Recently, I read a blog post by Phillip Kerr (2025) about how little English teaching had changed in the last 30 years. The post was a response to the British Council (2024) research paper subtitled A review of change in the teaching and learning of English and in teacher education and development from 2014 to 2024. His main critique of the paper was that although there are a myriad of blogs and research papers and journals out there talking about change in ELT, when it comes down to it, the real practitioners, the day-to-day teachers, are still doing what they were doing twenty years ago. This struck a chord with me. I have floated around this industry for the past 30 years, starting as a teacher, then a Trinity CertTESOL trainer, then I worked in publishing as a contributor to coursebooks and a professional development expert. I’ve also been a Trinity examiner and an EAP teacher, more recently working with a Japanese organisation developing ‘global skills’ materials. Relatively recently, I became a full-time teacher again for the first time in nearly 25 years and it was like I had never been away. Everything looked so familiar, coursebooks, grammar-based syllabus, paper-based, gap-fill tests, it was like the previous 25 years had never happened. Kerr suggests that managing large classes and managing workloads are two of the reasons why teachers have little desire to change especially if the innovations do not address these pressing issues. But his article made me wonder what else is stopping these innovations from trickling down into the everyday classroom and ask does it really matter?
A parallel observation
At the same time as reading the article, I also saw an experiment with an ant. A scientist draws a circle around an ant with a biro. The ant gets confused and won’t cross the border that has been created for it, despite there being no physical barrier there. The barrier is a figment of the imagination, but for the ant it is as real as being trapped in a glass. Are we as teachers trapped inside our biro circles, hemmed in by lines created for us but not really there? If so, what has created the circle and how can we break it down?
Do our students create the circles for us? I know from my own experience that when I try to be funky with my teaching, I get more complaints than when I just follow the book. Some students think that learning a language is doing grammar and vocabulary exercises because that is what they are used to. For them, learning and, more importantly, proof of learning is being able to fill their notebooks with grammar presentations and their coursebooks with completed gap-fill exercises. Progress is completing a level and moving to the next one, regardless of their readiness to move up. Language learning is not a linear process, but this is difficult to explain to students who are used to levelling up on computer games. The key is to take our students on the journey with us, letting the students know we are experimenting, explaining why we are doing something different and demonstrating how it will help their learning. However, this is easier said than done. It’s much easier to give the students what they want, make them feel like they are learning and ensuring their feedback on our lessons is positive.
Resistance to anything different
Another barrier to change is the exams we are preparing the students for. Cambridge, IELTS and school leaving exams are mostly still paper-based exams that test the students’ knowledge of the language not their ability to use it in a range of situations. Even exams like Trinity GESE which purport to be a test of spoken English have rigid grammar expectations that can see a fluent, eloquent student marked down for not using the exact grammar of the level. This means that teachers are loath to move away from a grammar-based structured syllabus because the exam at the end of the course is grammar-based and structured. We teachers feel we can’t change the exams, so we feel hemmed in by their approach. We could change our approach and still have success at exams, but this constitutes a risk and the fear the students will fail their exams; of course, fear is the enemy of change.
Many schools have external accreditation and thus have to meet criteria imposed from the outside. For example, a lot of language schools in the UK are accredited by the British Council and the accreditation scheme demands schools are inspected once every three years. As far as I can see from looking at the teaching inspection criteria, the inspections do not encourage or reward innovation, none of the criteria refer to evidence of professional development, classroom research or experimental practice. Instead, they expect teachers to show basic teaching skills that fall somewhere between the CELTA and the DELTA. External inspections can be like a written paper test for language learners where accuracy is rewarded over fluency. We all know that fear of making mistakes is one of the reasons why students are afraid to take risks. Do these external standards foster that same kind of environment for teachers? Even if a school is not seeking accreditation, there are often teaching expectations that come from above, skills that teacher need to demonstrate when being observed or institutional practices to which they must adhere. Do these top-down criteria create an invisible barrier to progress? Are they creating pressure for teachers to conform rather than innovate? We talk of learner agency for students, giving them more control over their learning; is it time for teachers to have more control over their teaching and their observations? Could we teachers be encouraged to set our own criteria for our observations? Could we choose our own classes to be observed and even choose our preferred observer? Would this allow us to take more responsibility for our CPD and experiment more and embrace change?
My motivation
As I finish up this article, I begin to have my doubts about why I am writing it. What’s the point? As Kerr says, innovation in our classrooms does not address our immediate concerns. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? – especially if fixing it brings more work for little or no reward to the teacher. And let’s face it, if it has been fine for the last twenty years, then why change now? But isn’t this doubt just another example of an invisible barrier? This time the barrier is created by us. The fear of failure, the fear of the possible resistance we might face, the fear of looking like an outlier or a troublemaker or the feeling of helplessness in the face of the size of the challenge ahead of us. In the end, it is easier to have an if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them mentality. After all, if we are getting good results and have happy students and managers, why embrace change?
Which brings me to the question, does it matter? Should we innovate and experiment in our classrooms? I think we should. We are preparing our students for the future not the past. The world has changed, English is a world language where intelligibility out trumps accuracy; being ‘native speaker-like’ is no longer king. The ability to mediate in a language, translate quickly, use a combination of languages is growing in importance. Digital competencies and understanding how to use translation and AI in our language use is essential. If there is a better way to approach teaching, to incorporate these and other needs, isn’t it our duty as teachers to try to find it? Are we not doing our students a disservice if we don’t?
Rik Mayall, the British comedian, was once asked to give advice to motivate some A-level students, (16–18-year-olds). He famously said or is said to have said: ‘misbehave, disagree, fight endlessly.’ Wonderful words of advice for young, inquisitive minds. Wonderful words of advice for teachers who want to see change. It might seem that our voice is just a small drop of water, but each drop gradually erodes the stone. So, rather than thinking ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’, look to Kevin Costner’s famous (but misquoted) line from Field of Dreams for inspiration, ‘if you build it, they will come’.
