Practice What You Preach Dr Amos Paran Institute of Education, - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Raising Subject Knowledge in Initial Teacher Education: Practice What You Preach Dr Amos Paran Institute of Education, University of London

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Interlude 1: Information exchange Tell your neighbour about the most important incident (or an important incident) that happened to you in your learning (either of languages or other subjects) that influences you as a teacher. Spend about one minute telling your story, then switch sides.

Two critical incidents  How to deal with a student who isn’t coming to class.  The school mentor as role model

Issue 1: Defining Subject Knowledge for Language Teachers

The components of Andrews’ Model  Language proficiency (labelled ‘Communicative Language Ability in previous models); based on Bachman 1990.  Pedagogical Content Knowledge: ‘the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction’ (Shulman 1987:8 in Andrews 2003:87)  Teacher Language Awareness: the intersection of the two areas

Freeman and Johnson 1998 !

The interaction of teacher language awareness components Leech 1994, p. 18  A ‘model’ teacher of languages should: 1. be capable of putting across a sense of how grammar interacts with the lexicon as a communicative system (both communicativeness and ‘system’ will need independent attention.) 2. be able to analyse the grammatical problems that learners encounter; 3. have the ability and confidence to evaluate the use of grammar, especially by learners, against criteria of accuracy, appropriateness and expressiveness. 4. be aware of the contrastive relations between native language and foreign language 5. understand and implement the processes of simplification by which overt knowledge of grammar can best be presented to learners art different stages of learning.

Issue 2: Proficiency issues in Language Teaching  ‘a fundamental component of a language teacher’s professional competence is his or her proficiency in the language her or she teaches. …(it) will in many cases determine the extent to which the teacher is able to use many current teaching methods appropriately and whether the teacher is able to provide a reliable model of target language input for his or her students’ Farrell and Richards p. 55-56

What teachers say about their proficiency  Butler 2004: Teachers perceived a gap between what they thought they should know and what they thought they knew.  Peacock 2004: correlation between trainee beliefs about vocabulary and grammar and proficiency.  Kamhi-Stein and Mahboob 2005 (In Snow et al. 2006): use of L1 affected by actual proficiency and beliefs about L2 teaching and learning.

Raising ITE Trainees’ Proficiency  Good quality, best-practice language teaching  English only policy, with a clear rationale and progression if needed (e.g. Lee 2004)  Creating a Speech Community ‘Language development in the individual does not happen in isolation; unlike physical growth, it will not take place without the interaction of another person who has already become a language user’. (Davies 2002:49)  The group of trainees needs to become a Community of Practice which operates in English.

One way of enforcing English only

Interlude 2: Opinion gap Turn and speak to the person on your other side (not the person you did Interlude 1 with); if you are at the end of a row, speak to the person sitting in front of you or behind you. What do you understand by ‘Good quality, best -practice English language teaching’?

Issue 3: Communicative Language Teaching Communicative language teaching (CLT), the most popular approach to the teaching of English around the world over the past two decades (Burns 2005) has been questioned on the basis that it relies on Western beliefs and values, and as such, is problematic because of the mismatch in expectations about teachers’ and students’ roles. Snow, Kamhi-Stein and Brinton 2006:264.

Most popular approach? ‘Surveys have revealed that students reach the Escuela de Turismo after some 12 years ’ essentially teacher-centred language learning. Accuracy and form have dominated over skills acquisition and communicative efficiency’. (Walker and Pérez Riu 2008: 19-20). ‘Although most second language (L2) teachers today claim to use a communicative language teaching (CLT) approach, genuinely communicative classrooms still seem to be in the minority. … many teachers’ claims of using CLT are often unsupported by actual classroom events. When observed, these teachers are found to spend more time giving grammatical explanations and encouraging rule application than conducting role plays, games, puzzles and conversations .’ ( Gatbonton and Segalowitz 2005: 325-326)

Most popular approach?  the critique of CLT is normally that ‘foreign language classrooms very often reproduce teacher- and form-focused instruction while at the same time teachers readily describe their teaching practice as communicative language teaching.’ Breidbach 2011: 101.  there is a sense of crisis among language educators concerning unfulfilled promises of CLT, a crisis that is also echoed in reports of learners’ language learning experiences Breidbach 2011: 110.

Misconceptions about CLT (Thompson 1996)  Misconception 1: CLT means not teaching grammar  Misconception 2: CLT means teaching only speaking  Misconception 3: CLT means pair work, which means role play.  Misconception 4: CLT means expecting too much from the teacher.

Another misconception CLT does not provide something ‘concrete and tangible to go home with …. Ever since its inception, the main concern of CLT had been simply to expose students to comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985), interpreted widely to mean having students use language in genuine interactions. Gatbonton and Segalowitz 2005:327

Some other reasons  Examination focus (Evans 1996 in Miller and Aldred 2000)Breidbach 2011 – large scale testing; ‘from washback to backlash’  Textbooks which are ‘traditional, examination oriented and ‘teacher proof’.

A digression Principled Communicative Approach (Dörnyei 2013) 1. Personal significant principle 2. Controlled practice principle 3. Declarative input principle 4. Focus-on-form principle 5. Formulaic language principle 6. Language exposure principle 7. Focused interaction principle

And now for the REAL reasons  ‘Teachers’ beliefs may be incompatible with those espoused in CLT’ ( Gatbonton and Segalowitz 2005: 326)  ‘many teachers have difficulty seeing the learning value of communication activities… (they) are used to highly structured activities such as teaching grammar rules, conducting drills, and teaching vocabulary lists, which makes it hard for them to accept that activities such as games, role-plays and problem solving with little obvious language teaching purpose can actually count as ‘real teaching’. (Gatbonton and Segalowitz 2005:27).  ‘ Teachers schooled in teacher-centred classrooms maintained beliefs and attitudes that made it difficult for them to embrace CLT.’ (Miller and Aldred 2000).  Miller and Aldred 2000: Teachers’ beliefs about their own culture and the role of the teacher in that culture. (Teachers are dominant, and are always right.)

How one teacher trained The scene: Breakfast at the ETAS conference hotel, Yverdon, 1998. Me: So, where did you train as a teacher? Teacher: I didn’t train – I don ’ t need training. I had a wonderful English teacher so I know how English needs to be taught. Me: Errr …. Mmmm …. Uhhhhh ….. Would you like some more tea?

The Apprenticeship of Observation Lortie (1975) A teacher trainee starts their training with ca. 13-15,000 hours of observing teachers teaching Borg (2004)

Subject matter cognitions: Training or prior beliefs? Miller and Aldred 2000:1 ‘what student teachers learn about in their pre- service education frequently has to compete with other factors which make up their beliefs system, for example, their own experience as language learners and established practice within education systems’.

Research into trainee beliefs Often uses the BALLI (Horwitz 1985)  Peacock 2001 ‘some detrimental beliefs were very slow to change despite instruction over 3 years on the nature of language learning (p. 187)  Busch 2010 Found significant differences in beliefs before an SLA course and after the SLA course.  Miller and Aldred 2000 Some changes after an awareness raising exercise which enabled trainees to situate their learning within their beliefs; change was found after the practicum.

Falling back on the past Richards and Pennington 1987:187 ‘the teacher preparation course was not able to make changes in the teachers’ schema that were substantial enough to direct their behavior in the classroom’. Busch 2010:319 ‘ novice teachers describe how they default into methods and techniques that they themselves experienced rather than what they had been trained to do in the practicum classes that they were teaching’