Online Education for Teachers of English as a Global Language

Hyun-Sook Kang, Dong-shin Shin, Tony Cimasko, Hyun-Sook Kang, Dong-shin Shin, Tony Cimasko

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367210243
• eBook ISBN: 9780429559921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

This collection offers a critical examination of online language teacher education programs (OLTE), looking at a range of issues which have informed their development and the challenges and opportunities in their implementation from a TESOL perspective.

Positioning itself uniquely amongst the growing literature at the nexus of technology and language learning, the book focuses on language teacher education programs designed for academic and professional credentials in online environments. Introductory sections provide a brief historical overview of the OLTEs as we know them today, with examples from a global range of programs toward demonstrating their theoretical and philosophical foundations. The second section of the book explores the paradigm shifts borne out of OLTE in the modes, media, and tasks employed and their subsequent impact on instructional efficacy. Subsequent chapters turn a critical lens on OLTE in raising questions around accessibility its implementation in less technologically developed environments, issues of quality measures and accreditation, and practicum concerns.

Taken together, this collection is a state of the art of online language teacher education programs and lays the groundwork for future research on the nexus of online education, teacher education, and applied linguistics.

1 Introduction

Hyun-Sook Kang, Dong-shin Shin, and Tony Cimasko

With the growing prevalence and importance of online teaching in higher education, this book aims to illustrate the current state of online language teacher education (OLTE) programs, with an emphasis on teaching English as a de facto global language. In particular, this book sets out to uncover how such programs are developed and delivered. Online courses and programs have become a legitimate part of higher education, as demonstrated in a US News and World Report ranking of various online programs, even at traditional brick-and-mortar universities. An abundance of conceptual and empirical research over the past two decades or so has touched upon a range of issues related to online education in teacher qualifications and professional development (c.f., Cope & Kalantzis, 2017; Dede, Jass Ketelhut, Whitehouse, Breit, & McCloskey, 2009; Kim & Bonk, 2006). However, relatively scant research has addressed the status of OLTE in developing teachers of English as an additional, second, or foreign language around the globe.

We therefore aim to sketch out emerging patterns surrounding OLTE programs and to discuss the associated pitfalls and possibilities. In doing so, this book examines what online platforms can offer with respect to teacher development in the areas of language learning, instruction, and assessment in diverse educational contexts. From there, this edited volume contributes to generating a new knowledge base pertaining to the development, implementation, and evaluation of OLTE programs for varying stakeholders that include university and program administrators, current faculty, and graduate students in language education and other related programs, and for current and prospective students in those areas of inquiry. The studies in this collection examine the multifaceted complexity of OLTE programs through varied paradigms of research, serving as an opportunity for current and future researchers, teachers, teacher educators, and administrators in language teacher education to share and reflect on how the field has responded to societal trends and institutional pressures, and on what the future holds for the nexus of online education, language teacher development, and the teaching of English as a global language.

Online Education

As long-standing institutions in Western societies, universities have long adapted and respond to cultural, structural, and technological innovations that range from the invention of the printing press, to globalization and its consequences, to the development and proliferation of informational technologies. Among the most recent changes is the prevalent use of online technologies to deliver instruction to students or to support interactions between students and their instructors. Often interchangeable with distance education (used to convey the physical separation between the student and the instructor), online education programs and courses have increasingly been offered not just by for-profit universities but also by nonprofit public and private universities. In the 2015–16 academic year, 45.6% (1,617,000 of 3,547,000) of graduate students in US higher education were reported to have participated in some form of online classes, with 27.3% of total graduate enrollment taking exclusively online courses (McFarland et al., 2017; US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2018). This recent trend represents a remarkable transition in higher education, given that only 16.5% of graduate students took online classes, with 6.1% participating in entire degree programs through online education in 2003–4. By comparison, 12% of undergraduate students took exclusively online courses in 2015–16.

The new direction in online education is influenced by student characteristics, field of study, and institutional control, among other characteristics. The US Department of Education (2018) reports that in fall 2018, while 56.8% of students 30 years or older took at least one online class during their graduate education, 37.8% of graduate students in their mid- to late 20s participated in online education. Merely 15.2% of full-time graduate students were enrolled in fully online programs, whereas 36.7% of part-time graduate students participated in exclusively online academic programs. This suggests that older part-time graduate students with other responsibilities and duties may be more interested in online course and program offerings than younger full-time graduate students. In addition to student characteristics, the graduate field of study is associated with different distributions of online courses and programs. While business/management and education tended to deliver higher proportions of online programs, hovering around the high figure of 35% for fully online programs, disciplines like law (8%) and life and physical sciences (9%) demonstrated relatively low proportions of online programs. Around 20% of nonprofit public or private US universities delivered fully online academic programs, in contrast to 68.5% of private for-profit institutions having delivered exclusively online programs. Considering that less than 5% of public universities and 6.7% of private nonprofit universities offered fully online programs in 2003–4, these figures suggest significant increases in online courses and programs by traditional brick-and-mortar universities.

As noted in statistics from the US Department of Education (2017, 2018), online degree programs and other credentials offerings have become a legitimate part of higher education. Among the varied accounts for the relatively new phenomenon are the availability of flexible learning opportunities for nontraditional students from diverse backgrounds and the mounting pressures “to bend the cost curve” in higher education (MacPherson & Bacow, 2015). Despite the fact that explanations and predictions of online education abound, still relatively little is known with respect to the pedagogical and curricular effects of online programs on a particular field of study, such as the learning and teaching of English as an additional language. In consideration of the significant role of English in the global economy and education as well as the prominence and prospects of English language teaching (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Crystal, 2012), it will be of paramount importance to sketch out the current trends and prospects of online education for teachers of English as a global language. In an attempt to achieve this, the next section provides a brief discussion of English as a de facto global language.

English as a Global Language

Along with the proliferation of online education in higher education, the worldwide prevalence of English as a lingua franca is the result of globalization (Altbach & Knight, 2007). Roughly a third of the world’s population uses English, and more than 70% use it as an additional language, speaking a language other than English as their native tongue (Crystal, 2012). As a de facto global language, English has been employed as a medium of instruction, as well as a subject in national/provincial curriculum and standardized testing, in countries where English is not widely used, including the so-called Expanding Circle countries (Kachru, 1990). Teaching and learning of English as an additional language have been essential parts of school experiences in many parts of the world. In response to the ever-growing demand for English language teaching and language teacher education, a growing number of institutions of higher education around the world have turned to online delivery. Online education for teachers of English as an additional language, therefore, is an inevitable phenomenon in today’s teacher education. Evolving views of English as embedded in English language teaching and learning are mapped out here: World Englishes, English as a lingua franca, and English as an international language. From there, the notion of English as a global language in the realm of online language teacher education will be discussed.

As the oldest idea among pluricentric views of English, World Englishes embraces all varieties of English from around the world (Kachru, 1990), including the so-called Inner Circle (where English is used as an official or first language, e.g., Australia, Britain, Canada, the United States), the Outer Circle (where English is used as an official language, along with other national languages, e.g., Ghana, India, the Philippines, Singapore), and the Expanding Circle (where English is taught as a foreign language but with no official status, e.g., China, Japan, Spain, South Korea). In addition to the inclusivity of all varieties spoken in different geographic and cultural-historical parts of the world, World Englishes tends to pay much attention to variations in linguistic forms and features that exist in localized English varieties (McKay, 2018). Among the implications of this perspective for English language teaching and teacher education is the legitimation of local forms and varieties and their speakers, sometimes perceived as the target norms tied to a specific geographic-historical region.

Another related and recently established perspective is English as a lingua franca, which refers to “interactions between members of two or more different linguacultures in English, for none of whom English is the mother tongue” (House, 1999, p. 74). Unlike the historical, geographic, and structural foci in World Englishes, English as a lingua franca highlights interactional patterns unique to encounters among English speakers from different linguistic backgrounds (Seidlhofer, 2005). Of note is that English speakers within this frame are users of English as an additional language, which may ultimately lead to co-construction of new norms surrounding the distributional use of English (Matsumoto, 2011). This approach has further implications for intercultural communication in higher education and other diverse communicative settings (e.g., Glaser, 2017; Lee & Lee, 2019 for English as a lingua franca in higher education; Kubota & McKay, 2009 for English as a lingua franca in a rural town in Japan where international diversity grows).

A third view of English today is called English as an international language, the principles of which are built upon the previously mentioned ideas (Canagarajah, 2014). In other words, the English as an international language approach acknowledges the existence of various English varieties around the world, influenced by speakers’ first language (L1) and their cultural backgrounds (as noted by World Englishes), and the speakers’ language expertise and resources (as described by English as a lingua franca scholars). Furthermore, the English as an international language approach is considerably invested in ways in which the pluricentric view of English is adapted and applied to local classroom contexts where materials from diverse sources are discussed and linguistic differences are negotiated (Matusda, 2019; Matsuda & Friedrich, 2011; Shin, Eslami, & Chen, 2011). In consequence, the English language within this frame is conceived of and taught as an emblem of plural cultures and identities at the fluid intersection of local and global contexts.

These approaches to English and English language teaching have brought significant changes to views of often-marginalized non-native varieties of English and their speakers, as well as curriculum, instructional materials, and assessment in English language teaching. Despite the merits of these views, individually and collectively, relatively little is known about how these views could be perceived at the crossroads of English language teaching and teacher education in online environments. This book aims to take on the commonalities among the aforementioned three pluricentric perspectives on English today. Based on the view of English and its status and variations as a direct result of globalization and related forces, we break away from the traditional obsession of acquiring the target forms of Inner Circle countries, and instead focus on endonormative standards in teaching English as an additional language and developing and supporting English teachers. Further, we strive to link this pluricentric view of English to online language teacher education as an avenue forward. The following section will map out some recent developments in online education for in- and pre-service teachers in English language teaching.

Online Language Teacher Education

As English has evolved into a global language for various purposes from education to commerce, the need for qualified English teachers has become more pressing than ever before (Altbach & Knight, 2007). This has driven an increasing number of language teacher education programs to offer academic degrees and professional development credentials in teaching English as an additional, foreign, or second language through online education. For the past couple of decades, the number of online language teacher education (OLTE) programs has exponentially increased, from 20 in the mid-1990s through more than 120 in 2009 to 186 nonprofit and for-profit institutions around the world offering OLTE in 2013 (Hall & Knox, 2009; Murray, 2013). Such programs offer a wide range of interests, ranging from pre-service teacher certification by online institutions and professional associations, through online in-service teacher professional development, to graduate degrees from traditional brick-and-mortar universities. They can be designed to meet the needs of specific groups of teacher candidates, such as teachers pursuing teaching licensure for specific states in a US context. However, a majority of the programs target teachers globally. Particularly, open access courses such as MOOCs (massive open online courses) enhance the accessibility of OLTE programs for global marketing (Shin & Kang, 2018).

OLTE courses are categorized according to delivery mode into online, blended (or hybrid), flipped, and web facilitated (or enhanced). Murray and Christison (2017) classified OLTE programs into (a) online with or without a synchronous component that involves meeting online at the same time; (b) blended/hybrid with both online and face-to-face (F2F) components with reduced F2F meetings; (c) flipped with online delivery of core contents and F2F problem solving; and (d) enhanced F2F courses supported by online activities. Depending on the proportion of online components in a course, the Online Learning Consortium (2015) distinguished four types of OLTE programs: online for more than 80%, blended/hybrid for 30 to 70%, and web facilitated for 1 to 29%. As such, OLTE programs offer their degree or certificate programs through various delivery methods to expand learning or professional development opportunities to those who could not obtain them through traditional F2F education.

The overarching purpose of most OLTE programs is to prepare candidate teachers for entry into the English language teaching (ELT) profession by offering foundational knowledge and skills as well as required experiences. Foundational knowledge and skills are defined in accordance with professional standards, such a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributor Biographies
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Paradigm Shifts and Best Practices 17
• Part II Pitfalls and Promises 133
• Index