English Teacher Recruiting Assumptions in Thai Secondary Education: Is the Extralocal Teacher of English Designation the Answer?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14456/bej.2023.8Keywords:
extralocal teacher of English, NES, NNES, Thai secondary educationAbstract
Whether to hire native English (NES) or non-native English speakers (NNES) as English teachers is a highly contested topic; based on this debate, this paper seeks to corroborate the recruitment criteria for English teachers in Thailand's secondary education system. Through random sampling, 100 of the most notable public and private secondary institutions that offer general English education were chosen. Of them, 87 published official recruiting documents. Rank order was used to distinguish the perceived importance of each recruitment criterion. The criterion that was most frequently and prominently stated was Nationality. As this criterion is considered the most significant when hiring English instructors, most English teacher hiring procedures in Thailand lack inclusivity and diversity because they prioritize nationality over important factors like language ability, educational background, and experience. To overcome this frame of mind, an all-inclusive designation that includes all non-local NES and NNES instructors should be implemented. It is therefore suggested that, seeing as English is a universal language and that many qualified English instructors come from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds, secondary education organizations should be encouraged to implement the uniform "extralocal teacher of English" (ETE) designation in place of the NES and the seemingly derogatory NNES teacher labels.
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