Other in Gin English Language Programme

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.
(TESOL)
Othering in an English Language Program
Author(s): David Palfreyman
Source: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jun., 2005), pp. 211-233
Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
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Othering in an
English Language Program
DAVID PALFREYMAN
Zayed University
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
In this article, I discuss how the administrators and local teachers
Turkish university English language centre perceive others in
institution. I present interview data to illustrate processes of Oth
whereby a group constructs a shared, Us-Them representati

another group. The data show that administrators and local te
view students and each other in terms of difference from themselves. In
constructing such representations, they draw on local and wider discourses about learning, social order, national and institutional charac-
teristics, class, and gender. Interrogating biases and developing a

deeper understanding of Othering in TESOL contexts can help English
language educators to develop appropriate and authentic pedagogies

and curricula for local contexts in an increasingly globalized world.
INTRODUCTION
T[his article is concerned with processes of cultural Othering exemplified in everyday generalizations about cultural groups such as "The
students here are so reluctant to speak up in class" or "There are big
differences between us and the American teachers." I examine how such
processes of Othering pervade one particular TESOL context: the

University School of English (USE),' a department in a private, English-
medium university in Turkey where rapid curriculum innovation has
highlighted the differences in perception between groups.
Teachers' or students' culture is often seen as a key factor shaping

people's ideas and decisions about roles, attitudes, and approaches in
TESOL. In recent years, TESOL researchers have been increasingly
interested in the sociocultural contexts and processes that shape TESOL
programs (Block & Cameron, 2002; Coleman, 1996; Holliday, 1994

Lantolf, 2000; Norton, 2000; Palfreyman & Smith, 2003; Pennycook
'This is a pseudonym, as are other names and terms related to the institution.
TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 39, No. 2, June 2005 211
1994; Phillipson, 1992), and in the search for appropriate methodologies based on cultural continuity and local knowledge in innovation and
practice (Holliday, 1994, 1999; Canagarajah, 1999, 2002; Smith, 2003).

Not only researchers but also teachers are increasingly encouraged to
make greater efforts to understand cultural aspects of their working
contexts. However, I would like to distinguish between popular concep-
tions of culture used in everyday professional situations and those used

in recent poststructuralist work.
First, in popular usage, culture usually refers to patterns of attitude and
behaviour shared by people from a particular national or ethnic group

(e.g., Chinese culture). This approach also underlies some research on
cultural differences, for example in the study of organizations (e.g.,
Hofstede, 1990), and often in writing about culture in TESOL. However,
patterns may well vary within a given society, for example, between
socioeconomic groups or within the same individual in different settings.
Kagitq~ba? (1988) notes a tendency toward a collectivist orientation
within Turkish family life, but an individualist one in working life. Thus,
more recent work on culture (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Pavlenko &

Blackledge, 2004) devotes increasing attention to issues of cultural
hybridity. Accompanying this change is an expanded conception of
culture encompassing nonethnic identities such as being middle class or

being a teacher.
Second, popular conceptions of culture tend to focus on other
cultures, rather than on one's own. The practitioner's culture-and

certainly the researcher's-is more often the basis for observations and
judgements than their object. However, it is important to remember that
focusing on students' culture can divert attention from one's own
culturally constructed predispositions. Cultural context is also often viewed

as an external constraint that hinders practitioners (such as teachers or
administrators) from fulfilling their goals (such as efficient learning or
efficient work). Practitioners often seek to minimize this obstructive
effect rather than using the cultural context as a resource for development.
Third, popular thinking about culture in TESOL often focuses on the
classroom. However, more recent work (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Coleman,
1996; Holliday, 1994) has tried to identify in a more nuanced way how
this micro level is connected with the institutional, societal, and global
factors that frame classroom life. A key issue in these connections is

power, which underwrites the worldviews of certain groups (e.g., Anglo
Americans or administrators) in relation to others' (e.g., Turks or

teachers, respectively) in certain domains (e.g., in professional publication or in the classroom).
As just outlined, recent work has attempted to deepen our understanding of culture's role in TESOL by viewing culture reflexively-that
is, as hybrid, not exclusively ethnic, and enacted in articulation between
212
TESOL
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local, institutional, societal, and global domains. This approach has

brought the concept of culture closer to that of a discourse (Foucault,
1977): a way of interpreting and describing the world that is constructed
through language and that appears across different contexts (Salaman,
1997). The concept of a discourse foregrounds the different and
sometimes competing patterns within a particular social group and the

wider contexts of power that support or suppress these patterns; it also
enables TESOL practitioners to understand people's subjectivities with

regard to teaching and learning English in a more complex and dynamic
way than the static and essentialized notion of cultural difference does.
The different conceptions of culture outlined earlier can be seen as
discourses about culture, which are in turn associated with the identities
of individuals in particular discourse communities. North American

educators, for example, are socialized, as members of a particular social
and professional group, to think about culture in particular (popular or
academic) ways. Freeman (2000) suggests the metaphor of walling in and
walling out to highlight how such discourses of education simultaneously
include, exclude, and construct certain identities or subject positions

(Foucault, 1977) as they stake out certain domains. Just as a discourse
walls in (prescribes or emphasizes) certain approaches and identities, it
also walls out (proscribes or marginalizes) others. This brings us to the
phenomenon of Othering, which walls out certain ways of thinking,
talking, or behaving and associates them with a (socially constructed)
Other.
Othering is important for TESOL professionals to consider because it
shapes perceptions about many of the issues that administrators and

teachers face. These issues include classroom interaction, conceptions of
what is to be taught and how it should be assessed, and the relative

positioning of nonnative and native-English-speaking teachers (Braine,
1999; Medgyes, 1996). Processes of Othering are linked to power
relationships in particular situations. My purpose in this article is to

examine these issues in a particular English language program in USE to
show both how Othering works in a concrete situation, and how
discourses of Othering relate to broader discourses. In doing so, I draw

on data from a broader study analyzing various aspects of learner
independence and autonomy, across diverse sites of a curriculum

(Palfreyman, 2001).
OTHERING
The term Othering refers to the ways in which the
particular group defines other groups in opposition to its

Them view that constructs an identity for the Other and
OTHERING IN AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAM 213
the Self (Woodward, 1997). Othering of another group typically involves
maintaining social distance and making value judgements (often negative) based on stereotyped opinions about the group as a whole (Riggins,
1997). Orientalism, the quintessential Othering perspective discussed by
Said (1979), involves the West's Othering of the East whereby "a very
large mass of writers ... have accepted the basic distinction between East
and West as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the
Orient, its people, customs, 'mind,' destiny, and so on" (p. 3).
The term Other typically refers to perceptions of national or ethnic
culture (e.g., Chrisman & Williams, 1993), but also, for example, to
institutional subgroups (Wright, 1994) and to gender (Butler, 1999).
Note that although Said's focus is on literary and political domains,
language education is also a key site in such discourses (Pennycook,
1994; Phillipson, 1992). Holliday (1999) points out how an Us-Them
perspective works in TESOL innovation projects that represent teachers
and other stakeholders in the "host culture" as, for example, "local,"
"insiders," "deficient in technology," or "hierarchical, collectivist, uncriti-
cal, undemocratic" (p. 31). Discourses about these stereotypes may
create new identities (e.g., "All Indians together," Holliday, p. 31), but
these identities are defined essentially by difference from Us, and they
may be applied indiscriminately to "anyone who does not conform to the
[Othering] discourse" (Holliday, p. 31).

Both Holliday and Said are careful to note that the Other is a socially
constructed (albeit influential) representation of a group of people, which
may or may not correspond to observation or other sources of information:
The phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with
a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal

consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient . . . despite or
beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a "real" Orient. (Said,
1979, p. 5)
The representation of the Other may be used to interpret actions and

phenomena in a way consistent with a dominant discourse, rather than
with what appear to be facts. As an example, Crewe and Harrison (1998)
cite an innovative type of wood-burning stove that Western aid workers
referred to as traditional simply because it was invented by an Indian

craftsman rather than by a Western technologist.
This brief explanation suggests that representation of other groups is
a key process in Othering. However, representation is part of a circuit of
culture (Du Gay, 1997), in which cultural/discoursal meanings circulate
as people produce, consume, represent, identify with, and regulate
cultural artifacts and messages. As will become clear, the ways in which
USE's administrators and teachers represent each other interact with
ways of establishing identity and regulating others.

214
TESOL
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It is important to note that Othering not only defines identities and

values, but also makes them seem natural (Fairclough, 1992; Gee, Hull &
Lankshear, 1996)-and this process includes one's own values. It can be

very difficult to critique the discourses to which one is accustomed, and
the dominant discourses of TESOL will tend to divert attention from
their own constructed (and sometimes contradictory) nature.
Some writers on TESOL issues have expressed reservations a
using the concept of Othering. Atkinson (2002), for example, state

"the very theory of orientalism itself... appears to be an essentializ
Othering and totalizing one, in that it reduces all Westerners
'social dopes' under the iron-clad control of [the discourse of orienta

(p. 80). Other writers associate Othering with a political correctnes
places any meaningful statement about culture out of bounds. Joh
(1999), for example, protests that "asserting that there are cu
differences is not derogatory; ... it demonstrates a greater respect

insinuating that cultures are all the same" (p. 6).
As these critics argue, an understanding of cultural differen

valuable goal for language education (Kramsch, 1998). However
courses of Othering, which represent such cultural difference as o

tive, uniform, and unchanging truth, can oversimplify the contex
which TESOL educators work. As Kubota (2002) points out in re

Atkinson, TESOL educators need to tease out discourses that pe
the profession and perhaps their own views, and they also ne
acknowledge how these discourses interact with the intentions of i
vidual people involved in TESOL. Doing this requires a nu
perspective on the discourses circulating in TESOL, as well as more

about how Othering works in TESOL settings.
Certain interesting questions remain about the phenomen
Othering in specific TESOL contexts. What patterns of Othering in

ence the TESOL professionals' everyday practice in different parts
world? What social, cultural, and political processes underlie t

discourses? How do these discourses influence TESOL curriculum
design and methodology? How are they taken up or resisted by ind
als and to what ends? In this article, I present data relating to
questions from one particular institution.
THE RESEARCH AND ITS SETTING
The data were collected between 1996 and 1999 for a study of
student, and administrator perceptions in USE. The university
USE is a part was one of the first private universities in Turke
become a model for private Turkish universities established thr
the 1990s. The university's founders had studied in the Unit
and Western models and discourses influenced its development as a

flagship of private higher education in Turkey. English is the primary
language of instruction. Many of the lecturers are from Western coun-
tries and all are expected to teach in English. USE is responsible for
ensuring that incoming students have sufficient English preparation.

Situated geographically, culturally, and strategically between Europe
and the Middle East, Turkey has since its creation in the early 1920s
broadly followed the trajectory initiated by its founder, Mustafa Kemal
Atatiirk, emphasizing the Turkish state's unity and sovereignty, as well as
Westernization of society. At the same time, Turkey has been struggling
to define itself with respect to East and West and to overcome internal
problems. Within this context, Stokes (1994) analyzes how middle-class
Turkish discourse about domains including city planning and personal

conduct reflects the theme of a fragile social order (modern, secular,
and Western) created out of disorder (traditional and Eastern). Rapid
economic development, particularly after the 1980 coup, has led to a
complex class structure; and a wealthy New Bourgeoisie has grown
considerably (Arat, 1991)-sometimes to the chagrin of established
middle-class intellectuals such as teachers, who have seen their prestige

eroded. The university described here is a product of this New Bourgeois
movement, emphasizing business, secularism, and Western models.
In terms of Holliday's (1994) distinction between British, Australian,
and North American (Western influenced, commercial) and tertiary,

secondary, and primary (more locally influenced, state run) TESOL
institutions, USE appears to be a hybrid: Western influences are very
noticeable, but within a university system shaped by local history and
state regulation. My own experience of USE offered me a necessarily
partial, but developing, view of the balances and imbalances at work in

this hybrid institution. Ijoined USE in 1994, a British teacher of English
who had lived in Turkey, and together with other new Turkish and
expatriate teachers I received a USE orientation programme. We were
given extensive information about the school curriculum and also told a
little about the students in a talk focused on debunking myths (of which
I had been unaware) about USE students being unmotivated, undisciplined, and violent. My socialization into the culture of USE began in
this way, and it continued as I talked to returning staff and later began
working with USE students.
While teaching at USE, I found that the official curriculum2 was
relatively new and had been instituted the previous year by a new British
management team. It was based on skills seen as necessary for the
21 use the word curriculum in a broad sense, referring not only to the planned content of the
school's teaching activities but also its implementation, and to the roles imagined for teachers
and students.
216
TESOL
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students' future studies, including language skills (e.g., writing academic
essays and understanding lectures) and independent study skills (e.g.,

self- and peer-editing essays and time management). The USE curriculum had previously been based on a structural syllabus, and concerns
persisted that the new curriculum did not adequately develop the
students' grammar and vocabulary. USE materials were prepared inhouse by teachers and curriculum developers. Materials associated with
the new curriculum were often based one-to-one on the skills in the new
syllabus, but teachers also made unofficial use of more form-focu

materials. Methodology promoted in the new curriculum included o
group work, project work, and self-access study, but in practice th
coexisted with more controlled, written practice activities and deducti
lecture presentation--even the new materials introducing academ

skills tended to take a discrete-skill, didactic approach. Independe
research assignments were a key part of the curriculum throughout e

level. Each of these institutionally specified and teacher-assessed assign
ments continued for 2 to 3 weeks and required students to researc
topic outside class time and then present it in written or oral form.
USE staff could be categorized as administrators or teachers. Admin
trators include senior and middle administrators running USE and tho
responsible for coordinating and developing the curriculum. This grou
of approximately 30 were mainly British but included some Turks as w
as Dutch, Finnish, New Zealand, and Irish members; approximately two
thirds were male and one-third female. USE's approximately 200 me
ber teaching staff fell into two national categories: approximately two
thirds were Turkish, and the remaining third were expatriates (mainly
British, Australian, South African, and North American). Expatria
teachers included males and females in their 20s, with 2 or more years
experience teaching EFL in various countries; Turkish teachers w

almost exclusively female, and included recent graduates in mode
language education, as well as older teachers with considerable experien

in Turkish high schools or state universities. USE's approximately 2,00
students (of about 10,000 total students in the university), were virtua
all Turkish; they were typically from wealthier families, although a sm
percentage were scholarship students from less well-off backgrounds.
The research aimed to investigate how various groups in the universit
perceived each other and the curriculum of the institution within whi
they interacted. As well as long-term observation, the research involv
interviewing in depth a representative sample of USE administrators a
teachers, using a flexible interview schedule (see Appendix A). Th
intention was to elicit and explore issues that seemed significant to th

informants. With teachers, I first asked them to describe a good stude
and a not-so-good student, then I asked them about their perceptions o
the institution as a whole and then moved to the concept of learn
independence. With administrators, I took a more direct approach,

asking about USE's focus on learner independence.
Each interview lasted 45-60 minutes, involved one informant, and was
conducted in English, the language in which we shared an advanced

level of competence. My own role in USE at the time was that of teacher
and teacher trainer; this role gave me regular collegial (nonsupervisory)
contact with the teachers and administrator informants. As far as I could
tell, both groups perceived me as a sympathetic colleague familiar with
both Western and Turkish culture, with no particular institutional

agenda. Interviews took place in quiet, private institutional settings
familiar to the informants (usually their own offices); they were loosely
structured around the interview schedule but accommodated infor-
mants' digressions onto related topics. With the prior consen
informants I tape-recorded the interviews, and afterward I tran

each interview for analysis.
In total I interviewed 12 administrators and 27 teachers. Th
in each case reflected salient variables in the school's pop
Administrator interviewees included senior and middle mana
and 3 of the 12 were Turkish; teachers were two-thirds Turks an
third expatriates, and each group included approximately equ

bers of more and less experienced teachers. I shall refer to in
informants with pseudonyms: EA for expatriate administrator, T
Turkish administrator; and TT for Turkish teacher, followed by a num
distinguish individual members. Further information about each
mant is included in Appendix B.
Unless otherwise specified, the data in this article come from

view transcripts, with minor editing for readability. However, I a
to data from teacher questionnaires, which I used to survey a sim
larger sample of individuals concerning specific issues that em
the teacher interviews.
USE participants can be seen in terms of two continua. One is in term
of institutional status:
Administrators Teachers-----Students
The other continuum relates to ethnic background:

Western
These
Turkish
continua
are
clearly
can be Western or Turkish

extent: Administrators in U
virtually all Turkish. How
becomes clearer in what fol
218
TESOL
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two groups of informants who represent contrasting views: expatriate
administrators and Turkish teachers.
Curriculum Administrators and Their Other
The notion of the cultural/discoursal Other may seem distant f

the rational world of curriculum planning. However, when I as
administrators to explain how the curriculum came to focus on learn
autonomy, their explanations centred on the perceived shortcom
("needs" in educationist discourse) of an Other: a student group defi

as lacking in "normal" traits, for example:
One of the prime criticisms was that students were not independent wh
they went into the faculties: they . .. didn't have all of the general skill
associates with somebody who is competent and self-starting. (EA1)
These accounts often referred to "Turkish culture" and "traditional
learning." It is interesting that the informants rarely mentioned Wes
culture: They saw the situation rather in terms of "rational," "pr

sional" (i.e., "natural") norms on the one hand, and "traditional,"
"Turkish" ones on the other.
The informants often compared USE students with students in othe
countries in terms of their capacity for independent learning. Th

compared Turkish students, the Turkish education system, and som
times other countries represented as similarly resistant to learner ind
pendence (Indonesia and Spain) unfavourably to more stereotypical

Western countries (Australia, the United States, Denmark, Finlan
Britain, Switzerland, and France). In some cases the comparisons
ferred to personal experience:
[In my previous workplace] in Indonesia, you'd probably find people ve
similar to here, a rote based system. (EA1)
And in other cases to common knowledge:

It's not easy to promote [learner independence] with our students. I think
you had Danish students or something like that, it would be easy, 'caus
think the whole environment, the whole society promotes independen
(EA4)
EA2 referred to lecturers in the university proper expecting studen
to be "like American students," whom he sees as "needing le
spoonfeeding." EA1 explicitly connected the notion of U.S. universit

as a model for the university, the aim of studying in other (presumab
Western) countries, and the subject position of the quality learner:
We've defined with the client, . . . what are desirable characteristics of a
learner in our particular context, based on the mission of the university,

which is to be an American university, to give people access to foreign study
opportunities, to have good quality learners. (EA1)
In these comments, cultures of learning (both those that are approved

and those that are criticized) are labelled according to national cultures.
Only occasionally is this distinction between national and learning

cultures made explicit, as when EA1 says (in apparent contrast to other
comments of his own) that
I don't think autonomy is a cultural thing: it depends very much on how
you've been brought up in terms of the school system and the learning that's
been required of you. (EA1)
Informants' statements about students' learning background focus particularly on the experience they assume the students have had studying
at high school-usually with implicit reference to state schools rather

than private ones. Informants see class sizes as very large and English
teachers as using excessive amounts of the students' native language to
communicate in class. They see the general approach as reproductive,
based on "rote learning" (EA1, EA4), and "repeating back to the teacher
what they expect you to repeat back" (EA1)-or, to use the nutritive
metaphors employed by other informants, teachers are "spoonfeeding"
students, and students are "regurgitating" information (e.g., EA2).

Masemann (1982) notes how Western discourse typically represents
reproductive education systems as less developed than systems emphasizing individual expression; in the USE context, EA3 expresses frustration
at a general reproductive orientation to knowledge, which she sees as

pervading Turkish students' language and study activities: "They repeat
things, they . . . copy things from texts, photocopy."
High school classrooms are seen as teacher-centred, and TA1, like the
expatriate administrators, represents this as a systemic problem:
It's very typical to hear things like "Oh the teacher is good, that's why they're
learning better." From the parents, and even in school management they
have a view like that; ... [and] if they fail it's either the teacher's fault or the
system's fault.
This is seen as leading students to rely too much on authority (in the
form of the teacher, exams, etc.) as opposed to relying on their own skills
and judgement. Some informants also linked these issues to an excessive
focus on grammar and vocabulary in high school, as opposed to the
focus on skills and genres in the new USE curriculum. EA3, for example,
says, "[Students] want grammar: being able to learn and repeat rules,
220
TESOL
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that's supposed to be 'learning."' Note that TA2 represents the link

between teacher authority, grammar, reproduction, and learning in a
more positive light:
When the teacher is up front, teaching grammar, it's OK, ... they concentrate
then, there's very little noise and disruption. They take notes on the backs of
handouts, copy from the board. ... If you capture their hearts in this way,
there is very high participation, they are satisfied with themselves and their
progress. (TA2)
EA2 (a long-term resident in Turkey), on the other hand, links these

same aspects, in negative terms, with broader Turkish cultural norms:
It sounds a bit of a generalization, but in [Turkish] society as a whole I don't
think there's very much of a feeling of people seeing a connection between
what they do and what happens. It's the same in the traffic, isn't it: you have
an accident, and "oh, it was bad luck"-it's nothing to do with the fact that
you're driving like an idiot. And [students] don't see that they've failed
because of something to do with them; it's always somebody else's fault: "the
exam wasn't fair, the teacher didn't mark it properly, or the school's against
us, or the university's got its quota system." (EA2)
It is clear here and in other interview data that several informants are
frustrated by students' apparent refusal to accept responsibility fo

failure. It undermines a fundamental premise of the individualist
worldview: that individuals are responsible for what happens to them
because it is the outcome of their own decisions.
EA4 and EA3 both criticize students' culture as anti-individualist in a

different sense:
It isn't a culture of the individual, it's very much a group culture; that's very
frustrating and that constrains and represses free thought.... You're actively
taught not to think, not to criticize and not to have alternative ideas.... And
so when we get the students it's very difficult to change that. (EA4)
And EA3 sees in the university a lack of the questioning attitude that she
sees manifested in pluralistic extracurricular activities in the West:
In [Western countries] at university there are clubs and societies, questioning
everything.... I remember [a UK university] and the clubs fair: dozens of

them, incredible ideas.... That's missing here.
Interestingly, although EA3 mentions the university clubs in the United

Kingdom, her attitude toward groups in other contexts is more negative:
Students talk a lot in groups in the library here. In [Northern European
countries] the library would be silent. Here you don't see individual students
with a pile of books, or hours and hours of notetaking and reading....

Reading means individual concentration! (EA3)
EA3 sees the group in opposition to an individualist work ethic,

substituting frivolous talk for the serious business of studying.
These examples all illustrate an Othering of students' background
with reference to national culture, particularly by expatriate informants
but also by Turkish ones (especially TA1, who is married to a British

administrator, and completed an MA TEFL in the United Kingdom).
The students' background is represented as the converse of everything
key to TESOL's professional discourses:
* TESOL emphasizes communication and skills, whereas Turkish

educational culture emphasizes grammar and vocabulary.
* TESOL emphasizes interpretation and reflection, whereas Turkish

educational culture emphasizes reproduction.
* TESOL emphasizes individual expression, whereas Turkish educational culture emphasizes authority and blind submission to the
group.
Note the questionable assumptions implicit in these representations:

that grammar and vocabulary are not an important part of language
proficiency, that TESOL educators do not require students to reproduce
some of what teachers convey to them, and that an orientation toward
authority or the group is inauthentic vis-a-vis the individual. In this

dichotomous view, national culture is represented as the prime influence
on student behaviour. It is overlooked that, for example, instructors in
U.S. universities may also find U.S. students unwilling to accept responsibility for failure-indeed, people in general observing others' behaviour
tend to attribute it to the actor's personal characteristics, but they tend to
see their own behavior more as a product of their own situation (Jones
& Nisbett, 1972). Similarly, the informants' equating group culture with
being taught not to think represents the (ethnic) Other's culture, with its
inadequate norms, as responsible for the students' failure.
This Othering focuses not only on students. Most of the management
informants expressed the view that Turkish teachers in USE share the
Turkish approaches mentioned earlier and hence do not easily accom-
modate the idea of learner independence: "I don't think [Turkish]

teachers see anything wrong with [a teacher-dependent classroom]
because in a lot of cases that's what they've been through themselves"
(EA5).
In general, Turkish teachers are seen as perpetuating the Turkish high
school style of teaching, which focuses on classroom control, requires

students to reproduce knowledge emanating from the teacher, and
centers on materials dealing with solid topics such as grammar. EA1
222
TESOL
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summarizes some informal theories of learning and teaching that he

would anticipate finding among resistant teachers:
They might have kind of behaviourist theories that if you repeat something
enough you learn it. . . . Another one might be based on discipline: they
probably would espouse autonomous learning, but they would associate
autonomy with disruption in the classroom, and they might not be able to
handle it. (EA1)
The informants seemed in general to feel that students and teachers

colluded in subverting the curriculum:
You've got reaction on the part of the students, because they don't see the
sense of it; you've got compliance [with the students] on the part of the
teachers because they went through the same system in the past. (EA1)
Informants showed varying reactions to the perceived conflict between rational and Turkish values. Some (e.g., EA4, and TA1) represent
it sadly as a losing battle; others (e.g., EA1) see it as a problem requiring
firmer control (or circumvention) of teachers and students; and still
others (e.g., EA5) represent it as a process of negotiation in which the
planned curriculum is adapted to teachers' and students' reactions while
retaining and focusing elements that she sees as valuable and relevant to
both groups.
Note that this conflict is not simply one of expatriate discourses versus
indigenous discourses. An Othering discourse constructs both poles of

the Western-Other opposition, and the conception of Turkishness constructed in the expatriates' comments is their representation of Turkish
culture (in contrast with the comments made by TA2, a Turk, about her
own culture). Furthermore, the issue is not simply one of expatriate

versus Turkish informants. TAI's position, for example, has bought into
the Othering discourse about Turkish culture and uses terms similar to
the expatriates'-which shows that informants' positions are not cultur-
ally determined but that they position themselves discursively. The

complexity of the situation does not level here. TAI's position in fact
echoes an established discourse in Turkish society of superior Western
technology, which dates from the late Ottoman period (Lewis, 1982) but
coexists with other discourses (e.g., the one underlying TA2's comment
about students' preferring teacher-fronted classrooms) that could be

considered equally, if not more, indigenous.
In contrast to these perceptions at the administrative, Western end of
the institution, I now consider how the Turkish teachers themselves
perceive the situation in which they work.
Turkish Teachers and Their Others
In this section I outline views expressed by Turkish teachers t
distinguish them from expatriate informants. Turkish teachers did no

explicitly deny the value of skills and independent thought, and indee
referred to them with qualified approval. However, they tended to fr
these concepts in terms of socializing students in the broader lo
context, talking, for example, of maturity rather than individual exp
sion. In interviews and in questionnaire data, Turkish teachers sho

particular awareness of individual students' socioeconomic and edu
tional backgrounds, such as their high schools, their future majors, an

their scholarship awards.
The most prominent social variable referred to was social class, ofte
linked to disorderly behavior. TTI contrasted USE students with those
state universities, saying that USE students in particular must be train
to be adults:
Here, probably because it is a private university, you have to train your

students at the same time. .... They just reflect their family problems or
personal problems here in USE--to the teachers, to the teaching atmosphere, to the classroom. (TT1)
Note how TT1 implicitly connects the private university setting to the
students' wealth and immaturity. Other Turkish teachers articulated

similar sentiments, using terms such as rich and high society, associated
with adjectives such as spoilt, disrespectful, lazy, and irresponsible. TT3
criticizes
the way they dress up, or the way they behave toward their friends of the
opposite sex. ... I have even come to recognize them in their cars in the city.
In front of me, if a car is swerving, or trying to push ahead, I say "that should
be a [student from this university]," and sometimes I see the sticker on it, and
they are. (TT3)
TT3 and others attribute students' general lack of respect for social
mores to their New Bourgeois social background:
They are not middle class, they are not high class families; they are just newly
rich people, mostly. And they don't know which class they belong to. So their
background is not very firm, it is slippery. (TT3)
Whereas administrators often refer to students' future needs, Turkish

teachers most often look to students' pasts, viewing them as problematic,
potentially disorderly products of a particular social background. The

Turkish teachers reproduce socially embedded perceptions of desirable
224
TESOL
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background and character, and contribute to Othering the very students
who are assumed by administrators to have the same background as

teachers. The teachers explicitly relate these interpretations to students'
social class, associating the New Bourgeois class in general with inherent
disorder (and thus a need for control).
Gender also enters into these perceptions. Although USE had approximately equal numbers of male and female students, the (almost
exclusively female) Turkish teachers usually represented the trouble-
some students-and also particularly independent ones-as male. In
Turkey, teaching is a predominantly female occupation (c.f. Sikes, 1999,

on the United Kingdom); when young, female, Turkish teachers from an
established middle class face male students from a new social class that
they consider immature and lacking in moral principles, they ma

perceive class, age, and gender as aligned.
The alignment of these local discourses about various social an
cultural Others is encapsulated in the following comment from TT2

who had recently graduated. She came to USE with a specific expect
tion of a typical student's class, geographical origins, gender, and habit

"I heard that [USE] students are spoilt, rich and not hardworking: sons
of Mafia people from the East of Turkey." TT2's reference to "Mafia" (a
term applied by the middle class to the post-1980 New Bourgeoisie) and
to the "East of Turkey" (what Stokes, 1994, calls Turkey's "intern

'Orient,"' p. 22) hints at the forces of disorder that haunt the midd
class in modern Turkey-as did a USE myth I heard from more than one
new Turkish teacher: that a teacher had in the past been threatened by
student with a gun because of an assignment grade.
Overall, Turkish teachers tended to represent students in terms o
local discourses about social class and social order, as well as gender. This
tendency among Turkish teachers is congruent with administrators
representation of Turks in general: They attribute results to contextual

rather than individual factors. However, although administrators tende
to lump Turkish teachers and students together, Turkish teachers' view
reveal how they in turn Other students.
DISCUSSION
The USE example illustrates the pervasiveness of Otherin
its complexity in a particular context. TESOL educator

draw on insights from the TESOL profession developed in
also to engage with their specific teaching contexts nee
between the ways of thinking and understanding that struc

different but intersecting domains.
The Othering processes observed at USE are not simpl

unitary (e.g., West Othering East). Different groups have their own
perspectives on the curriculum, and each walls in and walls out certain
interpretations of their own and others' motives and behaviour. National
and ethnic culture is significant to participants in constructing their
views of the curriculum, and the informants' own ethnicity also correlates with certain tendencies in their perceptions. However, ethnicity
interacts with other variables: institutional role, class, gender, and age
are all salient, although in different ways to different groups. Administra-
tors, for example, talk in terms of Turks in general, including both
students and Turkish teachers, whereas Turkish teachers see themselves
as very different from students, especially in terms of social class.

Note that each group tends to represent itself as rational or normal,
whereas the Others are represented as strange, Turkish, or newly rich. "We"
normally blame "Them" rather than "Us." The administrators, for

example, devalue practices such as rote learning (together with other
practices such as taking notes in lessons), an orientation to the group, a
focus on language structure, and attribution of results to contextual
influences.
Once more, it should be emphasized that the attitudes described in

this article are tendencies only: Not all expatriate administrators, fo
example, draw on the discourse of Turkishness to the same extent or in

the same way. However, the positioning of many informants on man
occasions reflects this contrast in discourses.3
The discourses of Othering in USE appear to be based in socia
networks both within and beyond the institution. Administrators tend to
appeal to rational norms from the TESOL profession's internationa
discourses, and Turkish teachers tend to appeal to discourses current in

their stratum of Turkish society. Some Turks (e.g., TA1) draw on Western
discourses as well as local Turkish discourses of superior Wester
technology (Lewis, 1982) and of order wrested from disorder (Stoke

1994) to Other their own cultural background for their own purpose
Furthermore, informants tended not to engage with the discourses o
Othered groups, but rather to stereotype them and react accordingly
For example, administrators tended to ignore the teachers' concern
about classroom order or to criticize teachers' emphasis of these issue
The discourses analyzed in this article shape the informants' curricular and methodological preferences. Administrators tend to favour th
development of language and learning skills and critical thinking, bu
' Other evidence in Palfreyman (2001) suggests that expatriate teachers occupy an interm
diate position in the institution, siding sometimes with their co-nationals and sometimes wi
their colleagues, depending on the teacher and on her purposes in particular situations. It al
shows how teachers and students themselves treat USE's managerial tendencies as an alie
Other.
226
TESOL
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(paradoxically) they do not give teachers the freedom to implement

these proposals. Turkish teachers on the other hand try to balance their
educational aims with institutional demands, their awareness of students'
background, and their own professional status.
These discourses of Othering are not simply products of ethnocentrism: They also have certain functions in the school's social structure.
They provide a rallying point of identity for the school's expatriate

culture, which was still within the mainly Turkish university. Administra-
tors use TESOL shibboleths such as learner autonomy, a communicative

approach and skills orientation to define themselves and their role with
respect to teachers and students. Representing Turkish norms as Other
benefits the comparatively new TESOL order of discourse in two ways.
First, it gives TESOL discourse authority and prestige, by presenting it as
an alternative to a set of norms that it represents as irrational. Second, it
diverts attention from the TESOL discourse's own contingent origins in
a particular Western rationality.
Another function of Othering is regulation of the Other. At an early
stage in his interview, EA1 told how he brought an end to a practice he
found when he first arrived in USE: "We had a moratorium ... on all the
production of materials in the traditional way--that was photocopyin
and handing out piles of photocopies." Along with disparaging
reproductive approach to material, in the context of the interview this

comment also aligns the institutional Other (teachers vis-a-vis administrators) with the historical Other (traditional vis-ai-vis modern), as well a
implicitly with the national or ethnic Other (Turkish versus Western).
Othering Turkish students and teachers goes hand in hand with institutional control of both groups.
Ultimately, managing institutional members is seen as a key consideration: " [Administrators] arejust trying to keep people in class day by day
and keep the thing running, which is fair enough, that's part of their
remit" (EA4). In the context of the interview, people could refer equally t
teachers or to students; the Othering of Turkish students and teachers i
linked to institutional strategies of control, as well as to wider professional discourses of management and TESOL. The discourse of Otherin
problematizes Turkish cultures of learning-and by implication Turkish
students and teachers-representing them in opposition to "Us," and a

"locked into irrational chaos, as needing to be brought into redeemin
order" (Ball, 1990, p. 157, discussing managers' perceptions of teacher
in the United Kingdom). By "eschew[ing] or marginaliz[ing] the prob
lems, concerns, difficulties and fears of [...] the managed" (p. 157), the
discourse aims to facilitate managing the Other.
People's representations of themselves and Others thus form part of a
negotiation of interests. It is easier to manage another group, or at least
not concern oneself with their interests, if they are seen as the source of
a problem, especially if one's own group can be represented as offering
a potential solution. It is important for those involved in curriculum

innovation to bear in mind that everyone sees themselves as trying to
solve, or at least cope with, situations in which they find themselves.
DEALING WITH OTHERING IN TESOL
One benefit of the present study is that it illustrates in d

variety of social and historical influences manifest themselv
educational context. A study of a different university elsewh
doubt show a somewhat different balance of these influences,
institutional setup, and different perceptions among admini

teachers. However, the processes identified in this study fit
of social change that is relevant to other contexts. For ex
and other Middle Eastern countries share with Turkey a tens
tradition (linked to religion) and secular modernism

Williamson, 1987). Eastern European countries have ex
similar expansion of discourses linked to Western exper
2001). Universities in Latin America (Albornoz, 1993) an
(Holliday, 1999) seem to manifest processes of Otheri
comparable to those described in the present article. Such re
can help TESOL practitioners to understand educational
range of contexts worldwide. Even where Westernization of

apparently not an issue (e.g., in ESL in the United States), th
that Othering is pervasive and multidimensional, and fu

functions, can help English language educators to underst
ing perspectives in education.
Although I have focused on Othering discourses that h
negative tone, it should not be assumed that USE is a dy
institution. Administrators and teachers work together ther
from various backgrounds collaborate, and students by a
velop their English and other skills. Many participants are p
the institution and its curriculum, but different groups do
certain level of frustration and alienation. How might this s
made less conflictual? Research such as that presented in
relevant, but ultimately it is practitioners who need to be aw
their own and others' perspectives interrelate. TESOL ed
administrators occupy powerful positions compared to
therefore have a correspondingly greater responsibility t
Othering processes and to develop more productive prof
courses about culture.
The data presented in this article were collected when USE was
adjusting to drastic and sudden changes from the early 1990s. USE lat
228
TESOL
QUARTERLY
attempted to bridge some of the gaps indicated by administrators' and

teachers' comments. For example, the Independent Research Assignments for lower level students changed from summative to formative
assessments, and from long library research assignments focusing on
content to sequences of more language- and learning-focused tasks
forming a course portfolio. The skills curriculum also sought to integrate
a focus on language form. Both of these changes could be seen as
attempts to negotiate between different perspectives within USE, and

both led, on the whole, to greater satisfaction among administrators,
teachers, and students.

Dealing with discourses of Othering involves raising awareness among
educators of these discourses' existence and contingency and of the

social forces that sustain them. It also ultimately involves negotiating
new, hybrid educational practices. Holliday (1999) suggests that problems associated with Othering can be addressed by adopting "alternative
ways of looking ... at the people we work with in innovation scenarios-
in their own terms rather than ours" (pp. 30-31) and cites Hayes's
(1997) studies of Thai teachers' oral life histories. He also emphasizes
the importance of TESOL practitioners' understanding themselves and
the discourses that they use to construct their profession; for example, is
"questioning everything" (EA3) a realistic and desirable goal, even in a

Western setting? Or is it a stereotype of their own goals that they use
selectively to deal with problems that arise in implementing curricula? In
terms of practice, Canagarajah (2002) suggests that teachers should base
pedagogical practices on an understanding of the culture of learning in
the community where they are teaching. He recommends an exploratory
and reflective approach to the teaching context and suggests ways in

which the individual teacher can respond to students' preferred learning
strategies.
Othering discourses among expatriate administrators and teachers in
USE represent Turkish students and teachers as irrational and reaction-
ary and as lacking independent thought and other skills. One way
forward might be for expatriate participants to develop an awareness
that Western or new ideas are not necessarily good and that local and
traditional ones are not necessarily bad or incomprehensible. It seems
likely that the later, positive developments in the USE curriculum
resulted in part from the administrators' increasing confidence and
familiarity with the local context; this coincided with a somewhat greater
proportion of Turkish staff in administrative positions.
To support this mutual accommodation, expatriate staff could be
encouraged to reflect on how real students in their own culture behave.

This approach might well reveal that attributes they see as Turkish are
found also in freshman students in their own culture. Rather than seeing
Turkish teachers and students in terms of what they are not, the
expatriates would benefit from greater awareness of what positive goals

and approaches Turkish teachers offer. For example, Turkish teachers'
emphasis on the learning process and on language form, their knowledge about students' social and educational background, their attention
to students' accustomed learning styles, their desire to provide structure
for students and to fulfil a role as authoritative resources of knowledge
are all potentially valuable. Expatriates' awareness of this value might be
enhanced by observing Turkish colleagues and discussing lessons within
the existing framework of Turkish-expatriate teaching partnerships.
Similarly, with regard to students, teachers could benefit from an
awareness of the informal collaboration and the emphasis on effort that
emerged from student interview and observation data in Palfreyman
(2001). If teachers were able to establish more individual relationships
with students---for example, through discussions of learning and student
reflection on assignments-they might better understand the students'
perspective and why they feel alienated from the USE system. Equivalent
possibilities exist for educational administrators, who could benefit from
taking teachers' concerns seriously and keeping in touch with classroom
life by teaching themselves, for example, or by discussing lessons with
teachers in nonevaluative situations.
Local administrators and teachers would benefit from articulating for
an expatriate audience the potential value of their own awareness o
students' social context. It is important also to remember that new ideas

brought by expatriates may well be useful in expanding local discourses
about learning and teaching. For example, the new USE curriculum
demands on students, although in hindsight somewhat unrealistic and
decontextualized, did lead Turkish staff to recognize that USE student
are capable of more than they are sometimes given credit for, provided
they are supported through pedagogical frameworks that draw on local
knowledge about students' backgrounds.
The social functions of Othering and its links with power make raisin
awareness and developing hybrid practices a delicate process, which may
be slow and piecemeal because of the variety of interests in action.

However, it will help to create more effective localized TESOL curricula
and pedagogies.
THE AUTHOR
David Palfreyman has been a TESOL teacher and teacher educator fo

Europe and the Middle East. He is interested in language awareness a
tural factors in language learning. He currently works in the Engli
Centre and the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Zayed University
230
TESOL
QUARTERLY
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232
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APPENDIX A
Interview Schedules
Note. The interviews formed part of a broader study, and not all questions below are referr
explicitly in this article.
Administrator Interview Schedule
How did "learner autonomy" come to be included in the USE mission statement?
What is meant by an "autonomous learner"?
How does learner autonomy/independence in USE compare with other contexts?
What difficulties are there in promoting learner independence in USE?
Teacher Interview Schedule
Could you describe a good student who you have taught recently?
Could you describe a not-so-good student who you have taught recently?
How typical is your good student/not so good student?
What would you like students to learn during your course?
What do you like and dislike about your work in [USE]?
What do you understand by the terms "learner autonomy" or "learner independence"?
Does learner autonomy or independence play any part in everyday teaching? How?
APPENDIX B
TABLE BI
Informants Cited
Pseudonym National background Gender Position in USE
EA1 British M Director

EA2
British
EA3
EA4
EA5
TA1
TA2
Finnish F Curriculum Developer

Irish F Curriculum Group Head
British F Curriculum Group Head
Turkish F Teaching Supervisor
Turkish F Teaching Group Head
TT1
TT2
TT3
TT4
Assistant
Director
Turkish F Teacher (10 years' experience)

Turkish F Teacher (new to teaching)

Other in Gin English Language Programme

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Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

In this article, I discuss how the administrators and local teachers

Turkish university English language centre perceive others in

institution. I present interview data to illustrate processes of Oth

whereby a group constructs a shared, Us-Them representati

view students and each other in terms of difference from themselves. In

teristics, class, and gender. Interrogating biases and developing a

language educators to develop appropriate and authentic pedagogies

students here are so reluctant to speak up in class" or "There are big

differences between us and the American teachers." I examine how such

processes of Othering pervade one particular TESOL context: the

medium university in Turkey where rapid curriculum innovation has

highlighted the differences in perception between groups.

Teachers' or students' culture is often seen as a key factor shaping

programs (Block & Cameron, 2002; Coleman, 1996; Holliday, 1994

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 39, No. 2, June 2005 211

practice (Holliday, 1994, 1999; Canagarajah, 1999, 2002; Smith, 2003).

tions of culture used in everyday professional situations and those used

behaviour shared by people from a particular national or ethnic group

more recent work on culture (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Pavlenko &

culture encompassing nonethnic identities such as being middle class or

Second, popular conceptions of culture tend to focus on other

cultures, rather than on one's own. The practitioner's culture-and

focusing on students' culture can divert attention from one's own

culturally constructed predispositions. Cultural context is also often viewed

efficient work). Practitioners often seek to minimize this obstructive

factors that frame classroom life. A key issue in these connections is

Americans or administrators) in relation to others' (e.g., Turks or

local, institutional, societal, and global domains. This approach has

1997). The concept of a discourse foregrounds the different and

sometimes competing patterns within a particular social group and the

enables TESOL practitioners to understand people's subjectivities with

The different conceptions of culture outlined earlier can be seen as

of individuals in particular discourse communities. North American

include, exclude, and construct certain identities or subject positions

Othering is important for TESOL professionals to consider because it

shapes perceptions about many of the issues that administrators and

what is to be taught and how it should be assessed, and the relative

1999; Medgyes, 1996). Processes of Othering are linked to power

relationships in particular situations. My purpose in this article is to

show both how Othering works in a concrete situation, and how

discourses of Othering relate to broader discourses. In doing so, I draw

independence and autonomy, across diverse sites of a curriculum

The term Othering refers to the ways in which the

particular group defines other groups in opposition to its

the Self (Woodward, 1997). Othering of another group typically involves

"insiders," "deficient in technology," or "hierarchical, collectivist, uncriti-

cal, undemocratic" (p. 31). Discourses about these stereotypes may

[Othering] discourse" (Holliday, p. 31).

a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal

The representation of the Other may be used to interpret actions and

referred to as traditional simply because it was invented by an Indian

as people produce, consume, represent, identify with, and regulate

USE's administrators and teachers represent each other interact with

ways of establishing identity and regulating others.

It is important to note that Othering not only defines identities and

Lankshear, 1996)-and this process includes one's own values. It can be

the dominant discourses of TESOL will tend to divert attention from

their own constructed (and sometimes contradictory) nature.

Some writers on TESOL issues have expressed reservations a

using the concept of Othering. Atkinson (2002), for example, state

Othering and totalizing one, in that it reduces all Westerners

'social dopes' under the iron-clad control of [the discourse of orienta