Cabin Crew ESP Teachers’ Pedagogical Decisions and Reasoning in Reading Instruction (Research Paper)

Although decades of research have documented teachers’ interactive pedagogical decisions and reasoning in education, decisions and their underlying reasoning by English for specific purposes (ESP) teachers have remained under-explored. This qualitative multiple case study sought to explore cabin crew ESP teachers’ decisions and their underlying pedagogical reasoning in reading instruction. Four ESP teachers, including two language teachers and two content teachers, were selected through purposive sampling from different aviation training centers. The videotaped recordings of eight sessions of ESP reading instruction and the related field notes were analyzed deductively based on areas of teachers’ decision-making, and the transcriptions of audiotaped stimulated recall interviews were analyzed inductively based on teachers’ underlying pedagogical reasoning for each category of decisions. The findings revealed a distinctive difference between the two groups of ESP teachers’ decision-making and pedagogical reasoning. The focus of language teachers’ decisions and reasoning was on helping learners to improve their language achievement. On the other hand, content teachers put more weight on teaching required concepts based on learners’ needs in order to improve their occupational performance. These findings have implications for the collaboration of language teachers and content teachers to bridge the instructional gaps in ESP instruction.