Native-Speakerism Its Resilience and Undoing

This book explores native-speakerism in modern language teaching, and examines the ways in which it has been both resilient and critiqued. It provides a range of conceptual tools to situate ideological discourses and processes within educational contexts. In turn, it discusses the interdiscursive nature of ideologies and the complex ways in which ideologies influence objective and material realities, including hiring practices and, more broadly speaking, unequal distributions of power and resources. In closing, it considers why the diffusion and consumption of ideological discourses seem to persist, despite ongoing critical engagement by researchers and practitioners, and proposes alternative paradigms aimed at overcoming the problems posed by the native-speaker model in foreign language education.

Introduction.- Part I The ‘resilience’ of native-speakerism.- 1. The resilience of native-speakerism: A realist perspective.- 2. Native-speakerism and nihonjinron in Japanese higher education policy and related hiring practices: A focus on the Japanese ‘top global universities’ project.- 3. English as a foreign language teachers’ understandings of the native/non-native dichotomy: An Argentine perspective.- 4. Overcoming native-speakerism through post-native-speakerist pedagogy: Gaps between teacher and pre-service English teacher priorities.- Part II The ‘undoing’ of native-speakerism.- 5. Menburyu and the shaguma: (De)constructing (inter)national cultural practices and symbols within a post-native-speakerist framework.- 6. A multilingual paradigm: Bridging theory and practice.- 7. ‘Native’ Japanese speaker teachers in Japanese language education at primary and secondary schools in Australia.- 8. Challenging and interrogating native speakerism in an elementary school professionaldevelopment programme in Japan.- 9. Post-native-speakerism and the multilingual subject: Language policy, practice and pedagogy.- 10. Fostering students’ empathy and cultural sensitivity to undo native-speakerism: A case study of a transnational education platform involving universities in Hawai‘i and Japan.- 11. Public dialogue, disruptive spaces, and the undoing of native-speakerism.