Contributing to gender equality through English language teaching: what do multiple stakeholders from 10 countries think?

This paper presents findings of the “Gender-ing ELT: International perspectives, practices, policies” project. The aim of the 10-country project was to investigate the socially relevant contribution that English language teaching can make towards achieving United Nations’ (2015) Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls. The project team designed a series of online multilingual surveys in order to collect data from a range of stake-holder groups in the 10 different countries represented in the project (Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Morocco, Ukraine, Philippines, and Vietnam). Interviews were also conducted in each country with school pupils (aged 13-14), their parents, teachers, and school leaders. In addition, the perspectives of those who are responsible for educating the next generations of pupils were also sought – i.e. student teachers and their university educators. Over 5,000 surveys were completed, and over 100 interviews were conducted.

In this paper, we first outline the findings from the survey data, which were subjected to statistical analysis (using SPSS), allowing for the identification of significant quantitative differences both within each country and across the 10 countries. Second, using discourse analysis, we discuss the interview data from the six stakeholder groups, which reveal how participants talked about and exemplified their lived experiences of gender in/equalities in educational contexts.

Our findings indicate that participants are positive about including notions of gender equality in English language teaching, yet gender transformative practices are beset by barriers. We conclude by suggesting that, if there is to be more progress towards gender equality, English language teaching needs to draw on multi-perspectives (i.e. a range of social actors who are embedded in the domain of English language teaching in public education systems around the world), using a context-sensitive approach.