Patrick C. L. Ng holds an EdD in Applied Linguistics and TESOL (University of Leicester, UK) and is currently a professor at the University of Niigata Prefecture in Japan. His research focuses on language planning and policy, sociolinguistics, language education, bilingualism, multilingualism, English as a lingua franca and Chinese language studies. Esther F. Boucher-Yip is an assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA. She holds an EdD in Applied Linguistics and TESOL from University of Leicester, UK. She is the author of the book Language Maintenance and Shift Among the Semai in Malaysia: A Study of Indigenous Language Use and the co-editor of Local Contextual Influences on Teaching: Narrative Insights from ESL and EFL Professionals.
Teacher agency in TESOL - should we be pessimistic or optimistic? This book provides much needed data and analysis across a diverse range of international sites. Now we can begin to answer the question based on more than just pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. -- Graham Crookes, University of Hawai'i Many new policies for the teaching of English give the distinct impression of being introduced, not so much because they are based on sound research and evidence of their success, but because of `common-sense' assumptions about how languages are learned and how they should be taught. Into this equation, in recent decades, has entered a kind of universal anxiety on the part of educational policy makers that without English, their nations will be left behind politically, economically and socially. ... Readers of this volume will find in these pages an intriguing compilation of classroom scenarios, instructional contingencies, and policy responses, at the heart of which is the agency of the language teacher. In response to the currently limited scope of research on micro-level language education policy, the editors have found a niche that is richly filled by the accounts that follow. -- Anne Burns, Foreword