESOL seemed to be within the discursive hegemonic nature of
so-called method. As such, in the beginning Ali and Refat both saw themselves as victims
of their self-assigned non-native non-Western international student status whose confidence and legitimate stance were challenged in the new educational contexts. In Ali’s
words,
when I was asked to review the assigned reading materials and post my responses on the class
Wiki, I felt that my comments all originated from existing Western knowledge … The
theories in these reading materials stemmed from Western studies and we were asked to
make sense of them” (Interview 4, 28 March 2013).

These (ethnocentric) practices in his TESOL programmes were also reported by Refat.

They had caused him to develop a sense of inferiority complex, whereby he fixated on his
non-native speaker status and saw his international student status being insignificant and
minor.
My first semester on the MA TESOL [program] was challenging because I found that the
materials were mostly based on the works of Anglo-American scholars. I could not fulfill the
requirement of my first assignment that asks each student to conduct a mini-teaching session,
because the class was dominated by native speakers and it was so stressful. (Interview 4, 27
April 2013)

Refat further described his journey as follows: ‘I was mostly passive in class and found it
hard to be assertive…’ and ‘…it took some time for me to realize that this was a wrong
self-image developed by me’ (Interview 4, 27 April 2013). Ali also described his early
experiences in the TESOL lectures as those of a ‘handicapped student’ who accepted the
fact that he needed some ‘physiotherapy sessions’ to meet the standards set by British
students and professors. Accordingly, he sought the assistance of senior international
classmates to help him ‘stand on his feet’ (Interview 5, 5 May 2013).
Ali’s and Refat’s experiences are rather common among international students studying at Western universities who often experience ‘culture shocks’ in classrooms partly
because they tend to perceive themselves as inferior and lacking linguistic, academic and
cultural knowledge (Marginson & Sawir, 2011). However, the problem here lies in the
tendency to overemphasise these cultural shocks and to blame international students for
lacking necessary knowledge and skills required to be successful in Western classrooms,
as argued in Chowdhury and Phan (2014) and Singh (2010). Obvious consequences of


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this problem include host institutions offering international students remedial support, a
practice that both reinforces the authoritative image of NABA hosts while safeguarding
them from having to question and revamp their curriculum, pedagogy and practice.
Another consequence is the underestimation of international students’ agency and
power to challenge the status quo and to critique what is presented to them in their
courses. Ali and Refat clearly showed their critical stance after the initial cultural shocks
as they progressed in their studies and gained more experience. Regarding post-method
pedagogy, they acknowledged its strengths while pointing to its weaknesses as well.
Throughout the program, I noticed that, theoretically, the post-method pedagogy is a more
democratic approach for the language teaching profession. It discusses how to conduct our
classroom practices based on our personal conceptualizations and local needs. However,
throughout my study in the TESOL program I felt this picture was always blurred. (Ali,
Survey)

For Ali it seems post-method pedagogy was ‘the main ingredient for successful EFL
instruction as it gives more recognition to teacher autonomy, beliefs and experiences’. Yet
he noted in the beginning he had struggled to adapt to ‘Western-oriented classroom
discussions’, to comment on ‘culturally inappropriate reading materials’ in his TESOL
course and to fulfil the requirements of ‘one-size-fits all’ assignments (Interview 3, 18
March 2013). For him, these were the primary reasons preventing him from being able to
experience more fully what he called ‘the essential means for effective teaching’.
Sharing a similar view, Refat said ‘I strongly believe in the concept and practices of
the post-method pedagogy’ and ‘much has been discussed about it and its macro-strategic
framework in our classes, but the program requirements did not help us contextualize
these ideas’ (Interview 4, 2 April 2013). It should be noted that the macro-strategic
framework of post-method pedagogy ‘is based on the hypothesis that teaching and
learning needs, wants and situations are unpredictably numerous’ (Kumaravadivelu,
2006, p. 68). Thus, educators in NABA TESOL cannot always prepare international
students to deal with the wide variety of unpredictable needs, wants and situations they
will encounter in their own countries. Nevertheless, it is expected of them to provide

space that will enable international students to recognize the differences between NABA
teaching practices and those that are applicable in their own countries so that they can
devise a context-sensitive approach to ELT upon graduation. Doing so would enable
‘counter-marginalization’ to take place among both TESOL teaching staff and students.
Indeed, the heart of the matter is that post-method approach needs to be challenged by
teachers and teacher trainers in all contexts.
As they went on with their studies, Ali and Refat also took on different positions with
regard to what they viewed as culturally inappropriate classroom discussions and reading
materials introduced to them. These positions included ‘avoiding’ and ‘focusing on suitable
parts only’ strategies (Refat), and ‘going with the flow carefully’ (Ali) approaches to adapt and
gain from the Western system. In addition to the adaptation strategies, Ali and Refat also
showed great awareness of the complexity of EFL instruction in different contexts. For
instance, Ali reported that the notion of Communicative language teaching (CLT) and its
modified version designed to suit local needs was optimistically introduced in his programme.
However, he felt rather pessimistic regarding the appropriateness of CLT in the KSA:
In my program, I was introduced to the concept of communicative grammar, communicative
tasks, communicative testing, communicative reading, task-based learning and so on. But I
think the Saudi culture does not support such concepts because our students are


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psychologically, culturally and socially not ready to accept these principles in our classrooms.
What matters to me is the learning outcome at the end of the day; i.e., my students should
gain communicative and linguistic competence together. (Survey).

Ali also expressed that in his course he did not get ‘enough practical skills that are
applicable in everyday classroom practices’. This is because many of the discussions
about teaching strategies were introduced through ‘Western lenses’ (Interview 5, 5 May
2013). Likewise, Refat expressed the view that ‘the post-method condition opened up a
wider space for teachers to localize their classroom pedagogies’. Nevertheless, he
complained that ‘…in classroom discussions, I found memorization and drilling methods
openly being condemned by my professors…methodological choices are always critical
because they largely depend on local needs’ (Interview 5, 27 April 2013).
Overall, these responses reflect the participants’ awareness of the fact that postmethod pedagogy, according to Block and Cameroon (2002, p. 10) ‘opens up new
opportunities for the expertise of language teachers in periphery contexts to be recognized
and valued’ and ‘makes it more feasible for teachers to acknowledge and work with the
diversity of the learners in their classrooms, guided by local assessment of students’
strategies for learning rather than global directives from remote authorities’. It is also clear
from their responses that they felt uncomfortable when their TESOL professors
condemned memorization and drilling methods so as to legitimize their advocacy for
process-oriented paradigms such as task-based learning and Communicative Language
Teaching in language teaching and learning. These findings show that Ali and Refat had
been critically aware of the complexity of the teaching beliefs that informed their
everyday teaching practices, of ‘the vitality of the macrostructure – social, cultural,
political, and historical – that shape the microstructures of the language classroom’
(Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 59), and of the importance of localizing their methodological
practices to accommodate local needs.

A transition from critical awareness and critiquing to Attainment: classroom
pedagogical strategies
To understand more clearly how Ali’s and Refat’s meta-pedagogical and critical
awareness as well as how their transitions from critiquing to attainment were translated
into their everyday classroom practices, one-semester classroom observations with both
participants were conducted. This methodological technique helps justify better in what
ways the participants’ everyday classroom pedagogical strategies were not mere reproductions of ready-made Western packages, but instead were the ‘continued recreation of

personal meaning’ (Diammond, 1993; cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 74) on the part
of the teachers as critical transformative practitioners. The outcomes of these observations
are presented below.
The classroom observations focused on (1) the pedagogical strategies employed by
each teacher to meet his students’ needs and (2) the underlying principles behind those
strategies. This is because strategies ‘do not constitute a method but function as a heuristic
to develop an appropriate pedagogy from the bottom up’ (Canagarajah, 2002, p. 142) to
meet local learners’ needs taking into consideration their learning traditions. Additionally,
classroom realities often do not correspond to any recognizable method; in other words, a
teacher might commence his class with a specific method in mind, but then might be
influenced by classroom contingencies to alter his strategies as he goes on
(Kumaravadivelu, 2003). It is for these reasons that we will summarize each participant’s


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overall pedagogical strategies and then critically report on the underlying principles
behind these strategies from each teacher’s point of view.
Ali teaches a three-credit course called English Academic Writing (ENG 311) to a
group of EFL students. These junior students are taking the course as a requirement for
their Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems. Refat teaches a four-credit
course called Reading Comprehension (ENG 101) for foundation programme students.
These students are expected to specialize in different engineering subjects upon successful
completion of their foundation programme.

Pedagogical strategies employed by Ali on the ENG 311 Course

Ali gave a full orientation to his students at the beginning of the term to familiarize them
with the teaching framework and strategies that he would be employing throughout the
semester. He informed his students that ‘you will be learning how to write through
negotiating’ because ‘writing is a complex social process’. Notably, he used what he
called a ‘negotiating cycle for teaching writing’ (Interview 3, 18 March 2013) throughout
the semester, which is summarized below (Figure 1).
Ali’s pedagogical strategies placed great emphasis on the students’ roles in constructing their own knowledge while learning how to write in English. At the beginning of the
semester, he informed his students that he would be negotiating with them how to write in
English and that his role would be changing gradually from that of a ‘directive’ to that of a
‘non-directive’ teacher. As shown above, Ali created a writing context to start his teaching
endeavours. He brought a variety of formal and informal texts to his classes as models. He
then explicitly taught his students which texts were considered to be legitimate academic
writing and which were not. In these practices, a careful, reflexive and critical reading of
the various models by the students gave them ample opportunities to recognize the
structures of written texts, vocabulary, text organization, genres and so on.

Figure 1.

Pedagogical strategies used in ENG 301.


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Ali also asked his students to team up with each other and bring two examples of
legitimate texts to the class. Using the materials they brought, he analysed the various
textual features with his students and answered various questions posed by them. Ali

justified such practices in an interview, ‘I want my students to have an awareness of what
we mean by academic writing, and not to use inappropriate texts that are posted on
Facebook or other social networking sites’ (Interview 3, 18 March 2013). In the student–
teacher text construction stage, Ali’s students were asked to write short essays on different
topics following the course guidelines. Ali then met his students individually to discuss
their written papers and to negotiate preferred types and strategies of feedback on their
papers. In these sessions, he gave direct advice about sentence structure, vocabulary,
writing conventions, etc. He said he felt that such scaffolding processes ‘will allow him to
accommodate different individual learning styles in the classroom and address any
misperceptions students may bring to their writing classes’ (Interview 6, 12 May 2013).
This line of argument is compatible with post-process views of writing that writers often
come to the moment of writing ‘with baggage, desires, hopes and fears about the world’
(Kent, 1994, p. 4). However, writing teacher and students can negotiate to address such
issues. In the last two stages, the students were asked to write a paper on assigned topics
independently and compare them with a similar text.
Ali justified the use of this ‘negotiating cycle’ as follows: ‘the notion of post-method
pedagogy drew our attention more towards students' needs’, so ‘depending on my own
creativity or transplanting Western writing pedagogies’ in the classroom may not help
students master the skills of writing. He mentioned that writing is a complex social process,
and thus, ‘our students should take more active roles in learning how to write through
negotiation and interaction processes’ (Interview 7, 15 May 2013). In Ali’s classes, a great
emphasis was placed on the student-writers; i.e., the student-writers’ innovation, creativity
and their active roles in constructing their own knowledge of writing were tapped.
Ali seemed more confident about his teaching practices, explaining: ‘although it is hard
to relate my current teaching strategies to a particular method, they work best for my
students. I can see their progress through time, and their feedback is another source of
evidence for me’ (Interview 8, 22 May 2013). Ali saw that this negotiating cycle had dual
outcomes: ‘it helps me reflect upon my own practices and the way I function in classrooms
as a writing teacher’, and it also ‘acknowledges students' existing or prior knowledge that
has been shaped by their local high school teachers’ (Interview 8, 22 May 2013). Building

on his experience of teaching, knowledge of writing pedagogies, and intuition and awareness of local needs, it seems Ali had creatively devised bottom-up classroom pedagogical
practices to suit his students’ needs. What really matters in post-method pedagogy, as
Prabhu (1990) puts it, is when EFL teachers learn ‘to operate with some personal
conceptualization of how their teaching leads to desired learning – with a notion of
causation that has a measure of credibility for them’ (p. 172). Equally persuasive is
Canagrajah (2002), who maintains that ‘though terms like experience, wisdom, and intuition are unscientific to base a pedagogy upon, in the post-Enlightenment period we are quite
comfortable with them’ (p. 140). What Ali did with his teaching offers a powerful pedagogical account that is appropriate to a specific context and suitable for a particular audience
whose learning needs and aspirations are well incorporated in the teacher’s pedagogy.
Pedagogical strategies employed by Refat on the ENG 101 reading course
The pedagogical strategies employed by Refat on the reading comprehension course
entailed a textual (or cognitive) approach, a functional approach and comprehension


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assessment tasks. He believes ‘reading comprehension involves many things; thus, students should be trained to accomplish different kinds of reading tasks’ (Interview 2, 10
March 2013). Conceptually, the strategies and attitudes imparted by Refat to his students
were something resembling a combination of explicit and implicit instruction. Throughout
the semester, Refat would usually read the assigned topics aloud and then stop from time
to time to offer explanations of concepts, elaborations of difficult words, phrases, passages
and critical interpretations of texts. He would also stop occasionally to comment on a
point of syntax or vocabulary. In these sessions, his students usually took notes; i.e.,
explanations of words, cross-references and any other remarks given by the teacher. He
also stopped from time to time to answer questions, in order to enhance his students’
literacy, critical thinking, knowledge and skills. To enhance the students’ oral skills, he
allowed them to comment on different aspects of the texts (e.g., difficult words and

syntax) and to ask questions centred on the assigned texts. To assess his students’
comprehension skills, he would ask an individual student to read passages of text aloud
and then he would question him and comment on his reading. He also used strategies like
summarization, question generation and cooperative learning as consolidation strategies
for comprehension assessment throughout the semester.
Although direct instruction or building on one or more mental representations of a text
was predominant in Rafat’s pedagogical strategies, he believed that such practices would
offer his students a ‘proper grounding’ in reading comprehension, since they had had little
exposure to English in their former studies. He maintained that it is these practices ‘which
stemmed from the traditional system of Islamic education – known as Madrasah – that
have produced Arabic scholars with incredible linguistic skills throughout history’
(Interview 5, 27 April 2013). He further added, ‘I know the Madrasah system has
produced great scholars of Arabic. But I think the same teaching styles can be implemented with our EFL students, since they are familiar with these practices in Arabic
instruction’ (Interview 5, 27 April 2013). This line of argument is compatible with the
tradition of Islamic educational views, which normally start with proper grounding (as
Refat called it), in that ‘the learner was made to read and memorize the Qu’ran in well
drawn-out stages’ (Hashim, Rufai, & Nor, 2011, p. 100). Despite the plethora of NABA
TESOL pedagogies in the ELT industry, Refat still believed that Saudi EFL learners have
their own learning tradition, and so this tradition needs to be recognized and maintained.
Most notably, post-method pedagogy had provided him with new insights into teacher
growth, especially his own. These views were evident in his assertion that ‘in a postmethod pedagogy teachers need to keep searching and developing different pedagogical
strategies that suit their local classroom instruction. In this way, we could end up
justifying our teaching practices and reflecting upon them’ (Interview 7, 17 May 2013)

Concluding remarks and implications
Growing evidence discussed in the existing literature including that of this study consistently demonstrates that power relations and discourses of privilege have continued to
significantly influence the production and dissemination of knowledge in the ELT industry. The increasing presence of international TESOL students means that NABA TESOL
educators should actively and proactively acknowledge and engage with the various ways
in which ELT is realized in other communities and critically reflect on the appropriacy and
intellectual rigour of their pedagogies and practices to enable necessary change beneficial

to those involved.


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By exploring local realities, this study has examined how Western-trained Saudi
teachers apply, critique and reflect on post-method pedagogy in their classrooms to
offer a response to the cultural politics and questions of appropriateness and ethics
underlying TESOL in the Saudi context. This article represents only an initial attempt
to examine the extent to which NABA TESOL have prepared international teachers to
develop meta-pedagogical and critical awareness, and how this awareness is being
translated into their everyday classroom practices. More studies with similar purposes
would open up more avenues for negotiating, ‘(re)examining and (re)structuring worldwide graduate [TESOL] programs aiming to prepare all teachers to work in globalized
contexts’ (Park, 2013, p. 22).
Having acknowledged the above, we nevertheless assert that when it comes to whether
and to what extent NABA TESOL programmes are appropriate and relevant to their
international multilingual multicultural participants, the answer is complex. While it is
tempting to condemn such programmes for their colonial and imperial ideology, it is also
important to look at the multiple layers of the training and listen carefully to the voices of
those receiving the training. The empirical data reported in much existing literature, while
highlighting the cultural politics of TESOL and its advocated pedagogies, demonstrate
student–teachers’ varied degrees of appreciation of the training (see for example BruttGriffler & Samimy, 1999; Inoue & Stracke, 2013; Phan, 2008). It also discusses how and
in what ways TESOL as a site of struggle, growth and identity (re)formation and
negotiation is felt and affirmed by TESOL students. This is also clearly evident with
Ali and Refat in this study.
Criticisms of TESOL programmes in many cases stem from ideological debates

(Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992), or from data collected through questionnaires,
journal writings, group discussions and interviews with TESOL students (see the references cited above). As such, what happens between the ideological level, TESOL
students’ perceptions and their actual classroom teaching remains little known. Our
study with more data collected in a period of over six months using multiple techniques
including classroom observations of two teachers’ microteaching processes helps unveil
the myth to a modest extent, given the small data sample.
The data obtained from Ali and Refat demonstrate each teacher is striving to devise
and create his own pedagogical paradigm. Neither Ali nor Refat had uncritically adopted
the assumptions of Western pedagogies or acted within the existing methodological
framework. Instead, they both showed great understanding of the complexity of ELT in
periphery contexts. These aspects were reflected in the pedagogical axioms underlying
their practices. Ali used his ‘negotiating cycle’ throughout the semester to help his
students acquire competence in writing. He started with explicit instruction and then
gradually assumed the role of facilitator. These practices show how Ali was creatively
and constructively adopting what he had learnt in his NABA TESOL courses specifically
the process-oriented approach. Ali clearly articulated these creative practices work for
Saudi students owing to his ‘personal knowledge, experiences and students' feedback’. In
contrast, Refat employed pedagogical strategies originating in the traditional Islamic
education system as a framework for devising relevant methods of teaching reading
throughout the semester. He believes his students are more familiar with such teaching
practices in their first language and hence believes these strategies should also work
effectively in their EFL classrooms.
A significant similarity across the pedagogical strategies used by both Ali and Refat is
that they are creatively using the process-oriented approach of EFL instruction throughout
their pedagogical strategies. Their pedagogical strategies appear to have been informed by


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O.Z. Barnawi and P. Le Ha

their critical stance of what they have gained in their NABA TESOL education. The data
obtained from the classroom observations show that a selective and well-informed
employment of post-method pedagogy has made it possible for Ali and Refat to play
multiple roles, including an analyst, a critical transformative practitioner and a decisionmaker. This is clear evidence of an ‘art-craft conception of teaching’ (Arikan, 2006, p. 4)
by EFL teachers who ‘theorize what they practice or practice what they theorize’
(Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 37).
It can be argued that although many aspects of NABA TESOL education can be
irrelevant, colonizing and alienating to their prior knowledge, experience and practices,
such education at least offers space for critical reflections that then enable more informed
pedagogies to be implemented in the classroom. It is also evident that Ali and Refat have
taken the ownership of their pedagogical practices and thus have been able to perform
their teacher roles effectively.
Ali and Refat have invested in their educational journeys through fulfilling admission
requirements of their respective programmes, participating in overseas training, and
successfully completing their respective degrees on the grounds that such qualifications
have great value in Saudi Arabia. In return they have benefited from these investments
financially, professionally and socially across Saudi contexts and settings.
Ali’s and Refat’s accounts offer evidence that the hegemony of NABA TESOL is
acknowledged, resisted to, appropriated and negotiated by stakeholders at the receiving
end. In the midst of all this, the data show the hegemony of NABA TESOL programmes
exists and operates at multiple levels, and it is partly through the Western-trained TESOL
teachers that such hegemony continues to sustain. Ali and Refat were never passive in the
entire process nor were they naïve about the cultural politics of TESOL. They appeared to
proactively take the advantage of being trained in the West to appropriate their given
privileged status in the home contexts. They shared with one of us their concerns about
problems of NABA TESOL pedagogies and Western practices, but their struggles and
their scepticisms of the quality of their training were not known to their colleagues, their

bosses and the society at large. They continued to enjoy the social cultural economic and
symbolic capital brought about by such training. They appeared to do so with awareness
and with a strong sense of agency. This very aspect of agency deserves substantial
scholarly attention in future research.
At this point, we would like to revise the question Prabhu (1990, p. 175) raised
24 years ago in which he was concerned about how to prepare periphery teachers to
reflect critically on their own practices and to enable ‘teachers' varying senses of plausibility’. To move beyond the mindset that positions periphery teachers at the receiving end
of NABA TESOL training and as the recipient of NABA TESOL pedagogical experiments, it is no longer valid to assume the enlightening and educating role of such training.
The question now should demand periphery teachers and NABA TESOL teachers to
constantly reflect, engage and communicate with one another to create meaningful interactions and pedagogies throughout the training process and in their classroom practice.
Notes on contributors
Dr Osman Z. Barnawi has a PhD in Composition and TESOL from Indiana University of
Pennsylvania, and a Master of Education in TESOL from the University of Exeter, UK. He is
currently Director of the English Language Center at Royal Commission Colleges and Institutes,
Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. He teaches at the Department of Applied Linguistics of RCY and holds an
adjunct position at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He has published extensively
in international referred journals. He is also a regular presenter in local and international


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17

conferences. His research interests include second language writing, teachers’ identities, critical
pedagogy, crisis leadership in higher education, performance assessment in higher education,
language programme evaluation, curriculum design and development, and teacher education. Dr
Barnawi can be contacted at

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Dr Phan Le Ha is an associate professor of Education in the Department of Educational
Foundations in the College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA. She also holds
adjunct and honorary positions at Monash University in Australia, Vietnam National University
Hanoi, and University of Reading in the United Kingdom. Her expertise and research interests
include international education, TESOL, identity studies, culture and pedagogy, academic writing
and higher education. Dr Phan has published widely in these areas too. She can be contacted at


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