TESOL and Feminist Pedagogy: The Application of Feminist Pedagogy in ESL versus EFL settings

Feminist pedagogy, which emerged in the United States in the 1980s, is an-anti oppressive pedagogy that invites students to build community, fosters an inclusive learning environment for everyone to succeed and lead, and encourages power sharing among and between students and teachers. With feminism spreading and varying across the world, feminist pedagogy advertently or inadvertently manifests itself in the work of some English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers. Feminist pedagogy has received popularity in English classrooms all over the world, which is evidenced by increasing research on the topic (e.g., Vandrick, 1994, 1995, 2016; Yoshihara, 2013, 2014, 2017)Despite interest in this topic, there is limited research on whether and how feminist pedagogy is understood and applied by ESL and EFL teachers, who may or may not identify as feminists or have any particular training in feminist theory. In this exploratory study, I pose two research questions such as “How do ESL and EFL instructors understand feminist pedagogy?” and “In what ways do ESL and EFL instructor apply feminist pedagogy?” to examine what ESL and EFL teachers in the United States and Russia think of feminist pedagogy, whether they apply feminist pedagogy practices consciously or unconsciously, and how feminist pedagogy can shape ESL and EFL curricula.For my primary research, I conducted semi-structured interviews with four ESL and three EFL instructors from the United States and Russia, respectively, over Zoom. I then applied thematic coding and thematic analysis to analyze their responses and to discover overarching themes across all seven interviews.The themes that arose show how instructors from both English language teaching settings and both countries understand and apply feminist pedagogy in their classroom. The instructors’ responses add and challenge the existing definitions of feminist pedagogy by expanding into the realm of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Further research into ESL and EFL teachers’ understandings and applications of feminist pedagogy is, however, needed to establish or question the connection between what the participants say during the interview, i.e. beliefs or teaching beliefs, and what they actually do in their classrooms, i.e., teaching practices.