From western TESOL classrooms to home practice a case study with two ‘privileged’ saudi teachers

On: 21 August 2014, At : 12: 48Publisher : Rout ledge I nfor m a Lt d Regist er ed in England and Wales Regist er ed Num ber : 1072954 Regist er ed office: Mor t im er House, 37- 41 Mor

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Critical Studies in Education

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From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: a case study with two

‘privileged’ Saudi teachers

Osman Z Barnawia & Phan Le Hab a

Royal Commission Colleges and Inst it ut es, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia b

Depart ment of Educat ional Foundat ions, College of Educat ion, Universit y of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

Published online: 21 Aug 2014

To cite this article: Osman Z Barnawi & Phan Le Ha (2014): From west ern TESOL classrooms t o

home pract ice: a case st udy wit h t wo ‘ privileged’ Saudi t eachers, Crit ical St udies in Educat ion, DOI: 10.1080/ 17508487.2014.951949

To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 17508487.2014.951949

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From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: a case study with two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers

Osman Z Barnawiaand Phan Le Hab*

a

Royal Commission Colleges and Institutes, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia; b Department of Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

(Received 3 April 2014; accepted 1 August 2014)

This article is located in the debates concerning the continued problems underlying the cultural politics of English-speaking Western countries’ Teaching English to Speakers

of Other Languages (TESOL) programmes and ‘Western’ pedagogies It examines two Saudi TESOL teachers’ pedagogical enactments in their home teaching contexts after returning from their Western-based TESOL programmes It aims to obtain insights into questions of knowledge construction, pedagogy and training in Western TESOL programmes and their impacts on these teachers’ teaching in Saudi settings We argue that these teachers have never been passive in the entire process nor have they been nạve about the cultural politics of TESOL They have appeared to proactively take advantage of being trained in the West to teach effectively and to appropriate their given privileged status in the home contexts They have also appeared to do so with awareness and with a strong sense of agency This very aspect of agency, as we argue, deserves substantial scholarly attention in future research We also argue that to move beyond the mindset that positions periphery teachers at the receiving end of Western TESOL training and as the recipient of Western TESOL pedagogical experiments, it is

no longer valid to assume the enlightening and educating role of such training

Keywords: English; pedagogy; TESOL; Western-trained; Saudi Arabia; periphery contexts

Introduction

The growing global demand for competent English language users as well as the increasing global demand for English-medium courses has turned the Teaching English

to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) enterprise into ‘a successful global industry’ (Walker,2001, p 187) At the same time, the commercialization, the cultural politics and geopolitics underlying the worldwide spread of English and the TESOL industry has been well discussed (Chowdhury & Phan, 2014; Kubota & Lin, 2009; Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992; Widin,2010) These discussions question the ethics and effectiveness

of Western TESOL degrees and training These discussions also demonstrate how TESOL

as a commercial cultural product and how colonial discourses including racial discrimina-tion and the sustained Self-Other dichotomy continue to embed and inform the pedagogy and practice of English language teaching around the globe, which has been actively created and shaped by both the Self and the Other

At a more specific level, the debates surrounding post-method pedagogy (which will

be defined in a later section of this article) in the post-Enlightenment period in the TESOL sphere play an important role in understanding teachers’ everyday classroom practice

*Corresponding author Email:halephan@hawaii.edu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2014.951949

While the construct of method has been problematized in the literature (e.g., Pennycook,

1989), to date few studies have been conducted to specifically explore and document how teachers use post-method pedagogy and its macro-strategic framework in English lan-guage classrooms, particularly those in countries where English as a Foreign Lanlan-guage (EFL) is taught Canagarajah (2002) argues that the paucity and absence of explicit research into post-method pedagogical practices in EFL classrooms resulted from the fact that these practices ‘simply have not been documented in the professional literature’ (p 148) What is clear in the post-Enlightenment period is, as Kumaravadivelu (Kumaravadivelu,2006) articulates, a ‘laudable transition from awareness to awakening’ but ‘what is not clear is how this awakening has actually changed the practice of everyday teaching and teacher preparation’ (p 76) in EFL contexts The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

is one such context, in which the association of English and English language teaching (ELT) to ‘Western’ values has long been controversial (Mahboob & Elyas,2014); and as such it deserves more scholarly attention

Informed by the above debates and discussions, this article examines in depth the educational and pedagogical experiences of two Western-trained Saudi TESOL male language teachers to obtain insights into questions of knowledge construction, pedagogy and training in Western TESOL and their impacts on these teachers’ teaching in Saudi settings The article investigates the extent to which such experiences have equipped these teachers with pedagogical underpinnings and criticality regarding post-method pedagogy and practices in their home classrooms

The cultural politics and recent developments of Western TESOL

It can be argued that the TESOL industry is still largely shaped by the growing market-ization and commercialmarket-ization of education, ethnocentrism, colonial remnants, racial discrimination and by the neo-colonial relations of power embedded in its curriculum, ideology and practice evident in numerous TESOL programmes in North America, Britain and Australia (NABA) (Canagarajah,2002; Inoue & Stracke,2013; Kubota & Lin,2009; Kumaravadivelu,2003; Mahboob & Golden,2013) These programmes in various ways continue to reproduce images of ‘the superior Self’ over ‘the inferior Other’ (Pennycook,

1998)

At the same time, despite the quest for the internationalization of higher education, most NABA TESOL programmes often give little recognition to international students’ intellectual capabilities and to their academic and professional identity construction journeys These programmes often demand international TESOL students to discard their prior knowledge in exchange of more advanced teaching methodologies and peda-gogies, criticisms that were raised by Liu (1998) and Auerbach (1995) nearly 20 years ago What is more, Auerbach (1995) argues that NABA TESOL are ‘often controlled not

by the structure or objective of the program but by the specific and sometimes incidental interest of the faculty’ (p 86) Recent studies such as Chowdhury and Phan (2014), Inoue and Stracke (2013), Ilieva (2010) and Ilieva and Waterstone (2013) continue to show the persistence of native speaker ideology in the curriculum, pedagogy and practice of TESOL programmes Specifically, Ilieva and Waterstone (2013) investigate the curricu-lum discourses circulating in a Western TESOL programme for international students in a highly reflective manner In questioning their own practices as teachers teaching in NABA TESOL programmes, these authors conclude that the discourses and practices existing in these programmes are still informed by Western superiority They raise several critical questions in their article, which include ‘Is a critique of native speaker ideology and

embracing the discourse of multi-competence truly a route to disrupt existing power relations or could these be another iteration of Center [NABA] domination of TESOL programs? [; and] Are we advancing academicentrism?’ (p 34) (see also Ilieva,2010for similar accounts) Several studies document international students’ reflections on their exposure to critical theories introduced in their NABA TESOL programmes (Chowdhury

& Phan,2014; Matsutani,2012; Phan,2008) Through such exposure the students become more aware of the cultural politics and the discourses of colonialism underlying TESOL and thus develop a more complex professional identity; however, the students also reveal that there is often only one course in their entire programme that gives them space for developing critical understanding of the field This calls for a more consistent and collectively critical approach in TESOL pedagogy and curriculum

Given all the above discussions, we are not claiming that Western institutions, teachers teaching in NABA TESOL programmes and courses in TESOL programmes are not aware

of international students’ pedagogical needs at all or do not provide any room for critical engagement with critical theories; neither are we assuming that international students are passive recipients of Western TESOL and are unreflectively adopting Western-generated approaches such as communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based learning (TBL) in their home settings Instead, we are interested in how international TESOL students appropriate, critique and put in practice what they have obtained in NABA TESOL, particularly in this era of post-method pedagogy This is because post-method pedagogy should all in all invite teachers and students to call into question the cultural politics, ethics and appropriateness of teaching regardless of contexts

Post-method pedagogy in TESOL and its predicament in EFL contexts

We would like to start this section by highlighting Kachru’s (1986,1996) premier work that captures the spread of world Englishes, in which he coined and discussed the three circle model of English, the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle In this model, the Inner Circle constitutes the traditional bases of English, largely referring to native-English-speaking countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, the USA and the UK) The Outer Circle includes countries where English is used as a second and/or an official language Many of these countries were former colonies of Britain (e.g., Singapore, India, Nigeria and Ghana) Finally, the Expanding Circle contains countries that use English as a foreign language (for instance, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Korea and Thailand) However, it is important to note that the borders of these circles are not always clear-cut

The Inner Circle in Kachru’s work is also referred to as the Centre, while the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle are grouped under the Periphery (Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson,1992) Throughout the article, these terms are used, and we fully acknowledge the limitations associated with them

Numerous criticisms of method particularly its embedded ‘marginality’ on the part of the Other and the hegemony of the Western Self’s worldview in the forms of unequal power relationships with the Other (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Kumaravadivelu, 2003; Pennycook,1989; Phillipson,1992) have given ways to the development of post-method pedagogy in TESOL A fundamental shift from method to post-method is seen as an attempt to decolonize Western-based pedagogies According to Kumaravadivelu (1994, cited in Kumaravadivelu,2003), post-method means ‘a search for an alternative to method rather than an alternative method’ (p 544) He contends that ‘any attempt to discover a new or a better method within the existing methodological framework is bound to be

conditioned by the construct of marginality’ (p 544), hence is subject to pedagogical inappropriateness, among other things

Post-method presupposes that periphery teachers will devise their classroom pedagogy

in ways that are compatible with local intellectual conditions They have to have ‘a desire

to challenge the debilitating effects of method’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p 545) intro-duced to them as a marginalizing tool To put such endeavours into practice, they need to comply with the framework of post-method pedagogy that is based on the three funda-mental parameters identified by Kumaravadivelu (1994cited in Kumaravadivelu,2003, p 544): ‘particularity’, ‘practicality’ and ‘possibility’ The ‘parameter of particularity’ indi-cates that language teaching should respond to the local, individual, institutional and socio-cultural needs of a particular group The ‘parameter of practicality’, on the other hand, refers to language teachers’ awareness of the reciprocal relationship between theory and practice The ‘parameter of possibility’ offers learners space for critical reflection on their life experiences and their socio-cultural and historical background in order to appropriate the English language in line with their own values and visions (Kumaravadivelu, 2003) Indeed, these three parameters are not mutually exclusive, but rather, they complement each other in helping periphery language practitioners to develop

a conceptual rationale vital for constructing a post-method pedagogy as a move towards decolonization

Nevertheless, the successful construction of such notions is often associated with challenges, particularly when the discursive formation of the colonial concept of method

is not critically discussed in TESOL courses Like the postcolonial predicament, post-method pedagogy derives from a colonial history ‘characterized by a particular discursive formation called method which has been shaped by the form of orientalism’ (Kumaravadivelu,2003, p 546) This colonial concept of method will continue to affect pedagogic practices in periphery ELT classrooms, particularly when periphery TESOL teachers are not aware of and are not meaningfully engaged in critiquing those assump-tions of mainstream instituassump-tions As Kumaravadivelu (2003, p 546) warns us, the post-method pedagogy predicament is manifested in ‘two dimensions’: (1) the ‘process of marginalization’ and (2) the ‘practice of self-marginalization’

The ‘process of marginalization’ is produced and upheld through what Kachru (1996) called ‘paradigms of marginality’ that consist of ‘paradigm myopia’, ‘paradigm lag’ and

‘paradigm misconnection’ in Kumaravadivelu’s (2003, p 547) words These three para-digms articulate the existence of flawed research practices in Centre applied linguistic circles: i.e., ‘monolingual speakers and societies’ are treated like the norms ‘for forming hypotheses about bilingual development’ (Kumaravadivelu,2003, p 547); the ‘scientific theory’ status of ethnocentric-oriented hypotheses is perpetuated by the mainstream literature, and investigative processes of hypothesis formation, testing and confirmation are disassociated from the sociolinguistic and historical realities of language used in periphery classrooms Kachru (1996) also discusses the ways in which the aforementioned paradigms are implemented as ‘a very effective strategy of subtle power’ (p 242) One consequence of this myopic vision of mainstream institutions is that international TESOL students are subjected to constricting and exclusionary practices which may adversely affect their professional endeavours (Chowdhury & Phan,2014)

It is this practice of subtle power in Western TESOL that maintains the dominance of Western knowledge over local knowledge For example, the macro-strategic framework that derives from the post-method pedagogy requires periphery teachers to localize their classroom pedagogic practices through bottom-up strategies Yet the pivot of post-method pedagogy is based ‘on the theoretical insights that originated from an already documented

Western knowledge base’; it would be much more preferable for the theoretical support for this pedagogy to have been derived ‘from the findings of empirical research conducted and documented in and by periphery communities where English is learned and taught as

a second/ foreign language’ (Kumaravadivelu,2003, p 547) In the face of a paucity of documented local knowledge based on post-method pedagogical practices, international students may unintentionally transfer those ethnocentric-oriented pedagogic practices to their contexts Worse still, they might unknowingly argue for the validity of these Western-based instructional strategies

The practice of self-marginalization by language teachers and academic administrators

in periphery contexts can be seen in different ways It is common practice, for instance, for institutions in many EFL and ESL countries to post job advertisements stating that they require teachers with recognized NABA TESOL certificates and qualifications, especially native speakers (Mahboob, 2010; Mahboob & Golden, 2013) Such self-marginalization practices would further endorse NABA programmes to perpetuate their dominance ‘by exploiting the practice of self-marginalization on the part of the subaltern’ (Kumaravadivelu,2003, p 548; Widin,2010)

With regard to Saudi Arabia, the academic relations between the Saudi government and many Western countries reinforce this hegemony across the country In 2004, the Saudi government put billions of dollars into Western-style higher education by launching

a scholarship programme called the King Abdullah Scholarship (KAS) that helps Saudi citizens to complete their further education at Western universities Accordingly, parents are encouraging their children to apply for the KAS to pursue their education overseas, and local universities are competing (i.e., by launching different job-incentives) to recruit Saudi manpower with Western qualifications For instance, King Saud University, one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the country, offers four monthly stipends for Saudis who are studying at the top 100 universities in the USA Such country-wise trends have introduced a strong discourse of the privilege of Western qualifications and led Saudi higher education authorities to normalize the effectiveness of Western pedago-gies and accept often without questioning the pedagogical outcomes of NABA TESOL Saudi teachers without Western qualifications have been labelled a subordinate group of language educators across the country The high importance attached to Western qualifi-cations could be described as a form of hegemony perpetuated ‘through social practices, social forms and social structures produced in specific sites such as the church, the state, the school, the mass media, the political system and the family’ as McLaren (2003, p 76) puts it

Given the above discussions, this article examines how Western-trained Saudi teachers

of English perceive post-method pedagogy introduced in their NABA TESOL courses and the extent to which such courses have prepared them to develop meta-pedagogical and critical awareness, and how this preparation has been translated into their everyday classroom practices

The context: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

English in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is not a ‘neutral’ language It is loaded with political, religious, social, and economic overtones and is a topic of heated debate While the influence of globalisation and modernisation policies adopted in KSA has led to an increase

in the use of English in the country; there are processes of resistance to English that question its validity and contribute to a shift in the language to suit local beliefs and practices (Mahboob & Elyas,2014, p 128)

In the midst of such resistance and the tendency to self-marginalise as discussed above, the pursuit of English as a desirable form of social, linguistic, political, cultural, intellec-tual and economic capital has also been central at all levels in the KSA, the largest country

in the oil-rich Gulf States of the Middle East The Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education have been investing enormously in ELT across the country The past two decades has witnessed several major government initiatives to promote mass literacy

in English nationwide (see Mahboob & Elyas,2014for more details) What is more, the geopolitical reality of the globalization of English, the impacts of the 9/11 event on the Islamic countries’ education systems (Rizvi,2004), and the recent ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings (i.e., a series of protests, demonstrations and civil wars took place in the Arab world in mid-December 2010) have all played major roles in accelerating English education policy reforms in the KSA

Together with offering scholarships to Saudi citizens to obtain Western education overseas, the Saudi government has been boosting the internationalization of higher education in the country With direct financial and logistic supports from the government, local universities have been adopting top-down internationalization policies to promote national, institutional and individual competitiveness in response to the increasing globa-lization of English Universities and colleges are revising their mission statements to ensure a commitment to internationalization, franchising international educational provi-ders to their local people, cultivating partnerships with foreign institutions, launching joint TESOL (e.g., MA TESOL, Diploma in TESOL) and adopting international curricula, among other endeavours English is now considered a medium of instruction in Saudi higher education contexts, especially in engineering, medicine, business and information technology At post-secondary education, topics of accreditation, international partner-ships, joint ventures, English as the medium of instruction and the internationalization of higher education are highly regarded in university communities as well as at senior official talks Possessing Western training/education in the Saudi contexts is considered

to possess a form of capital

With awareness of the complexity of English and ELT in the KSA, we now present our research project conducted with two Western-trained Saudi TESOL teachers to obtain more insights into the questions raised in the article

The study

The study adopted a qualitative research approach with the aim to obtain rich descriptions

of data, comprising highly detailed accounts of the participants’ personal experiences, beliefs, attitudes and everyday teaching practices It examines the extent to which NABA TESOL have prepared Saudi EFL teachers for their teaching back home with a particular focus on how they are able to devise context-sensitive and institution-specific classroom pedagogies and to develop their own sense of plausibility A qualitative approach makes it possible to understand such complex issues as it helps not only reveal the participants’ experiences, but also connect their experiences with wider social contexts (Creswell,

2007; Park,2013)

Males and females are segregated in the Saudi education system; therefore, the first author who was the one who conducted the study had access to male participants only The data presented in this article were part of a larger project collected from male Saudi teachers of English in a period of six months Multiple data collection methods including

a questionnaire, observation of lessons and semi-structured interviews were employed We

will report the data from two teachers from whom we have collected the most data using all the above-mentioned techniques The participants’ pseudonyms are Ali and Refat

The data collection process consisted of three phases; each phase informed the one that followed The researcher first distributed a questionnaire to obtain data about the participants’ educational and professional backgrounds They were also asked to voice their opinions about the concept of post-method pedagogy and to state whether their pedagogical needs had been met with regard to teaching materials and the pedagogical strategies that informed their classroom practices, and who was responsible if such needs had not been met Based on their responses to the questions, semi-structured interviews were designed to obtain more details and insights

Classroom observations were then conducted to explore how the participants’ class-room pedagogies were realized in their everyday classclass-room practices The teachers were informed that the primary purpose of these observations was to capture the general pedagogical strategies they employed in their classrooms to meet their students’ needs In order to overcome any problems arising from power relations and conflicts of interest between teachers and students, we obtained the consent of each party separately The students’ consent form was written in Arabic while the teachers’ form and survey were in English The semi-structured interviews were conducted in both English and Arabic Classroom observations began in week three of the spring semester, which meant that the learners were familiar with the purpose of the researcher’s presence, and also with their teachers and their classroom teaching styles All classroom observations were scheduled with each participant in advance to ensure that tests and other forms of examination were not being observed Both participants had given the researcher their teaching schedules in advance and at the same time highlighted the examination or test weeks/days Based on the data obtained from the classroom observations, interviews were subsequently conducted with both participants, concentrating on the teaching strategies they employed in their classrooms and the rationale behind these practices All interviews were conducted in a quiet place, audio-recorded with the consent of both participants, and transcribed verbatim The process of data analysis commenced before the end of the data collection We also used the constant comparative method to identify themes related to (1) the participants’ perceptions of obtaining Western TESOL qualifications, (2) their opinions about the concept of post-method pedagogy, (3) their views on whether their pedagogical needs had been accommodated in NABA TESOL and who was responsible if such needs had not been met and (4) their classroom pedagogies and the rationale behind those practices

Western TESOL qualifications as capital, privilege, marginalisation and authority The participants viewed their Western TESOL qualifications within the Saudi context in various ways, ranging from seeing them as monetary and tangible resources to seeing

Participants Age Gender Educational background Qualifications

Teaching experience

Currently teaching at

Ali 37 Male BA in English Literature

& Linguistics

MA TESOL/Applied Linguistics, UK

12 years University

Refat 40 Male BA in English Literature MA & PhD TESOL,

USA

13 years University

them as an advantage which would have a beneficial influence on all aspects of their professional lives For Ali, his TESOL qualification had transformed him into a ‘great resource’ compared to his co-workers who held degrees such as MAs in English Literature or Linguistics obtained from Saudi universities:

I consider myself as a great resource because of my experience in the past as an international student who studied at one of the top-notch universities in the UK, and currently a teacher who holds a major that does not exist at Saudi universities (survey)

Ali further described other forms of accumulated capital that had been bestowed on him

by his Western education:

Yes, there is a big demand for MA TESOL holders across the country, with high salary Thus,

I had a one-year study leave from my secondary school and went to the UK to complete my Master's degree I thank God for the fact that my current qualification has given me a rewarding job at university level It helped me to become the coordinator of the Applied Linguistics track within one semester In the university community and Saudi society, I have been perceived as a model language teacher who had a Western education, linguistic and cultural practices Of course, I am extremely happy to be treated in this way (Interview 1, 16 February 2013)

Similarly, Refat stated that although his TESOL MA and PhD qualifications from the USA had made his professional journey rather complex, they had empowered him within the Saudi context Throughout his teaching career, he had experienced various types of privilege:

It was so sad I was planning to complete my degree in English literature Surprisingly, my university approved my scholarship for a TESOL degree because there was a high need for it After graduation I realized that I had been given more space to take decisions such as introducing new, changing course structures, and leading various departmental committees, despite the fact that there are some senior co-workers who hold PhD degrees from non-Western universities My authority has never been questioned (Survey)

These attitudes experienced by Refat at his university are evidence of the dominant discourses of privilege attached to Western qualifications which have not only been normalized and remain unquestioned (Park, 2013) at Saudi universities, but have also contributed to the marginalization of other Saudi language teachers who hold locally obtained qualifications Refat elaborated on these ‘disrupting’ normative discourses as follows:

To be honest with you, I sometimes feel that my everyday practices are not right Yet both co-workers and administrators, unknowingly, attach more credibility and legitimacy to my decisions because of my Western qualifications This scenario has put me under a lot of pressure (Interview 1, 21 February 2013)

The complex feelings experienced by Refat may be attributed to the fact that Saudi educational authorities often uncritically accept the assumptions of second language acquisition theories and pedagogy imported from Western TESOL, thus in effect legit-imizing their own marginalization These self-marginalization practices (Kumaravadivelu,

2003) were also reported by both participants, who noted that Saudi language teachers perceived degrees from Western universities to be ‘golden’, ‘the mainstream’ (Refat,

Interview 2, 11 March 2013) and ‘the house of knowledge and research’ (Ali, Interview 2,

20 March 2013) In contrast, they considered local universities as places of academic cliques, and described local degrees as ‘survival degrees’ (Ali, Interview 2, 20 March 2013), ‘local knowledge’, ‘easily attainable’ and ‘not prestigious’ (Refat, Interview 2, 11 March 2013) The use of such terms by these teachers is also an indication of how the cultural politics underlying NABA TESOL shapes language teachers’ perceptions and practice in the field

From inferiority complex to critical awareness and critiquing

In expressing their viewpoints regarding post-method pedagogy they experienced in their TESOL courses, Ali and Refat described how they positioned themselves as they were progressing in their studies in Britain and in the US respectively

Notably, the participants’ experiences of post-method pedagogy and its macro-strate-gic framework in NABA TESOL seemed to be within the discursive hegemonic nature of so-called method As such, in the beginning Ali and Refat both saw themselves as victims

of their self-assigned non-native non-Western international student status whose confi-dence and legitimate stance were challenged in the new educational contexts In Ali’s words,

when I was asked to review the assigned reading materials and post my responses on the class Wiki, I felt that my comments all originated from existing Western knowledge … The theories in these reading materials stemmed from Western studies and we were asked to make sense of them” (Interview 4, 28 March 2013)

These (ethnocentric) practices in his TESOL programmes were also reported by Refat They had caused him to develop a sense of inferiority complex, whereby he fixated on his non-native speaker status and saw his international student status being insignificant and minor

My first semester on the MA TESOL [program] was challenging because I found that the materials were mostly based on the works of Anglo-American scholars I could not fulfill the requirement of my first assignment that asks each student to conduct a mini-teaching session, because the class was dominated by native speakers and it was so stressful (Interview 4, 27 April 2013)

Refat further described his journey as follows: ‘I was mostly passive in class and found it hard to be assertive…’ and ‘…it took some time for me to realize that this was a wrong self-image developed by me’ (Interview 4, 27 April 2013) Ali also described his early experiences in the TESOL lectures as those of a ‘handicapped student’ who accepted the fact that he needed some ‘physiotherapy sessions’ to meet the standards set by British students and professors Accordingly, he sought the assistance of senior international classmates to help him ‘stand on his feet’ (Interview 5, 5 May 2013)

Ali’s and Refat’s experiences are rather common among international students study-ing at Western universities who often experience ‘culture shocks’ in classrooms partly because they tend to perceive themselves as inferior and lacking linguistic, academic and cultural knowledge (Marginson & Sawir, 2011) However, the problem here lies in the tendency to overemphasise these cultural shocks and to blame international students for lacking necessary knowledge and skills required to be successful in Western classrooms,

as argued in Chowdhury and Phan (2014) and Singh (2010) Obvious consequences of