ELF and teacher education: addressing ideological barriers to ELF-aware teaching practices.

The emergence of English as a global lingua franca (ELF) has heightened the need for reconceptualizing English language teaching (ELT), urging a re-evaluation of fundamental issues such as learners’ goals, the notion of language ownership, the concept of linguistic competence, and the approach to error correction. While several frameworks have been proposed to integrate ELF into ELT (e.g., Dewey; Patsko, 2018; Kemaloglu-Er; Bayyurt, 2019; Sifakis; Bayyurt, 2018), deeply rooted ideologies continue to impede the full adoption of ELF-aware pedagogies. As Lowe (2020) argues, these ideologies serve as “counterframes” that hinder progress toward more inclusive and ELF-aware teaching approaches. Through a critical examination of these ideological barriers, drawing on examples from pre-service English teachers, this paper seeks to illustrate how certain entrenched ideologies –including native-speakerism and standard language ideology– function as significant obstacles to adopting an ELF-informed perspective. It argues that, to bridge the gap between theory and practice, teacher education must emphasize a critical approach that empowers prospective English teachers to question and challenge these deeply rooted beliefs. By fostering a more nuanced and critical understanding of English as a dynamic, global means of communication, teacher education can better equip future educators to embrace ELF-aware pedagogies that align with the diverse and multilingual contexts in which English is used today.