“We are cheaper, so they hire us”: Discounted nativeness in online English teaching

Abstract

This article considers the rapidly expanding online market for English teaching. Drawing on interviews with 11 Filipino online English teachers and the first author's own experiences teaching English online, we examine how teachers feel under the conditions of precarity they experience in the gig economy for language teaching. In addressing the experiences of Filipino teachers, we introduce the notion of "discounted nativeness." Discounted nativeness describes Filipino teachers' ambivalent position within the online English teaching industry: platforms take advantage of Filipino teachers' high levels of English proficiency-up to and including passing them off as American teacherswhile the teachers experience discrimination from students and maltreatment by the platforms. The article concludes by discussing the need for sustained research into the burgeoning market for online language teaching.

Socio‐technical issues in the platform‐mediated gig economy: A systematic literature review: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…Performance management (B2) in the gig economy can be described as algorithmic management in practice (Panaligan & Curran, 2022; Popan, 2021). This facet of management involves evaluating, training, promoting, and appropriate employee compensation while removing human managers from the employer‐employee relationship (Buckingham & Goodall, 2015).…”

“…Moreover, the examination of different gig work occupations has recently become popular, indicating the trend of a higher level of scrutiny of gig work in the different contexts of use. For example, early on most of the empirical studies in gig work were conducted with rideshare drivers (Rosenblat & Stark, 2016) and delivery workers (Puram et al, 2021), but more and more research has turned to other kinds of occupations producing distinctive findings about new types of gig workers, such as beauty workers (Anjali Anwar et al, 2022), online English teachers (Panaligan & Curran, 2022), and legal consultants (Yao, 2020). Interest is also increasing in studying different characteristics of gig workers such as gender (Ma et al, 2022) and disability.…”

“Contemporary standard” English policy and pseudo‐diversity among inner and outer circle assistant language teachers in Japan

“…However, neither the resource book nor other policy documents comprise the Ministry's remark on how online classes taught by non‐ALTs should and can be implemented in accordance with the contemporary standard English policy. Furthermore, there are no documents that indicate Ministry's knowledge about, or recognition of, the plight of those low‐waged online English instructors who are hired more as “discounted” “gig workers” and “face enormous pressure to please clients” (Panaligan & Curran, 2022, p. 250).…”

Introducing private online language education: Out‐of‐the‐shadows, technology‐powered foreign language teaching

“…In Russia, lessons with "native" English teachers are more expensive than with Russian-speaking teachers (Kozar, 2015). It follows that inequality in pay rate exists, such that "native-speaking" teachers are paid more than their "nonnative" counterparts for the same amount of work (Panaligan & Curran, 2022).…”