Gender Equality in English Language Teaching Practice: A Resource Book for Teacher Education

Gender equality in English language teaching practice: A resource book for teacher education contributes to a reconceptualisation of English language teacher education by drawing teacher educators’ and student teachers’ attention to the importance of gender equality from an early stage of professional development. It is one of the outcomes of the international research project ‘Gender-ing ELT: International perspectives, practices, policies’, which investigated the socially relevant contribution that English language teaching (ELT) can make towards gender equality and the empowerment of woman and girls.

The book contains 30 reflective essays written by future/current English language teachers, who discuss whether their ELT practice should contribute to gender equality. These essays are organised in ten country-specific sections – Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Morocco, Philippines, Ukraine and Vietnam. Each of these sections opens with a country profile in order to help readers understand the context in which the essays were written. The profile is followed by three essays, which have been supplemented with additional activities (pre-reading reflection, post-reading discussion and practical tasks). These activities are wide in scope, and they may be undertaken by teacher educators and student teachers in all country contexts.

The context-specific personal reflections included in this book have the potential to resonate in several other contexts. They show that there is much to share across national/local contexts and that there is still much to do to challenge gender inequalities wherever we are on the globe.