P o l i l o g . S t u d i a N e o f i l o l o g i c z n e
nr 10 ss. 271–274 2020
ISSN 2083-5485 https://doi.org/10.34858/polilog.10.2020.334 © Copyright by Institute of Modern Languages of the Pomeranian University in Słupsk
Liz England, TESOL Career Path
Development. Creating Professional Success,
New York, Routledge 2020, 126 pp.
Every so often a book appears with the potential to impact the way we think about ourselves, both as language teachers and people. The new Routledge contribution for English language teachers TESOL Career Path Development. Creating Professional Success by Liz England is one such book.
For a long time, the emphasis in language teachers’ career path development (CPD) has been focused on learners’, not teachers’, needs. Consequently, there have been multiple publications on how to make language lessons more enjoyable and learner-friendlier with few examples of corresponding teachers’ voices. However, the times have changed and the role of the teacher has been aff ected the most. With more ‘remote’ working from home, with large numbers of people teaching English without proper training or motivation, and experience of burnout at various stages of career, no longer is being a language teacher a successful and satisfying profession for life. That said, there are no books on language teachers’ all-life careers, nor research-based tools for teachers how to cope with the change of professionalism. Therefore, this book is timely, very much needed and in a way empowering.
The monograph is divided into ten chapters, each focusing on a particular aspect of the factors that impact teacher professionalism. Every chapter starts off with an auto-biographical vignette and the book, as the Author says, results from her 35-year-sup-port of TESOL(Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) teachers at all stages of their careers coupled with open-ended interviews with 50 English teachers.
In Chapter 1, ‘Introduction’, the aims and the rationale for the book are explained and described. England also discusses her concept of CPD, which aims at addressing all TESOL teachers, irrespective of the stage of their professional career (preservice, novice, mid-career/switcher, veteran, and semi-retired teachers), geographical or cul-tural diff erences.
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Chapter 2, ‘Theorizing TESOL career development’, outlines the Author’s fi ve-pillar model of career path development that is to be extensively discussed in the subsequent fi ve chapters: teacher education, teacher motivation, organizational devel-opment, leadership, and life balance. She argues that her model embraces the needs of diff erent kinds of English language teacher community, as it addresses teachers’ motivations, attitudes and beliefs, as well as effi cacy and career trends.
Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 focus on the particular pillars of the model. In Chap-ter 3, ‘Teacher education’, there is a claim that the traditional ‘equipment’ of language teachers with TESOL’s subspecialty areas, such as applied linguistics (identifi cation and investigation of language-related problems), language pedagogy (approaches, methods and techniques for language learning and teaching), and cross-cultural com-munication may not be enough for the 21st century. As these traditional courses fail to address the skills referring to employment, attaining recognition or navigating op-portunities for advancement, to name but a few, their impact may prove insuffi cient in fulfi lling contemporary teachers’ needs.
Chapter 4, ‘Teacher motivation’, is an excellent section on the motivation of language teachers. The author poses a number of questions that have not been re-searched yet, for example: How does teacher motivation serve teachers and learn-ers?, How can language teachers remain motivated?, How to prepare language teachers for fulfi lling careers in an ever-changing world?, What are teachers’ mo-tivations (both internal and external) at diff erent stages of their careers? Although these language teacher motivation queries, just like the problem of emotional labour introduced towards the end of this chapter, create essential content, they have rather been ignored or very little discussed both in the literature and in language teacher preparation courses.
Chapter 5, ‘Organizational development’, is more concerned with implementing eff ective change in an organization, be it a school, a university, or another institu-tion where language teachers work. England criticizes a recent neoliberal trend with a focus on increased workloads, accreditation-based documentation, more numbers in enrolments and ever-changing technology skills without giving a thought to how these activities infl uence the workplace and the employees. She suggests that lan-guage teacher associations should support lanlan-guage teachers in ‘keeping calm know-ing change’ (p. 56), improve their job security and advocate on behalf of teachers rather than language learners, which is usually the norm.
The main focus of chapter 6, ‘Leadership’, is on mobilizing and energizing Eng-lish language teachers as well as the need for disseminating information about their lifestyles. As TESOLers’ work impacts three planes: micro (their work in the class-room), meso (their work at their workplace) and macro (their work in society in which they operate), the Author argues for more information about how and to what extent English as a foreign language teachers make a diff erence in their local, national and international communities.
Many teachers may fi nd Chapter 7, ‘Life balance’, the most compelling. It deals with what is at the heart of professional survival as a teacher c focusing on three
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Liz England, TESOL Career Path Development. Creating Professional Success
components: body (physical care and exercise), mind (cognitive skills, knowledge, problem-solving skills), and soul (fi nding engagement in something as it helps with smooth moving from one stage to another). Unless the balance of these components is maintained, the future for TESOLers will involve more work-related stress, too long and unappreciated work hours, family demands, or bad bosses. What is more, teachers who are taking care of themselves provide a good model for their students, an argument which should never be dismissed.
Chapter 8 is all about appreciating rewards and transitions, called by England ‘milestones’, in an English teacher’s career. Rewards should be considered impor-tant as their absence may be a reason for many a teacher to quit a job. This chap-ter certainly invites the reader to think about their own job-related rewards and milestones, as well as provides a list of good questions for deeper refl ection. What I found thought-provoking was, for example, a remark that native speakers who work with non-native English speaking students can be viewed by their supervisors and other administrators, and sometimes peers in other academic disciplines, as being lower in a professional hierarchy.
Chapter 9, ‘Moving forward – Roles of educational organizations and language teacher associations’, is probably one of the few book chapters in language teach-er education litteach-erature that deals with the impact of professional organizations on language teachers. Although the Author admits that any language teacher’s career draws, in addition to the fi ve pillars discussed in the book, on forces of luck, good fortune and serendipity, what is important is also the so called ‘intentionality’ which stands for a teacher’s eff ort to take control.
In the fi nal chapter, ‘It’s on us: Intentional TESOL career path development’, England develops her notion of ‘intentionality’ and points to three essential career skills for English teachers that go beyond the content of Master’s (their most fre-quent terminal degree) studies: developing networks, building advocacy skills, and using technology. Networking involves the people who have somewhat helped an individual teacher over a course of a career life. Advocacy, for themselves, for their language programs, and for other teachers, is the skill that could be considered as part of graduate and continuing education, whereas the positive eff ect of technology has been shown, for example, in the recent coronavirus pandemic.
The monograph includes references and indexes of topics covered and authors cited.
There are a number of features which combine to make the book worth recom-mending:
• It fi lls a long-awaited gap, focusing on language teachers’, not language learn-ers’ needs, and addressing the issue of career path development.
• It considers the voices of all English teachers and provides examples that suit preservice, novice, mid-career/switchers, veteran, and semi-retired TESOLers, which stands in opposition to most English teacher education resource books that tend to focus mostly on preservice and, less frequently, novice English teachers.
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• It introduces a fi ve-pillar TESOL career path development model which addresses contemporary teacher needs, such as sustaining teacher motivation, organizational development, leadership and life balance self-care.
• It is accessible, as each chapter always begins with a teacher’s scenario, which better prepares readers for the content of the chapter and invites them to refl ect upon similar situations in their professional lives.
There will always be readers who may object to the refl ective bias of much of the contents, arguing that there is too little ‘linguistic’ content. To my mind, however, eff ective language teaching starts with the well-being of the language teacher. Hence, the ‘refl ective’ aspect, which leads to enhanced self-awareness, lies at the heart of teacher professionalism.
