Special Conference Theme on TEFL Tourism: ICOT 2017

If you follow the blog regularly you will know that I have recently completed my PhD research and am now starting to publish papers along with my forthcoming book to be published by CABI addressing the concept of TEFL Tourism (if you don't follow the blog regularly then you know now!). As part of my means of introducing this niche tourism form to the wider academic community I will be running a special session on TEFL tourism at the ICOT conference to be held in Chiang Mai, Thailand in June. I would like to encourage academics and practitioners to attend the session and contribute a paper/presentation where appropriate. The details are outlined below. 

Special Session- TEFL Tourism 

There is evident lineage between the concepts of English language teaching and tourism, represented, for example, through evocative marketing material, the commoditisation of the TEFL product, teacher motivations and experiences. Defined by Stainton (2016) as ‘a person who travels outside of their usual environment to teach English as a foreign language and whose role shifts between tourist, educator and educatee at various points in their trip’, there is little currently known about the TEFL tourist, who they are or their impacts on society and industry. This special session allows therefore for this form of niche tourism to be explored in an interdisciplinary way by bringing together researchers who are interested in tourism as a means of English language teaching but who may come from fields of study other than tourism such as education, development, anthropology and management. 

The special session will seek papers that attempt to address the following key issues, including (but not limited to) the following themes: 

• The commodification of English language teaching 
• Pedagogical practices in TEFL tourism 
• TEFL tourism as a means of economic and social development  
• English language volunteer tourism 
• The TEFL working holiday 
• Backpacking TEFL teachers 
• The efficacy and performance of tourists employed to teach English  
• The cultural implications of TEFL tourism 
• TEFL tourism and the expatriate community in Thailand and South East Asia 

If you would like to participate please submit an abstract of no more than 350 words electronically on or before 26^th May 2017 to me at hayley.stainton@bucks.ac.uk.