Tony Wright
Tony Wright (b. 1948) is a British ELT writer and teacher educator, Emeritus Professor of Language Education at the University of St Mark & St John (Marjon) in Plymouth. He has taught and trained teachers across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and continental Europe, and his work sits at the point where classroom practice, teacher learning, and the sociology of the lesson meet.
Wright writes about classrooms as social places before he writes about them as language places. That is the thread running through his career. His early contribution to the OUP Candlin–Widdowson series put Teacher Roles on the ELT map, making the question of who does what and on whose authority a legitimate object of study. His later work on Reflective Practice and teacher training continued the same argument, that classrooms deserve to be understood before they are managed.
Career
- Taught and trained internationally across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Europe
- Long association with the University of St Mark & St John (Marjon), Plymouth, as a teacher educator
- Now Emeritus Professor of Language Education at Marjon
- Frequent collaborator with Rod Bolitho on language awareness and trainer development
Published Work
- Roles of Teachers and Learners (1987)
- Investigating English (with Rod Bolitho, 1993)
- Classroom Management in Language Education (2005)
- Trainer Development (with Rod Bolitho, 2007)
Influence
- Helped put teacher and learner roles on the ELT map as a distinct object of study
- Reframed classroom management as a social and interactional phenomenon rather than a discipline problem
- Influential on reflective, experiential teacher education traditions, especially in UK-facing MA ELT programmes