Identifying and disseminating context-appropriate ELT pedagogy: A bottom-up approach

Harry Kuchah reports on a research study to fill the gap of ELT pedagogies by exploring the practices and perspectives of both learners and teachers about what counts as good and appropriate teaching.

In recent years, ELT professionals and researchers have called for contextually appropriate forms of ELT pedagogy to be developed, arguing that the dominant discourse on ELT methodology, as promoted by local Ministry of Education policy makers around the world, has been largely generated in ideal (North) contexts and so does not reflect the challenging realities of the majority of language teaching and learning contexts in which they are being imposed. Despite these calls, there has been very little research that shows how contextually appropriate ELT pedagogies can be developed especially in the context of large under-resourced primary classrooms in sub-Saharan Africa.

In this talk, I report on a research study that attempted to fill this gap by exploring the practices and perspectives of both learners and teachers about what counts as good and appropriate English language teaching in two English medium primary school contexts in Cameroon. In presenting the findings of this study, I highlight the potential contribution of a bottom-up research approach to teacher development which recognises both learner and teacher agency as well as takes account of context in the process of identifying and disseminating good practice

Part of the Centre for Language Education Research (CLER) Seminars for Winter 2016.