659681

research-article2016
LTR0010.1177/1362168816659681Language Teaching ResearchStapleton and Shao

LANGUAGE
TEACHING
Article RESEARCH

Language Teaching Research

A worldwide survey of
2018, Vol. 22(1) 10­–28
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1362168816659681
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168816659681
Patterns and perspectives journals.sagepub.com/home/ltr

Paul Stapleton
The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Qing Shao
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Abstract
This article reports on a survey of 241 Master of Arts programs in TESOL (MATESOL) in 16
countries serving as a snapshot of second language teacher education in 2014. After an initial
screening by a set of criteria, these programs were first identified, and their course offerings,
among other criteria, such as entrance and capstone requirements, were categorized. In total,
3,877 courses across 15 knowledge fields were coded with frequency counts taken. Our analysis
revealed that the most frequently appearing course offerings tended to focus on teaching
methods. However, large differences appeared among the programs with regard to the offering
of courses in various knowledge fields. Differences also appeared between US and non-US
programs, particularly with regard to practicum requirements. Several other patterns and themes
emerged from the data including the extensive coverage of social and cultural aspects of language
learning in elective courses, and the lack of focus on specific English as a foreign language (EFL)
contexts in course offerings, among others.

Keywords
Capstone requirements, knowledge fields, second language teacher education, TESOL: MATESOL
programs

I Introduction
In 2000, the British Council estimated that there were 750 million to 1 billion people
learning English as a second language (England & Hall, 2012). Recently, it has forecast

Corresponding author:
Qing Shao, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Room 668, 6/F, Meng Wah Complex, Pok
Fu Lam Road, Hong Kong.
Email: qing@shao.email
Stapleton and Shao 11

that by 2020, there will be 2 billion people using or learning to use English (British
Council, 2013). Because of the advantages afforded to contexts with competent speakers
of English in second language (L2), the desire to attain fluency in the language is appar-
ent across broad sectors of society worldwide. With this demand has come the need for
qualified English language teachers, which has led to the development of certificate and
degree programs at various levels to meet this need. Among these qualifications, one of
the highest achievable is the Master of Arts in teaching English to speakers of other lan-
guages (TESOL) or its equivalent (fully defined below and hereinafter referred to generi-
cally as ‘MATESOL’). While it is difficult to provide an exact number of MATESOL
programs in the world, a cursory check of one website (mastersintesol.net) suggests there
are upwards of 300 programs worldwide that have established official websites pre-
sented in English. There are indications that the number of MATESOL programs has
increased rapidly in recent years; however, the literature reveals no systematic survey of
these programs and their course offerings among several other criteria associated with
graduate degree programs. Thus, the present study seeks to address this gap in the litera-
ture by locating and surveying MATESOL programs worldwide by means of gathering
information from their websites, and describing their nature and characteristic patterns,
while linking these to research in second and foreign language teacher education.

II  Literature review

1 Introduction
Apart from being the world’s lingua franca for a considerable length of time with pri-
macy in matters of diplomacy, commerce and academic research (Seidlhofer, 2005),
English is also the lingua franca of international students. From 2000 to 2012, the num-
ber of international students doubled to 4 million representing 20% of the tertiary sector
(UNESCO Institute for Statistics, n.d.). Universities outside of English-speaking coun-
tries, even those that were traditionally reluctant to teach in English, are now competing
globally for students, and to do so successfully, their medium of instruction is increas-
ingly English (Graddol, 2006). About a decade ago, Graddol (2006) claimed that half of
all international students were taught in English. In 2015–2016, with more than 65% of
the top 100 universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings
(Times Higher Education, 2015) situated in English-speaking countries, competitive
forces are likely to have driven this proportion even higher. In tandem with the increase
in international students who require minimum levels of proficiency for admission to
programs taught in English, the field of TESOL has steadily grown and been promoted
by many universities to international markets (Chowdhury & Le Ha, 2014).
Not only is there a growing need for English language teaching expertise for instruct-
ing international students, but many local students in English-speaking countries also
share this need. The population of students with limited English proficiency in the USA,
for instance, increased by 80% between 1990 and 2010 with a growth of more than 200%
in several states (Pandya, Batalova, & McHugh, 2011). Considering the trend of globali-
zation and mass immigration, it is understandable that TESOL programs both within the
USA and beyond have been established to satisfy the demand to formalize qualifications
12 Language Teaching Research 22(1)

in TESOL. This growing trend towards professionalizing the field has created an interest
among aspiring teachers to further their education and qualifications in second language
teaching, and in turn provided a source of students for MATESOL programs, which is
now considered the standard terminal degree (TESOL International Association, 2007).
As Richards (2008, p. 160) notes:

A common observation on the state of English language teaching today compared with its
status in the not too distant past is that there is a much higher level of professionalism in ELT
[English language teaching] today than previously. By this [it] is meant that English language
teaching is seen as a career in a field of educational specialization[;] it requires a specialized
knowledge base obtained through both academic study and practical experience, and it is a field
of work where membership is based on entry requirements and standards.

Richards (2008) adds that this professionalism can be separated into two broad streams:
one at the certificate level, in which teacher trainees receive instruction in classroom
skills, and the other, ‘teacher development’, usually offered at the master’s level, in
which students take courses typically associated with applied linguistics, such as phonol-
ogy, grammar and semantics. In other words, at the certificate level, students learn how
to teach a second language, while at the master’s level they learn more about second
language acquisition.

2  Concerns about MATESOL programs

In spite of this move to professionalize language teaching, concerns have emerged about
whether the MATESOL actually produces effective teachers (Singh & Richards, 2006).
There are also concerns that the subject knowledge acquired in such programs ‘is not
enough’ to improve prospective teacher’s instruction (Bartels, 2005, p. 408). As Richards
(2008, p. 172) concludes, ‘despite the huge investment in ELT teacher training programs
in different parts of the world in the past 30 years, there is very little research available
on the impact of such investment.’
A related concern is the quality or even existence of field-based experiences in
MATESOL programs. Baecher (2012) claims that, in the USA, ‘well-integrated clinical
experiences are the exception rather than the norm, and for the majority of teacher can-
didates the experience is one characterized more by fragmentation than by integration’
(p. 538). According to Baecher, this fragmentation in TESOL programs comes in several
forms. Because these programs include courses across a variety of specialties, faculty
sometimes come from a wide range of disciplines and departments, such as linguistics
and education, making communication and program coherence challenging. Also, these
faculty members generally have more experience teaching adults rather than the younger
learners whom the graduates are most likely to teach. She also notes that even when
practicums are included as part of the program, their quality is sometimes questionable,
with classroom observations, as opposed to actual teaching practice, representing the
bulk of students’ clinical experience.
Concerns about a lack of good quality practical classroom experience also ignore the
issue of contextualization. There are a growing number of international students who
Stapleton and Shao 13

graduate from MATESOL programs outside their own countries and then return home to
teach (Lo, 2005); yet any practical experience or knowledge gained from methodology
courses may be impracticable in their home country’s classrooms because of curricular
emphasis on summative assessment or more traditional approaches to teaching languages
that are established in required textbooks. Leung (2009) notes that it is regulatory bodies,
such as ministries of education that stipulate what teachers need to know, and the ways
this knowledge is best taught. An example of this comes from the Education Bureau in
Hong Kong where prospective language teachers need to have taken courses in seven
subjects covering various aspects of linguistics, language acquisition and teaching meth-
odology in order to be qualified English language teachers. As a matter of course, these
requirements have an impact on the existence, growth and course offerings of educa-
tional programs that provide the qualifications sought. However, both domestic students
(in English-speaking countries) wishing to teach abroad, and international students
returning to their home countries may find that curriculums, approaches and guidelines
are a poor match for what was studied.
TESOL teacher education has also been influenced by organizations that have devel-
oped guidelines. The most ready example of this is the Standards for the Recognition of
Initial TESOL Programs in P–12 ESL (English as a second language) Teacher Education
produced by the TESOL International Association (2010), which prescribes five knowl-
edge domains, namely, (1) language, (2) culture, (3) planning, implementing and manag-
ing instruction, (4) assessment and (5) professionalism. Under each domain, subject
knowledge areas are further prescribed in detail. This organization has been a member of
the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) of the USA since
1999, and serves as ‘the primary source for the development of ESL standards for teach-
ers of P–12 students in the United States’ (TESOL International Association, 2010, p. 5).
These standards are also aligned with federal legislation in the USA, for instance, the No
Child Left Behind Act (TESOL International Association, 2010, p. 68). Significantly,
given the reputation, size and early beginnings of the TESOL International Association,
its guidelines undoubtedly have had an impact on TESOL programs outside of the USA.
However, although the name of this association includes the word ‘international’, its
existence is clearly intended for a domestic context.
With regard to the actual course content in MATESOL programs, various studies have
investigated specific aspects, many of them recommending a shift away from theoretical
course material to an approach that is more relevant to classroom teachers. In one of the
few survey studies, Vasquez and Sharpless (2009) found that the extent to which prag-
matics was covered in 94 MATESOL programs in the USA varied greatly from no cover-
age at all to eight weeks of class time. Also in the USA, Govardhan, Nayar, and Sheorey
(1999) note the overemphasis on theory in MATESOL course offerings while advocating
the inclusion of courses that address practical classroom issues, such as pedagogic and
functional grammar. This call is echoed by Folse and Brummett (2006) who surveyed
eight MATESOL programs in the state of Florida focusing on grammar courses. After
finding that only five of the programs had a course devoted to grammar, they recom-
mended that all programs should include such a course, and that there should be an
emphasis put on pedagogical grammar, as opposed to linguistic analysis. In a similar
vein, in a survey of 58 MATESOL phonology course syllabuses in the USA, Murphy
14 Language Teaching Research 22(1)

(1997) noted weaknesses and inconsistencies while promoting a need to make the courses
more applicable to the needs of classroom teachers.
The findings of a study comparing two diverse MATESOL programs in the USA
(Ramanathan, Davies & Schleppegrell, 2001) help to explain many of the issues involved
in generating the nature of a given program. Most of the key findings showed that course
offerings were influenced by the prevailing contexts of the departments and universities
where the programs were housed. Specifically, influences included the prevailing exper-
tise and ideology of staff, e.g. how to balance the practical with the theoretical, or socio-
cultural elements with those of general linguistics; the local community needs, e.g. job
prospects for graduates; the logistical, e.g. how the program fits into the universities’
culture; and how to avoid having the program lose prestige. In sum, the study under-
scored the myriad forces and considerations that affect the composition of an MATESOL
program.
Thus, with this history and criticism as a backdrop, it is clear that MATESOL pro-
grams are responding to a complex mix of forces, both institutional and research led.
Much of the published work surveying MATESOL programs appears to focus on higher
education in the USA, or on the specific courses offered. The literature reveals, how-
ever, no comprehensive efforts to survey existing MATESOL programs worldwide and
explore what they reveal about the present state of graduate-level instruction and stand-
ards in second language teaching and learning. Accordingly, the current study surveys
the existing curricula of MATESOL programs, both US and non-US, in an effort to
present an up-to-date inventory and overall picture. We do this by cataloguing charac-
teristics including their location, basic requirements, organizational structure and course
offerings.

III Method
1  Program selection process
The first step of the survey was to find master-level programs worldwide that cater to
in-service or pre-service teachers of English to speakers of other languages. We used four
websites, namely, mastersintesol.net, matesol.info, mastersportal.eu and findamasters.
com to assist in locating master-level programs for in-service or pre-service TESOL
teachers. These websites generated more than 300 master’s degree programs worldwide.
We then examined the course offerings and curriculum plans of these initially identified
programs, which had various titles such as Master of Arts / Master of Education / Master
of Arts in Teaching / Master of Teaching / Master of Science … in TESOL/TEFL/TESL/
ESL/ELT/Applied Linguistics/Bilingual Education. In the end, we excluded more than
70 programs from the initial collection phase for the following reasons: the programs
were cancelled or had stopped admitting new students; the programs led to a postgradu-
ate diploma rather than a Master’s degree; the programs focused mainly on research (e.g.
most TESOL-related Master’s programs in mainland China are similar to research-based
Master of Philosophy or MPhil programs in the UK) rather than pedagogical enhance-
ment; the program pages and the university websites did not present a detailed curricu-
lum plan online, or the course catalogs were only available to insiders (log-in required);
Stapleton and Shao 15

the programs were offered by organizations that were not academically recognized; or
more than half of the courses in the program were not directly pertinent to TESOL (e.g.
a course entitled ‘Mathematics, Science, Social Studies’ in a Master of Education of
MEd program). After screening, 220 programs remained. To include as many eligible
programs as possible, we searched further using key words in a generic search engine
and identified more programs that had not been on our list. This resulted in a finalized
list of 241 programs. Besides the course offerings, noticeable key information such as the
required number of courses for graduation, whether or not a thesis was required (and
if so, the length), the recognition by local governments in terms of teaching licensure,
the admission requirements, and so forth, were noted and kept in a database for later
analysis.

2  The course coding process

The course titles were treated as raw data because similar content can be packaged under
different titles, and courses with similar titles can cover different content; there were also
titles whose course content was unclear, e.g. ‘The Thinking Classroom’. In the 241 pro-
grams, there were 3,877 course titles (with a few duplications for courses that had dual
focuses) that were converted into a textual corpus. Following open coding processes
(Corbin & Strauss, 1998), the authors went through several rounds of reading, and then
discussed and finalized 15 categories of course offerings. Because the authors believe
that there is currently no widely accepted consensus on what student teachers of TESOL
should learn, the rationale was to let those categories emerge from the data, rather than
to categorize course titles into any ready-made framework (e.g. TESOL International
Association’s five-domain framework mentioned earlier). The authors realized that the
creation of categories (Table 1) was somewhat subjective and there were occasional
overlaps among categories, but the coding process was an effort to make each of the
categories reasonably representative of a justifiably distinct ‘knowledge field’. For the
purposes of this article, the term ‘knowledge fields’ will be used together with ‘catego-
ries’ interchangeably. In Table 1 we provide our categories in comparison with the five
knowledge domains developed by TESOL International Association. As can be seen, not
every category of ours fits neatly into one of the five domains. For example, a course
included in Specific learner groups may focus on young learners or children with special
needs, which may have connections with all five domains. In addition, Literature/
Language Arts does not appear to neatly fit into the ‘language’ domain, since this domain
only includes language as a system (linguistics) and language acquisition and develop-
ment (TESOL International Association, 2010).
After finalizing the categories, the authors worked independently on the coding.
The second author coded every course title in each program into the corresponding
knowledge field. Although the coding process was largely transparent, some titles were
coded into two or more fields when their content appeared to straddle more than one
category. For example, ‘Teaching language, literature, and popular culture’ was put
into three categories: Teaching methods/issues, Society/culture/sociolinguistics, and
Literature/Language Arts. The first author then randomly categorized titles in 36 pro-
grams (accounting for 15% of all programs) after a preliminary training session with the
16 Language Teaching Research 22(1)

Table 1.  Categories in comparison with the five knowledge domains developed by TESOL
International Association.

Category Illustrative keywords or content Domains prescribed

1. SLA theories
2. Teaching methods/issues
3. Curriculum/material
planning
4. Assessment/testing
5. Text
6. Elements of linguistics
7. Society/culture/
sociolinguistics
8. ESP/EAP/content-based
9. Practicum/internship
10. TESOL in local contexts
11. Capstone
12. Literature/language arts
13. Specific learner groups
14. Research methods
15 Education/management
by TESOL
SLA; psycholinguistics; motivation language
teaching methods; teaching strategies planning,
for specific language skills (e.g. implementing, and
listening, speaking, etc.); theoretical, managing instruction
methodological and practical issues; (hereafter referred
technologies for teaching (e.g. CALL) to as instruction)
curriculum planning instruction
assessment; testing assessment
discourse analysis; pragmatics; corpus language
general linguistics; phonetics; phonology; language
lexis; morphology; semantics; grammar
bilingualism; multilingualism intercultural culture
communication; world Englishes
ESP; EAP; content-based instruction
practicum; internship professionalism
locally applicable knowledge instruction
theses; portfolio; project comprehensive n/a
exams
using literature; literary texts n/a
children; adults; kids with special needs n/a
research methodology; research design n/a
educational management; leadership; professionalism
ESL program development

Notes. CALL = computer-assisted language learning. EAP = English for academic purposes. ESP = English
for specific purposes. SLA = second language acquisition. TESOL = teaching English to speakers of other
languages.

second author. Since the majority of the titles were transparent, an inter-rater agreement
of 83.7% was achieved, which reached a satisfactory level based on Smagorinsky (2008,
p. 401) who suggests a minimum of 80% over 15% of scripts. Roughly 15%–20% of
titles were opaque enough that we had to read the course descriptions in order to fully
capture the essence of the course content. This was usually helpful; however, occasion-
ally no course description was present online and, more rarely, we still had difficulty
coding the content. When course names did not neatly fit into an established knowledge
field, e.g. ‘Language awareness for TESOL’, the authors referred back to the program
pages to look for the course description in order to decide which knowledge element(s)
it covered (elements of linguistics for the course in this case). The course titles where
disagreements existed between coders were resolved via discussion.
The knowledge field data were divided into a ‘compulsory’ group and an ‘elective’
group to distinguish between the subject areas that were compulsory for TESOL teachers
by the universities. For most programs, distinguishing between compulsory and elective
Stapleton and Shao 17

courses was clear. However, in some cases when courses were called ‘core’ or ‘required’,
students actually had the option whether to take them or not. For instance, the courses
‘Teaching Grammar’ and ‘Teaching Pronunciation: Theory and Practice’ were listed as
‘required courses’ in a program offered by an American university, but students only had
to take either one of them despite the very different nature of the two courses. Thus, even
though these two courses were called compulsory or core courses, we treated them as
electives because either of them could be avoided.

IV Results
In our survey, which essentially serves as a snapshot of MATESOL programs worldwide
in late 2014, multiple areas of interest and themes emerged during the process of collect-
ing and analysing data. In this section, we report some basic statistics; we also organize
the findings of course offerings around some noticeable patterns, such as the most and
least frequent knowledge fields, and the distinction between US and non-US programs.

1  Basic statistics
Among the 241 programs, 146 were offered by American universities followed by 48 in
the UK. Programs also appeared from the following countries (in order of frequency
from most to least): Australia (10), New Zealand (9), Canada (8), Hong Kong (7), China
(2), Japan (2), Taiwan (2), Cambodia (1), Egypt (1), Iceland (1), Ireland (1), Malaysia
(1), Mongolia (1), and Singapore (1); see Figure 1.

Figure 1.  MATESOL programs offered in/outside USA.

18 Language Teaching Research 22(1)

Beyond the general requirements of admission (usually a bachelor degree or its equiv-
alent), we found that only 16 programs stated clearly in their official website that past
teaching experience was required. Some universities, e.g. Durham University in the UK,
divided their programs into two strands, catering for students with or without teaching
experience. Nine programs were found that admitted current teacher license/certificate
holders only.
For international students whose first language is not English, we found 201 programs
specifying language requirements; these were usually satisfied by IELTS (International
English Language Testing System) or TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)
scores. Some universities stated on their website that international applicants must sub-
mit TOEFL scores, but did not clearly state the minimum requirements, while other
universities stated minimum requirements for all international students, not specifically
for MATESOL programs. Well over half (149 programs) required an IELTS score, with
7 or its equivalent as the most frequently stated level with each subtest score no lower
than 6.0–6.5.

2  Course offerings
On average, students had to complete 9.9 courses (including a thesis or equivalent, if any)
to graduate from the MATESOL programs. However, this figure, calculated from 207
programs, can only be taken as indicative because 34 of the programs did not state the
number of courses required to complete the degree. For instance, some universities men-
tioned how many credits were to be finished, but failed to state how many credits each
course was worth. Some programs mentioned neither the total number of courses nor the
overall credits required for students to graduate. Despite attempts to quantify the number
of hours required to complete each course within a given program, we were unable to tally
an accurate figure because this information was seldom mentioned at program websites.
Table 2 lists the knowledge field categories ranked in the order of frequency that
course titles appeared in the data. For example, there were 340 compulsory courses that
covered elements of linguistics. The frequency was thus 340/241 = 1.41, meaning that
each program included on average more than one course on elements of linguistics as a
required course. We have chosen to list numerical frequencies rather than absolute num-
bers for ease of comparison.

3  The most frequently covered knowledge fields

There were 405 compulsory courses and 255 elective courses that covered the broad area
of teaching methods, strategies and techniques. Table 2 shows the frequencies of Teaching
methods/issues in both the compulsory and elective groups (1.68 and 1.06 respectively),
making it the most common knowledge field among all 241 programs. Elements of lin-
guistics was the second most frequently appearing field (1.41) in the compulsory group.
Because this knowledge field had a few distinct and recognizable areas, we calculated
the frequencies of these subcategories: Grammar/syntax (0.53), Phonetics/phonology
(0.24), Lexis/morphology/semantics (0.10) and General linguistics (0.55). In the elective
group, elements of linguistics ranked third with a frequency of 0.67.
Stapleton and Shao 19

Table 2.  Frequencies of knowledge fields.

Order of Compulsory group Elective group

frequency
Knowledge field Frequency Knowledge field Frequency
1 Teaching methods/issues 1.68 Teaching methods/issues 1.06
2 Elements of linguistics 1.41 Society/culture/ 1.03
sociolinguistics
3 SLA theories 0.83 Elements of linguistics 0.67
4 Practicum/internship 0.66 Education/management 0.58
5 Research methods 0.62 Text 0.48
6 Curriculum/material planning 0.55 TESOL in local contexts 0.44
7 Society/culture/sociolinguistics 0.54 SLA theories 0.38
8 Capstone 0.48 Curriculum/material 0.35
planning
9 Education/management 0.48 Assessment/testing 0.27
10 Assessment/testing 0.47 ESP/EAP/content-based 0.26
11 TESOL in local contexts 0.18 Capstone 0.25
12 Text 0.14 Research methods 0.25
13 Specific learner groups 0.10 Practicum/internship 0.23
14 ESP/EAP/content-based 0.09 Specific learner groups 0.19
15 Literature/language arts 0.06 Literature/language arts 0.12

Notes. EAP = English for academic purposes. ESP = English for specific purposes. SLA = second language
acquisition. TESOL = teaching English to speakers of other languages.

4  Practicums and the distinction between US and non-US programs

Well over half of all MATESOL programs in our survey were housed in American
universities, and for this reason we highlight some notable distinctions between US
and non-US programs. This multitude of programs in the USA may be partly because
‘elementary or secondary school teachers in most states in the USA must have a degree
in education with an endorsement or add-on certification in ESL’ (Common
Qualifications for English Language Teachers, n.d., paragraph 6). Supervised
Practicum/internship, according to our research, was prescribed by many states as a
prerequisite. In other countries, however, such a strong relationship between licensure/
endorsement and the MATESOL programs was not found. This background may
explain the distinction found among the 155 US and 86 non-US programs. Figure 2
shows that Practicum/internship had an approximate frequency rate of 0.9 in the USA,
but only 0.23 outside the USA.

5  TESOL in local contexts

Another distinction between US and non-US programs was in the category TESOL in
local contexts. Courses such as ‘Studies in K–12 classroom discourse’ or ‘Latinos in
urban schools’ (in the USA) and ‘Teaching English in the elementary school’ (in Japan)
20 Language Teaching Research 22(1)

Figure 2.  The frequency of compulsory practicum.

Figure 3.  The frequency of TESOL in local contexts.

were put into this category (Figure 3). In the compulsory group, courses in localized
knowledge were three times more frequent in the USA than those in other countries. In
the elective group, the US frequency almost doubled that of the non-US frequency.

6  Most infrequent knowledge fields

‘Specific learner groups’ and ‘Literature/Language Arts’ were the least frequently cov-
ered knowledge fields. These two categories were among the three least frequent fields
in both the compulsory and the elective groups, meaning students had little opportunity
to encounter these knowledge fields in either compulsory courses or electives.
Stapleton and Shao 21

7 Capstone
A capstone requirement was relatively infrequent. Fewer than half of the programs (0.48)
demanded a compulsory program-leaving thesis, project, portfolio or examination,
among which only 57 programs required a compulsory thesis. In a quarter of the pro-
grams (0.25), capstone was listed as an elective, meaning students could avoid it if they
took two or more courses in its place. Among programs offering a capstone essay/pro-
ject, the length of the thesis varied from 10,000 words (e.g. York St John University) to
17,000 words plus a 3,000-word research dissemination plan (e.g. University of South
Wales). Comprehensive examinations (almost exclusively found in US programs) were
the least frequent form of capstone with frequencies of 0.06 in the compulsory group and
0.05 in the elective group.

V Discussion
Our findings as laid out above convey useful details even without analysis. The fact that
there are in the hundreds of MATESOL programs in over a dozen countries in itself
makes a statement about the professionalization of the field echoing Richards (2008).
The coding of the offerings and requirements also reveals the extensive disciplinary
diversity of the field, while also providing an extant artifact of this graduate program as
it stood worldwide in 2014. However, the data we collected and analysed presented us
with multiple patterns and potential themes for discussion among which we were forced
to choose. This section, then, includes a discussion of the themes we perceived as the
most important ones emerging from the data.

1  Teaching methods and practicum

Among all the knowledge fields, courses in Teaching methods/issues were the most fre-
quent by a large margin indicating that MATESOL programs worldwide focused on
classroom techniques. Such a finding suggests that the division between certificate and
Master’s programs claimed by Richards (2008) may not be as wide as believed. According
to him, students learn how to teach a second language at the certificate level, while at the
master’s level they learn about second language acquisition. With an average of 1.68
compulsory courses and 1.06 elective courses out of an average of 9.9 courses required
to successfully graduate from MATESOL programs, Teaching methods/issues comprised
on average 17% of compulsory program content (and this does not include the many
pedagogically oriented courses students can choose as electives offered in other knowl-
edge fields). Its frequency in the compulsory group was double that of theories of second
language acquisition (SLA) (0.83). We cannot say whether this percentage is increasing
or decreasing; however, it does indicate that MATESOL programs in general are paying
heed to pedagogical content.
In a study of novice teachers’ perceptions of their preparedness and efficacy in the
classroom, Faez and Valeo (2012) claimed that the practicum could be one of the ‘most
influential aspects of the induction programs’ (p. 450). Practicums are perceived as the
provider of a professional context for student teachers to build their self-image as real
22 Language Teaching Research 22(1)

teachers (Xu & Connelly, 2009). According to our findings, practicums were particularly
stressed in the USA where they may be most related to P–12 teaching licensure. In most
American states, supervised teaching practicums are prescribed by local educational
authorities as a prerequisite for being awarded a teacher’s certificate and, in many cases,
the MATESOL, or similar programs, are recognized by the local government as the par-
tial fulfillment of the requirement for a teacher’s certificate. More than half of the US
programs included in our survey were related to P–12 endorsement, and their students
can apply for a teacher’s certificate valid in the respective state upon graduation. In fact,
many state governments have adopted the Standards for the Recognition of Initial
TESOL Programs in P–12 ESL Teacher Education prescribed by TESOL International
Association (2010) for the USA. Although the word ‘practicum’ does not appear in this
document, one of the knowledge domains is ‘Planning, implementing and managing
instruction’. In one sub-domain ‘Implementing and managing standard-based ESL and
content’ (pp. 48–52), the rubrics provided are only to be assessed when student teachers
actually get the chance to teach. Thus, there appears to be a strong connection between
practicums and MATESOL programs in the USA. However, the connection between
licensure and MATESOL programs was more distant in non-US countries as reflected by
our failure to find any programs whose graduates automatically attain qualified teacher
status in the associated country or jurisdiction. This may be because government-sanctioned
teacher licensure systems that award qualified teacher status are already well established;
MATESOL programs outside of the USA also tend to be new, and are often offered by
universities in an ad hoc, self-funded manner.
To uncover how the practicum is realized, we paid particular attention to the programs
that offered Practicum/internship and presented their course descriptions online. Those
course descriptions indicated to us that the quality of supervised practicums offered in
the USA tended to be overseen by government guidelines, usually in terms of the number
of teaching hours or other means. In non-US countries, where most MATESOL programs
were not linked to a local teacher’s certificate, Practicum/internship (which appeared at
a rate of only 0.23 as a compulsory module) was usually substituted by classroom obser-
vation. In some universities, it was offered with very limited places to top students only.
In other non-US programs, teaching practice was realized only in a peer-to-peer teaching
environment without any real students. This type of mock teaching still fell into the
Practicum/internship category, which meant in practice that the occurrence of ‘real’
practicums in non-US programs was even lower than the already low rate of frequency.
Baecher’s concern (2012) about the questionable quality of practicums may thus remain
when it is not monitored by educational authorities. Without a linkage to the licensure
requirement from local educational authorities, the motivation for universities to organ-
ize energy-and-money-consuming practicums or internships seemed low. Thus, the gap
between US and non-US MATESOLs appears to be widest with regard to practicums,
which in turn is related to strong ties to licensure and the nationally accepted standards
in the USA and weak (or non-existent) ones outside of the USA.
It should be reiterated that the programs included in this survey were all career-oriented
as we filtered out research-oriented programs (with no course work) at the data collection
stage. Given that only 16 among the 241 programs stated clearly in their official website
that past teaching experience was required, the MATESOL, seen as the terminal degree
Stapleton and Shao 23

in the profession, could simultaneously be the first and only training that most prospec-
tive teachers receive before entering the field. This coincides with Hasrati and Tavakoli’s
observation (2014) that MATESOL programs in the UK are admitting an increasing
number of less-experienced student teachers.

2  The emphasis on society, culture, and sociolinguistics

Although our survey uncovered a degree of consistency with regard to course offerings
within the broad field of TESOL, such as the need to include methods courses and ele-
ments of linguistics, it was evident that some programs had leanings towards one sub-
discipline or another. Among the 241 programs, one of the most noticeable patterns was
the abundance of courses covering sociolinguistic perspectives of TESOL. Among elec-
tive courses, Society/culture/sociolinguistics was the second most frequent knowledge
field at a rate of 1.03 courses per program, which was lower than the most frequent
category by only a very slight margin (0.03), and which exceeded the rate of the third
most frequent knowledge field by a considerable margin (0.36; see Table 1). Likewise,
among core courses, this category had a reasonably high frequency of 0.54. In addition
to the compulsory and elective SLA courses, courses with titles such as ‘Language in
Social Contexts’, ‘Critical Language and Cultural Studies’, ‘Dimensions of Bilingualism
and Multiculturalism’, and the like, offered master students opportunities to further
understand ‘culture as it affects student learning’ (TESOL International Association,
2010, p. 38). As Johnson (2006, p. 235) suggested:

Both the content and the activities of L2 teacher education must take into account the social,
political, economic, and cultural histories that are located in the contexts where L2 teachers
learn and teach. Context is not necessarily limited to specific geopolitical boundaries but can be
sociopolitical, sociohistorical, and socioeconomic contexts that shape and are shaped by local
and global events, for example, the globalization of English or the recognition of World
Englishes.

What Johnson (2006) saw as a challenge, i.e. ‘the recognition that the professional devel-
opment of L2 teachers takes place in ever-changing sociopolitical and socioeconomic
contexts around the world’ (p. 245), seems to have been taken to heart among the leaders
of the MATESOL programs surveyed. This comment may have parallels with Ramanathan
et al. (2001), who claimed that propensities towards certain sub-fields are a result of
complex dynamics related to department politics, availability of staff, perceived local
needs and logistical negotiations with other departments, among other reasons.
These shifting dynamics notwithstanding, we found a strong leaning towards society,
culture, politics and/or gender in some programs. For instance, in one US program, among
a dozen electives, half were courses such as Language, Gender and Power or Language
and Communication across Cultures. This brings us to ask about MATESOL program
course offerings in general whether the pendulum might have even swung too far towards
socio-cultural and socio-political issues, which may be coming at the expense of the cog-
nitive elements of language teaching and learning. Thus, in the case of this program, and
quite a few other similar ones where elective offerings were heavily weighted towards
24 Language Teaching Research 22(1)

social and political elements, it would be possible for a student to graduate with a consid-
erable amount of knowledge about language but a limited amount of knowledge of it.

3  Most infrequent knowledge fields

Although in any ranking exercise some entity has to be placed at the bottom of the list,
the low coverage of Specific learner groups and Literature and Language Arts, both as
compulsory and elective courses is notable. One possible reason for the infrequency of
courses focusing on young learners or learners with special needs might simply be that
universities lack the expertise in this area. Baecher (2012), for example, observed that
some faculty members generally have more experience teaching adults than younger
learners. The desire of parents, especially in East Asia, to enroll their children in English-
medium-of-instruction indicates that pedagogy in this area may be wanting. Tangentially,
the infrequency of courses in literature and language arts may reflect a trend towards
MATESOL programs being aimed at teaching English for practical use. This coincides
with the findings of many studies focused on motivation showing that prospective stu-
dents learn English as the world’s lingua franca with more instrumental intentions than
integrative ones (e.g. Pan & Block, 2011). Therefore, courses focusing on content such
as the appreciation of Shakespearean sonnets and plays, have difficulty competing with
those that offer content that have practical utility.

4  Requirements to graduate
The somewhat surprising finding that included a mandatory capstone requirement (only
57 of them required a mandatory thesis) could have differing meanings. One meaning
could simply be that these programs are responding to market forces. Given that a thesis
or exam requires a more intensive effort, prospective students may be more attracted to
those programs without a capstone and thus program administrators are reluctant to
implement one for fiscal reasons. On the other hand, the MATESOL may be viewed
more as a professional degree than an academic one with no need to include a thesis
oriented towards research. After all, unlike research-based programs, taught master’s
programs ‘have been formulated in order to respond to advances and developments in the
field’ (Hesketh & Knight, 1999, p. 152) rather than to make those advances.
The question of requirements also raises a point about the rather large differences that
appeared among the programs with regard to the number of courses to be completed. At
the low end, some programs required only five courses while at the high end 17 courses/
modules had to be completed. Although different institutions had various definitions of
a course (or sometimes ‘module’), one course in any given program might contain the
content of several courses in another.

5  Contextualizing TESOL
Related to this leaning towards certain sub-disciplines is the issue of contextualization.
Against the backdrop of the standards prescribed by TESOL International Association
that serve US domestic context, courses concerning contextualized knowledge were
Stapleton and Shao 25

three times more frequent in the USA than those in other countries. Contextualized
teacher training appears crucial for TESOL practice, yet the increasing internationaliza-
tion of student bodies may be in conflict with the content focusing merely on one con-
text. As Leung (2009) points out, regulatory bodies in different regions or countries have
differing stipulations regarding what teachers need to know and teach. These differing
stipulations, coupled with the complex influences that go towards the development of
MATESOL programs (Ramanathan et al., 2001) are juxtaposed against the increasing
number of international students entering these programs (Cho, 2013) who have diverse
end needs. For example, courses that address the challenges of teaching Hispanics in the
USA have little to do with the teaching challenges in other contexts, for example, East
Asia, where thousands of mostly young English teachers are recruited every year. A
striking finding here is that none of the programs offered in English-speaking countries
included courses specifically addressing the needs of East Asian learners of English.
Given that teaching in East Asia and other English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts
still tends to be rote-oriented, courses in the Teaching/issues category offered in the
above western countries that presently focus on communicative or task-based approaches
may be ignoring the realities of regional contexts where some graduates will be teach-
ing. Thus, more context-specific electives in MATESOL programs could benefit both
domestic and international students who want to teach in different contexts.

VI Limitations
This study surveyed 241 MATESOL programs worldwide to reveal a big picture view of
TESOL teacher education at the master’s level. Although we made efforts to include as
many programs as possible, the nature of information from online sources meant that limi-
tations were inevitable. As in any study that surveys hundreds of educational programs
offered in over a dozen countries, there are bound to be challenges in initial catchment and
inclusion, categorization and analysis. At the outset, finding MATESOL programs was not
a problem given our web-driven approach. However, determining whether this approach
was sufficient for locating all, if not most, of these programs remains uncertain. Despite
using multiple websites specializing in the listing of these programs worldwide, we cannot
be sure that there are not a significant number that we have missed, especially since only
those programs that displayed detailed curriculum plans in English were surveyed. For
instance, at best we could only find one or two programs in several countries such as Japan,
China, Taiwan and Ireland. Any conclusions drawn about differences between US pro-
grams and those from these countries may appear questionable since the one or two pro-
grams would hardly be representative.
Once our list of programs was finalized, challenges in categorizing course offerings
emerged. Despite our best efforts to code the 3,877 course titles into a limited set of cat-
egories that captured their essence, undoubtedly, another group of coders would generate
a different set than our 15 knowledge fields. This uncertainty is also underscored by a
small, but not insignificant number of courses with titles, e.g. General Topics in ELT, and
descriptions that were even more opaque.
To add some self-reflection, the two authors both currently work within the TESOL
field. Although one of us was western-educated and the other Asian-educated, we lack
26 Language Teaching Research 22(1)

the knowledge of contexts, policies and cultures of all countries included in our research.
We currently work in the same city where English is the default language used in aca-
demia, which, during our analysis, partly accounted for our reliance on US-based
research, or relevant studies in English.

VII Conclusions
This worldwide snapshot of the MATESOL in late 2014 suggests that TESOL, as a disci-
pline and profession, is both vibrant and healthy. Nevertheless, from the data we gathered,
some patterns we perceived as important emerged. Foremost among these was that
MATESOL programs in general do provide training in English language teaching methods,
and that in US programs, the training often extends to practicums upon the request of local
education authorities. However, outside of the USA, practicums are less common and their
quality may be questionable. Related to this is the apparent lack of course offerings in
MATESOL programs worldwide that address the classroom realities of international TESOL
students whose mother tongue is not English. As a case in point, courses that provide strate-
gies for prospective teachers on how to cope with learning environments, such as those
containing curriculums with mechanics-focused approaches and summative assessment,
appeared to be largely absent in our data, yet such courses would certainly fill a need.
Another finding we believe may be significant is related macro movements within the
field of TESOL. While the discipline has been quick to embrace social and cultural aspects
of language learning as exhibited by the course offerings in the programs we surveyed, it is
surprising that we did not find many course titles exclusively focusing on areas such as
learning styles, motivation, or educational neuroscience (McCandliss, 2010) within the
context of language learning. Given the compelling findings that have emerged in the past
decade or two in these sub-areas, MATESOL programs in general may need to revisit their
offerings and consider whether such areas would benefit their students.
Finally, we believe the present survey can serve as an overview providing a big pic-
ture perspective for MATESOL program leaders and planners to use for reference and
comparison. This survey can also function as a milestone to be used in the future to mark
trends in the broad field of teaching English to speakers of other languages at the gradu-
ate level.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

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