Culture teaching practices of Lower Secondary School ELT teachers from the Global English perspective: A qualitative case study in Thailand

Abstract

Nowadays the use of English language has been steadily extended around the world due to the intensive globalisation and advanced ICT (e.g. Jenkins, 2015). English language skills and competence are globally required for many purposes, and provided in national education systems worldwide (e.g. Seidlhofer, 2011). Since English becomes a global lingua franca, culture becomes diverse as multiple cultures flow through the use of English language. It is thus difficult to clearly identify the native speaker and fix cultural reference in multilingual and multicultural contexts (e.g. Baker, 2012a; Byram, 2012a). Teaching cultural differences between the target and learners’ cultures is problematic, particularly in English language education. This research is aimed at investigating ELT teachers’ culture teaching practices, and examining the factors affecting culture teaching practices in order to improve cultural instruction, promote ELF cultural pedagogy in English language education, and in turn enhance Thai learners’ ability and competence in intercultural communication.
In this regard, the study was conducted from late October 2018-March 2019 in one private school in Bangkok, Thailand. Qualitative data were collected from observations, interviews, and document archives with seven ELT teachers in the foreign language department, plus eight focus groups of students, semi-structured interviews with two administrators and four management staff. Qualitative content analysis and NVivo 12 were employed together to analyse and interpret the data. The in-depth exploration of the cultural instruction in practical context consequently discovers that the teacher participants integrate culture and basic cultural awareness in Baker’s (2011; 2012c; 2015a) intercultural awareness model into their English language lessons to some extent. Despite their lack of awareness and knowledge of intercultural education, they strongly attach importance of the English language to native speakers’ language and cultural norms for intercultural communication. Then, they apply a variety of teaching resources via the cross-cultural approach on the basis of their cognition and individuality (i.e. life experience and personal preferences). As the ELT teachers are striving to maintain a balance of teaching culture in conjunction with huge demands for Standard English, their culture teaching practices are dynamic and sensitive to the internal (e.g. students’ interest, language proficiency, and cultural knowledge) and external contextual factors (i.e. the school, parents, and the educational system). Given that the teacher participants are key agents who deal with the conflicting educational circumstances in order to bring the cultural features into their English language classroom, this study underscores the significant role of ELT teachers as the decisive factor in boosting intercultural education.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Nattida Pattaraworathum: orcid.org/0000-0002-1527-0703

ORCID for William Baker: orcid.org/0000-0003-0533-2795

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