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Sandie described two scenarios common in primary schools in Portugal:
the English teacher who goes into the mainstream classroom to teach English once or twice a week
the generalist teacher (the mainstream primary teacher) who includes teaching a FL as part of the curriculum.
Wendy focused on the need for sensitivity on the part of the native-speaker teacher/trainer going into schools e.g. in Hong Kong where they can meet with resentment from local teachers.
Rebecca described an approach to YLTT which works well in Venezuela: a trainee works in the classroom with an experienced teacher after having shared workshop inputs.
Laura highlighted the need for NESTs to be aware of the cultural, educational and social norms of a country like Thailand where children are educated in a much more formal system than we are used to. This has implications for classroom management strategies.
Eleanor's contribution had a similar focus based on her experience of working in India -a part of the world where education is valued and elders are respected. this can be foreign to us. She referred to Canagarajah's book Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (1999 OUP) which opens with a capable westernised trainer failing to meet her students' expectations because, as one of her students put it, "these new methods are constructed with western students in mind. Because our culture is different they are irrelevant to our concerns."
