Radical Pedagogy (2007) ISSN: 1524-6345 Infusing a Postcolonial Component into English Language Teacher Education Curricula for a Global Century 1 Faiza Derbel Assistant Professor Department of English Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Sfax Route de l’aéroport Km 4,5 Sfax 3000, Tunisia fderbel26@yahoo.com Anne R. Richards Associate Professor and Fulbright Teaching Fellow Department of English Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Sfax Tunisia Department of English Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia 30144, USA Anne_Richards@kennesaw.edu Faiza Derbel is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Sfax, Tunisia, where she has coordinated the business English curriculum, teaches TESL methods, and supervises graduate students. She is currently conducting research on technology, pedagogy, and intercultural communication. Anne R. Richards is Assistant Professor with the Department of English at Kennesaw State University, USA. In AY 2006–2007, she is a Fulbright fellow with the University of Sfax, where she teaches rhetoric and American studies. Her research interests include the digital divide and multimedia design. Abstract Millions of nonnative speakers in periphery countries are shaping the English language teaching profession substantively as they learn English in response to the economic and cultural pressures associated with globalization. Yet Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) certification and graduate programs in the US may not reflect this sea change in the context of their subject by centrally incorporating a postcolonial component. An exploratory study of TESL programs affiliated with institutions housing highly ranked US English departments suggested that courses offered to TESL students may not sufficiently reflect awareness of and engagement with the global contexts of English language teaching. We recommend that core courses in TESL postbaccalaureate, M.A., and Ph.D. programs be created or revised specifically to facilitate understanding of (1) the history and significance of World Englishes and (2) a variety of international perspectives on English language teaching and learning. Curricular reconfiguring is necessary so that future ESL teachers who speak English natively will possess critical awareness of how and why English is being used as a global language. DEFINING GLOBALIZATION It has become a cliché to say that the Twenty-First Century is an era of globalization. Indeed, this fashionably wooly term, as Block and Cameron (2002) observe, pervades “contemporary political society, technology, and culture” (1). Waters (1995) defines globalization as a condition that brings about “the systematic interrelationship of all the individual social ties that are established on the planet” (63). This definition does not suggest the quality of such interrelationships, but in the minds of many the move towards globalization predicts an interconnected world of benign hybridization and pluralism. 1 RADICAL PEDAGOGY, Volume 9, Issue 1, Winter 2007, http://www.radicalpedagogy.org/radicalpedagogy.org/Infusing_a_Postcolonial_Component_into_English_Langu age_Teacher_Education_Curricula_for_a_Global_Century.html