Ideology, purpose, or context? Integrated findings of a mixed-methods study explaining English-as-a-foreign-language teacher educators’ language use

• In Event: Plurilingual, translanguaging, and asset-based pedagogies across contexts

Proposal

Across Latin America, English language teacher education (ELTE) programs try to ensure quality English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching in contexts where English proficiency is highly valued but inaccessible to many (Cardona-Escobar et al., 2021; Díaz Maggioli, 2017; Zaidan, 2020). Given that students often enroll in ELTE with limited English proficiency, programs have the challenge of teaching English to teachers-in-formation at the same time they develop other aspects of their professional profile—often through English-medium instruction in content courses as well as language-learning courses (Abad et al., 2019; Banegas & Martínez Argudo, 2019; Cajas et al., 2023). Research in other contexts suggests that multilingual approaches can support inclusion, well-being, and content and language learning for bi- or multilingual students in English-medium instruction (Cenoz & Gorter, 2020; Vogel & García, 2017). However, multilingual approaches tend to be “taboo” (Barahona, 2020, p. 5) in ELTE in the Latin American region, where EFL teachers’ ability to teach in English is a major concern (Serrano et al., 2015; Stanton & Fiszbein, 2019) and ideologies of linguistic imperialism and native-speakerism are prevalent (González Moncada, 2021; Zaidan, 2020).

This convergent mixed-methods study (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) explores language in Ecuadorian university-based ELTE and aspires to open space for language use practices in ELTE that suit specific contextual needs in the region rather than being dictated by dominant ideologies. Theoretically, this study is guided by a decolonial perspective on English language teaching (Kumaravadivelu, 2016), which suggests that language use is laden with ideologies and power and equity implications (Robinson et al., 2020); and the Capabilities Approach (DeJaeghere & Walker, 2021), which links language use practices to the ELTE purposes valued by teacher educators.

I use ordinary least squares regression and survey data from 115 professors at 21 Ecuadorian universities to describe how much EFL teacher educators use English, Spanish, or a multilingual approach when teaching content courses and relate their language use to valued purposes of teacher education, language ideologies, and educator characteristics. Focus group interviews with a subset of 37 professors illuminates how educators connect their language use practices to the purposes of teacher education that they value. This presentation proposal focuses on preliminary results to the question: To what extent do language ideologies shape language use and the relationship between language and purpose in EFL teacher education, as described by integrated qualitative and quantitative data?

The integrated findings converge in linking language use to whether teacher educators more highly value empowering teachers to differentiate their instruction, over holding teachers accountable to standards. Quantitatively, educators who prioritize empowerment appear to use less English (β = -0.2, p < 0.05) and more Spanish (β = 0.3, p < 0.05) than the group overall. (Their mean English use is still 4.24 [s = 0.94] on a five-point scale, compared to 4.35 [s = 0.84] overall.) Qualitatively, educators’ goals vary from offering “a range of options for philosophies, methodologies, ways to solve problems” (Diana, English-dominant multilingual approach) to ensuring students “fulfill the exit profile that is stated” (Walter, English-only approach). Thus, language use seems linked to teacher educators’ stance on empowerment versus accountability as the broad purpose of teacher education.

The results diverge regarding specific teacher-learning outcomes. In the regression analyses, valuing pedagogical skill above all is associated with a decrease in own language use (β = -0.4, p < 0.05) and valuing English language proficiency foremost seems to have no significant relationship to language use (p > 0.10). Qualitatively, however, those who describe closely following an English-only ideal tend to emphasize English proficiency, while those who embrace using the most Spanish within a multilingual approach emphasize pedagogy and professional identity. Thus, for Franklin (English-only approach), “the most important quality of any English teacher will always be that they know English,” but for Teresa (balanced multilingual approach), “acquisition of the language does not worry me so much... —but the content, the pedagogies, the strategies so they can teach it in a better way.” This apparent contradiction between quantitative and qualitative findings could be explained by the role of ideologies, which are held constant in the regression analyses: perhaps educators who prioritize pedagogical skill model the language use approach they believe to be ideal.

Both forms of data show that educators often have strong beliefs about language use in ELTE, which generally align with the language use they report. However, consistent links between teacher educators’ language use and ideas representing linguistic imperialism, native-speakerism, or multilingualism more broadly—beyond language in ELTE—are not evident in either the quantitative or qualitative analyses. This raises questions about the relevance of critiquing or praising language use practices in varied contexts based on theoretical ideological implications and suggests that further empirical study of these ideologies is needed.

The contextual reality of geographically and socioeconomically unequal access to English is clearly important to language use in ELTE. In focus groups, participants point to students’ language abilities. Zoila, who teaches in a provincial public university, comments, “100% use of English in a third or fourth semester class is not possible; I cannot lie about a latent reality in our country,” while Teresa and Mercedes use multilingual strategies to avoid “harming” students with lower proficiency than their peers. While almost all participants report they themselves have at least a high intermediate (CEFR B2) level, each additional level of teacher educators’ own English proficiency is associated with an almost 0.4-point increase in their English use (p < 0.001) and a close to 0.5-point decrease in Spanish use (p < 0.001) on the five-point scale used in the survey. Thus, while ideology and purpose may be influential, teacher educators’ language use practices cannot be decontextualized from issues of access to high levels of academic English.

While some previous research considers language use within ELTE (Alarcón et al., 2022; Goodman, 2022; Tian, 2020), this study is particularly innovative in positing that multilingual approaches may address equity issues for teachers-in-formation in EFL contexts—not only their students—and exploring the extent to which ideology, purpose, and context shape practices.

Author

• Adeline De Angelis, SIT Graduate Institute