Chuck Sandy

iTDi Program Director

Chuck is a teacher, teacher trainer, author & educational activist with 30 years of experience in the US, Japan and Brazil. His many publications include the Passages and Connect series from Cambridge University Press and the Active Skills For Communication series from Cengage Learning. He is a frequent presenter at conferences and workshops around the world. Chuck believes that positive change in education happens one student, one classroom, and one school at a time, and that it arises most readily out of dialogue and in collaboration with other educators. This is the reason he has built a Facebook group with over 9000 teachers from 24 countries that meet for ongoing educational discussions. It is also the reason he has worked to introduce Design For Change into Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia.

Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto

iTDi Program Director

Barbara has taught both English and ESL in the United States, and EFL in Japan for more than 25 years. She earned her BA from Western Oregon University and her Masters in TESOL from Northern Arizona University. Barbara has conducted workshops throughout Asia, the U.S. and Latin America, and is co-author of the best-selling young learners Let's Go series (Oxford University Press). She is also a founding member of the JALT Teaching Children special interest group. Her motto is "Always try new things," so these days, when she's not teaching, writing, or giving workshops, you'll often find Barbara online exploring the potential of social media for professional development. If you'd like to explore with her, you can usually find Barbara on her award winning blog, Teaching Village » here.

Kate Cory-Wright

iTDi Faculty

Kate is passionate about working with teachers in international contexts. She has trained teachers in 23 countries around the world - Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. She has co-authored 17 EFL books, as well as writing video materials, e-projects and teacher training materials. She lives in the stunning country of Ecuador in South America.

Scott Thornbury

iTDi Academic Director

Scott is a teacher and teacher educator, with over 30 years' experience in English language teaching. He is currently Associate Professor of English Language Studies at the New School in New York, teaching on an on-line MATESOL program. His previous experience includes teaching and teacher training in Egypt, UK, Spain, and his native New Zealand. Scott’s writing credits include several award-winning books for teachers on language and methodology including The A-Z of ELT, How to Teach Grammar and Teaching Unplugged. He is series editor for the Cambridge Handbooks for Teachers (CUP) and was also the co-founder of the dogme ELT group, whose archived website, called Teaching Unplugged, can be found here. Scott currently leads a fascinating community at the popular and thought-provoking blog, A-Z of ELT blog. He also is lead author in the iTDi Teacher Development program.

Adrian Doff

iTDi Faculty

Adrian Doff has taught English and trained teachers in Finland, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Egypt, Germany and the UK. He has written a wide range of EFL coursebooks, supplementary books and teacher training material, mostly for Cambridge University Press. These include the coursebooks Meanings into Words, Language in Use and English Unlimited, the teacher-training book Teach English, the listening skills books in the Cambridge Skills for Fluency series and the self-study reference and practice series Language Links. He is currently living in Germany and working as a free-lance writer and teacher trainer, and works as a tutor on training courses for the CELTA and DELTA certificates. Adrian brings vast experience in teacher training to the iTDi online platform context. He also shares the role as lead author, along with Scott Thornbury, on the iTDi Teacher Development program.

John F. Faneslow

iTDi Faculty

John became involved in ESOL by becoming a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa. Upon completion of Ph.D. at Columbia University, Teachers College, he joined the faculty. At Teachers College, his main interest was observation and analysis of interactions, both inside and outside of classrooms. “Beyond Rashomon" and "Let's see", two of his seminal articles in the TESOL Quarterly, have been reprinted in many anthologies. "Beyond Rashomon" was the basis of Breaking Rules (Longman, 1987) and "Let's See" was the basis of Contrasting Conversations (Longman, 1992, reprinted 2010). Try the Opposite (SIMUL, 1992, reprinted 2010) grew out of his work with teachers in Japan. He has been active professionally, serving as president of TESOL International and president of New York TESOL. John is now a visiting professor at The New School in New York and at Akita International University in Akita, Japan.

Steven Herder

iTDi Program Director

Steven has been teaching within the Japanese EFL context since 1989. Having over 20 years teaching experience at the elementary and secondary school level, he is currently an associate professor in the International Studies department at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts. He is also extremely active in professional development within the ELT community. He co-founded MASH Collaboration in 2007, an online community devoted to professional development through collaboration. He is an avid user of Skype and can often be heard saying, “Collaboration creates just the right amount of tension to get lots done.” He also spends time editing numerous articles, academic volumes and proceedings, and leading teacher training seminars for various companies throughout Japan. Steven works from the perspective that, “being a teacher means a never-ending commitment to learning”.

Theron Muller

iTDi Customer-Experience Director

Theron is a teacher and researcher based in Japan, and is current an Associate Professor at the University of Toyama, Japan. His publications include exploration of TBL, including a chapter in the award-winning book, Teachers Exploring Tasks, and various essays on academic publishing. He is also lead editor on two book projects related to EFL, including Innovating EFL Teaching in Asia, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Currently, his research interests include investigating the experiences of authors pursuing academic publication, journal review systems, and improvement of distance MA programs. A Featured Speaker at JALT2011, he is active with JALT Publications, an Associate Editor with the Asian ESP Journal, part of the University of Birmingham CELS Open Distance Learning team, and an active member of MASH Collaboration, where he is an instructor for the online MASH Academic Publishing course.

Gareth Knight

iTDi Managing Director

Gareth has worked in the education field in Asia for more than twenty years. Leaving London and a career at British Telecom, Gareth headed to Tokyo to work in educational publishing and training. He co-founded a highly successful corporate training venture within a leading Japanese educational publisher. He joined Cambridge University Press in Tokyo and led their sales and marketing drive into the Japanese market. Armed with an MSc in Teaching English, Gareth moved to Bangkok in 1997 and lectured post-graduate linguistics at Srinakharinwirot University. During this spell, Gareth authored two textbook series published by Cambridge. In 2000, Gareth rejoined Cambridge to build sales channels and marketing throughout Southeast Asia for educational product. He became the Asia group director for Cambridge Learning. He is now working full-time as iTDi Managing Director based in Bangkok.