Exploring Teacher Language Ideologies Embedded in Classroom Practices: Prospects and Possibilities for Implementing Global Englishes Language Teaching

ABSTRACT

The Global Englishes (GE) paradigm advocates pedagogical reforms to prepare learners for communication with linguistically diverse interlocutors. Although GE has garnered increased scholarly attention recently, implementation of Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT) in classrooms remains progressing slowly. This warrants an investigation into teacher language ideologies embedded in classroom practices, with the goal of discussing the prospects and possibilities for GELT implementation. Guided by an ethnographic case study, we observed two English classrooms in Thailand over an academic year and triangulated with semi‐structured interviews and artifacts. The findings showed that teachers’ classroom practices largely reflected a standard language ideology by emphasizing English as an overly fixed, correct linguistic system, and a cultural essentialism ideology by teaching predominantly native‐speaker cultures as essentialized forms. Nonetheless, some practices reflected a GE‐oriented ideology, such as partially accepting Thai‐accented English use, encouraging ownership of English, and explicitly teaching the World Englishes model. Although the study was limited to two classrooms, the findings suggest that teachers navigated multiple language ideologies that coexist and interactionally shape classroom practices. This study highlights the need to foster greater teachers’ ideological clarity, ideological agency, and critical action in implementing GELT.