Dilemma and tensions of Englishes in educational settings: What can English teachers do to advocate multilingual justice?

The critique against native speakerism, the belief that the English language is the property of native English speakers so that any teaching, learning, speaking, and anything associated with English should be then based on native English speakers’ agreement, has been loudly argued for decades (Pennycook, 2001). This belief privileges English from Anglophone countries and marginalises Englishes from other countries. It is also the starting point of injustices in English-language teaching where discrimination (Ro, 2021) and marginalisation over others take place (Irham, 2022b). Nowadays many scholars have advocated a more moderate view as to how to teach English to students whose first language is not English. Among them are to situate English as an international language or as a (global) lingua franca, to introduce and advocate trans approaches and to help students raise their awareness about multilingual competence (see for example Pennycook, 2001). However, what happens in the classroom often does not match with what has been critically argued in the literature. Those proposals such as promoting English as a lingua franca or international language instead of English as a foreign language could not be easily implemented. There occurs a refutation, contestation, and sometimes rejections from policymakers, students or even parents as to which English should be provided and taught to the students in the school (Irham, 2022a). The domination of American and British English in the pop culture, which follows from the US and UK’s economic and political power, has perpetuated the hegemony of English varieties from those countries. It is not surprising therefore that students often desire for American or British English compared to other varieties