Today I'm going to talk to you about a new book that's coming out in June, as Claire said. So it's all about TEFL tourism. A couple of years ago now, actually, I finished my PhD research on TEFL tourism. I've also worked as a TEFL teacher myself and I know lots of people who have. And so that really sparked my motivation to write the book. Just to give you a bit of a background as to how it came about and why I think it's so important and why I think that it will have some increased traction in the academic community, but also in industry as well-- I was a qualified teacher. I've done a PGCE here in the UK, and I went out to Thailand to be a TEFL teacher. I wanted to do a bit of traveling. I also enjoyed teaching. So I went out there, and I did a TEFL-- Teaching English as a Foreign Language-- course. It was a short course and most of it was online, which was something that's new to me. Haven't done a PGCE-- I don't know how familiar you all are with PGCE placements and how they work. They can be quite intensive. Not necessarily difficult, but there is a lot of theory, a lot of teaching pedagogy involved. And in the UK and certainly across many Western countries, teaching involves a lot of-- there's a lot of theory that underpins it.  How do you structure your lesson,  having starter activities, plenaries, having  differentiation, suiting the needs of different types  of learners, printing on different colors  because perhaps you've got somebody who's dyslexic,  and all these sorts of things-- you've  got all of this stuff going on in the back of your mind  when you're planning a lesson as a teacher, all of which  you learn as part of your PGCE.  So I'd been a practicing teacher for two years.  I had my PGCE, decided to have a change, went out to Thailand.  There were many people who were actually doing it the other way  around, who I was training with.  So the TEFL qualification was about 20 hours online,  the one that I did.  And then it was one week practice  in the destination where you had people  who weren't qualified teachers, apart from having  the same TEFL certificate as myself  once I'd finished, who were training you.  And you had about two hours practical and practice  in the destination.  Now all TEFL qualifications do differ.  This is just to give you an example.  Most of the people in my course wanted to be teachers,  or they thought they did.  They wanted to get a taster.  What's it like to teach?  I'm going to go to Thailand and I'm  going to test it out, see if it's for me.  Some of them had struggled to get on a PGCE placement.  So at that time, it was very difficult to get  on a PGCE course.  Teaching was really popular.  It was just before they put the fees up, so lots of people  were enrolling on PGCE courses, and some people  couldn't get on, because they didn't  have the right experience on their CVs, et cetera.  So they were doing it to gain experience to get on a PGCE  when they come back.  Some people wanted to build their CVs  to help get a job when they come back.  But what I noticed was actually, as a qualified teacher, to me  this wasn't teaching.  This was playing games with kids with no theoretical  underpinning, with no reasoning behind how  you designed your lesson.  These people who had no experience teaching  would design exams as they thought fit.  They'd never sat any of these exams themselves.  They had no idea what to put in an exam and why.  And that's how the students were assessed.  And there were so many different things like this  that I thought, well, this is raising a lot of alarm bells  to me as a qualified teacher.  And so they were the more career-minded.  And so you can see here, I developed a typology.  And they were a lot of the career-minded people  who were doing it to gain experience  get on PGCE programs.  Some of them weren't doing that at all. They literally just wanted to extend their gap year.  They wanted to have a good time.  Unfortunately, those people didn't always  care about the education of the students.  They might turn up late a lot, or they would turn up hungover  because they were at a party the night before.  They wouldn't put much time or preparation into their lessons, because they just wanted the easy money  and then go out afterwards.  They would leave and not a word of their notice,  and leave the school stranded with no teacher.  Things like this.  Not all of them, but those were common traits that I would say.  And they were very much leisure-minded.  They weren't focused on the teaching.  There were the expats.  My case study initially was on Thailand.  The book has taken that a bit broader and looked in general.  But in Thailand, there's a big expat community.  A lot of those are fairly elderly male population.  So there's a huge amount of men who had relocated to Thailand  and were working as TEFL teachers.  They weren't necessarily bad, but a lot of the time,  they weren't very well-qualified.  Sometimes they didn't have a degree.  Often they didn't have any English qualifications.  So my argument was, really, are they the best people  to be teaching this to the students?  And then there were the philanthropy-minded people.  And they were really the ones who wanted to help,  wanted to do good.  So I've noticed there are all these different types  of people.  And there are a lot of question marks out there for me.  So I came back and I thought, this  is something that's actually pretty serious,  and people aren't acknowledging this.  So I could see there were different tourist types.  I could see there were concerns over educational standards.  Is the level of assessment correct?  Are they teaching them in the best way?  Et cetera.  I could see that actually people had mixed perceptions.  What people expected from their teaching  wasn't necessarily what they were getting.  It certainly wasn't what I expected.  I expected it to be quite similar to here,  and it really wasn't.  And a lot of people on PGCE courses or employers  or university lecturers or people  who do the recruitment at universities  would perceive it to be more similar to what  we have in the UK as well.  And actually it was very different.  So what I noticed was that there's  really mixed perception.  Nobody really knows exactly what this is.  It's not clear.  And there were a lot of sustainability concerns.  Is it having cultural impact?  Is it economically great?  A lot of the Western teachers who  were 21-year-olds with no English qualifications  were getting paid double the salary  of local teachers who were qualified,  who'd been doing it many years.  That's clearly going to cause some problems  in the community and some feelings of uneasiness.  So I had all these things whizzing around my head.  So when I back to the UK and I decided  to embark on a university-level academic career,  I thought, well this is the area that I really want to look at.  This is an important part, not only  from an academic perspective, which  is the way that I've portrayed it through the book,  but also through an industry perspective which is something  that I'm also trying to do because I have my own blog  and I do a lot of social media-type stuff.  So I'm also trying to put it across in that regard as well.  So that was a bit of a background.  So areas that are in need of investigation--  what role does TEFL play in the tourism industry?  So to date, nobody had previously  joined these two concepts.  Teaching English as a foreign language and tourism  were two very different things.  But actually they come together very succinctly.  It's very clear when you look at a lot of organizations  who promote TEFL tourism.  They don't call it TEFL tourism, because I'm  the one who's coined that term, but when  they promote these trips, they look like a package holiday.  They've got pictures of people on the beach,  people riding elephants, people going to festivals on them.  They incorporate a lot of tourism elements in them.  So it's very obvious when you scour  the internet for opportunities that TEFL and tourism come  together very neatly.  But actually, in an academic sense,  those two areas haven't been joined together before.  So what the book does is it looks at-- actually  what role does TEFL play within tourism?  And I focus on demonstrating those links  and how they come together.  Levels of regulation is something that's questioned,  something that needs more investigation.  My book really is a preliminary text to this concept.  TEFL tourism hasn't been addressed  before in this manner.  So the book-- what it does actually  is open up lots of areas for further research,  for investigation, and it asks lots of questions.  So one is, how can we regulate this industry?  How can we make sure that the person who's teaching them  is not a pedophile?  Because there are no checks in most cases to check that  it isn't the case.  How can we check that they're suitably qualified?  Because there are many people teaching who  don't have qualifications, who don't  have backgrounds, who haven't got adequate experience  teaching.  Those sorts of things.  So regulation is in need.  What are the impacts of commodification?  So very much so, the TEFL industry has been commodified.  It's no longer, in many cases, about development needs,  about helping people.  It's about selling a product.  And there are many companies who've packaged this,  and they sell it just like they would  sell you a package holiday.  What are the implications of that?  Is the TEFL package a representation  of postmodern tourism?  Well, I argue that it absolutely is.  It might not be your traditional transfer, flight, and hotel,  but it is definitely replicable of that.  And the TEFL package, so to speak, will often include--  maybe not the flight but transfers.  Sometimes flights.  It depends on the organization.  And they'll often include some form of accommodation.  And then there might be extras.  And you purchase it just in the way  that you would a traditional package holiday.  And actually, companies like i-to-i,  who are owned by [INAUDIBLE] are very big on TEFL tourism.  So a lot of the companies that you see selling this  are aligned with the traditional mass tourism model.  So there's definitely some relationship there  that could do with further exploration.  What's the role of pedagogy in teaching philosophies  and principles?  So what role does the actual practice of teaching  play in TEFL tourism?  From my research, I've seen not a huge role.  So perhaps that's where regulation needs to come in.  What's the impact of ethnocentric perceptions? So I've got a section in the book  where I talk about the fact that our perceptions derive  from our own personal experiences.  It's inevitable if I go out to another country  and I'm told to teach something, or if one of you are,  you're going to do that in a way that you've  learned from your own experience in education,  whether you've taught or whether you've been taught. You've seen how a teacher was when you've sat in a classroom.  That's how you think teaching should take place.  And that's not always appropriate in other contexts,  particularly when you've got geographical and cultural  differences.  So what role does that play and how does that impact?  Is it enhancing issues such as globalization and power  inequalities and things like this?  And they're very much sustainability issues  that need to be considered.  And as I've discussed, are the TEFL teachers  suitably qualified?  What role does that actually play in development?  Does it help development?  Perhaps not.  In many cases, you might have TEFL tourists who  are on short-term placements.  How much good are they doing when they're only there  for a week or two weeks?  Is the next TEFL tourist just teaching them  the same things all over again?  Are they actually working from a proper curriculum?  Often not.  So how much are the students learning?  Is it really helping countries to meet their development  agendas?  What are the sustainable ethical negative impacts?  I've touched on some of those.  Who are these TEFL tourists?  How can we best tailor these products to them?  How can we best manage it?  And looking at the wider tourism industry,  what lessons can we learn?  There's been lots and lots of studies of, particularly,  positive and negative impacts of different tourism forms.  We can take lessons from those and apply them  to the context of TEFL tourism.  We don't need to make the same mistakes again.  So these are some areas that are in need of investigation  that I highlight throughout the book.  And I really have asked a lot of questions,  and I think there's scope for lots more  research to take place there.  So just to give you a quick runthrough of some  of the main areas addressed in the book, then--  so what is TEFL tourism?  It's rooted in both the concepts of teaching English  as a foreign language and of tourism.  TEFL tourism can be classified as a tourist on two grounds.  Firstly, they travel away from their home country  for a period of time, and secondly, once they're there,  they then travel around or go on day trips, et cetera,  in their destination.  They can often be qualified as educational tourists as well.  They are generally educated as part  of the experience, whether they gain  a formal TEFL qualification or whether they're just learning  about the new culture, about the new destination,  about teaching practices.  And they're also the educators. So educational tourism has been looked at in that first regard  quite a bit, but it hasn't been looked  at in this second regard, where actually the tourists are  the people doing the educating, not taking it.  So that's another interesting take on TEFL tourism  that hasn't been explored yet that I introduce in the book. So my definition that I've put down in the book  that I derived from my PhD research  is that a TEFL tourist is a person who  travels outside of their usual environment to teach English  as a foreign language, whose role shifts between tourist,  educator, and educatee at various points in their trip.  So TEFL tourism is not straightforward.  And this is part of the wider problem.  It spans different countries, different cultures,  and different ethnicities, and this brings with it  lots of complications.  There's lots of things to consider,  such as the issue of globalization.  What impact does that take?  Developing economies and the differences  between those and developed economies.  We've got the growing need for English teachers,  and this is one way to meet that demand.  Is it the most appropriate way?  Maybe not, but if it's the only way,  should destinations do this?  I think that we need to do a lot more research  behind the motivations and the impacts  in order to establish that.  Regulation, as I've said, is a big concern.  And there are differences across education systems as well.  In some countries, education systems are very open.  In others, they're very closed.  In Western culture, we tend to encourage open thinking.  In many countries, it's very much rote learning.  Some countries, they have very strict punishment.  Maybe they have physical punishment,  whereas in all Western countries,  that's not something that's acceptable within our culture.  So these differences need to be overcome and need  to be managed, or an awareness at the very least needs to be highlighted for these.  So that's just to give you a few examples of why it's quite  a complicated issue to examine.  To give you an idea of how big it is  and why I obviously thought that there was the need  to do the research in this area, we've  got a world of increasing globalization. More and more people want to speak English.  English is increasingly becoming the spoken language  in lots of places.  And because of this, we need lots of people to teach it.  And so as of 2014, which was the latest statistic I've  been able to get, the number of English language learners  worldwide peaked at 1.5 billion, with estimates  that this figure will increase to over 2 billion by 2020.  So that's just to put it into perspective. It is big business.  It's estimated that over 250,000 native English speakers  work as English teachers, although we don't know exactly,  because there is a lot of informal employment  as well that isn't necessarily accounted for.  That takes place in over 40,000 different schools and language  institutes around the world. So that's just to give you an idea,  demonstrate that it is a big industry.  In many ways, this industry has now been commodified.  We've turned it into a product.  This is due to our ever-capitalist market,  and a lot of organizations are really  taking advantage of the opportunity to make money from this as a business.  So the initial premise of meeting development needs,  of giving aid, of helping communities maybe  isn't so much in the forefront as it used to be,  because we've now had all these profit-orientated organizations  that have really come into the marketplace.  So essentially, language is now treated as an economic resource  and which is cultivated for material profit  or acquired as a skill to be offered on the market.  And the TEFL process has been organized, it's been reshaped,  and it's been put often into this package format,  because it has now become a business more than just  something to do good and to help. So in the book, I look at the relationship between tourism,  development, and language.  And the tourism industry inherently  is very profit-driven, whereas the development industry  is the paradox to that.  So actually, does it work?  We don't really know because not enough studies  have been done on it.  But this is something that I discuss in the book. And there's a lot of ambiguities in the industry,  and a lot of questions.  And like I said, throughout the book  I do raise lots and lots of different questions  about TEFL tourism and highlight areas that  do need more research.  What makes a good teacher?  Well, a good teacher in England might not  be a good teacher in India or Costa Rica or Tanzania.  So that's quite ambiguous.  What are the cultural impacts of this?  Inevitably, if I'm teaching English,  I'm going to use my own colloquial phrases.  I'm going to give my own examples.  I might talk about pop culture that people  in that destination, that culture  might not be familiar with those.  I might offend them by saying something  that they find offensive, because I'm ignorant,  I'm naive, I don't realize.  And there are lots of examples of this.  So the cultural aspects definitely need  a lot more investigation.  Am I contributing to globalization?  Is that necessarily a bad thing?  This is another area.  What is a TEFL qualification?  I highlighted that at the beginning.  There are qualifications you can do  at university that last a year. There are other qualifications you can do online that last 20 hours.  On paper, they both say TEFL certificate.  This is something that I definitely  think needs regulation, but it's very blurred.  What actually is a TEFL qualification?  We don't really know.  And so that leads me on to lack of regulation.  There's very little regulation saying who can be employed,  who can't. There's very few background checks.  There's very few checks on what qualifications you've got,  what work experience you should have.  And where there are regulations, it's  certainly not on a global scale or any sort  of international scale.  It is on a local scale where that does apply.  That's something that needs to be addressed.  Lack of transparency.  Do prospective TEFL tourists really  know what they're going to do?  Do they really know what the job entails?  In my research, the answer to that was often no. I found that people ended up teaching the police.  They had no idea they were doing that.  They had to take part in school shows and dress up,  and they felt really silly, because they did the hair and makeup in a way that they would never  normally leave the house.  Well, they didn't know the job involved that.  And for some people, that might be a deal-breaker. They might decide to resign over things like that.  It's not transparent at all.  Those people then apply to a university PGCE placement,  who also don't know that that was their job role. They think they were working with exam bodies.  They think they were working incorporating these concepts I  mentioned at the beginning-- differentiation,  different teaching pedagogy.  They don't realize that they don't  know any of this essential underpinning knowledge,  or that we view to be essential here.  So there's definitely a lack of transparency. And how do we measure quality.  There's no Ofsted.  There's very little measurement of quality across the board.  So TEFL tourism links with lots of different tourism forms.  And I've identified that there's that the macro niche forms  of tourism, such as volunteer tourism, philanthropic tourism,  cultural, [INAUDIBLE] educational, adventure, gap year.  Often, these are inherently linked with TEFL tourism.  So you might be on a gap year, and during that time, you're doing TEFL teaching.  You might be out to learn about teaching practice,  so you're an educational tourist whilst you're teaching English. So a lot of those are inherently linked with the practice  of TEFL tourism.  We then also have some micro-niches  such as linguistic tourism.  So perhaps there's people out there  to learn the local language.  And service learning as well.  So there is existing research in these other areas  within these niches.  So what I'm arguing is why aren't we  taking lessons from them? At the moment, there doesn't seem  to be very much management taking place on a large scale. Perhaps there is on smaller scales,  but there's little evidence of this,  and there's lots and lots of research within the wider  tourism industry that we can take and we can apply  and we can learn lessons so that we don't  make the same mistakes again.  We then have different types of TEFL agencies, which  I address in the book as well.  So we have two major strands.  So there's the teaching-focus type agencies.  So they tend to be our non-governmental agencies,  our charities, development organizations, government  organizations.  And we then have our tourism-focused.  So they're the ones who are often through a tour operator.  Perhaps they are a subsidiary of a big tour operator,  such as i-to-i is a subsidiary of [INAUDIBLE]..  And you've got your teaching agencies there as well.  So some are for-profit.  Some are not for-profit.  That's inevitably going to have an impact on their motivations  and the way that they operate.  So the TEFL package is something that I introduced briefly  earlier.  TEFL tourism is a micro-niche, but it  does demonstrate really strong links or really strong  similarities with mass market.  So you've got this package model, essentially.  So like I said before, you've got lots of elements  that all basically get incorporated into a package.  You can literally go on the website, click Purchase,  and next thing you know, you're off on your way  to be a TEFL teacher.  So there are definitely similarities there,  and I suggest that we do need more research into what  are the implications of that.  And organizations who want to make a profit  and who put together such TEFL packages  aren't necessarily vetting people to get the best people.  They are profit-orientated most of the time.  So does the profit-orientated market  necessarily align itself well with something that ultimately  is supposed to enhance development and give aid  to a community?  Often those things don't sit so well together.  So that's definitely something that  needs additional exploration.  And there's also questions about education, as I touched on before as well.  What is good education?  What is a good teacher?  Should we necessarily take our teaching practices  from the UK or whatever Western country we're from  and just apply them in a developing country?  There are arguments to suggest that that might not always  be appropriate.  That could be culturally insensitive.  It might be inappropriate.  They might not understand.  They might not react well to our practices.  And actually there's an argument to say  that we should be looking more at their needs  rather than just giving them what we already know.  So that's something that I address in the book.  And I've got a chapter that looks at the issue of education  and the differences between different educational systems. One of the major issues that I also highlight in the book  is impacts.  So inevitably, any tourism form has both positive and negative  impacts.  And so TEFL tourism is no different.  Like I said, we can align a lot of these with other tourism  forms, and we can learn lessons from them.  And I think it's very important that we do.  So I won't talk you through all of these here,  but there's just some examples for you  of the types of impacts that could be identified  within the social, economic, and pedagogic realms, which  are obviously areas that are very important.  So I talk about that more in the book.  I also look at-- who are TEFL tourists?  So in order to manage the industry, we need to understand who are these people that are involved.  So this is according to my case study.  And obviously wider research is needed  in different destinations.  But I've given a sort of brief introduction to this in the book and highlighted  that it is an area that requires more research.  Just to give you an idea from my case study,  most people did not have prior teaching  experience, less than half.  And most TEFL tourists don't teach as part of a gap year.  The most common length of a TEFL placement is between one and two years.  The average salary is about 700 pounds.  That was in Thailand.  That will differ greatly between destinations.  And lots of TEFL tourists are also entitled to expenses,  and they might get free accommodation, housing  allowances, free food, travel reimbursements, visas,  work permits, et cetera.  And for those who do pay an agency,  often a package-type agency, the average amount  is about 550 pounds.  And again, that was based on Thailand.  They tend to be older than volunteer tourists.  I've done lots of comparisons between TEFL tourism  and volunteer tourism, because I identified volunteer tourism  as being the most similar tourism form.  And so they tend to be between the ages of 22 to 30.  Most of them are single.  And there are five dominant nationalities,  which is British, American, South African, Irish,  and Australian.  But most organizations do have criteria for which nationality  you need to be, so that's very much dictated by that.  Most TEFL tourists are qualified to degree level or above.  And there are wide concerns about whether they hold the right skills.  Are they suitably qualified?  Do they have suitable skills to actually be a TEFL teacher? So that's just to give you an idea of the characteristics.  In my research, I've identified that there  are lots of differences between Western teaching and teaching  in developing countries, which are things that  should be addressed in the TEFL qualifications that don't tend to be, things such as physical punishment,  lack of pedagogic understanding, lack of formal assessments,  lack of curriculum, cultural differences, et cetera.  So I think an important question to ask is what is the focus.  Is it teaching or is it tourism?  And that really differs depending on the TEFL tourist.  Often, actually, some of them will move.  Their focus is teaching Monday to Friday, but on the weekend  they let their hair down and all bets are off. And that's quite common, which is why in my definition,  I say that TEFL tourists can move between being the educator and the educatee at various points of their trip.  So there's just a couple of quotes  for you to give you an idea of the sorts of things  people are saying. So as I outlined at the beginning, I have developed a typology based on Thailand.  So I've given that as an example in the book. But obviously the book has widened it out. It's not only looking at Thailand. But I think that these four categories  do summarize quite well the different types of people.  And I'd be very interested to see studies undertaken  in similar destinations, or totally different destinations  in fact, to see if this does still work across different areas. So like I said, that just summarizes the fact  that they do change their roles.  So they might be tourists on the weekend, teacher in the week. And that's very common.  To give you an idea of motivations,  lots of reasons people want to be TEFL teachers. Here's just a list of some of the major motivations.  Like I said at the beginning, their motivations  generally do center around what type of TEFL tourist they are.  So if they're a career-minded tourist,  their major motivations will be around probably building  their CV, gaining experience, that sort of stuff.  If they are leisure-minded, their major motivations will  be around leisure activities, going  to the beach, the weather being nice,  things like that probably.  So what I really highlight in the book  is I introduce all of these different areas  and all of these concepts, but I really  highlight that actually we need to understand  this industry more, and we can't do that through one book.  There is an urgent need, I would argue, for more research,  for more understanding, for many reasons.  To enable agencies to sufficiently  understand the motivations and requirements  of their clients, which will enhance their business  potential.  So for example, if you are one of those organizations selling  the TEFL packages, if you don't know who you're selling it to,  you're not probably going to be doing your best job. You need to understand that.  So that's important.  And to provide prospective tourists  with an accurate perception of the TEFL experience.  If they don't understand what they're buying into,  they might not last.  They might not be happy.  They might not give good reviews.  They might cause problems in the destination  through their behavior because they're not enjoying it.  They're not happy with it.  So we need to be more transparent.  To enable future employers such as schools, such as university  placements, and to actually understand  what is the experience and to plan accordingly.  To enable educational institutions also  to be able to understand, to be able to plan accordingly,  and to understand what skill set people are  going to come to them with if they've been a TEFL teacher.  Are their expectations realistic? But also for the government, ultimately TEFL tourism should be about enhancing the levels of English  in the community.  And that's often initiated as a top-down process  by the government.  And so the government needs to have an understanding  of-- is it working? Is it causing more positive benefits than negative benefits?  And that we don't know yet, because there hasn't been enough research into it.  So these are all some of the major areas highlighting why we really need to understand this industry more and underpinning the rationale for writing the book.