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Taiwanese Pre-Service English Teachers’ Attitude Towards Native-English-Speaking-Teachers and Native-and-Nonnative-English-Speaking-Teacher Team Teaching

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Taiwanese Pre-Service English Teachers’

Attitude Towards

Native-English-Speaking-Teachers and

Native-and-Nonnative-English-Speaking-Teacher Team Teaching

Li-Yi Wang

National Institute of Education, Singapore liyi.wang@nie.edu.sg

Abstract

This study investigated the attitude of Taiwanese pre-service English teachers towards the competition and cooperation with native English speaking teachers (NESTs) in the English language teaching (ELT) profession. This study employed mixed-methods which included 258 surveys, and 35 interviews from five normal universities and universities of education in Taiwan. The findings show that most participants see NESTs as strong competitors in the employment market, but are not against the policy of hiring NESTs if they are qualified teachers. They believe team teaching with NESTs is beneficial to their students and are willing to team teach with NESTs, but are worried about being ‘marginalized’ by their students and NESTs. They are also concerned about the conflicts and tensions resulting from the process of communicating with NESTs. To help these prospective English teachers fulfill their duties in their upcoming teaching career, teacher education needs to take greater responsibility in supporting the teachers’ professional lives.

Key Words: Taiwanese English teachers, English teacher education, native English speaking teachers, team teaching

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INTRODUCTION

The belief that the cooperation between native English speaking teachers (NESTs) and non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) in English language classrooms might make a unique contribution to English language education has been shown in a great number of projects around the world, in particular in some well-known programs in certain relatively wealthy Asian Pacific countries, such as the JET Program (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program) in Japan, the EPIK (English Program in Korea) in Korea, and the NET Scheme (Native-speaking English Teacher Scheme) in Hong Kong (China). These programs have become part of the central governments’ language education policies in these countries and the majority of the NESTs recruited via these programs are expected to conduct team teaching with local English teachers at public primary and secondary schools. In Japan, for example, team teaching has emerged as one of the most important issues in English language education in the past few decades (Tajino & Tajino, 2000). To speed up its integration into the international community and development into an Asian-Pacific economic center, the Taiwanese government recently decided to follow its neighboring countries’ step and launched the program called the FETRP (Foreign English Teachers Recruitment Program) to recruit NESTs to teach English together with local Taiwanese English teachers at public schools (Huang, 2003). According to the policy, the recruited NESTs must be certificated teachers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand. The major roles of the recruited NESTs include conducting team teaching with local Taiwanese English teachers,

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compiling English teaching materials, and training local English teachers. Nevertheless, the government has been considering accepting uncertified NESTs due to the recruitment difficulties (Mo, 2005). This paper aims to present Taiwanese pre-service English teachers’ attitude towards NESTs and NEST-NNEST team teaching and discuss its implication to English teacher educators and policy makers in countries where NEST-NNEST team teaching are implemented. Survey and interviews were used to collect data from 258 research participants. This paper starts with a literature review on the theory and practice of NEST-NNEST team teaching, which is followed by a description of the research methods and research findings, and ends with a discussion on the role of teacher education in preparing NNESTs for team teaching with NESTs.

LITERATURE REVIEW

In Western tradition and definition, the structure of collaborative teaching, or team teaching, involves two or more teachers cooperatively planning, instructing, and evaluating one or more groups in an appropriate instructional space and given length of time, so as to take advantage of the special competencies of the team members (Singer, 1964, cited in Buckley, 2000). From a Western perspective, advantages of team teaching for students include the maintenance of attention and concentration, the increase of active class participation and independent thinking, and the experience of having teachers with different backgrounds and teaching styles (Bauwens & Hourcade, 1995, cited in Carless, 2002; Buckley, 2000).

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Nevertheless, few would argue against that team teaching is a highly demanding task since it requires certain qualities from co-participants, including mutual trust and respect, time for planning and preparation, sharing roles and responsibilities, open-mindedness and flexibility, and support from principals and administrators (Buckley, 2000; Perry & Stewart, 2005). In NESTs-NNESTs contexts, the idea that a NEST and a NNEST work together by building on each other’s strengths is based on the assumption that some roles may be better played by the NEST rather than the NNEST, and vice versa (Tajino & Tajino, 2000). Given that an ideal English language teaching environment is one in which NESTs and NNESTs can complement each other in their strengths and weaknesses, it seems that the concept of team teaching can successfully build an ideal ELT environment for learners (Medgyes, 1992).

Nevertheless, regardless of the positive impact that team teaching has on learners (e.g., Carless, 2002, 2006), a number of studies looking into the administration of NESTs-NNESTs team teaching suggest that this collaborative teaching model has significant impact on local NNESTs because it causes: (1) an unwelcomed atmosphere towards NESTs among local English teachers, (2) a direct threat to local English teachers’ self-confidence in their English competence, (3) an imbalanced power relationship between NESTs and local English teachers, and (4) a repeated struggle about conflicting teaching objectives among local English teachers.

First of all, NESTs are often perceived as a threat by local English teachers. Some researchers investigated the perceptions of NNESTs in Hong Kong regarding the massive influx of NESTs as their teaching partners in the classrooms and found that the

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recruitment of NESTs made local English teachers feel discriminated against and marginalized by the government (Boyle, 1997; Lung, 1999). Many local English teachers in Hong Kong and Korea who were assigned to conduct team teaching with NESTs perceived their foreign teaching partners as superior exotic manpower who were simply brought to show them how to teach (Boyle, 1997), and described the arrival of NESTs as ‘the worst nightmare’ (Niederhauser, 1995, p. 4). In Japan, NESTs were described by local English teachers as: not properly trained to lead the class, having no experience as an educator, having little in-depth knowledge of English, and not being responsible for the class (Tajino & Tajino, 2000).

Second, team teaching with NESTs often makes local English teachers doubt their own English competence. In Japan, some local English teachers were reluctant to team teaching with NESTs because they were uneasy about their English and were afraid of making mistakes (Carless, 2004; Wada, 1996, cited in Tajino & Tajino, 2000). Browne and Wada (1998) found that most Japanese English teachers had great difficulties in and were hesitant about working with NESTs due to the lack of confidence in their own ability to communicate in English with foreigners. From the perspectives of Korean teachers of English, team teaching with NESTs is also seen as a threat to their confidence in their own English competence. And the lack of confidence is, to a certain extent, closely related to the qualification of NESTs (Niederhauser, 1995). NESTs who are well educated and experienced often meet even greater resistance than untrained and inexperienced NESTs because they represent a more substantial professional challenge to Korean English teachers employed in the

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same field (p. 5). The lack of confidence about speaking English makes a large number of Korean English teachers avoid contact with NESTs, thus they would rather not work with NESTs at all (Carless, 2004).

Third, team teaching creates an imbalance of power in the relationship between NESTs and local English teachers. In Japan, it was found that once a NEST entered the classroom, he or she often became the main English teacher for that class (Tajino & Walker, 1998). In the same study, 50.9% of the respondents (i.e., Japanese secondary students) reported that they thought their classes were NESTs-centered. For Japanese teachers of English, they were likely to assign the role of classroom leader to NESTs by letting the NESTs take over their classes. Only a negligible number of Japanese English teachers saw their foreign teaching partners as equals (Mahoney, 2004; McConnell, 2000). Consequently, team teaching often results in a situation where local English teachers are relegated to just being ‘interpreters’ (Kumabe, 1996, cited in Tajino & Tajino, 2000). In the work of Tajino and Walker (1998), nearly two-thirds of the Japanese students said they would not need a Japanese English teacher in class if the NEST spoke Japanese well, suggesting the students did not see the Japan English teachers as anything other than an interpreter. Also in English classrooms in Korea, a common scenario is that the NEST plans the lesson independently and teaches most of it, whilst the Korean English teacher is present to help out with discipline, classroom management or communication problems without getting involved in any teaching activities (Carless, 2002).

At last, the administration of team teaching brings local English teachers into a series of struggles about conflicting teaching

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objectives. In many Asian countries, communicative English teaching carried out in team teaching classes is often in conflict with grammar and reading-based preparation for examinations (Carless, 2004). In Hong Kong, with regard to the issue of innovative teaching (i.e., communicative and interactive English) and traditional teaching (i.e., drillings and tests regimes), the endless negotiation and compromises appearing between local English teachers and NESTs have resulted in tensions in team teaching classes. A team teaching situation usually ends up like ‘a tug of war’, forcing local English teachers to ‘catch up with the syllabus’ in their solo lessons (Carless, 2006, p. 333). Local English teachers often complain that they feel a need to catch up with the syllabus in their solo lessons after team taught lessons because they are normally being exposed to different ideas or thinking concerning all the aspects of teaching (Carless, 2006).

In the literature, NESTs-NNESTs team teaching has drawn extensive discussion. However, nearly all of the studies discussing issues with regard to NESTs-NNESTs team teaching investigated in-service NNESTs only. There is a little attention paid to pre-in-service NNESTs. There is scarce understanding regarding prospective NNESTs’ attitude towards competing and cooperating with NESTs in their upcoming teaching career. Literature has shown that collective participation and cooperative teaching allow for the ‘powerful format of teacher learning’ (Desimone, 2009, p. 184), and are the key features for effective professional development (Birman, Desimone, Porter, & Garet, 2000; Crawford, Schmeister, & Biggs, 2008; Desimone, 2009; Wayne, Yoon, Zhu, Cronen, & Garet, 2008). Since teachers’ beliefs and attitudes strongly determine the way they teach and the way they develop as teachers (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop,

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2004), it is important for pre-service teachers to form positive attitudes toward teacher collaboration. Initial teacher training is an important time for pre-service teachers to begin to create a solid teacher image, attitude and identity that would support and sustain them in their future profession (Timostsuk & Ugaste, 2010). To teacher educators, research into the emerging beliefs, attitudes, and identities of pre-service teachers is a significant way to obtain information about what is meaningful to student teachers at this critical stage of their teaching career, which greatly helps teacher educators prepare students teachers for their prospective academic progress and professional lives (Korthagen, 2004; Korthagen & Vasalos, 2005; Malderez, Hobson, Tracey, & Kerr, 2007). To foresee pre-service English teachers’ professional roles and light up necessary renovation in teacher training education, there are needs to further the understanding about these teachers’ attitude towards NESTs. In addition, most research in the literature were conducted in the JET Program, the EPIK and the NET Scheme contexts, the three relatively larger, well-documented, and longstanding programs (Careless, 2006; McConnell, 2000). To present a panoramic picture of NESTs-NNESTs team teaching in Asian ELT classrooms, the present study targeted the FETRP, a smaller and more recent NESTs-hiring program launched by the Taiwanese government less than a decade ago, and investigated Taiwanese pre-service English teachers’ attitude towards NESTs and NEST-NNEST team teaching. The author believes that the respondents’ contribution to the proposed questions should provide a better understanding about their attitude towards the competition and cooperation with NESTs in the ELT profession.

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METHODOLOGY

Method

The strategy used in the present study is a sequential exploratory procedure in which an initial survey and a follow-up phenomenological study are applied. First, surveys are believed to be useful because various types of data that describe, explore, or explain physical characteristics, phenomena, behaviors, and attitudes can be gathered and have been used in social science for data collection with the intent of generalizing from a sample to a population (Babbie, 1990). In addition, contributions made by participants through phenomenological study will be able to provide access to better understand participants’ in-depth, socio-politically constructed perceptions, and detailed experiences in reference to the relevant topics (Moustakas, 1994). Hence, a mixed methods design is ‘useful to capture the best of both quantitative and qualitative approaches’ and is helpful for researchers who want to ‘both generalize the findings to a population and develop a detailed view of the meaning of a phenomenon or concept for individuals’ (Creswell, 2003, p. 22). Accordingly, the author believes combining qualitative and quantitative methods would provide greater insights into the issues concerned in the present study. The adoption of the mixed methods approach in the present study was also greatly inspired by studies adopting mixed methods of data collection to explore issues centering on NNESTs (e.g., Carless, 2004; Holmes, 2003; Inbar-Lourie, 2001; Llurda & Huguet, 2003; Luk, 2001; Milambiling, 1999; Samimy & Brutt-Griffler, 1999; Samuel & Stephens, 2000; Tang & Johnson, 1993; Walker, 2001).

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Participants

The participants of the present study were recruited from the English language departments at two normal universities and three universities of education located in northern, central, and eastern Taiwan in the spring and summer of 2007. These participating universities offer four-year programs leading to a Bachelor’s degree and two-year graduate programs leading to a Master’s degree. Since these universities are the major sources of public primary and secondary English teachers in Taiwan, students enrolled in these universities are committed and expected to become prospective elementary and secondary school English teachers in Taiwan. All of these universities had NESTs as teaching staff by the time the present study was conducted. In Taiwan, the frequency and accessibility of contacting with NESTs vary significantly, depending on the areas in which the institutions are located. In addition, the entrance requirements and the courses included in English departments in different normal universities and universities of education vary from one to another. Choosing participants from different institutions located in different areas instead of a single, specific university might help reduce any effect caused by geography and premises.

The participants were selected according to three criteria. First, the participants must be Taiwanese English teacher trainees who are enrolled in English departments of normal universities or universities of education in Taiwan. Second, the participants must have completed at least two years of their training programs because students who have undertaken at least two years in their training programs should be more appropriate and more able to provide the information needed for the present study than those pre-service teachers who have just

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begun their training programs. Third, the participants must have experience of learning English with NESTs in their English learning histories. Individuals’ beliefs and attitudes are influenced by personal histories and experiences. The author assumes that students who have English learning experience with NESTs might have better understanding of the NEST-NNESTs issues concerned in the present study. They might provide more informative data and be more contributive than those who do not have learning experience with NESTs. It is worth noting that in the present study, the experience of being taught by NESTs is seen as a different experience from that of being taught in a NEST-NNEST model. Hence, the participants only need to have learning experience with NESTs. It is not a necessity for them to have experience of being taught in a NEST-NNEST model.

Out of 270 copies of the closed-ended questionnaire distributed in the first phase of data collection, 260 surveys were returned, yielding a response rate of 96.3%. The high return rate strengthens confidence that the obtained sample represents the target community. Of the 260 questionnaires, two were regarded as invalid responses due to the respondents’ failure of completing half of the questions in the questionnaire. Out of the final 258 respondents, 128 (49.6%) of the respondents are pre-service secondary English teachers, and 130 (50.4%) are prospective elementary English teachers. The even distribution in the number of the respondents preparing to become secondary and elementary English teachers provides balanced perspectives held by these two groups of pre-service teachers. In line with the demography of pre-service English teachers in Taiwan, of which nearly 90% of the student teachers are female (MOE, 2011), 219 (84.9%) of the respondents in the present study are female and 39

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(15.1%) are male. In addition, all the participants claimed that they knew the government’s policy of introducing NESTs to public schools and were aware of the government’s consideration of accepting uncertified NESTs. At last, about half of the participants (53.9%) claimed that they had courses that discussed team teaching in classrooms in teacher education, but only 30.5% of the participants said that they had training courses in which they had two teachers teaching English together.

At the end of the questionnaire, there is an inquiry question seeking the participants’ willingness to take part in a subsequent interview. Participants who showed their interest in doing the interview were asked to leave their names and contact number and/or email address on the questionnaires. Participants who completed the questionnaires and agreed to contribute further data were considered as potential interview participants for data collection in the second phase. In order to reduce the effect resulting from geography, the author eventually recruited 35 pre-service English teachers as interview participants, including nine male and 26 female who come from five different universities located in four different counties in Taiwan.

Data Collection and Analysis

Taking the position of choosing the mixed methods approach, closed-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the participants. At the first stage, closed-ended questionnaires adopting a five-point Likert-type scale to assess the extent to which the participants agree the concerned statements were used to gather quantitative data, which were followed by the

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application of the in-depth, semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative information. All question items in the questionnaire and interview were designed by the author and piloted by two of the author’s colleagues. There are five categories of questions in the questionnaire: (1) Training in team teaching; (2) Perception of competing with NESTs in the employment market; (3) Response to the government’s NESTs-hiring policy; (4) Belief about the effectiveness of team teaching with NESTs; and (5) Concerns about team teaching with NESTs (see Appendixes 1 and 2). It is worth noting that although the first two questions in the questionnaire regarding the participants’ training in team teaching are useful detectors of the participants’ training in the relevant field, the use of the findings from these two questions is only limited to the description of the feature of participants due to the concern of using a scale to the statements which appear to be yes/no questions. In addition, the questions used in the interview are acting like ‘facilitators’, which were designed with the intent of guiding the participants into broad discussion. In practice, the participants were invited to contribute information regarding the questions concerned rather than to answer each specific, fixed question in order.

Data collection was divided into two phases. In the first phase of data collection where the close-ended questionnaire is used, four documents including: (1) an inquiry letter (written in English) addressing the intention of conducting the present study; (2) a plain language statement (written in both English and Mandarin); (3) a copy of the questionnaire and interview questions (written in English); and (4) an institutional consent form (written in English) were first sent to the authorities of the concerned departments of the institutions

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in order to ask for permission to conduct the present study. On the meeting sites, the author gave an oral introduction of the present study, distributed the consent forms to the students, and answered the queries raised by the students. The participating students were asked to fill out and return the questionnaires on the spot with the aim of raising the return rate. In the second phase, individual in-depth interviews were administered for obtaining qualitative data. Interview participants were first consulted by the author to arrange the specific time, meeting sites, and methods depending on their mutual convenience. More than two-thirds of the interviews were conducted in a face-to-face setting; these interviews took place in the seminar rooms in the departments to which the students belonged. Others were conducted through telephone mainly because the participants thought it was more convenient for them. All the interviews were conducted in Mandarin on the assumption that the participants could be able to express their feelings and perspectives more clearly through the use of their mother tongue. All the interviews were audio-taped for the purpose of transcription.

For data processing and analysis, a codebook was assembled to conduct the data coding of the completed questionnaires for computer analysis, including the coding frames and coding instructions regarding valid and missing data. After the processes of coding and computer data entry, a series of data cleaning operations were performed on the complete data set to pick up probable inconsistencies. Next, statistical analyses were performed. With regard to the qualitative data, since the interviews were conducted in Mandarin and audio-recorded, the content of the interviews were transcribed by the author into written forms in Mandarin first. Then

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the transcription was analyzed by using the NVivo 7 computer program based on the consideration of its capacity to handle data in Mandarin. The author first established the major themes according to the topics of the interviews. After that, the author obtained the relevant contents in the transcription and categorized them into these themes. Information regarding the issues of the present study were located and transcribed into English for reporting.

FINDINGS

Perception of Competing with NESTs in the Employment Market

In terms of securing teaching positions in the employment market, most participants see NESTs as strong competitors. They believe that English learners in Taiwan do not favor Taiwanese English teachers. The survey shows that 71.6% of the participants thought Taiwanese English learners prefer to be taught by NESTs rather than Taiwanese English teachers (Question 1, Table 1). In the interview a number of participants indicated in the interview that they were worried about the competition with NESTs in the job market not because of their own English competence or qualification, but because of learners’ and parents’ preference for NESTs. From their perspectives, learners and parents normally regard NESTs as better teachers, which is frustrating to them when they look for job opportunities. The following quotes are representative of this perspective:

Daniel: My worry has nothing to do with my English proficiency, ability or educational background. The key point is

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how the public see Taiwanese and foreigners…Taiwanese society thinks all the English teachers from abroad are good if they look like foreigners. NESTs are good because they are foreigners…This is the concept that is widely accepted by the society. The way the public judges whether a teacher is good or bad is to see if he/she is a foreigner or not.

Kate: I am worried about the competition with NESTs in the job market because the general stereotyped impression of Taiwanese people is that foreign teachers are better than local Taiwanese teachers…Even Taiwanese teachers who have Master or Doctor Degrees in the field of English literature or TESOL are regarded as incompetent teachers by the public because English is not their mother tongue at all.

Helen: My experience is that learners always look for foreign teachers rather than Taiwanese teachers if they want to have tutors to teach their speaking and listening and to practice their conversation. Even though I believe my speaking and listening are as good as foreign teachers, I am not eligible to apply for the positions just because I am not a native speaker of English.

The participants’ perception that the public prefers NESTs makes them feel NESTs are more competitive than themselves in the employment market. The survey shows that as high as 79.7% of the participants either agreed or strongly agreed that in Taiwan, NESTs could find jobs more easily than local English teachers (Question 2, Table 1). In the interview, some participants shared their job-hunting

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experience and complained that they were seen as inadequate by parents due to their lack of overseas experience. Their experience makes them feel that parents in Taiwan do not care about the qualification of NESTs at all:

Chloe: NESTs have certain advantages because parents always like NESTs. Every time when we apply for a tutor position or something, parents always ask about overseas experience. Otherwise they prefer hiring foreigners. They don’t care what the NEST can teach. They only care about the accent. They wish we had that kind of [native English speaker] accent.

Maggie: I think we can’t beat them because they are native speakers of English. If I were the boss, I would also prefer hiring foreigners. It can’t be denied that most people think foreigners are better English teachers and don’t want to hire Taiwanese teachers.

The survey further shows that the majority of the participants (76.3%) believe that in Taiwan, NESTs can find jobs easily even if they are not qualified teachers (Question 3, Table 1). The survey also reveals that the competition brought by NESTs in the employment market has created great pressure on the participants. Over half (51.2%) of the participants admitted that they were worried about their future as English teachers due to the competition with NESTs in the employment market (Question 4, Table 1).

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Table 1

Perception of Competing with NESTs in the Employment Market

Question SD D N A SA Mean (SD) 1. English learners in Taiwan prefer to be taught by NESTs* 0 (0%) (10.1%) 26 (18.3%) 47 (47.9%) 123 (23.7%) 61 (0.95) 3.87

2. NESTs may find jobs more easily than Taiwanese English teachers*

0

(0%) (7.4%) 19 (12.9%) 33 (52.9%) 136 (26.8%) 69 (0.89) 4.01

3. In Taiwan, NESTs could find jobs easily even if they are not qualified teachers

6

(2.3%) (8.1%) 21 (13.2%) 34 (43.0%) 111 (33.3%) 86 (0.97) 3.98

4. I feel worried about my future as an English teacher because I have to compete with NESTs in the employment market 8 (3.1%) (28.3%) 73 (17.4%) 45 (41.5%) 107 (9.7%) 25 (0.87) 3.21

Note. *N = 257, one participant missed the item concerned. SD = strongly disagree, D = disagree, N = neither agree, nor disagree, A = agree, SA = strongly agree. The higher the mean, the more the respondents agreed with the statement.

Response to the NESTs-Hiring Policy

In response to the government’s policy of hiring NESTs and the consideration of accepting uncertified NESTs, the participants believe that qualification is an important criterion in recruiting NESTs. The survey shows that the vast majority (88.0%) of the participants either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the claim that the Taiwanese government should hire NESTs to teach in elementary or secondary

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schools even though they have no teaching certificates, while only 5.4% either agreed or strongly agreed (Question 5, Table 2).

Table 2

Response to the NESTs-Hiring Policy

Question SD D N A SA Mean (SD)

5. The Taiwanese government should hire NESTs even though they have no teaching certificates

131

(50.8%) (37.2%) 96 (6.6%) 17 (4.3%) 11 (1.1%) 3 (0.86) 1.68

Note. SD = strongly disagree, D = disagree, N = neither agree, nor disagree, A = agree, SA = strongly agree. The higher the mean, the more the respondents agreed with the statement.

When asked whether it is necessary that the government hired NESTs with whom they might teach English together at schools need to be qualified or certified teachers, a great number of the participants claimed that NESTs’ qualification should be a prerequisite in the recruitment policy. They see NESTs’ qualification as a necessity from the perspective of fairness. The interviewees in the present study argued that their co-teaching NESTs must also be qualified teachers because they themselves are qualified English teachers. The same criterion must be applied to the recruitment of NESTs:

Edward: The NEST whom I teach English together with must be a qualified teacher. It is unfair if I am a qualified teacher and the NEST is an unqualified teacher…We [Taiwanese English

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teacher trainees] now have to be certificated in order to become public school teachers. Nowadays the certificate is a piece of evidence proving you are a good teacher, and the same criterion should be applied to those NESTs.

Fiona: I think it is very important that the NEST I might cooperate with is a qualified teacher. We [Taiwanese English teacher trainees] ourselves are qualified teachers. It doesn’t make sense to allow NESTs who have no teaching certificates to come to Taiwan to teach with us just because they can speak English.

Some other participants see NESTs’ qualification as a necessity because they think unqualified NESTs wouldn’t be beneficial to their students. According to these participants, team teaching with qualified NESTs would not only save them considerable time on communicating with NESTs, but also make the effect of team teaching more remarkable. The following quotes are representative of this perspective:

Wendy: I think there might be many communication problems between NESTs and me if they are uncertified teachers or have no idea about English teaching. They might not know anything about this field and might plan the classes carelessly. If we can’t communicate effectively or cooperate well, students might feel confused and don’t know what/how/who to follow.

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Kate: I would care whether the NEST I cooperate with is a qualified teacher or not. I might have to spend a lot of time on communicating with the NEST if he/she is an unqualified teacher. If the NEST is qualified, I might not have to spend that much time on communication and the quality of communication would be better. A qualified NEST definitely knows how to teach, and I also know how to teach. It would be beneficial to students if we can combine what the NEST learns in his/her home country and what I learn in Taiwan, and apply it to the team teaching class.

Belief about the Effectiveness of Team Teaching with NESTs

The majority of the participants have a very positive attitude towards the benefit of team teaching with NESTs. The survey shows that the majority of the participants (73.6%) believe that it is beneficial to English learners if Taiwanese English teachers teach English together with NESTs in the classrooms, while 10.1% are against the effectiveness of team teaching on students’ learning (Question 6, Table 3). Many participants believe that through exchanging and sharing beliefs between the two different English teachers in team teaching, the teachers might be able to come up with the approaches that suit their students the best. In comparison with traditional English classes, team teaching presents a different picture of English language teaching and learning to students:

Nicole: I would look forward to collaborating with NESTs. I would share my thoughts and ideas regarding English teaching and learning with them. I would also talk to them about the

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features and learning styles of my students. Then I would like to listen to their ideas regarding the teaching materials and the teaching activities. I think we will have some productive discussions about the teaching content and students’ learning conditions so that we can together develop some teaching materials that suit our students.

Kevin: I would look forward to teaching collaboratively with NESTs because the model is new to students and can activate students to learn the language. They will find learning English is not only for exams but also for communication. In the short term, learning English is for exams. But in the long term, the purpose of learning English is to communicate with foreigners. Team teaching is a great help to students. English classes are no longer just exams, exams, and exams.

Helen: I think team teaching provides students with different learning experiences. Two teachers working together can definitely offer students something exciting and special. Students may thus learn something different…I think team teaching is beneficial to students.

Also talking about the benefit of team teaching with NESTs, some participants focused on NESTs’ strength in phonology and its benefit to students. They believe that team teaching is helpful to students’ learning because NESTs bring native speaker accent and pronunciation to the classrooms:

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Bruce: I think it is definitely beneficial to students if Taiwanese teachers teach English together with NESTs. After all, our [Taiwanese English teachers’] accent is different from that of NESTs. So I think it would be a good idea to have NESTs. Christine: I think it [team teaching] is beneficial to students. I personally think it is not easy for Taiwanese people to learn a foreign language. After all English is their [NESTs’] mother tongue, not ours. Students would find there are so many things they can learn if they have a chance to see how NESTs pronounce or how NESTs use specific words.

In addition to the benefit of accessing native speaker accent and pronunciation in team taught classes, a number of the participants are interested in the learning atmosphere and environment that team teaching creates and its influence on students’ learning effectiveness. They believe that the presence of two different backgrounds of teachers could offer students even more abundant resources:

Petty: I think it’s beneficial to students because we [Taiwanese English teachers and NESTs] will create an English environment. The environment will encourage students to express themselves in English. And I think that’s pretty helpful to them.

Opal: Two teachers teaching together bring more things to students, and that’s better than one single teacher controlling the whole class.

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Janet: I think students may learn more efficiently if they have access to a variety of teaching styles, including Taiwanese teachers’ styles and NESTs’ styles…The two teachers might have their own teaching styles, which provide students the chance to experience different teaching styles. Students will thus have more opportunities to find out the teaching styles that suit them the best.

Luke: Team teaching provides students with a varied, multi-layered training. It enriches the variety of teaching practice. Students might thus feel English classes are more interesting and fresh, which might help them to concentrate on the classes more easily.

The participants’ belief of team teaching as a beneficial teaching model to students also reflects on the participants’ willingness to team teach with NESTs. The survey shows that as high as 63.6% of the participants either agreed or strongly agreed that they looked forward to team teaching with NESTs (Question 7, Table 3). In the interview, some participants mentioned that they looked forward to team teaching with NESTs in their prospective teaching career because they thought team teaching would be beneficial to themselves as English language educators. Through team teaching with NESTs, they believe they can get more chances to learn or benefit from NESTs in terms of improving their teaching performance. The quotes below are representative of this perspective:

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Laura: I would look forward to team teaching with NESTs very much. I can fix up my weaknesses in teaching skills by watching the way NESTs teach. I can also improve my English proficiency by communicating with NESTs. And NESTs may learn grammar concepts which confuse them from me. I think this [team teaching] is pretty good.

Christine: I would look forward to team teaching with NESTs because I would like to take a look at their teaching methods and compare them with ours. I feel that their teaching methods are much more open and flexible than ours. They normally allow students to learn or develop freely but ask questions whenever it is suitable. I would like to see how they manage classrooms and conduct teaching activities.

Table 3

Belief about the Effectiveness of Team Teaching with NESTs

Question SD D N A SA Mean (SD) 6. It is beneficial to English learners if Taiwanese English teachers teach English together with NESTs 1 (0.4%) (9.7%) 25 (16.3%) 42 (53.1%) 137 (20.5%) 53 (0.88) 3.84 7. I look forward to team teaching with NESTs

4

(1.5%) (7.8%) 20 (27.1%) 70 (51.2%) 132 (12.4%) 32 (0.85) 3.65 Note. SD = strongly disagree, D = disagree, N = neither agree, nor disagree, A = agree, SA = strongly agree. The higher the mean, the more the respondents agreed with the statement.

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Concerns about Team Teaching with NESTs

In the interview, participants talked about different worries in regard to team teaching with NESTs, among which the most frequently mentioned one is NESTs’ dominance and their marginalization in the classrooms. Based on their observation or experiences, a number of participants are afraid that NESTs might take over the whole class. They are worried that at the end, they might become teaching assistants, live translators, or servants who are only responsible for preparing teaching materials or running errands without actually getting involved in the teaching of English. The following quotes are representative of this common concern among the participants:

Harry: I have heard quite often that when NESTs who are hired by the government to teach in the classrooms usually play the role of dominant teacher and become the only authority in the classrooms. It becomes very difficult to allocate the time and duty. To local Taiwanese teachers, they feel like their classes are taken over by the NESTs.

Helen: Team teaching may take longer time and need more preparation…Even though I am willing to team teach with NESTs, I am worried about the cooperation with NESTs. This is because when Taiwanese teachers cooperate with NESTs, they are always seen as assistants of NESTs.

Emily: I have had the experience of observing a team taught class and it was like the Taiwanese teacher was just a translator and the NEST dominated the class. The Taiwanese teacher just

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followed what the NEST said and assisted the NEST. The feeling is that the Taiwanese teacher was just a translator and there’s actually no team teaching.

Laura: When NESTs teach in the classrooms, they show little respect to Taiwanese teachers who are allocated to team teaching with them. They even see Taiwanese teachers as teaching assistants and ask them to prepare teaching materials or run some errands. Team teaching is actually a lie because Taiwanese teachers seldom have a chance to talk when NESTs teach on the platform. Basically, it is NESTs who dominate the classes. Taiwanese teachers are like assistants or servants. Edward: I observed a classmate of mine who taught English together with a NEST in a primary school. What I saw was that my classmate was just like a translator. He didn’t need to have too many teaching skills. He did whatever the NEST needed him to do. He was not like a teacher. He was like a translator standing there.

Another major concern of the participants about team teaching with NESTs is the communication problems with NESTs. They said they were worried about whether they could communicate with NESTs effectively without encountering conflicts resulting from the process of interacting with NESTs due to the different personal characteristics, different beliefs about teaching English, and different cultural and training backgrounds between NESTs and themselves. The following quotes are representative of this kind of perspective:

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Bruce: I think we [the NEST and I] might need to communicate a lot before we cooperate. It may become a big problem if we cannot get along with each other well. In that case, it would be really difficult to carry out team teaching. It is very important to cultivate our unspoken consensus beforehand.

James: I feel that foreigners are quite stubborn. It seems that it’s hard to persuade them to change their thought. I am quite worried about this. They might be very direct with me if they don’t like my lesson plans. They might not change their feeling or opinion regarding my lesson plans. I think it would be okay if we have good communication. It [Team teaching] won’t work if we can’t communicate well.

Vera: I think more or less there would be communication problems. After all, we [The NEST and I] have different cultures. The professional training we have taken might also be different from each other. It’s possible that we have different opinions about teaching methods.

The respondents’ concern about the communication problems with NESTs also reflects on their attitude towards conducting English classes without the presence of NESTs. The survey shows that as high as 44.9% of the participants either agreed or strongly agreed that they would prefer teaching English alone if they could choose, while 16.6% either disagreed or strongly disagreed (Question 8, Table 4). This finding suggests that given the choice of conducting English

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classes alone, nearly half of the participants would go for individual teaching rather than team teaching with NESTs.

Table 4

Concerns about Team Teaching with NESTs

Question SD D N A SA Mean (SD) 8. If I could choose, I would prefer teaching English alone 5 (1.9%) (14.7%) 38 (38.4%) 99 (32.9%) 85 (12.0%) 31 (0.94) 3.38

Note. SD = strongly disagree, D = disagree, N = neither agree, nor disagree, A = agree, SA = strongly agree. The higher the mean, the more the respondents agreed with the statement.

With regard to this survey result, the interview has provided more in-depth information. A number of participants mentioned that they would prefer teaching alone even though they believed team teaching was also beneficial to students. They went for the option of teaching alone simply because they thought in comparison with team teaching, teaching alone would be a more ‘effective’ way of teaching English:

Audrey: Our [NESTs’ and my] beliefs regarding teaching and learning might be different and our preference for teaching methods might also be different. So I believe the effect of teaching alone is larger than that of team teaching with NESTs. Daniel: There are a lot of things that need to be taken into account in team teaching, including the distribution of the duties

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and the timing of exchanging the leading role and supporting role played respectively by the two teachers. It is hard to control the timing and tempo. I prefer teaching alone because I think it is more effective. Team teaching involves more jobs and takes more time to prepare the classes. I think it is a bit troublesome. Theresa: Once upon a time we [Taiwanese English teacher trainees] went observing English teaching at a school. There was a NEST and a Taiwanese teacher team teaching together. I found that the NEST couldn’t discover the students’ confusion in the class. The teaching practice was actually dependent on the Taiwanese teachers’ coordination…I was wondering why it took two English teachers to accomplish the class that actually could have been done by just one single Taiwanese teacher.

The results of the present study show that as prospective NNESTs operating in the EFL context, the participants see NESTs as strong competitors in the employment market, but are not against the government’s policy of recruiting NESTs under the condition that the hired NESTs must be qualified teachers. The participants believe team teaching is beneficial to their students and are willing to team teach with NESTs in English classrooms, suggesting self-confidence is not an issue in their consideration of working with NESTs. Nevertheless, the participants are afraid of being ‘marginalized’ by their students and NESTs and ending up like teaching assistants, translators, and discipline keepers in team teaching classes. They are also concerned about the conflicts resulting from the process of communicating with NESTs due to the different personal characteristics and different cultural

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and training backgrounds between NESTs and themselves. Given the choice, a great number of the participants would prefer teaching alone because they believe that is a more ‘effective’ way of teaching English.

DISCUSSION

It seems logically paradoxical in the results that even though most participants see NESTs as strong competitors in the employment market due to the public’s favor of NESTs, they are not against the government’s policy of introducing NESTs to public schools under the condition that the hired NESTs must be qualified teachers. The findings suggest that the issue of hostility among local non-native English teachers toward the arrival of NESTs in some Asian countries (Boyle, 1997; Lung, 1999; Neiderhauser, 1995; Tajino & Tajino, 2000) is not overwhelmingly observed among the Taiwanese participants. Even so, as Braine (1999) points out, in the case of NNESTs operating in ESL/EFL contexts, no issue is ‘more troubling than that of discrimination in employment’ (p. xvi). To NNESTs who must complete education training, pass English proficiency tests, and undergo a series of selection procedures in order to get teaching positions at schools, parents’ and English learners’ preference for NESTs is devastating to their self-image and confidence. Thus, teacher education and professional development should put more emphasis on raising NNESTs’ awareness of the valuable asset they have as NNESTs and the contributions they can make in the ELT profession (Kamhi-Stein, Aagard, Ching, Paik, & Sasser, 2001;

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Miliambiling, 1999; Reves & Medgyes, 1994; Seidlhofer, 1999) to help NNESTs build up their confidence as ELT professionals.

As to the issues regarding the cooperation with NESTs, the majority of the participants show a great interest and willingness to team teach with NESTs. In addition, the participants rarely mentioned self-confidence when they talked about team teaching classes in the interviews. The finding suggests that self-confidence is not an issue in the participants’ consideration of working with NESTs, which is different from that in the literature (Browne & Wada, 1998; Carless, 2004; Tajino & Tajino, 2000). This is probably because most of the participants, as the results show, believe that NEST-NNEST team teaching is helpful to their students and themselves as ELT practitioners. Their confidence in conducting team teaching with NESTs might be boosted by their genuine intention to bring this beneficial teaching model into English classrooms to help their students. In addition, all of the participating universities had NESTs as teaching staff while the study was conducted. Also, the experience of having been taught by NESTs was used as one of the criteria in selecting the participants for the present study. The constant contact with NESTs in universities and personal English learning history with NESTs could also, to a certain extent, help with the participants’ confidence of working with NESTs.

Another significant finding is that team teaching with NESTs represents a threat to the participants’ authority and credibility and redefines their professional roles in the classrooms. The participants are concerned about the imbalanced power relationship between NESTs and themselves in team teaching classes. The participants’ worries of being ‘marginalized’ and treated as translators, teaching

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assistants, and discipline keepers by their students and NESTs are similar to those in other studies (Carless, 2002; Kumabe, 1996; Mahoney, 2004; McConnell, 2000; Tajino & Walker, 1998). In particular, being affected by the influential ideology of Confucianism, a typical classroom practice in Taiwan is teacher-centered with students acting as obedient and silent recipients. Teachers normally perceive themselves as the only source of knowledge and authority in the classrooms. In NESTs-NNESTs team teaching settings, however, the participants must share their authority with NESTs or even let NESTs take over the classes. Arguably, team teaching with NESTs redefines the participants’ professional roles in the classrooms. In response to that, training programs in teacher education and professional development need to take greater responsibility in helping NNESTs construct positive images and identities of themselves to support their professional lives.

One other major concern of the participants regarding team teaching with NESTs is the potential conflicts and tensions resulting from communicating with NESTs. The participants are well aware that successful team teaching requires extensive mutual communication between teaching partners, but are afraid of confronting conflicts when they discuss teaching and learning objectives, teaching methods, lesson plans, and duty distribution with NESTs. They think conflicts are unavoidable during the communication process due to the different personalities and different cultural and training backgrounds between NESTs and themselves. These results are similar to those reported by some scholars (Browne & Wada, 1998; Careless, 2004, 2006). Arguably, in many Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Hong Kong (China), and Taiwan,

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traditional English teaching can be described as teacher-centered and test-driven (Tajino & Tajino, 2000). Such influential teaching practices feature intensive drillings and learning by rote. However, communicative English teaching carried out in team teaching classes is often in conflict with grammar and reading-based preparation for examinations (Carless, 2004). In these countries, the major pressure on local English teachers is to prepare their students for the entrance examination, which suggests that teachers are more likely to teach towards the content of the exam rather than endanger the success of the students by focusing on communicative approaches (Browne & Wada, 1998). Under this circumstance, local English teachers have to communicate, negotiate, and compromise with NESTs who have different opinions about teaching and learning objectives in team teaching classes, eventually resulting in conflicts and tensions between NESTs and local English teachers.

It also seems logically paradoxical that although the majority of the participants are motivated and willing to team teach with NESTs, nearly half of them would prefer teaching alone if they could choose. In the interviews some participants mentioned that teaching alone would be a more ‘effective’ way of teaching English because team teaching with NESTs is often ‘troublesome’, ‘taking more time’, and ‘involving more jobs’. The finding corresponds to the observation reported in the literature, revealing many local English teachers in Asia either conduct all or none of their supposedly team teaching lessons (Choi, 2001; Kwon, 2000; Mahoney, 2004; McConnell, 2000). In addition, for English teachers in Asian countries, the traditional school cultures tend to encourage teachers to teach in isolation (Storey, Luk, Gray, Wang-Kho, Lin, & Berry, 2001, cited in Carless,

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2002). The notion of team teaching is sometimes perceived as a foreign product by local English teachers, who believe that ‘there should be one chef in the kitchen, one authority’ (Carless, 2004, p. 10). For participants who would prefer teaching alone, their decision might be influenced by this deeply-rooted educational ideology.

Another explanation to some participants’ preference for teaching alone could be related to their insufficient training in team teaching. As shown in the findings, the participants’ training in the field of team teaching is insufficient. In certain Asian ELT contexts, local English teachers’ attitude towards team teaching with NESTs is strongly affected by their training in this specific area (Crooks, 2001; Tajino & Tajino, 2000). Given the participants’ insufficient training in regard to team teaching with NESTs, relevant courses should be one of the key elements in the curricula so that pre-service English teachers could have a better understanding and preparation for this demanding task. Tajino and Tajino (2000) proposed that team teaching may be most effective when it is ‘team learning’, in which all the participants, teachers as well as students, are encouraged to exchange ideas and cultural values (p. 3). Courses incorporating this conception would help pre-service English teachers develop a more positive attitude towards team teaching with NESTs. Curricula should also provide pre-service English teachers with sufficient opportunities to practice team teaching with NESTs in classroom settings through collaborative projects; these practices shall bolster their confidence in working with NESTs and allow them to explore types of team teaching methods that can best serve their pedagogical goals. As Carless (2006) reminds, learners and teachers themselves can benefit more from team teaching classes if team teaching participants are

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well-trained ELT practitioners. To teacher training institutes, the logically paradoxical results shown in the present study also indicate the demand for a need analysis from student teachers. Through the need analysis, teacher educators would be able to get insights into student teachers’ attitudes and identities formation and effectively empower student teachers to support their professional lives in their future career.

The findings of the present study have brought to light a number of issues that future research could usefully investigate. First, the established literature has reminded us about the complexity of carrying out team teaching in Asian ELT contexts (Mahoney, 2004; McConnell, 2000; Tajino, 2002). Since the participants have shown their positive attitudes towards working with NESTs, further investigation is needed in order to find out whether these prospective English teachers as well as the government-hired NESTs are well-prepared with sufficient knowledge and skills to embark on the demanding mission in ELT classrooms. Second, since the findings of the present study were gained through investigating pre-service English teachers’ attitudes toward the competition and cooperation with NESTs, one issue that could be followed up is the comparison of the results gained from in-service English teachers and pre-service English teachers. Any difference that is to be found in the group of practicing teachers with regard to the relevant NESTs-NNESTs issues will point out the need for studies on the nature of this change and its reasons. Third, an investigation of how team teaching actually works in the classroom through classroom observation would provide a close look into the impact of this collaborative teaching model on both camps of teachers’ teaching practices. Lastly, given the

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participants’ concern about NESTs’ qualification, a follow-up study could go beyond the discussion of pre-service English teachers’ beliefs that only certificated NESTs could be competent teachers and further investigate the difference between the impact of certificated NESTs and uncertified NESTs on non-native English teachers’ practical teaching behaviors, in particular in team teaching settings. The field work would provide insights into NESTs’ certification and its correlation to local non-native English teachers’ professional roles.

CONCLUSION

Achievement in English language competence is frequently seen as a central component of educational, economic, or social progress in Asian countries. The Taiwanese government believes the introduction of NESTs to public schools and NEST-NNEST team teachings may help English learners in Taiwan achieve greater English language proficiency. This study investigates non-native pre-service English teachers’ attitudes towards the competition and cooperation with NESTs. The results show that the majority of the participants see NESTs as strong competitors in the employment market due to the public’s preference for native speakers of English, but are not against the policy of hiring NESTs. They believe team teaching with NESTs is beneficial to their students and are willing to team teach with NESTs. Meanwhile, the participants’ concerns about team teaching with NESTs include the imbalanced power relationship in the classrooms and the conflicts and tensions resulting from the process of communicating with NESTs. To help prospective NNESTs

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deal with these issues, more discussion on the unique value of NNESTs in the ELT profession and more theoretic and practical exposure to the conduction of team teaching could be the start points of the renovation in the training programs of English teacher education. However, there are a few limitations concerning the methodology of the study which require future studies to tackle on. First, NEST-NNEST team teaching involves complex issues, making the questionnaire used in the study appears to be simplistic or terse. Second, the use of the Likert scale to the statements which appear to be yes/no questions regarding the participants’ training in team teaching raises the concern of validity of the relevant question items. At last, as a preliminary inquiry, the study did not ascertain if there are any differences in the responses between the prospective secondary English teacher participants and the prospective elementary English teacher participants. Therefore, future research can certainly tap into these areas.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Li-Yi Wang is a research associate at Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include linguistic imperialism, World Englishes, teacher professional identity, and English teacher education.

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APPENDIX A

Survey Questions

Questions SD D N A SA

1. I have had courses that discuss team teaching in classrooms. 1 2 3 4 5 2. I have had courses in which I had two teachers teaching together. 1 2 3 4 5 3. English learners in Taiwan prefer to be taught by NESTs. 1 2 3 4 5 4. NESTs may find jobs more easily than Taiwanese English teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 5. In Taiwan, NESTs could find teaching jobs easily even if they are not qualified teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 6.

I feel worried about my future as an English teacher because I have to compete with NESTs in the employment market.

1 2 3 4 5

7.

The Taiwanese government should hire NESTs even though they have no teaching certificates.

1 2 3 4 5

8.

It is beneficial to English learners if Taiwanese English teachers teach English together with NESTs.

1 2 3 4 5 9. I look forward to team teaching with Taiwanese English teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 10. I look forward to team teaching with NESTs. 1 2 3 4 5 11. If I could choose, I would prefer teaching English alone. 1 2 3 4 5

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APPENDIX B

Interview Questions

1. Are you worried about the competition with NESTs in the employment market? Why?

2. Do you think it is important that the government hires only qualified NESTs?

3. Do you think team teaching is beneficial to students? Why? 4. Do you look forward to team teaching with NESTs? Why? 5. What are your concerns about team teaching with NESTs? 6. Do you prefer teaching alone? Why?

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