Native-speakerism and non-native second language teachers: A research agenda

Abstract

Abstract A lot of attention has been devoted in the last 30 years to understanding nativeness and what has traditionally been called non-nativeness. While many studies have attempted to problematize the dichotomic division between so-called native speakers and non-native speakers, several others have specifically focussed on the language teaching profession in order to understand aspects related to identity and performance of teachers who align with either one of those two categories. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of relevant literature published after Moussu and Llurda's (2008) state-of-the-art article and set out a series of tasks that we deem important in order to expand the field of research and cover areas that have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Those tasks are grouped into three sections that cover the main aspects that we perceive to be in need of attention: (1) debunking native-speakerism; (2) differences between native teachers and non-native teachers; and (3) languages other than English.