Trained for teaching high school, poached for teacher training: a case study of a Cambodian English teacher's first year of teaching in Cambodia

This chapter is concerned with reconciling formal teacher training and actual classroom practice in the first year of a language teacher's career. A case study of the experience of a Cambodian English teacher's first year of teaching in Cambodia is presented. The teacher completed a four-year BEd (TEFL) degree to teach English in Cambodia's public secondary school system. By graduation, however, she had been recruited along with nine other graduates to replace a team of expatriate lecturers and teach on the BEd (TEFL) programme itself. The chapter explores diverse issues as this teacher had to adjust to a demanding and high-profile teaching position for which she was not specifically trained. Among the issues discussed are: the adjustment from native-speaker expatriate lecturers to non-native-speaking local lecturers; the classroom management of unruly students; and gender relations in the language classroom. The research methodology (combining introspection, questionnaire and interview) provides a rich description of this teacher's personal account of her first and most formative year of teaching.