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Educational accountability and student achievement polarization, which result in high dropout rates, pose significant challenges and pressures on teachers' pedagogical leadership. Whether pedagogical leadership, which originates in the Western educational environment, can significantly improve student achievement in Chinese high schools remains unclear. This concept has not yet been fully explored in the Chinese educational environment, and its direct impact on student achievement and the mediating role of English teaching methods remain to be investigated. However, existing research has concentrated on the effectiveness of principals' pedagogical leadership, with variations in teachers' pedagogical leadership practices. Many reform measures have been implemented in China to improve student achievement, but past educational practices have analyzed the impact on student achievement from a single instructional leadership, school capital or teaching method perspective. Furthermore, there is a lack of multidimensional and systematic assessments of the direct effects of teacher pedagogical leadership on student achievement and the mediating effects of English teaching methods.

To address this gap, this study analyzed the impact of teachers' pedagogical leadership on student achievement and the mediating effect of English teaching methods with the support of the theory of action for teacher leadership, specifically using pedagogical leadership and English teaching methods models.This study conducted a questionnaire survey of 968 participants in Taian City, China, and quantitatively analyzed the data using SmartPLS structural equation modeling (SEM).

This study revealed that pedagogical leadership has a positive direct effect on student achievement. Meanwhile, among the four mediating factors, the Direct Method, Audio-Lingual Method and Communicative Language Teaching had significant mediating effects.

This study shows that the effective use of academic and professional capital allocation in pedagogical leadership, combined with effective measures of using multiple effective English teaching methods, helps achieve high-quality student achievement.

Writers, their practices, and their tools are mediated by the contexts in which they work. In online spaces and classroom environments, today’s writers have increased access to collaborators, readers, and reviewers. Drawing on our experiences as English teacher educators and as researchers of digital literacies and online affinity spaces, this chapter offers examples from three English teacher education programs in the United States and Australia to demonstrate how we link our research in out-of-school spaces to literacy practices in school contexts for our pre-service teachers. To do so, we share an illustrative example from each program and consider how in-class activities and assessment tasks can encourage pre-service teachers to learn about: the importance of clear goals and real-world audiences for writers; the value of self-sponsored, interest-driven writing in the English curriculum; and the role of authentic conversations between readers and writers as part of the writing, revising, and publishing process. The chapter concludes with recommendations for class activities and assessments that could be used within English education programs.

English language teacher preparation has a relatively short history in Scotland's universities. This chapter outlines some of the contributions made by Scottish institutions and academics to English language teaching globally, including during the very early stages of English becoming a global language. Commercial influences on English language teacher education are outlined as an explanation for why programmes diverged from Initial Teacher Education (ITE) provision from the 1960s, including pressure from short-course teacher education and rising precarity of English language teachers. This chapter concludes with some encouraging work from foreign language teaching and Gaelic-Medium instruction, showing how English language teacher education may be able to rebuild connections to ITE to engage with the contemporary linguistic diversity in Scotland's classrooms.

Many situations that affect the teaching of English have been unevenly examined in the scholarship. Asking the question, “What research in English teacher education will address the demands of preparing English language arts teachers for 21st century contexts?,” the authors provide recommendations to the field that will make our work more relevant and propose areas for further study based on current situations in English education in the United States that will move the field forward. The chapter suggests topics for further research centered on the English language arts-specific methods (pedagogy) course that includes exploring the tensions between literacy and English studies, integrating technology, moving theory into practice, the effects of high-stakes testing and assessments, and supporting more diverse student populations.

This chapter argues that equipping teachers for the essential task of serving as social justice advocates in their classroom and school communities must become the central task of English teacher preparation programs. This argument is positioned against the backdrop of a U.S. sociopolitical climate that has seen increased injustice and violence against youth, teachers, and schools in spite of official policies promising otherwise. The authors describe current efforts to achieve a social justice focus in two spaces that are particularly influential for practicing and aspiring English teachers: pre-service teacher preparation coursework and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), our primary professional organization. The chapter examines the trajectory of research and practice that has arisen in response to the 2012 NCTE standard on social justice in English teacher preparation and offers suggestions to the next generation of educational researchers about increasing the visibility and efficacy of this important work.

The varying traditions, goals, paradigms, and discourses associated with English language arts (ELA) underscore the degree to which there is not one school subject English, but many “Englishes.” In a neoliberal context, where movements like standardization and accountability stake claims about what ELA should be and do in the world, teachers, especially beginning teachers, can struggle to navigate the tensions engendered by these many and contradictory “Englishes.” This chapter attends to this struggle and delineates a process by which English Educators might illustrate the field’s vast and ever-changing terrain and support beginning teachers as they locate themselves in ELA. In delineating this process, we argue that in order to see and navigate the field in a neoliberal era, ELA teachers should treat the field as a discursive construction, constantly re-constructed by the dynamic play of social, political, and economic discourses. We argue that in treating the field as a discursive construction and exploring and locating themselves within the terrain, ELA teachers, rather than feeling powerless in the face of neoliberal forces, can leverage these different discursive forces, and gain footing in their classrooms, schools, and extracurricular communities to navigate the coexistence of many “Englishes” and argue for their pedagogical choices.

Contemporary standards-based reforms to teaching and teacher education are characterised by appeals to technical orientations to teacher professionalism. In addition, the standardisation agenda has targeted literacy education as a focus for interventions. This has highlighted an incongruence between standardised approaches to literacy and pedagogies and practices in subject English that have developed over time, and which represent disciplinary ways of knowing.

This paper uses the occasion of the author’s transition from classroom English teacher to teacher educator to inquire into the pedagogies and practices around teaching with texts that form part of her professional identity. The purpose of this study is to introduce cultural memory as an approach to interpreting narratives about educational experience and the development of English pedagogies over time.

The paper argues that standards-based reforms tell “official stories” (Malcolm and Zukas, 2009) about teacher professionalism that displace knowledge of past practices and the ethical and intellectual investments they represent. This is characterised by a marked “presentism” (Green and Cormack, 2015) in contemporary education policy. By contrast, critical autobiographical inquiry practised as cultural memory produces situated accounts of the role of professional memory in the on-going “project” (Green 2002/2014) of English teaching.

The paper presents new work in the area of teacher professional identity drawing on the interdisciplinary methods of cultural memory studies.

Increasing government regulation of educational practice with public accountability through a national curriculum and external testing, the establishment of professional teaching standards and associated teacher accreditation requirements are strong forces in contemporary Australian education. This paper aims to identify and examine some of the current governmental policies and the associated institutionalised requirements for initial teacher education within this particular context.

It focuses particularly on preservice English teachers, and in addressing these issues, there is an exploration of the contested territory of the subject English, the key factors affecting initial teacher education students and the effects of professional standards on educators.

It is argued that there is a need for a much broader vision of educational purpose, a richer construction of subject English than is defined by the testing of traditional literacy skills and productivity outcomes, with a greater empowerment of teachers whose achievements are increasingly limited by narrow accountability measures.

Formal accreditation demands appear to constrain the various multimodal practices and creative, collaborative pedagogies that enhance educational experiences in the twenty-first century. The challenge ahead for educators is to find a balance between the contemporary pressures of a global society, external expectations, professional aspirations and personal values.

This chapter briefly explores selected English and general education policy documents, curricula, and textbooks within the context of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective and examines how they have changed pre- and post-21st century. First, a policy document related to education in KSA in general (pre-21st century) is analyzed along with an English language teaching (ELT) policy document of the same period. Next, two general policy documents post-21st century are explored, followed by one related to ELT policy. Finally, one post-21st century document related to higher education is discussed. The “network of practices” within which these documents are situated are first detailed, as well as the structural order of the discourse, and some linguistic analysis of the choice of vocabulary and grammatical structures (Meyer, 2001). Issues which might be problematic to the learning and teaching identities of the students and teachers interpreting these documents are also highlighted. Finally, we consider whether the network of practices at this institution and KSA in general “needs” the problems identified in the analysis and critically reflect on the analysis.

This chapter examines how the author, a teacher educator, uses self-study to reframe and reconceptualize her teaching of Emirati preservice teachers. The author describes how conducting self-study helped her shift from using monolingual approaches to teaching Emirati preservice teachers and a focus on improving their English language proficiency, to affirming their bilingual identities, and becoming more culturally responsive. Initially, the researcher posed the question, “how do I frame and reframe my teaching to support the English language learning of my Emirati preservice teachers?” then progressed to asking and answering the question “how can I affirm the bilingual identities of my Emirati preservice teachers and support their English language proficiency?”