Teaching English as an International Language

Drawing on both Western and Asian theoretical frameworks, this book showcases the complexity of EIL teachers’ roles as their identities are challenged by values and practices that seem contradictory to their own. It examines how their identities are constantly constructed and reconstituted through resistance and negotiation.

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Building on both Western and Asian theoretical resources, the book examines how EIL teachers see themselves as professional and individual in relation to their work practices. It reveals the tensions, compromises, negotiations and resistance in their enactment of different roles and selves, especially when they are exposed to values often associated with the English-speaking West. The ways they perceive their identity formation problematise and challenge the seemingly dominant views of identity as always changing, hybrid and fragmented. Their experiences highlight the importance of the sense of belonging and being, connectedness, continuity and a coherent growth in identity formation. Their attachment to a particular locality and their commitment to perform the moral guide role as EIL teachers serve as the most powerful platform for all their other identities to be constructed, negotiated and reconstituted.