English teacher recruitment in Thailand: Market ideology, native-speakerism, and legitimacy in schools

David D. Perrodin, Nopporn Chantaranamchoo, Tippawan Sukjairungwattana, Ratchadaporn Ketanon and Chaiyos Paiwittayasiritham
Silpakorn University, Thailand

This study presents a theory-building analytic synthesis of research on English teacher recruitment in Thailand's secondary education sector, examining how native-speakerism and market ideology structure legitimacy and reproduce inequities in teacher hiring. Framed as a staffing and governance issue, the synthesis clarifies how legitimacy criteria are specified, audited, and normalised in education labour markets. Drawing on a systematically assembled corpus of 16 published studies, research was analysed as interpretive data to identify convergent evaluative criteria across recruitment discourse, policy analysis, and empirical work. The synthesis indicates that recruitment practices privilege symbolic markers of nativeness, including nationality, accent, and racialised identity, over pedagogical expertise and contextual competence. Simultaneously, competence-based criteria - demonstrated language proficiency, pedagogical expertise, and intercultural competence - recur across the literature but remain analytically fragmented and structurally marginalised within hiring instruments and institutional decision-making. To address this fragmentation, our study theorises the extralocal teacher of English (ETE) as a second-order analytical classification that consolidates these criteria and enables cross-study comparison, independent of nativeness-based labels. By advancing ETE as an analytical construct rather than an empirical recruitment category, our study offers a transferable framework for education research on recruitment inequities in Thailand and comparable schooling systems.
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Authors: Mr David D. Perrodin (corresponding author) is a PhD candidate in development education at Silpakorn University, Thailand and an English language specialist. He holds an MA in Teaching and has nearly two decades of professional experience in Thailand. His research focuses on equitable English teacher recruitment, language education policy, and sustainable development. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4328-7342 Email: daviddperrodin@gmail.com Dr Nopporn Chantaranamchoo is an Associate Professor in development education at Silpakorn University, Thailand. He holds a PhD in development education and a masters degree in economics. His research interests include development economics, quantitative research methods, and education policy reform, with emphasis on equity, evaluation, and learning outcomes. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1730-3860 Email: nopporncu@gmail.com Dr Tippawan Sukjairungwattana is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, Silpakorn University, Thailand. She holds a PhD in development education and specialises in environmental education and sustainability. Her research addresses education for sustainable development, eco-conscious school reform, and community-based teacher development in Thailand. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-9449-5204 Email: sukjairungwatta_t@su.ac.th Dr Ratchadaporn Ketanon is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, Silpakorn University, Thailand. She holds a PhD in educational philosophy and an MEd in curriculum and instruction. Her research focuses on development education, the integration of local wisdom, culturally responsive pedagogy, and inclusive educational practices in Thailand. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-1395-1257 Email: kimketanon@hotmail.com Chaiyos Paiwittayasiritham is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, Silpakorn University, Thailand. His research focuses on teacher professionalism, digital competence, and professional learning communities. His recent work examines pre-service teachers' digital skills and teacher self-development aligned with national professional standards. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5383-1637 Email: paiwithayasirit_c@su.ac.th Please cite as: Perrodin, D. D., Chantaranamchoo, C., Sukjairungwattana, T., Ketanon, R. & Paiwittayasiritham, C. (2026). English teacher recruitment in Thailand: Market ideology, native-speakerism, and legitimacy in schools. Issues in Educational Research, 36(2), 677-696. http://www.iier.org.au/iier36/perrodin.pdf