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System 37 (2009) 1–11

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Non-native English-speaking teachers, contextand English language teaching

David Hayes *

Department of Applied Linguistics, Brock University, St Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada

Received 17 August 2007; received in revised form 27 May 2008; accepted 9 June 2008

Abstract

This article contends that, in spite of a recent upsurge in writing on non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) inthe global discourse of English language teaching (ELT), the experiences of NNESTSs working within their own state edu-cational systems remain seriously under-investigated. To help to redress this, the article explores, from their own perspec-tives, how a group of NNESTs experience English teaching in Thailand, where English is taught as a foreign language.Though the article only has space to consider two aspects of the teachers’ lives and careers – classroom methods andcommitment to teaching – it is hoped that it will contribute to an understanding of the many and varied locally-basedpractices of ELT, as well as helping to correct a monolithic view of ELT based on western conceptions of practice. Theimportance of NNESTs of English being ‘native’ in terms of their situational teaching competence is, accordingly, givendue weight.� 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs); Teaching behaviour; Teacher professionalism

1. Introduction

It remains a measure of the condition of the field of ELT1 that ‘‘expertise is defined and dominated bynative speakers” (Canagarajah, 1999a, p. 85; see also Holliday, 2005), and that, as a consequence – thoughthe situation is changing – the experiences and perceptions of non-native English-speaking teachers(NNESTs)2 feature disproportionately little in the professional academic discourse despite their over-whelming numerical majority. This article contends that there is a need to bring the experiences of

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doi:10.1016/j.system.2008.06.001

* Tel.: +1 (905) 688 5550x5359.E-mail address: dhayes@brocku.ca

1 I have chosen to use the term ELT (English language teaching) as a convenient acronym for what is a complex scenario where Englishis taught variously as a second, subsequent or foreign language.

2 I recognise that ‘native speaker’ and ‘non-native speaker’ are linguistically and conceptually problematic terms (see, e.g. Rampton,1990). However, as they are still common in the worldwide discourse of ELT, I shall use them here for lack of generally acceptedalternatives.

2 D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11

NNESTs working within their own state educational systems to the forefront of the ELT professional dis-course in order to redress significant imbalances in our knowledge base. To do so is important because, toadapt a comment from Berns et al. (1999, p. 138), ‘‘what is of concern is the value and necessity of hear-ing actual voices and views from the periphery that provide rich perspectives on and insights into thecomplexity of English [language teaching] worldwide.” This then has the potential to inform discussionsabout an ‘‘ecological perspective” on language teaching in which ‘‘understanding the reality of teachinginvolves exploring the meaning it has for students, for teachers, and for the others who, in one way oranother, influence what is done in classrooms” (Tudor, 2001, p. 9). The ‘reality of teaching’ will, ofcourse, vary from context to context. Accordingly, in this article I shall explore aspects of the realitiesof English teaching in one country where English is a foreign language – Thailand – as experienced byNNESTs themselves. In doing this I shall rely primarily on the perspectives of the teachers themselves,expressed in their own words, gathered through in-depth interviewing. To uncover the experiences ofNNESTs in context is important, not least because, as Harmer (2003, p. 338) says ‘‘the social contextin which learning takes place is of vital importance to the success of the educational endeavour”. Thaiteachers of English are teachers in the Thai state educational system first and foremost: they are govern-ment officials with permanent, pensionable positions. It is this social context which centres their lives asteachers and impacts upon their classroom decision-making. Thai teachers in the Thai educational systemmay be ‘non-native’ speakers of the language they teach, but they are ‘native’ in terms of their situationalteaching competence – which is as much a part of their professional expertise as language competence(Shin and Kellogg, 2007).

2. NNESTs and ELT

The scale of NNEST populations worldwide is immense. For example, Bolton (2004, p. 388) has calculatedthat in China alone the number of secondary school teachers of English totals some 500,000. In the muchsmaller country discussed in this article, Thailand, there are 63,450 teachers teaching English to some 9.6 mil-lion schoolchildren3. What is it that they do every day in their classrooms? How do they teach? What do theythink about teaching and about being teachers? These dimensions of NNEST in countries such as Thailandare rarely explored.

There have, however, been some important investigations of the experiences of NNESTs. Comparisonshave been made between NNESTs and NESTs to uncover differences in aspects of teaching behaviour (seee.g. Arva and Medgyes, 2000; Medgyes, 1999; Shin and Kellogg, 2007). There have also been investigationsof instructional practices in particular contexts with a specific focus on representations of communicative lan-guage teaching (CLT) approaches. Hu (2005), for example, gathered data from Chinese students on theirteachers’ classroom practices while Mitchell and Lee (2003) contrasted French language teaching in theUK with EFL teaching in Korea. Another notable study (Tsui, 2003) documented the development of exper-tise amongst a group of NNESTs in Hong Kong. The overtly ideological nature of ELT and its instantiationin a periphery community are the subject of Canagarajah (1999b). NNESTs have also reflected on their expe-riences as teachers within the educational systems of English-speaking countries (see e.g. Pacek, 2005, and thevarious papers in Braine, 1999); reported on perceived identities as native/non-native teachers (Inbar-Lurie,2005); and, in one notable collection, set personal biographies as NNESTs alongside accounts of the historyof ELT in their countries (Braine, 2005). However, these works aside, the active agency of NNESTs as teach-ers within their own educational systems is insufficiently explored when we consider the numbers of teachersinvolved. We still know comparatively little about the careers and classroom lives of teachers of English incountries such as Thailand from their own perspectives; and it seems valid to echo Medgyes’ (2000, p. 445)conclusion that ‘‘On the whole, the study of the non-native teacher remains a largely unexplored area in lan-guage education”.

3 I am grateful to Ajarn Laddawan Songka, Ministry of Education, Bangkok, for providing these figures. The number of teachersincludes class teachers at the primary level who teach English amongst other subjects, as well as specialist English teachers usually teachingat secondary level.

D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11 3

3. The research approach

3.1. Methodology

Data for this article was gathered through in-depth, unstructured interviews with seven Thai teachers ofEnglish, each interview lasting between 2 and 3½ hours. Interviews were conducted in English though infor-mants occasionally used Thai where they felt it necessary to convey a concept or a particular piece of infor-mation for which they could not think of the English equivalent. The interviews had a broad focus on theinformants’ educational experiences as learners and teachers within their social contexts and a list of topicareas was used as a framework for discussion (see Appendix). The list did not, however, constrain the discus-sion and throughout the interviews I remained open to any topic informants wished to raise. As can be seenfrom the list, the interviews were wide ranging and it would not be possible to examine the entire range oftopics in an article of this length. The over-arching research question was:

What is the subjective experience of these informants in the state education system in Thailand with respectto their experiences as teachers within their own context throughout their careers?

In this particular article I wish to focus on the following sub-set of research questions.

(1) What are informants’ subjective perceptions of their classroom lives: what influences and shapes theirclassroom practice?

(2) What are the sources of the informants’ commitment to teaching?

The unstructured interviews aimed to provide answers to the research questions by opening a window ofunderstanding onto how these teachers made sense of the social world of teaching which they inhabited (Snapeand Spencer, 2003). Within this framework, the conduct of the interview itself was of paramount importanceand all writers on interviewing as a research technique (see e.g. Chirban, 1996; Kvale, 1996; Rubin and Rubin,2005) agree that interviewing of this type should strive to be ‘‘more like a conversation between partners thanbetween a researcher and a subject” (Schutt, 1999, p. 304). But when there is inevitably a power imbalance inmost interview situations, the undertones of researcher and researched roles resonating throughout the pro-cess, achieving this conversationality is a skilled process which requires practice. Interviews for this study wereonly conducted after I had known the participants for some time; with five of the seven participants beinglong-standing professional colleagues dating back to my first involvement in the Thai educational system morethan fifteen years ago. This familiarity with context and with the research participants had both advantagesand disadvantages: advantages in that I, as researcher, shared a great deal of contextual knowledge and couldbe seen as an empathetic rather than a detached outsider; disadvantages in that the prior relationship mighthave influenced what informants chose to reveal, what Goodson and Sikes (2001, p. 25) have termed a dangerof ‘working in one’s own backyard’. In response I should note that my full-time involvement in the contexthad ceased by the time these interviews were made and that I had, therefore, no official status within the edu-cation systems. Also, my position as non-Thai meant that I was not fully a part of the education system evenwhen I worked in the context. Certainly it would be true to say, as will become evident in the discussion of thedata, that the various interviewees spoke freely, and seemed to welcome the opportunity to talk in depth abouttheir lives and careers and to be listened to with respect.

I also observed informants’ in their classrooms whenever my interviews coincided with school terms. Insuch cases I spent 1–2 days with the informants, observing not only their regularly scheduled classes but theirusual daily routines. No specific observational schedule was used as my intention was not to record, for exam-ple, precise patterns of teacher–student interaction or the amount of time spent on teacher talk or student talkbut simply to record impressions of general teaching approaches and to note any features of the lessons whichI found particularly interesting. The observations were not designed as the primary research instrument, but asa supplementary means of allowing an element of ‘methodological triangulation’ (Cohen et al., 2000) in theresearch, i.e. to provide another perspective on what informants had to say about their classroom teaching.Reference to this observational data will be made on occasion throughout the discussion of findings though

4 D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11

there will be a principal emphasis on narrative reporting from the interview data in accordance with the overallpurpose of the study to ‘give voice’ to the participating teachers.

Interviews were transcribed verbatim, a time-consuming process which resulted in some 370 pages ofprinted paper, but a valuable process for developing in-depth familiarity with the content of the data. Oncethe interviews were transcribed, I worked with the printouts to refine initial, tentative interpretations madeduring transcription, examining each transcript individually at first and then scrutinizing interpretationsacross all transcripts. A process of ‘meaning categorization’ (Kvale, 1996) occurred as stretches of talk wereattributed to thematic categories and sub-categories. The main dimensions of categories arose partly from rel-evant literature, partly from the interview topic areas and partly from the process of analysis itself, the latterbeing akin to that of induction in grounded theory – though I was not concerned with the gradual process ofabstraction and moving towards theory so much as ‘‘look[ing] for ways to assemble the disparate data into awhole, without creating the whole forcibly” (Henning, 2000, p. 9). I saw my task as analyst as uncovering themeaning of the human experience of teaching contained within the narratives of the informants. Notes fromclassroom observations were examined and sections from these notes cross-linked to the thematic categoriesidentified in the interviews.

3.2. Participants

Of the seven teachers interviewed, six worked in the north-east of Thailand and one in the north. They havebeen anonymized here as: Arunee, Ladda, Naraporn, Orapan, Sasikarn, Sudarat (all female) and Suthee(male). All of the interviewees were known to me through my professional engagement in education in Thai-land for more than 15 years, and 6 of them have been known to me for this entire period. I intentionallysought interviewees who had had extensive experience of education in their state system and who would thusbe able to speak from the basis of a broad range of experience. None of the interviewees, then, were at thebeginning of their careers and this fact has enabled the gathering of wide-ranging data across participants’lives, from their own schooling to the mid- to later stages of their careers. I recognise that, had I chosen tointerview beginning teachers, the responses of the interviewees to the topics raised and thus the findings of thisstudy might have been very different. However, it must equally be recognised that, in research of this type, oneset of interviewees is not privileged over any other and all are equally capable of making valuable though dif-fering contributions to the knowledge base of the profession. The sample does not, as Cohen et al. (2000, p.104) put it, ‘‘pretend to represent the wider population” of teachers in Thailand and so there can be no claimsas to the generalisability of these findings. The only claim that can be made is that they illuminate the situationfrom the particular perspectives of these teachers.

3.3. Setting

The contexts in which the teachers in this study began work – and in which five continue to work, with twohaving moved to the tertiary sector – are government secondary schools in north and north-east Thailand.Secondary level in the Thai system is called ‘Mathayom’, abbreviated as ‘M’ and there are six grade levels,M1–M6 (ages 12–17). Where there is more than one class at each level, these are numbered consecutively,e.g. M6/1, M6/2 and so on. Thai education is regarded as ‘traditional’ (here used to indicate a teacher-fronted,teacher-controlled approach) and authoritarian in nature (Chayanuvat, 2003) and there has been considerablepublic debate about such methods of teaching and testing now being inappropriate to modern Thai society(Bunnag, 2005). The authoritarianism manifests itself in the highly structured nature of schools themselveswhere school directors wield immense power over teachers which, again, is at odds with official pronounce-ments regarding the ‘empowerment’ of teachers. Although English is not a compulsory subject in the Thai cur-riculum, virtually all schools teach the language. Class sizes of 40–50 are the norm. Learner-centred methodsare legislated for in the most recent National Education Act of B.E. 2542 (1999) for all subjects (Office of theNational Education Commission, 1999, p. 35) and recent initiatives have re-emphasised ‘‘policies aimed attransforming the teaching and learning of languages to be more communicative” (Ministry of Education,2006). In harmony with official pronouncements, schools use textbooks which purport to be ‘communicative’in orientation: these textbooks are predominantly western imports.

D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11 5

4. Findings and discussion

In this article I have chosen to discuss two areas relating to these English teachers’ professional lives inThailand, viz. (1) ‘Classroom practice’; and (2) ‘Commitment to teaching’. I have preferred to interrelate find-ings and discussion in relation to published literature, rather than to separate them, to provide what I hopewill be a more coherent narrative of these Thai teachers in relation to the professional discourse. My intentionis to provide ‘snapshots’ of the lives of Thai teachers in order to shed light on their situations. The constraintsof a journal article inevitably limit what I am able to discuss and I have focused on these two areas as the datareveals that they are central to the life of an English teacher in Thailand.

4.1. Classroom practice

Holliday notes that in terms of classroom practice the ‘traditional’ is no longer entirely the teacher-fronted,grammar-translation class of popular imagination but that ‘‘many . . . communicative practices have beenestablished for a long time and have indeed become themselves traditional” (Holliday, 2005, p. 11). CLT couldnow be said to be the dominant paradigm in English teaching worldwide, at least in its theoretical represen-tation in official curriculum documents. But the interpretation of official mandates is a different matter andclassroom teaching, as we shall see, may reveal many different interpretations of ‘communicative practices’.

Against this background, amongst all the informants interviewed there was high value placed upon the needto use English to communicate in the class and, generally, support expressed in principle for a communicativeteaching approach. As one of the informants, Sudarat, said: ‘‘I try to find how can I encourage my students tospeak more English.” In the case of the Thai informants as a group, however, there was no uniformityexpressed of how the communicative approach was used in their own classes, or, indeed, whether it was usedat all on a continuing basis. Sudarat made clear that she felt there was misunderstanding within the Thaiteaching community about what CLT and the student-centred teaching at its basis meant. Her view of the pre-vailing understanding was that ‘‘many schools focus on the worksheets, you know, the worksheets and a lot of

exercises. It means student-centred, that’s it now. I think they have misunderstood about this” (Sudarat). Otherinformants offered support in general terms for CLT but did not see it as the only determinant of classroommethods for Thai teachers, regardless of the official curriculum. For example, another teacher, Naraporn, indi-cated that in the last week of the school semester examination constraints meant that she could not use a com-municative teaching approach, even though she valued it. The situation also required her to use students’ firstlanguage when explaining grammar points, a common practice in Thai schools.

It’s very good and right now, here in my school, we have forty teachers altogether, and then we still have thecommunicative approach. [. . .] it’s good – communicative approach – it’s good. [. . .]

This week, in this school, communicative teaching is until this week because next week we will have the final

examination. We do this [communicative approach] along with traditional styles because I have to teach

grammatical points to them. I have to talk abut present perfect, I have to talk about present or past con-tinuous, things like that. We still have to talk about this. (Naraporn)

She explicitly stated that ‘‘I don’t talk English when I talk about grammar, many more understand” (Narap-orn), a practice which she related to the demands of the university entrance examination dominating practicein the higher grades. Other teachers also commented on examination demands (see below).

In common with Naraporn, Ladda also provided support for the applicability of the communicativeapproach. However, she went on to acknowledge that in her own classrooms there was a need to adapt tosituational realities and so use more Thai and even the local north-eastern dialect (which she referred to asLao). Following a lesson observation class where I remarked on use of the first language she commented:

Yeah, [I use] some Lao.

I: Why do you do that?

Because I have learnt from experience. Some students remember a lot and learn when we compare with themeaning of Lao; and some students don’t understand English. (Ladda)

6 D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11

Most of the children in her school came from farming communities and saw little need for English either intheir present or their future lives: ‘‘They don’t have a background in English and the context that encourages

them to think that English is very important.” Ladda therefore used the students first language as an aid to theirlearning and, even when some did become more proficient in English, she continued to use the first language toshow consideration for the students in other ways: ‘‘In some classes when they are very good, I start to use Thai

or Lao just to make a joke when they are sleepy or they feel bored or something like that.”

For Arunee the approach and the amount of English used depended on the class. Lesson observation notesfor her M6/1 class recorded ‘‘Class predominantly in English. Some Thai during latter stages of grammarexplanations” and for another class of the same grade, M6/7, ‘‘Much more Thai [than for M6/1] used to checkvocab, confirm instructions. Most students clearly not understanding much [English] though some busy writ-ing in their books”. In Arunee’s school, as in most schools in Thailand, classes were arranged according toability (M6/1 being rated more highly than M6/7) and at M6 level it was the university entrance examinationrather than the official curriculum that seemed to determine how children should be taught. When asked aboutthe different approaches in the two lessons in the interview Arunee commented – ‘‘I need to guide them [ClassM6/7]” – and noted that school requirements meant ‘‘We have to give them the same evaluation” so the classeshad to cover the same material. She complained: ‘‘One of the obstacles that we are fighting, we are struggling

now, is because we cannot do the child-centred activity for this level, especially M6, because of the entrance exam-

ination.” Clearly the use of particular methods may be constrained by contextual features over which teachershave no control, the washback effect of examination formats taking precedence over curriculum mandatesbeing common (Weir, 1990).

Sudarat consistently expressed her desire to use English in the class as much as possible; and was unfailinglyobserved to do so with her secondary school classes. Nevertheless she found difficulties implementing herapproach when she moved institutions, contrasting her experience in school with that of her new role inTeachers’ College:

With my students at [school] I could use English the whole period [. . .] I said [to the college students] I’m

Thai but I like to speak English when I teach English, because in their schools they have never heard any

English sounds from their English teachers. So I asked them . . . how did you study, how did your teachers

teach you? They told me that they just follow the textbook and they have no chance to interact in English.(Sudarat)

It would seem, then, from her college students’ reactions that Sudarat’s own teaching methods were notthe norm in other Thai schools; and, indeed, we have seen that other Thai informants interviewed for thisstudy sometimes adopted classroom practices which were at variance with the requirements of the nationalcurriculum. However, the persistence of the older traditional, teacher-fronted, grammar-translationapproaches should not always be thought of simply in deficit terms, i.e. as resulting from a lack of under-standing or willingness of teachers to implement a communicative approach. Most teachers teach as theydo because they believe that the methods adopted are effective for the purpose. The data indicates not onlythat informants were aware of the principles of a communicative approach and its place in the requiredcurriculum but that the older approaches persist because some teachers find them useful and appropriatewith certain groups of learners. This may be tied to the demands of examinations and the requirement toteach grammar in a formal way, or related to situational constraints in which teachers respond to studentswho have no background in English and feel the language has little or no relevance to their present orfuture lives. This ‘‘persistence of inherited traditions of teaching” (Pomson, 2002, p. 23) has been foundin other contexts (see, e.g., Sato and Kleinsasser, 2004) and in Thailand Pomson’s conclusion would seemto be pertinent that inherited traditions persist because they are regarded as useful in their particular con-texts of occurrence and that they continue ‘‘a not-yet-completed narrative” (Pomson, 2002, p. 24; citingMacIntyre, 1985, p. 221). The perceptions reported in the data indicate, then, that teachers use methodswhich they feel to be appropriate to the purpose of promoting children’s learning – and to enable themto pass key examinations – and that these may, on occasion, not be those specified in national curricula.Though teachers have little overt professional autonomy in relation to officially mandated curricula, theyretain de facto independence over the degree to which an official curriculum is actually implemented in theclassroom.

D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11 7

In spite of constraints, Thai teachers – as one would expect – also demonstrated creativity in their teaching.To cite just one example, Sasikarn, teaching in a resource-poor secondary school, reported how she took herstudents out of the class to practise.

Like giving directions, I took them outside and they work like a team, teamwork, like one blindfolds their

eyes and the other one gives the directions. Like they have to go straight on and turn right and turn left; and

then which pair reaches the finishing line first without hitting the – you know I use the thread to tie up from

one tree to another tree and then they can walk along there – the pair that reaches the finishing line without

hitting the thread that I tie up so they were the winners. They enjoy it. I took them outside and did a lot ofactivities. (Sasikarn)

These were not necessarily activities that she had learnt on any teacher-training course as she noted ‘‘that

kind of activity, outdoors activity, I got it from the scout camp. I just adapt into English” (Sasikarn). She thusshowed that an imaginative teacher can overcome the constraints of a resource-poor school and make use ofthe everyday environment in creative ways to promote students’ learning.

Classroom teaching and the methods that these teachers used are, then, many, varied and frequently imag-inative. What unites them all is that selection of methods is based on an understanding of the needs of thestudents in their particular situations. Some of the teachers combined the curriculum requirement of a com-municative approach with older traditional methods – grammar translation – when circumstances required it;while others based their practice on communicative methods alone. However, the basic principle in the selec-tion of methods as revealed in the data is always to meet the needs of the students at the particular stage oftheir school career, and sometimes it is examination needs which predominate.

4.2. Commitment to teaching

There is ample evidence in the interviews that these particular teachers had a strong belief in and commit-ment to the value of their work; its value to students in their schools and to society at large. These are aspectsof what Lortie (1984) called the ‘psychic rewards’ of teaching which are central to teacher commitment andwhich often serve as a counterbalance to the negative factors surrounding teaching summarised by Dornyei(2001, p. 174–175) such as: high stress levels; increasing restrictions on teacher autonomy; difficulties of main-taining intellectual challenge in the face of curriculum and classroom routinization; and poor economicrewards compared to other professions.

The commitment of these teachers came from outside as well as from within the individual. Sudarat, forexample, drew strength from her family: ‘‘My family helped me a lot, especially my mother.” But she derivedher primary commitment from a desire to help her students to realise their potential and from wanting to helpimprove English teaching in Thailand. A strong sense of duty and integrity comes across in these comments:

When I taught at [previous] school I wanted to make my students enter university, as many students as

possible. . . . [Now] I plan to help my students and I plan to help Thailand in terms of teachers of English.

I would like to see English teachers improve in their careers more than this. I would like to see good modelsof teachers and I would like to see Thai students speak English more fluently than nowadays. (Sudarat)

In common with teachers in many other countries, hard work was sometimes motivated by economic neces-sity as well as being a quality of the individual. Naraporn’s working commitments, in addition to her duties atschool, encompassed part-time weekend teaching at the local Teachers’ College and private tuition afterschool hours. She was also writing a series of textbooks and studying part-time for a PhD in educationaladministration at a local university. Her only free time was one Sunday every two weeks when she got up ‘‘late

in the morning about six o’clock, normally I start at five” (Naraporn) and spent time with her family. She feltstrongly that her contented home life – ‘‘My husband is just like my close friend. And my three boys, we feel veryclose” (Naraporn) – enabled her to do more than others could do. But her willingness to work long hours onher textbooks was also motivated by a desire to show what it was possible for Thai teachers to achieve:

The main thing, I would like to present my ideas to the world, to show everyone that Thai teachers, Thailocal teachers can do this kind of thing. I would like to show them that. (Naraporn)

8 D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11

Commitment to their work was also manifested in the everyday, local actions that these teachers took withtheir school students. From observation it was clear that Sasikarn was a skilled classroom practitioner with theability to empathise with her students and develop in them a desire to learn. She recalled the situation whenshe moved to her second school and had (as is common with teachers new to a school) been given an M6 classconsidered by other teachers to contain a large number of ‘naughty’ boys. The naughtiness was restricted tomany of the students skipping class regularly but this was potentially damaging to them as 80% attendancewas required in order for students to pass the course and so graduate from school. Rather than leave the stu-dents to their own devices Sasikarn made the effort to persuade them back to class.

So I just try to look for them and then, you know, talk to them – not like in other teachers’ ways but in my

way. I gave them the good reasons to come to the class and what will happen if they skip the class [. . .] but

if they come back and start the lesson they have a chance to pass. (Sasikarn)

When asked if they did return she said:

Yeah, they did. [. . .] I was happy about these students and then they remembered me after they graduated

from the school. They came back and they said ‘‘Thank you very much, Ajarn [Thai for ‘teacher’]. At least

I know something, I learnt something from you.” That’s the good thing. (Sasikarn)

Sasikarn has always gained immense satisfaction from doing her job well in the classroom, and, as we cansee from her reactions above, she embodies a ‘culture of care’ (Nias, 1999) in the classroom. This care extendsfrom her concern for the social as well as academic welfare of her students to the amount of effort she puts intoher own lesson preparation to provide her students with fulfilling classroom experiences. When asked if sheenjoyed being a teacher she said:

Yes, especially teaching in the classroom. And especially when I, you know, work to prepare for the lessonand the students interact in the class, that’s the best. But if I don’t have time to prepare, I just use my expe-

rience and talk to the students in the classroom without materials or without techniques, it’s very boring.(Sasikarn)

Here she notes that for her the time to plan lessons is important and thus lack of time to plan properlyimpacts on the quality of the classroom experience for both her students and herself. Lack of planning timeis directly related to the other duties teaches in Thai schools are required to perform. It is expected that allThai teachers will undertake administrative duties beyond their usual teaching loads of some 20–24 fifty-min-ute periods a week. Naraporn worked in the academic administrative section in her school; Ladda workedwith her school’s research section, overseeing projects to implement educational reform; while Arunee, Sasi-karn, Sudarat and Suthee all worked (or had worked) in the national in-service training network of EnglishResource and Instruction Centres (ERICs), responsible for developing and running courses for teachers intheir provinces; and Naraporn, Sasikarn and Suthee had also been required to act as master of ceremoniesat formal school events. Arunee and Sasikarn had twice been and Arunee continued to be head of the Englishdepartment in their schools. These administrative duties, which Ladda reported in schools to vary from suchthings as working in ‘‘the school canteen, about testing food” to overseeing ‘‘the discipline of the students” placeconsiderable demands on the time of all teachers. Similar experience of teacher overload has been reflectedelsewhere (for examples from other countries see e.g. Helsby, 2000; Klette, 2000; Munthe, 2003; Roberts-Holmes, 2003) and is part of what seems to be a general trend towards the ‘intensification of teachers’ work’(Hargreaves, 1994) which, as we have noted from Dornyei (2001), is a significant counterweight to the positive,psychic rewards of teaching.

However, enjoyment in the interaction with students, in helping them to learn, remains a major source ofsatisfaction for teachers, whatever their situation. As Estola et al. (2003, p. 239) found: ‘‘Vocation is ulti-mately adopted in practice and it shapes practice.” Certainly, enjoyment in teaching was a universal themeamongst the informants here – ‘‘I always enjoy teaching, no matter where” as Suthee said – and the desire toteach well a strong motivating force – ‘‘The thing that stimulates me is I just would like to be a good teacher”

as Ladda said. Teachers here also recognise that their impact on students can extend beyond the boundariesof the classroom, as we have seen from how Sasikarn was concerned that her ‘naughty’ students did notharm their prospects of graduation from school. Sasikarn makes clear that in the final analysis dedication

D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11 9

to work is a personal responsibility. She works ‘‘because I would like to do it. I enjoy doing it. It’s my job.

Whenever I was assigned to do something, I’ll do my best”. Some teachers will always give everything they canto their work, while others will not. Some are always striving to improve themselves so that they can dotheir jobs better while others are not. In this respect teaching is no different to any other profession. Allthe Thai informants seemed to share a desire for self-improvement, taking higher degrees where possibleand taking advantage of in-service training opportunities. Sasikarn, for example, stated that she went to takea diploma and then MA in TEFL as well as going to America for a year on a teacher exchange programmebecause ‘‘My knowledge is just this bit, only tiny bit” and ‘‘My English is not good enough, yes. My duty

comes first, my English is not good enough”.From the discussion it seems to be clear that if we consider what makes an effective, successful teacher we

have to go far beyond the boundaries of the technical aspects of teaching – the methods used in the classroom.Methods are important but they are just one aspect of a teacher’s effectiveness. Other characteristics areequally important and we can turn to the perspectives of one of the Thai teachers for an overview. Suthee gavea number of key qualities for success in teaching – hard work, devotion, sincerity, honesty, trust, helpfulnessand friendliness. Suthee did not consider methods to be so important if these were visualized as uncriticaladherence to one method – ‘‘We can’t strictly follow one particular method” – but more important was a prin-cipled selection of methods based on the students’ background, situation and needs which took full account ofthe humanity of the individual. As he said:

When I teach I teach the students and I teach the subject matter. I teach the human being as well. I see him

as a human being and also I give, I provide knowledge.

The value of using a variety of methods was also recognised by Sudarat. In her advice to other teachers, shedeclared it was important to be open to ideas from whatever source and that any technique had potential use-fulness in Thailand if adapted:

Don’t be ‘anti’ any techniques – ‘Oh, this is not good for Thai people’ – you can adapt any teaching

approach, any teaching techniques to use with your students.

5. Conclusion

The teachers’ perspectives discussed here contribute, I feel, to a vision of ELT classroom practice as aresponse to the locally-situated needs of the participants (Butler, 2005; Canagarajah, 2005; Mangubhaiet al., 2005) and suggest that the ELT profession needs to acknowledge a richer and more varied picture ofclassroom life than one sanctioned by official curricula; one in which there is an acceptance that ‘traditional’forms of instruction persist for a reason, and that to uncover the reason there is a need to investigate the socio-cultural and educational contexts of use of the methods. This is corroborated by Hu’s (2005) finding that theuse of particular methods by groups of teachers in China correlated with particular socio-economic and cul-tural conditions, encompassing disparities in the availability of subject resources, school facilities, the qualityof the teaching force vis-a-vis government minimum professional requirements, access to authentic languageoutside the class and differing views on the value of English in terms of economic and social capital. Theresearch here argues that investigation of socio-cultural and educational contexts in which classroom teachingis enacted is crucial to the understanding of local practices. This understanding will, in turn, contribute to cor-recting a monolithic view of ELT based on western conceptions of idealised practice. More research of thiskind is, in consequence, needed to enrich our collective understanding of the global practices of ELT in itsmany and varied local contexts. Further, our professional discourse of ELT as a global profession masksthe reality that for many NNESTs – unlike highly mobile NS teachers – their primary professional identityis as career teachers within their own societies, with the wider social responsibilities that such an identityentails. These social responsibilities are strongly represented in the commitment of the teachers here to theirwork as teachers of English in the Thai education system and they demonstrate situational teaching compe-tence. Teachers’ ‘nativeness’ in this respect needs to be given its due prominence in understandings of teachingand learning English as a foreign language in context, rather than disproportionate attention paid to ‘non-nativeness’ in terms of English language competence.

10 D. Hayes / System 37 (2009) 1–11

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Thai teachers who gave so freely of their time to provide the data on which this article isbased. I am also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which have helpedto strengthen the article immensely. Any remaining flaws are, of course, my own.

Appendix A. Interview topic areas

� Reasons for becoming a teacher� Family background� Present post

– How long here– Classes taught– Thoughts about teaching– Enjoyment– Motivation– Dislikes– School administration– Induction– Staff–student relationships� Own schooling

� Pre-service training� In-service training� Other formal qualifications� Other posts� Teachers and society� English

– Its position in the country– Attitudes to English

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