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Interview with Dr. N.S. Prabhu
by Alan Maley
A.M. Well Prabhu, its very nice of you to agree to give this
interview to The Teacher Trainer and nice to have you back in
Cambridge.
N.S.P. Thank you.
A.M. Can I ask you, what have been the most significant events
in your own teaching life?
N.S.P. Early in my ELT career, I stumbled on Harold Palmers
Principles of Language Study. Its a very small book. I really was
greatly moved by what I thought was a pedagogic sense of intuition
and excitement in that book. Its a book Ive read again and again
since then. The other thing was Chomskys Syntactic Structures. Its
equally small! These two books had a great influence on me. In a
way, Ive been trying to make sense of language teaching in a way
that is in harmony with those two views. Other than that, its been
actual teacher training that I have learnt a great deal from. And
from 1979-1984, every day teaching on the Bangalore project was a
real stimulus to thinking.
A.M. From my own knowledge of you, I know that trying out ideas
on people and getting a response, even if its disagreement has
always been very important to you.
N.S.P. Yes, I see professional progress in those terms. I think
thats the source of growth for the profession; the growth of ideas
in different people and the development of these together, the
influencing of one another, gradually, imperceptibly.
A.M. If we can just pass on to the Bangalore Project as its
popularly known. What would you say were the defining features of
that project? What made it different from other classroom research
projects (of which admittedly there had been very few until
then)?
N.S.P. I think it came, at least in Southern India, at a time
when there was a wearing off of peoples belief in the structural
approach. There was a kind of psychological readiness. In my own
mind, the idea that grammatical competence might best be provided
through a preoccupation with meaning took shape suddenly as a
result of earlier tentative thinking. I saw it as taking Harold
Palmers thinking a step further.
Because of the psychological readiness, a few people in the
project said, Why dont we go ahead and do it in the classroom? And
also it seemed a good way of stimulating professional discussion in
the light of actual teaching and evidence about teaching made
available to people rather than going on with seminars etc. So, it
was one way of getting professional discussion going and making it
more meaningful.
A.M. Was it ever your feeling that the pilot project could be
generalised to national or state level?
N.S.P. I suppose when we started I would have said Yes but Id
also have said that we wanted to work on it for a while before we
could say it was something that deserved to be done on a larger
scale. And indeed, within the first year it became clear that the
model (of piloting followed by large scale implementation) wasnt
going to do justice to the project. It was thought best to
influence teachers and then teaching gradually.
A.M. I know youve always been somewhat sceptical of large-scale
implementation of other peoples ideas, partly because the
originators understanding and experience arent there.
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N.S.P. Yes, and in fact the implementation of the structural
approach in India shows that. It became a fixed set of procedures
which teachers carried out with no sense of involvement, and in
some cases actually with a sense of resentment. I cant think of
that kind of teaching being beneficial to learning, whatever the
method.
A.M. Could we pass on to your present work in Singapore at the
National University? Are you doing any work there similar to the
work in South India?
N.S.P. Not really. I dont think it would be easy at all in
Singapore. First of all the education system is much more
effectively controlled than in India. Secondly, wanting to try out
a new method would imply that the methods already being followed in
the schools are less than good. In Singapore, there are these
sensibilities. Being an expatriate I dont think Ill be able to
attempt anything like trying out a new method. Probably thered be
more controversy than productive work. So my teaching is confined
to Post Graduate Courses, electives in Applied Linguistics for
students majoring in English on Honours or M.A. courses.
A.M. But you do still have a number of things that concern you
deeply about the processes of language learning and training
teachers?
N.S.P. Im thinking more and more about what it means for a
teacher to work with some understanding of how the teaching leads
to learning, with some concept that has credibility to the teacher
himself. Also, about what it means for the teacher to be influenced
by other concepts and how ideas change. To the extent that we can
understand this, we can look for ways to clarify and facilitate the
process.
What I want to do when I get back to India is keep an open house
for any teacher who wants to walk in and talk about teaching. It
doesnt matter if its only two or four teachers. I want to try to
get the teachers to state on paper what theyve said. Trying to
write, clarifies things. It straightens ones thinking. It reveals
and develops new thoughts. This is the process writing philosophy.
So, a small number of teachers trying to state their perceptions,
and then other teachers trying to state their perceptions but
taking in the perceptions of the first group - this can not only
help those teachers immediately but it can also reveal to us some
of the processes by which teachers perceptions work and form.
Perhaps theres room for something like a journal not in the sense
of learned articles but of teachers statements circulated to other
interested teachers.
A.M. In a sort of networking mode?
N.S.P. Yes.
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A.M. What youve been talking about, youve given a label to,
namely a sense of plausibility?
N.S.P. Yes. I think in teaching, as in any human interaction
activity, one needs to work with some understanding, some concept
of what is going on. In teaching,. How the act of teaching might
lead to the act of learning. That conceptualisation of intentions
and effects and so on is a sense of plausibility. I call it that
because I dont want to make any claims about its being the truth.
For that teacher however, it is the truth! There is a very real
sense in which our understanding of phenomenon at any one time is
the truth for us.
There is also in teaching, as in other recurrent interactions, a
need for routinisation. But if the job becomes over-routinised,
there is no sense of plausibility engaged. The sense of
plausibility gets buried or frozen or ossified. From that point of
view, the aim of professional activity should be to keep the
teachers sense of plausibility alive and therefore open to
influence by the on-going experience of teaching and interaction
with other teachers perceptions and senses of plausibility. I think
that is the process of teacher development. There has to be some
measure of routinisation but there needs to be some room for
something being at stake, some scope for satisfaction and
dissatisfaction, so that something is learned from the act of
teaching.
A.M. Is there anything youd like to say about teacher training
in connection with the Bangalore Project?
N.S.P. We did surprisingly little teacher training on the
project actually. Initially it was a group of about five people who
had participated in the seminars and discussions leading to the
project. In the first year we tried out different kinds of lessons
jointly so they were a part of the evolution of the teaching
procedure. About 12 teachers came to the project in subsequent
years. Mostly they had attended the Annual Review seminar, got
interested and offered to join the project. The seminar gave them
some idea of the philosophy, and as for the practice, all they did
was watch the teaching of other people in the project for about two
weeks, teach a couple of lessons, watched and commented on by one
of the existing members of the project and after that they went
ahead and taught.
A.M. It seems to be based on a sitting with Nellie model. You
watch other people doing it, you do it yourself and reflect on what
youve done and discuss it.
N.S.P. Yes, and thereafter you learn in the process of doing it
yourself. But, these were people who found themselves interested in
the project and volunteered, so that possibly makes a difference.
There was one teacher, or trainer actually, who was drafted onto
the project. He tried for four or five months but I dont think he
ever understood what was going on.
A.M. Were doing this interview for The Teacher Trainer, a
journal which is a little bit along the lines of the newsletter you
were mentioning. The aim is an exchange of an informal kind between
teacher trainers. Would you have any message for teacher trainers?
Any perceptions youd like to share with them?
N.S.P. I think the problem in teacher training is finding a way
of influencing teachers thinking without seeking to replace their
existing perceptions. Teachers ought to be able to interact with
ideas from outside and those ideas have to be available to them
and, in fact, to be put forcefully so as to give them full value.
But how to do this without psychologically intimidating or cowing
down teachers or demanding acceptance of the ideas is, I think the
problem of teacher training. Its giving value to what teachers
think but giving value too to the ideas one puts to teachers.
A.M. Thank you very much. Thats very interesting.
Reference Prabhu, N.S. (1987) Second Language Pedagogy
O.U.P.
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LEARNER INDEPENDENCE: A WEEKEND SEMINAR FOR TEACHERS IN
BAVARIA
Bruce Pye
This article gives a brief account of a teacher-training weekend
on the subject of learner independence (LI). I hope there is
something in it for those with an interest in LI and also for those
interested in the methodology of teacher-training seminars in
general.
After some necessary information about the participants and
their teaching situation, and about the aims of the seminar, the
account covers the materials used and the way the seminar
developed, from the initial warm-up to the results produced by the
group.
The Participants The seminar, which was run by myself and a
colleague, Jenny Richardson-Schlotter, was held under the auspices
of the Bayerischer Volkschochschulverband (Bavarian Association of
Adult Education Institutes) and had been advertised as offering
ideas and materials to encourage learner independence. It ran from
Friday evening to Sunday lunchtime, some 16 contact hours, was
residential and had eleven participants.
These were teachers from various Bavarian Volkschochschulen
(VHS), teaching extensive courses in general English to adults,
mostly in the evening, mostly for 90 minutes once a week, mostly
using a course book they may not have had much say in choosing.
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Our Aims In preparing the seminar we wanted our methodology to
embody at least some of the principles of LI which we were aiming
to introduce our teachers to. This meant giving our participants as
much autonomy as feasible within the restraints imposed by short
time, fairly low-tech resources, and above all the participants own
expectations as we were able to anticipate them from our previous
experience.
In general, participants on such seminars are a lot more
interested in practical classroom ideas than in theory (which may
have been a reason for the relatively low number of participants in
our seminar). We therefore felt that some sort of tangible results
should emerge from the mists of consciousness-raising. To produce
concrete results of any kind, the participants would have at some
point to set themselves specific aims. We saw it as our job to help
them reach this point with enough time left for their aims to be
realized.
Warming Up The seminar began with small group discussion tasks
on various topics related to the general theme of the seminar. Thus
a group could choose between tasks such as:
Make notes about something you have learned recently at home or
at work, and how you went about learning it,
Complete the sentence A good learner is..
Discuss how teachers can promote learner autonomy.
Compile a list of the advantages and disadvantages of
self-instruction.
Discuss your own expectations of this seminar.
We aimed to provide a range of discussion impulses varying from
the personal and anecdotal to the more academic and abstract. The
most popular topic proved to be the participants own experience as
language learners.
Input: The Library The core of the seminar comprised a library
of some 21 photocopied articles and short extracts from books.
Participants were free to read as much or as little as they wanted,
and in any order they chose. They were also free to read entirely
on their own or to work with a partner or partners.
It was our intention that the reading should lead via discussion
and negotiation to the participants defining aims and setting
themselves tasks for the rest of the seminar. The articles and
extracts provided information and food for thought on such topics
as: learning strategies and learner types, techniques and ideas for
self-assessment and self-monitoring, identifying learner needs and
motivation, negotiating course content, learning to learn, project
work. We also included one or two short texts on recent views of
second language acquisition. Overall we were aiming for a selection
of materials providing educational, linguistic and methodological
perspectives on LI.
Catalogue, Checklist, Report Form We deliberately avoided
categorizing texts as offering educational perspectives on LI,
learner training materials, or whatever. Apart from the difficulty
of the task, we wanted to influence the participants in their
choice of reading as little as possible. We did, however, provide a
guide to the bank of texts, giving the briefest possible
information about the content and the number of pages (between 2
and 8). In the case of extracts from books, the books were also
available for further consultation.
In addition to the library catalogue, participants were also
provided with a kind of pre-reading checklist, actually a form of
learner contract. Our intention was to try and get the participants
to make themselves firm promises about what they were going to
read.
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To encourage them to monitor their thoughts while reading we had
also prepared a sort of report form for notes. This emphasized the
participants emotional as well as their intellectual responses to
their reading, encouraging them for example to make a note of ideas
which they found surprising, or hard to accept, or which they would
like to know more about or discuss with their colleagues later.
As it transpired, the relatively formalized contract and
commentary form were quickly abandoned by most participants in
favour of informal individual procedures. Participants made ad hoc
decisions about what to read next, and used their own paper for
their individually preferred styles of note-taking.
Plenary Discussion The bulk of Saturday morning was taken up by
individual reading. Saturday afternoon began with a plenary and
provisional reports and feedback about what had been read. The
discussion was unusually interesting and fruitful for a plenary
session, precisely because no two people had read exactly the same
things, and whilst one or two participants had skim-read their way
through a large part of the material, others had got immersed in
one subject and had read little but in depth. The exchange of tips
and recommendations led to a general desire for further reading
time and another hour was allotted for this.
Jenny and I had had some misgivings about basing so much of the
seminar on an extended phase of individual reading. Our Bavarian
seminars are usually pretty lively, sometimes even hectic affairs
with everyone interacting as if there were no tomorrow. There is a
danger of equating the noise level directly with the success of the
undertaking. It was therefore a relief as well as a source of
gratification when our participants expressed their appreciation of
the peace and quiet and freedom to work on their own.
Group work, Group results From the reading there emerged three
main areas of interest, which were now pursued in group work. These
were: 1) progress checks, learner diaries and learner contracts; 2)
differentiation and pacing within a course; 3) self-access
learning.
Further concentration of focus and effort led to one group
working with a group member to produce a learner contract. The
contract was for an Englishman working in a management capacity in
a German firm. He had learned German with little formal instruction
and was particularly keen to improve his written skills in the
language. The group helped him to analyse problems and clarify
aims, suggested activities and offered him information about the
availability of materials.
The second group produced a number of recommendations relating
to differentiation within a class. This is a classic VHS issue as
courses tend to be either very heterogeneous or so small that they
have to be cancelled.
The third group produced a list of activities which learners can
pursue by way of accompaniment to their VHS course. This ranged
from general, and familiar, ideas like watching satellite TV to
more specific suggestions such as corresponding with fellow course
participants in English and tips to do with homework.
Classroom Implications Following the presentation and discussion
of results, the tutors and participants agreed to switch the focus,
in the short amount of time remaining, to classroom activities.
Following a presentation by the trainers of some learning-to-learn
activities and learner-created materials, the group split into two
halves to discuss in one case the role of the teacher within a
framework of self-directed learning, and in the other to try and
find ways of making a course book unit more negotiable for the
students.
Not surprisingly, these discussions proved somewhat
inconclusive. We would have needed another weekend, and by now we
were all tired out. This was indeed a pity because, by returning to
some central issues of the classroom situation, we were in a very
real sense just beginning. However, I suspect that a great deal of
life is like that, and not only teacher-training.
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Acknowledgements It is only fair to mention the contribution
made to our seminar planning by various articles and suggestions
for further reading in, (at the time of publishing), INDEPENDENCE,
the newsletter of the IATEFL Learner Independence special interest
group. The group is now called Learner Autonomy. A version of this
article appeared in Issue No. 5, Spring 1989. A special
acknowledgement is also due to the account by Marion Geddes. A
teacher training workshop on individualisation in
Individualisation, edited by Marion Geddes and Gill Sturtridge,
Modern English Publications, 1982.
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One important part of a trainers job is giving public talks or
workshops. Though as teachers we are very used to working in front
of and with groups of people,
somehow doing this with peers or national and international
colleagues can seem more frightening. We have thus included in the
journal quite a lot of help over the years on how to run training
sessions. Below, Andrew Wright, an occasional speaker, gives us his
tips.
Some notes on giving talks at conferences
By Andrew Wright
Thank goodness the idea of workshops has been developed in
recent years. But it would be a great shame if talks or lectures
were rejected out of hand. I have no doubt that lectures will
always have a useful role. The question for me is how to make them
as worthwhile as possible.
The way one gives a talk is a reflection of a personal
relationship with the receivers and with the subject; it is also a
reflection of how one responds to the context both immediate and
more general.
On the whole, my talks have been about the use of games and
activities. I dont assume that the forms I use for this sort of
theme would always apply to other people. However, colleagues might
like to hear how a fellow occasional lecturer goes about things.
Here are some of the ideas which are important to me:
The receiver is as important as the subject So all the normal
communicators criteria apply. Who are the receivers? What do they
know already of the general area and of the specific subject you
wish to deal with? What is their attitude to it? How do they value
it? What form of communication are they used to? Would a different
form please or offend them? What relationship do they
conventionally have with a speaker? Must you mix
authority/credibility with personal understanding? Can the teachers
cope with broad perspectives in abstract terms or do they prefer
instances?
The peripatetic speaker You probably dont know the people you
are talking to individually. I feel the need to speak to people I
dont know before the talk so I usually try to get my things set up
early and then chat to people as they come in. It helps me. I
sometimes look for something that I can acknowledge in the people
there in my talklike how they have given up time to come..or that
the best holiday for a teacher is watching another teacher working
or I may try to comment on a more weighty aspect of what I am told
concerns them, for example, a change in public examinations.
Alternatively, I might begin by saying, Ive never taught in your
schools and so cannot possibly advise you how to teach. Please see
me as a traveling tinker who has various ideas and is offering them
to see if they are of any use.
Starting with activities Although I share the same general world
of language teaching with the people there I do not share any
specific experience that I can refer to. So I often like to begin
with activities of some sort without explanation and then, after
about ten minutes, stop and point out the issues which I think are
important. In this way we have a common experience and a reference
point. Dramatically it is marvelous to begin immediately with
activities because the listeners become participators and there is
so much more excitement. If the activities are intriguing, then
curiosity is aroused, the listeners become active as they take part
and, at the same time, search for an idea of why you have got that
activity going. At the SPEAQ Conference in Quebec I began by
juggling. Then I asked for a volunteer
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and taught him to juggle. About half way through I asked people
to make a note of the sort of language we were using and this gave
them a hint of the point I was working towards.
The structure Starting off with the broad structure of the talk
does not appeal to me. However, I always try to give it after about
ten minutes. And I do feel that it helps to be following a
structure so people feel you know where you are going. A rigid
structure or more particularly, written-out notes or even the full
text is disastrous because people feel they cannot affect things
and if they do you may be totally thrown. Perhaps the feeling of
what I want to convey is even more important than the structure of
the presentation I have in mind. The wonderful thing about being
guided by feeling is that you are adaptable and that everything you
say and doeven the little thingsis filled with a sense of unity of
purpose. For me the feeling is usually that I want to enjoy myself
with everyone there.
Individuals I need the participation of the people there. For
this reason I build into my talks activities all the way through.
And I always try to respond fully to individuals. If there is a
very demanding individual, I usually try to respond but if they
seem to be determined to go up an alley (in my view) I will say
something like, thats a very interesting point. I dont think I can
cope with it at the moment. Perhaps we can talk about it
afterwards. If someone is being aggressive for some reasons, I
sometimes put the point back to everyone else, inviting a response
and then it is normally dealt with to everyones satisfaction.
Pace I do think that pace is important. There is room for slow
and fast pace. A slow pace should never be because of muddled notes
or inadequate control of the a/v equipment etc. but because that is
the nature of the feeling of the activity. If people feel you are
talking slowly and moving slowly for a significant purpose, they
can be on the edge of their seats! But I tend to like a fast pace
for at least some of the time. In this I like to introduce the idea
of tantalizing people, perhaps by doing something nice with them
and then stopping it just as they are beginning to drop from the
height of their involvement.
Market Sellers of blankets and cheap crockery have some great
techniques. One of them is to address, with some intensity, a
particular person in response to a comment he might have overheard,
or to some gesture or movement he claims to be able to interpret.
An intense moment or two with someone about halfway to the back and
slightly to one side is so intriguing for everyone else. Done too
much it might be irritating though!
Jokes I love to be involved in the subject and in the whole act
of trying to communicate. For me the moment is so important. I am
prepared to risk a lot to try to relate to people. This can be done
by jokes, anecdotes and a bit of fun but if the teachers feel that
there is nothing more to the talk than fun they will go off feeling
pretty cheated. Obviously they have to feel that you care about the
subject, you know about it and you can see it from their point of
view. Jokes just told to warm up the listeners are a mistake, I
believe. The joke should arise out of the concept being developed
and should highlight aspects of it.
There are so many things I dont know about in everything I have
a go at, obviously. If one of them comes up I say so and without
shame. I think I may disillusion a few people but I hope this is
outbalanced by the feeling that I am, after all just like them,
doing my best but far from infallible.
Take-home ideas In most of my talks I try to get activities
going and some individual responding and thinking going on too.
However, I feel that there is very often an expectation that a
lecturer is going to give them something which can be used on
Monday. Many teachers have hardly been to inservice training before
and are more likely to feel positive and helped if they have
something positive to take away with them than if they have simply
undergone an unusual experience. I think if one can give the
teachers some things they can actually use and which contain the
living yeast of a new way of thinking they
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will have a chance of realizing the power of the underlying idea
through the act of experiencing its success in their own
classrooms.
Gesture and movement For me these are important. For large
groups of people between 30 and 500 I think gestures and movement
are very important. (Above 500 people and the back rows probably
cant see your body movements! So voice, speech and a big OHP screen
become the vehicles.) Body movements help to emphasise the way you
are structuring your talk, and the pace (like a conductor). They
help you to stress detail and they help you convey feeling. They
allow you to indicate individuals you may be talking to.
Big gestures are important for large groups. People used to
talking to large groups sometimes find it difficult to talk to
small groups. (Similar to a difference between acting for film and
acting in the theatre?)
Gestures and movements can either be used to support spoken
language or to offer contradictory concepts and feelings or they
can be used on their own without speech.
I think you use gestures should be known to the people you are
talking to and not gestures from your home area and not personal
mannerisms without any communicative direction.
It is silly but I feel slightly ashamed to talk about gesture
and movement. I suppose it is because of the long history of
dominance of the world and the scorning of non-verbal forms. Yet
body movement is one of the most powerful ways of affecting people
for better or for worse.. so continuing I think we would speak of
the need for clearly articulated gestures as we would speak of the
need for clearly articulated speech. I believe that gestures should
be timed to fit with spoken language ( or the other way round like
Mrs. And Mr. !!!!!!) Gestures should usually only take place with
one part of the body at once..the mimes arm unfolds, the hand
unfolds and the finger and then it points! Im sure theres more to
it than that but I havent studied the grammar of body movement.
And, to return to my very first point, whilst believing that we
must communicate we must obviously do so in our own way.
Visuals OHP visuals are useful in several ways:
if you are nervous, then you can base your whole thing on
transparencies and they will take you through your talk.
they give an alternative way of saying what you are trying to
express orally. they can do some things you cannot do orally
particularly giving a holistic view of a
number of different relationships. some people need to see an
idea written down.
Andrew Wright is a teacher, teacher-trainer, author and visual
artist as well as being able to juggle and ride a mono-cycle!
Working freelance at the time of writing he had recently given
seminars in Italy and South America and written some lively new
readers for EFL students.
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This series publishes original or revised versions of papers
given at major conferences. Our aim here is to make sure that
worthwhile contributions informing colleagues of
recent work and thoughts should be available also to those who
cant get to the conferences!
Teaching, Teacher Training and Applied Linguistics
by Rod Bolitho
Language teachers, and particularly teachers of English as a
second or foreign language, are under ever-increasing pressure to
acquire a masters degree in addition to a post-graduate teaching
certificate. A glance at the appointments columns in the
educational press will confirm what many teachers already know to
their cost: that state and private sector employers in many
countries are, for whatever reason, insisting more and more on
academic credentials as well as a basic professional qualification.
In a buyers market it is clearly their perfect right to do so, and
yet it is a worrying trend for those of us who value professional
know-how at least as highly as academic excellence in a classroom
teacher.
It is my contention that this trend is persuading far too many
teachers to set their sights on professional advancement through
academic prowess rather than through a more humanistic assessment
of their own development needs. Add to this the worry shared by
many in the field of language teaching that Applied Linguistics is
an ill-defined field of activity a young discipline with a mild
identity crisis, perhaps and some of the very real concerns of this
essay begin to crystallise. In it, I will examine some recent
contributions to the discussion of the relationship between theory
and practice, and suggest a basis for a more healthy
relationship.
In an article published in 1982 in English Language Teaching
Journal, Christopher Brumfit and Richard Rossner offer their
decision pyramid model as a point of departure for their discussion
of teacher training and the structure of the language teaching
profession. They postulate four levels of decision (see Figure 1)
and three levels of teacher training.
4. Classroom decisions
3. Materials construction
1. Approach
2. Syllabus design
Initial Training
In-service training
Academic courses (MA upwards)
FIGURE 1 Decision Pyramid Model
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From this it will be seen that they regard pre-service training
as being essentially concerned with classroom-level decisions, and
only very marginally concerned with superordinate issues of
approach. In-service training is seen as legitimately concerning
itself with all four levels of decision. Academic courses at M.A.
level and beyond, however, are seen as only slightly concerned with
the classroom, and primarily occupied with questions of syllabus
design and approach. If, as I suspect, this is a fairly accurate
representation of the status quo in teacher training, or even if it
represents an ideal for Brumfit and Rossner, the implications are
worrying for several reasons:
1. The pyramid model is hierarchical, and it implies the
closing-off of avenues of professional development for all but the
privileged few.
2. Even if the implied dynamic of the model is bottom-up, it is
all too easy to see it as top-down (most hierarchies work this
way), in which case it places superordinate decisions, which
ultimately affect what goes on in the classroom, in the hands of
academics who rarely if ever see the inside of a classroom. In this
sense, the model is also paternalistic; it encourages teachers to
trust in those higher up rather than to seek ways of tackling their
own professional problems. So it is open to abuse as a
justification of superiority by academics and as an excuse for
doing nothing by teachers.
3. It therefore devalues teaching as a lower-order activity.
4. It is a convergent, academically-oriented model, apparently
taking no account of all the other factors which might contribute
to the personal and professional development of a teacher.
An alternative view, more difficult to realize graphically,
would be to classify syllabus designers, material writers, teacher
trainers and applied linguists (not to mention publishers and
examining bodies!) as service providers to the teaching profession:
essentially parasites who depend on the classroom encounter, on the
teaching/learning activity, for their very existence. This might
help teachers to take a more robust view of their own worth and to
increase their self-esteem.
In another article in English Language Teaching Journal, Henry
Widdowson argues that teachers should concern themselves more with
theory:
No matter how concerned teachers may be with the immediate
practicalities of the classroom, their techniques are based on some
principle or other which is accountable to theory.
and then:
I would wish to argue, then, that language teachers have the
responsibility to mediate changes in pedagogic practice so as to
increase the effectiveness of language learning, and that such
mediation depends on understanding the relationship between
theoretical principle and practical technique. To dismiss theory is
to undermine the possibility of such an understanding and to create
the very conditions for the bandwagon effect that many who belong
to the practical brass tacks school so vigorously criticize.
(Widdowson 1984)
These are arguments which Widdowson reiterated emphatically in
his opening address to this seminar (Widdowson 1986), and they
deserve attention and comment, both in relation to the situation of
schoolteachers in Hong Kong, and with a more global
perspective.
Let me state straight away that my own stance is not
anti-theoretical, and that I do not belong to the (largely
mythical?) brass tacks school which Widdowson refers to. Operating
between the extremes of the spectrum which extends from an
unthinking preoccupation with technique all the way to an unhealthy
concentration on the abstract, there is a population of principled
practitioners who, fully
-
aware of the priority they must accord to the routine demands of
the classroom, nevertheless realize that there are areas of theory
which deserve their attention as they work their way towards a
better understanding of the teaching/learning process. These
practitioners do not need reminding of the value of theory, but to
suggest that they should be mediators between theory and practice
is to misunderstand the role which theory plays in their
professional lives. Applied linguists, like most people who work in
academic institutions, write because publications are expected of
them. It is right that they should put up their views for
consideration by a wider public. Teachers, on the whole, do not
need to write. Much of their creative energy goes into the
classroom encounter. It is right that it should. Does that
necessarily mean that teachers ought to read what applied linguists
write? Most teachers would prefer to choose what they need to read,
basing their decision on a realistic assessment of their own
strengths and weaknesses. Like other professional people, they will
need only to have the options laid out for them. Theory is often
perceived as gratuitous on pre-service courses (rightly or wrongly)
since few trainee teachers have the basis of classroom experience
they would need to furnish a proper perspective for theoretical
issues which are dealt with, whether these are drawn from
linguistics, psychology or elsewhere. Teachers in-service are
constantly confronted with practical problems and may feel
themselves, particularly in state education, to be too busy
mediating between their students and inadequate textbooks, between
their students parents and the institution and between 1,001 other
conflicting demands, to consider any more remote form of mediation.
Indeed, they may point, with some justification, to areas of theory
which have contributed more confusion than enlightenment to their
practice in recent years: the communicative revolution with all its
half-baked interpretations in various contexts has led to a great
deal of insecurity; conflicting theories of second language
acquisition have also caused uncertainty.
A principled practitioner, however, will continue to glean what
he/she can understand and use from these theories, through careful
reading of journals attendance at conferences, etc. He/she will
also pose questions to the theorists along the lines, maybe, of
those posted by Richard Rossner to Pit Corder in a recent
interview:
But an implication of this view of language learning* is that
there will be great uncertainty in the teachers mind about what he
or she should do precisely. Even if one accepts that optimum
conditions for language learning have to be provided by the
teacher, involving comprehensible input and meaningful tasks, as
well as language awareness-raising activities, some tremendous
questions still remain. What kind of comprehensible input does it
matter? What kinds of task does it matter? In what order does that
matter? What guidance, if any can applied linguistics offer to
these areas? Is it still the teachers responsibility to provide a
programme of work for his or her learners? What is to go into that
programme? (Corder 1986)
* In an exchange of views with Dick Allwright, Corder has just
expounded on the merits of acquiring language while focusing on
something non-linguistic, allowing learners to make use of their
knowledge of the world to help them to learn the structure of the
language.
The answers to these (any many other!) questions will, however,
be worked out co-operatively if at all. It is unreasonable to
expect theorists to answer them unless they spend more time in
classrooms, and to expect teachers to answer them unless they have
more time to think. Teachers do not take kindly to imposed
decisions, handed down directly or indirectly, from higher up the
pyramid, or to guilt-inducing admonitions to concern themselves
more with theory.
It is, of course, to be expected that those who populate the
higher slopes of the pyramid will seek to protect their own
positions in the hierarchy (especially if this involves them in
teaching only a few hours per week to small, motivated groups of
postgraduate students, leaving abundant time for thinking, research
and work in publications), and even to sell their wares.
Those who run courses at Masters level can be expected to extol
the virtues of the content of such courses, just as a
double-glazing salesman might be expected to be vigorous in his
attempts to sell his product. However, double-glazing has some
known side-effects which are far from pleasant; in providing better
heat and sound insulation to a building, for example, it often
creates problems of condensation. This is clearly unsatisfactory,
as the consumers initial decision to purchase was almost certainly
solution-oriented. Similarly, a teachers decision to take, say, an
M.A. in Applied Linguistics,
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or in ELT is often solution-oriented, in which case the
potential for disappointment is already there. The analogy had
better end here, however, for a double-glazing salesman inhabits a
different career pyramid from most of his customers and wields no
power or influence in their respective professional spheres. Those
who run Masters courses in Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics, by contrast, seem to wield considerable power and
influence, and it is difficult for those lower down the pyramid to
see other solutions to the dilemma surrounding professional
advancement.
It is difficult, too, to go along unreservedly with the elitist
position suggested by Brumfit in his otherwise excellent chapter in
this book. He maintains (Brumfit 1986) that in any system there
should be a minority of teachers who have had time off to reflect.
What are the criteria for allowing such periods of time off? What
are the options open to a teacher? Most paid time off is granted to
teachers who are prepared to devote it to gaining a higher
qualification usually on a taught course. Unpaid leave may be the
only solution for those who really do need time to reflect. All too
often, financial support is allocated on an arbitrary basis, or is
available only to a privileged few. Unpaid leave can be
contemplated only by those with considerable private means, and
thus almost never by breadwinners in families. Nice as it may be
for those running Diploma or Masters courses to have a steady
population of sponsored or rich postgraduate students on their
courses, this is not a solution to the need for professional
development felt by the vast majority of teachers at some time in
their careers. As long as a hierarchical system is seen to operate,
there will be those who make progress and those who dont. As long
as applied linguistics remain in universities and express
themselves in terms which teachers find difficult to understand,
but somehow feel they ought to understand, as long as the rules for
professional advancement are devised by academics so that training
takes place on their territory and on their terms, teachers will
continue to feel inferior. As long as teaching continues to be
regarded as a lower-order activity, involving high stress, large
numbers of contact hours and low pay, and as long as those involved
in theory have visibly less of the first two and considerably more
of the last-mentioned commodity, there will be im-balance in the
profession. It is unfortunately true that, for every Widdowson or
Brumfit, with their valuable ideas about language and language
learning, there are dozens of academics who provide little or no
impetus in the profession, and who nevertheless spend long years
occupying privileged positions in the hierarchy. How many
university lecturers go back to teaching? And it simply will not
do, given the impact of their discipline on language teaching and
learning, for applied linguists to assert (as some do!) that they
lay no claim to practical relevance on their courses, and that
teachers who come on them have no right to expect any practical
orientation. As the decision pyramid makes clear, it would be wrong
to expect applied linguists to concern themselves much with
technique, but the concerns of language learners and teachers must
also remain those of applied linguists, otherwise their very raison
detre will surely vanish.
So what ways forward are there for teachers who wish to develop
personally and professionally? This is the current concern of the
IATEFL* special interest group on Teacher Development, formed in
1987 in the UK. Conceived resolutely as a bottom-up movement, this
group has begun to explore different ways of breaking with
established thinking on professional advancement. It is neither
anti-intellectual nor anti-establishment in its approach. It seeks
merely to explore as many different avenues as possible, thereby
widening the choice for teachers. However, given the traditional
emphasis on the acquisition of qualifications (very much part of
the having mode identified so clearly by Erich Fromm (1979)), it is
perhaps natural that many of the early contributions to the work of
the Teacher Development group have been concerned with being: being
a better teacher, a better listener, a better colleague, a more
balanced and integrated person. Adrian Underhill, the founder of
the T.D. group, put it this way:
What is missing from our thinking about teacher training and
teacher development is a real understanding of precisely how
teachers grow and change, based not on armchair theory but on the
vigorous experience of what actually happens and what could happen
inside ourselves, our colleagues and our students. (Underhill
1984)
The central impetus provided by the special interest group and
its newsletter Teacher Development has led to the formation of
local and institutional support groups of teachers in many parts of
the U.K., and this seems to be helping teachers to identify and
define their own development priorities, instead of having them
laid out before them by those higher up the hierarchy. It is too
early to say what effect these groups might have, but there must
be, at the very least, a move to engage school managements in both
state and private sectors in a discussion of staff development
needs. The huge state investment (in most countries, not just the
U.K.) in the pre-service training of teachers leads employers
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to expect delivery of batches of well-prepared professionals to
their institutions. The realization that all teachers need
professional refreshment after a spell of wrestling with problems
thrown up in the daily classroom encounter is an uncomfortable and
potentially expensive one for employers. Yet the need for both
personal development and professional updating remains. If it is
articulated clearly and often enough by those who feel it, pressure
will eventually mount for appropriate provision to be made in the
career structure of every teacher, and not just the privileged few.
If this involves a major shift of resources and manpower from
pre-service to in-service training, and a consequent re-examination
of the relationship between classroom and practice and theory,
between teachers, trainers and applied linguists, so much the
better. We might even see teacher-training relocated in schools and
applied linguists in classrooms, listening to students and
teachers, and remembering what it feels like to teach. By doing
this, they will be making themselves available to teachers to
co-operate on here and now problems such as the preparation of
suitable tests for communicative teaching programmes, designing new
syllabi and teaching materials, formulating realistic learning
objectives for learners at different stages of development and
analyzing learners errors and thereby they will be engaging
themselves at first hand in the real world of language learning. If
they were able to take this step, the basis for mutual respect and
genuine interchange would soon be established.
*IATEFL International Association of Teachers of English as a
Foreign Language
References Brumfit, C. A Whole Profession Model of Continuing
Teacher Education, 1986 I.L.E. International Seminar Papers (Hong
Kong)
Brumfit, C. & R. Rossner. The Decision Pyramid and Teacher
Training for E.L.T. English Language Teaching Journal, 36/4
(1982)
Corder, S.P. Talking Shop: Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics. English Language Teaching Journal, 40/3 (1986)
Fromm, E. To Have or To Be, Abacus, 1979.
Underhill, A. A Quest for Permanent Evolution. E.F.L. Gazette,
September 1984
Widdowson, H.G. The Incentive Value of Theory in Teacher
Education. English Language Teaching Journal, 38/2 (1984)
Widdowson, H.G. The Pragmatics of Language Teacher Education.
1986 I.L.E. International Seminar Papers (Hong Kong).
Note Teacher Development , the newsletter of the IATEFL special
interest group is available from IATEFL.
This article first appeared in Re-exploring C.E.L.T. edited by
Verner Bicklay and is reproduced here with permission.
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1
The Teacher Trainer - Back Articles Saved from:
http://www.tttjournal.co.uk
Some ideas stay with us for years and years and the idea of
using a foreign language lesson as an interactive demonstration on
an initial
teacher training course is one of those ideas. Just a week ago I
received a draft article from a trainer using
the foreign language lesson on her course in Japan and wanting
to share a variation with readers of the journal. So when I re-read
the article below
reprinted from Volume One Issue Two, and remembered its classic
trainee-centred and realistic rhythm, I knew it was one for the web
archive!
The foreign language lesson-trainees prepare the trainers
demonstration
by John Carmichael
Many initial teacher training courses contain an element of
demonstration by an experienced teacher in which trainees are
placed in the position of the foreign language learner so that they
experience teaching techniques from the receiving end. They are
given a lesson or a micro-lesson in Arabic or Japanese for example.
As has been recognised, this procedure runs the risk of dazzling
the relatively inexperienced trainee with a display of techniques
which s/he will find difficult to emulate within the typically
short duration of the training course. S/he may be daunted rather
than impressed. It can be very frustrating for the beginner on the
slopes to be expected to admire the performance of a skiing
virtuoso. As a result trainers often make a point of building in to
their demonstrations deliberately bad practices that can be
highlighted on the subsequent discussion. A useful variation on
this technique is to get the trainees to think through an
appropriate procedure (for a particular micro-skill such as
dialogue building, handling a listening comprehension or teaching a
lexical set for example) before being taught in the foreign
language. To take teaching a lexical set as a detailed example,
tell the trainees that you would like to teach them seven or eight
words in a foreign language (e.g. word for different fruits). You,
the teacher, would like these words to become part of their active
vocabulary. How would they like to be taught? What procedure do
they think would be most effective in achieving this aim? Get the
trainees to discuss this in small groups and note down a detailed
procedure. Monitor the groups and prompt if all the relevant issues
have not been considered (e.g. When do you want to see the written
form? How many times do you want to hear the word before you are
asked to say it yourself? How many times do you want to say each
word? What context do you want to practise the words in?). Get
members of different groups to exchange their ideas and then, with
the whole class, draw up a consensus procedure on the whiteboard.
Differences of opinion at this stage can serve to highlight the
need to accommodate the different learning strategies to be found
in any group of students. Then teach the vocabulary using the
procedure provided by the trainees. Follow the recipe they have
given you exactly. After this, repeat the group/whole class
discussion so that the trainees can evaluate the suggested
procedure in the light of their experience and suggest any
amendments they wish. This overall process of planning in the
abstract and then assessing and re-evaluating in the light of
experience directly parallels the experience of trainees in their
own lesson planning and classroom contact. Here is an illustration
of the before and after procedures that one group of trainees came
up with.
Before Use visual aids to convey meaning. Teacher gives the
model for the first word twice; students listen and then repeat
chorally and individually. Follow this procedure one word at a
time.
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2
Write the words on the board and get students to read them off,
checking pronunciation.
After Use visual aids to convey meaning. Teacher shows visual
and says all the word while the students listen. Teacher gives a
model for the first word two or three times; students listed then
repeat chorally and individually. Highlight pronunciation and
stress where necessary. Don't dwell too long on students who are
having initial difficulty reproducing the word. They can be given
the opportunity to listen to other students repetitions. Come back
to them later. Build up a lexical set. Reap as you go along and at
the end, both in order and in random order. Practise the words
further in a personalised context (e.g. talking about likes or
preferences). Elicit the words again from the students as you write
them on the board. Highlight any peculiarities of the written form.
Matching exercise; students write the words (jumbled at the bottom
of the page) next to the appropriate pictures.
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The Teacher Trainer Back Articles Saved from:
http://www.tttjournal.co.uk
Towards Reflective Teaching
by Jack C. Richards Department of English, City Polytechnic of
Hong Kong
Most teachers develop their classroom skills fairly early in
their teaching careers. Teachers entering the profession may find
their initial teaching efforts stressful, but with experience they
acquire a repertoire of teaching strategies that they draw on
throughout their teaching. The particular configuration of
strategies a teacher uses constitutes his or her teaching style.
While a teachers style of teaching provides a means of coping with
many of the routine demands of teaching, there is also a danger
that it can hinder a teachers professional growth. How can teachers
move beyond the level of automatic or routinised responses to
classroom situations and achieve a higher level of awareness of how
they teach, of the kinds of decisions they make as they teach, and
of the value and consequences of particular instructional
decisions? One way of doing this is through observing and
reflecting on ones own teaching, and using observation and
reflection as a way of bringing about change. This approach to
teaching can be described as Reflective Teaching, and in this paper
I want to explore how a reflective view of teaching can be
developed.
What is reflection? Reflection or critical reflection, refers to
an activity or process in which an experience is recalled,
considered, and evaluated, usually in relation to a broader
purpose. It is a response to past experience and involves conscious
recall and examination of the experience as a basis for evaluation
and decision-making and as a source for planning and action.
Bartlett (1990) points out that becoming a reflective teacher
involves moving beyond a primary concern with instructional
techniques and how to questions and asking what and why questions
that regard instructions and managerial techniques not as ends in
themselves, but as part of broader educational purposes.
Asking what and why questions gives us a certain power over our
teaching. We could claim that the degree of autonomy and
responsibility we have in our work as teachers is determined by the
level of control we can exercise over our actions. In reflecting on
the above kind of questions, we begin to exercise control and open
up the possibility of transforming our everyday classroom life.
Bartlett, 1990. 267
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How does reflection take place? Many different approaches can be
employed if one wishes to become a critically reflective teacher,
including observation of oneself and others, team teaching, and
exploring ones view of teaching through writing. Central to any
approach used however is a three part process which involves:
Stage 1 The event itself The starting point is an actual
teaching episode, such as a lesson or other instructional event.
While the focus of critical reflection is usually the teachers own
teaching, self-reflection can also be stimulated by observation of
another persons teaching.
Stage 2 Recollection of the event The next stage in reflective
examination of an experience is an account of what happened,
without explanation or evaluation. Several different procedures are
available during the recollection phase, including written
descriptions of an event, a video or audio recording of an event,
or the use of check lists or coding systems to capture details of
the event.
Stage 3 Review and response to the event Following a focus on
objective description of the event, the participant returns to the
event and reviews it. The event is now processed at a deeper level,
and questions are asked about the experience.
Let us examine approaches to critical reflection which reflect
these processes.
Peer Observation Peer observation can provide opportunities for
teachers to view each others teaching in order to expose them to
different teaching styles and to provide opportunities for critical
reflection on their own teaching. In a peer observation project
initiated in our own department, the following guidelines were
developed.
1. Each participant would both observe and be observed Teachers
would work in pairs and take turns observing each others
classes.
2. Pre-observation orientation session Prior to each
observation, the two teachers would meet to discuss the nature of
the class to be observed, the kind of material being taught, the
teachers approach to teaching, the kinds of students in the class,
typical patterns of interaction and class participation, and any
problems that might be expected. The teacher being observed would
also assign the observer a goal for the observation and a task to
accomplish. The task would involve collecting information about
some aspect of the lesson, but would not include any evaluation of
the lesson. Observation procedures or instruments to be used would
be agreed upon during this session and a schedule for the
observations arranged.
3. The observation The observer would then visit his or her
partners class and complete the observation using the procedures
that both partners had agreed on.
4. Post-observation The two teachers would meet as soon as
possible after the lesson. The observer would report on the
information that had been collected and discuss it with the teacher
(Richards and Lockhart, 1991).
The teachers identified a variety of different aspects of their
lessons for their partners to observe and collect information on.
These included organization of the lesson, teachers time
management, students performance on tasks, time-on-task, teacher
questions and student responses, student performance during pair
work, classroom interaction, class performance during a new
teaching activity, and students use of the first language or
English during group work.
The teachers who participated in the project reported that they
gained a number of insights about their own teaching from their
colleagues observations and that they would like to use peer
observation on a regular basis. They obtained new insights into
aspects of their teaching. For example:
-
It provided more detailed information on student performance
during specific aspects of the lesson than I could have gathered on
my own.
It revealed unexpected information about interaction between
students during a lesson.
I was able to get useful information on the group dynamics that
occur during group work.
Some teachers identified aspects of their teaching that they
would like to change as a result of the information their partner
collected. For example:
It made me more aware of the limited range of teaching
strategies that I have been using.
I need to give students more time to complete some of the
activities I use.
I realized that I need to develop better time management
strategies.
Longer term benefits to the department were also cited:
It helped me develop a better working relationship with a
colleague.
Some useful broader issues about teaching and the programme came
up during the post-observation discussions.
Written accounts of experiences Another useful way of engaging
in the reflective process is through the use of written accounts of
experiences. Personal accounts of experiences through writing are
common in other disciplines (Powell 1985) and their potential is
increasingly being recognized in teacher education. A number of
different approaches can be used.
Self-Reports Self-reporting involves completing an inventory or
check list in which the teacher indicates which teaching practices
were used within a lesson or within a specified time period and how
often they were employed (Pak, 1985). The inventory may be
completed individually or in group sessions. The accuracy of
self-reports is found to increase when teachers focus on the
teaching of specific skills in a particular classroom context and
when the self-report instrument is carefully constructed to reflect
a wide range of potential teaching practices and behaviours
(Richards, 1990).
Self-reporting allows teachers to make a regular assessment of
what they are doing in the classroom. They can check to see to what
extent their assumptions about their own teaching are reflected in
their actual teaching practices. For example a teacher could use
self-reporting to find out the kinds of teaching activities being
regularly used, whether all of the programmes goals are being
addressed, the degree to which personal goals for a class are being
met, and the kinds of activities which seem to work well or not to
work well.
Autobiographies Abbs (1974, cited in Powell 1985) discusses the
use of autobiographies in teacher preparation. These consist of
small groups of around 12 student teachers who meet
for an hour each week for at least 10 weeks. During this period
of time each student works at creating a written account of his or
her educational experience and the weekly meetings are used to
enable each person to read a passage from his or her autobiography
so that it can be supported, commented upon by peers and the
teacher (43).
Powell (1985) described the use of reaction-sheets sheets
student teachers complete after a learning activity has been
completed in which they are encouraged to stand back from what they
had been doing and think about what it meant for their own learning
and what it entailed for their work as teachers of others (p.46). I
have used a similar technique in working with student teachers in a
practicum. Students work in pairs with a co-operating teacher and
take turns teaching. One serves as observer while the other
teaches, and completes a reaction sheet during the lesson. The
reaction sheet contains the following questions. What aspects of
the lesson were most effective? What
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aspects of the lesson were least effective? Would you have
taught any aspect of the lesson differently? Why? The student who
teaches also completes his or her own reaction sheet after the
lesson. Then the two compare their reactions to the lesson.
Journal Writing A procedure which is becoming more widely
acknowledged as a valuable tool for developing critical reflection
is the journal or diary. The goal of journal writing is,
1. to provide a record of the significant learning experiences
that have taken place
2. to help the participant come into touch and keep in touch
with the self-development process that is taking place for them
3. to provide the participants with an opportunity to express,
in a personal and dynamic way, their self-development
4. to foster a creative interaction
between the participant and the self-development process that is
taking place
between the participant and other participants who are also in
the process of self-development
between the participant and the facilitator whose role it is to
foster such development
(Powell, 1985, Bailey, 1990)
While procedures for diary keeping vary, the participant usually
keeps a regular account of learning or teaching experiences,
recording reflections on what he or she did as well as
straightforward descriptions of events, which may be used as a
basis for later reflection. The diary serves as a means for
interaction between the writer, the facilitator, and, sometimes,
other participants.
Collaborative Diary Keeping A group of teachers may also
collaborate in journal writing. A group of my colleagues recently
explored the value of collaborative diary-keeping as a way of
developing a critically reflective view of their teaching (Brock,
Ju and Wong, 1991). Throughout a 10 week teaching term they kept
diaries on their teaching, read each others diaries, and discussed
their teaching and diary keeping experiences on a weekly basis.
They also recorded and later transcribed their group discussions
and subsequently analyzed their diary entries, their written
responses to each others entries and the transcripts of their
discussions, in order to determine how these three interacted and
what issues occurred most frequently. They reported that:
Collaborative diary-keeping brought several benefits to our
development as second language teachers. It raised our awareness of
classroom processes and prompted us to consider those processes
more deeply than we may otherwise have. Collaborative diary-keeping
also provided encouragement and support; it served as a source of
teaching ideas and suggestions; and in some sense it gave us a way
to observe one anothers teaching from a safe distance
By reading one anothers diary entries, we were able to share our
teaching experiences, and we often felt that we were learning as
much from one anothers entries as we were from our own. Reading and
responding to the entries led us back to our own teaching to
consider how and why we taught as we did.
These teachers observed however that
1. collaborative diary-keeping is more effective if the scope of
issues considered is focused more narrowly.
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2. a large block of time is needed
3. participants must be comfortable in sharing both pleasant and
unpleasant experiences and be committed to gaining a clearer
picture of their teaching and their classrooms.
Recording Lessons For many aspects of teaching, audio or video
recording of lessons can also provide a basis for reflection. While
there are many useful insights to be gained from diaries and
self-reports, they cannot capture the moment to moment processes of
teaching. Many things happen simultaneously in a classroom, and
some aspects of a lesson cannot be recalled. It would be of little
value for example, to attempt to recall the proportion of Yes-No
Questions to WH-Questions a teacher used during a lesson, or to
estimate the degree to which teacher time was shared among higher
and lower ability students. Many significant classroom events may
not have been observed by the teacher, let alone remembered, hence
the need to supplement diaries or self-reports with recordings of
actual lessons.
At its simplest, a tape recorder is located in a place where it
can capture the exchanges which take place during a lesson. With
the microphone placed on the teachers table, much of the teachers
language can be recorded as well as the exchanges of many of the
students in the class. Pak (1985) recommends recording for a one or
two week period and then randomly selecting a cassette for closer
analysis. This recording could be used as the basis for an initial
assessment. Where video facilities are available in a school, the
teacher can request to have a lesson recorded, or with access to
video equipment, students themselves can be assigned this
responsibility. A 30 minute recording usually provides more than
sufficient data for analysis. The goal is to capture as much of the
interaction of the class as possible, both teacher to class and
student to student. Once the initial novelty wears off, both
students and teacher accept the presence of the technician with the
camera, and the class proceeds with minimum disruption.
Conclusions A reflective approach to teaching involves changes
in the way we usually perceive teaching and our role in the process
of teaching. As the examples above illustrate, teachers who explore
their own teaching through critical reflection develop changes in
attitudes and awareness which they believe can benefit their
professional growth as teachers, as well as improve the kind of
support they provide their students. Like other forms of
self-inquiry, reflective teaching is not without its risks, since
journal writing, self-reporting or making recordings of lessons can
be time-consuming. However teachers engaged in reflective analysis
of their own teaching report that it is a valuable tool for
self-evaluation and professional growth. Reflective teaching
suggests that experience alone is insufficient for professional
growth, but that experience coupled with reflection can be a
powerful impetus for teacher development.
References Bailey, K.M. 1990. The use of diary studies in
teacher education programmes. In J.C. Richards and D. Nunan (Eds),
Second Language Teacher Education (pp. 215-226). New York:
Cambridge University Press
Bartlett, Leo. 1990. Teacher development through reflective
teaching. In J.C. Richards and D. Nunan (Eds), Second Language
Teacher Education (pp. 2002-214). New York: Cambridge University
Press
Bond, D.R. Keogh and D. Walker (Eds). 1985. Reflection: Turning
Experience into Learning. London: Kogan Page.
Brock, Mark N., Bartholomew Yu and Matilda Wong. 1991.
Journaling together; collaborative diary-keeping and teacher
development. Paper presented at the International Conference on
Second Language Teacher Education, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong,
April 1991.
Pak, J. 1985. Find Out How You Teach. Adelaide, Australia:
National Curriculum Resource Centre
Powell, J.P. 1985. Autobiographical learning. In Boud, et al.
(pp. 41-51).
Richards, Jack C. 1990. The teacher as self-observer. In Jack C.
Richards, The Language Teaching Matrix. New York: Cambridge
University Press (pp. 118-143)
Richards, Jack C. and Charles Lockhart 1991. Teacher development
through peer observation. In press. TESOL Journal.
Schn, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals
Think in Action. Temple Smith
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The Teacher Trainer Back Articles Saved from:
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At the IATEFL Conference, Edinburgh 1988, I had the chance to
talk to two trainers from afar. Ephraim Weinbraub told me of his
work with
teacher memories and Jane Revell about her work on video
materials for teaching English through other subjects such as Maths
and Biology.
Trainer Talks
A talk with Ephraim Weintraub, Teacher Trainer at the Hebrew
University, Jerusalem
After Ephraims workshop The ghosts behind the blackboard we had
a chat over coffee. These are some of the things Ephraim said:
I see the teacher as rather a lonely person, stranded on the
island of the classroom, cut off from colleagues by walls and
corridors and from the students by desks and blackboards. The
teacher is subject to pressures and demands of all sorts. To finish
the syllabus, to get exam successes, to keep the classroom orderly,
to help pupils gain jobs, to be both controlling and understanding.
I have an image of the teacher as a tight-rope walker or a
juggler.
Teachers are other-person oriented and tend to forget
themselves. They are often under stress, burnt out. There is a
great necessity for teachers to face themselves. If they dont, they
cant face others. They have to have a dialogue with themselves
before they can converse with their pupils. But there is a great
reluctance in teachers to do this, to face the stress.
In my work in Jerusalem, I take 3rd year B.A. Postgraduate
students on a TEFL teacher training programme, and teach English 8
hours a week in a High School. I train teachers at the Hebrew
University too and Im a teacher-counsellor for teachers and
students in any subject area. So I see most sides!
Sometimes I ask people how many teachers they have had in their
lives. The answers range from I cant remember to 75 to one too
many. I ask people to write down their memories of positive
experiences and negative experiences as students and to share them
in groups. Most people have strong residual memories and if you
classify the memories they share, you find that the clusters of
characteristics around good teachers are:-
1. The teacher as expert who dazzles the pupils with
knowledge.
2. The teacher as parent, warm and accepting.
3. The teacher as a peer or fellow adult.
These characteristics reflect our underlying desires as
teachers.
The characteristics clustering around the black ghosts or bad
teachers memories are:-
1. The teacher as attacker, punisher, aggressor, or even
2. The teacher as sadist.
3. The teacher as incompetent or just no good!
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Once teachers or students have shared their memories and
discussed them, they realise that there is both a good and bad
teacher in all of us, and that its okay to feel anger inside but
how we channel it is a matter of moral responsibility.
What is essential is that we integrate our memories, our
experiences into our initial or pre-service training so that the
ghosts of teachers past are acknowledged and faced. Teaching
technique is not unimportant but it is empty unless the ghosts have
been dealt with. Once each individuals good and bad ghosts have
been identified they can then be referred to by peers or the
trainer throughout the course. Lets suppose someone has a bad ghost
called Mr. Barnaby and a good one called Miss Martin. As the
teacher with these ghosts goes through the course, the group can
say That sounds like something your Mr. Barnaby would say/do! or
How would Miss Martin have dealt with that? or That reminds me of
Miss Martin! In this way, the past can be referred to in a
non-threatening way, in an evolutionary way. People can move
on.
A Talk with Jane Revell, Author and Teacher Trainer in the
Canary Islands (at the time of interview)
I asked Jane about her recent work in teaching English through
another subject, i.e. teaching, say, photography or crafts or
geography in English to non-native speakers wanting to learn
English.
Ive recently been involved in compiling a video made up of
authentic TV sequences. Its for 11-14 year olds learning English.
Its not a normal scripted EFL video, although I did work to a
structural syllabus. Rather Ive found educational programmes on
Science, Geography and other subjects. These programmes were made
for native English speakers. They are good quality TV, with good
content in English. Ive then screened it for linguistic
constraints. So, for example, Ive found some footage for the
Present Simple in sequences such as Why do elephants have trunks?
and How do you cool a cuppa in the quickest way? Once Id sorted
though the TV programmes to find good films with interesting
content within the linguistic constraints I had, I took it to some
native speaker teachers to see how they felt they could use it.
The teachers came up with two main questions:-
1. How can I use the video when the pupils dont know the subject
content, let alone the English?
2. How can I use the video when I dont know the subject content
myself?
I would answer the first question by saying that pupils often
know more than teachers about elephants or tea or whatever so they
can be the knowers for a change. Secondly, its quite okay for
people not to know the content. If you watch the video, then youll
know. Its a good reason for both teachers and students to watch the
video! You can learn things!
Its interesting that native English speakers reacted this way.
Perhaps it is the case that native-speaking language teachers go
into E.F.L. because its content-secure. They have a natural
competence in the language that gives them security. If asked to
branch out into new content areas like Maths or Geography or
Science, they may feel insecure in the subject. On the other hand
maybe some native-speaking teachers will feel the need for more
content, for something more to get their teeth into since the
language itself need not present them with challenge. These
teachers may welcome English through content subjects warmly.
Either way, I see some possible solutions for teachers who are
native speakers:-
Teachers can do research themselves into the new content.
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Teachers can be trained in the new content. Teachers and
students can join together in joint discovery via the material
But for non-native teachers, already struggling with the
language they are trying to teach, and often working with large
classes of unmotivated students, we cant really ask more of them.
Perhaps the solution here is to have inter-disciplinary,
cross-curriculum contact. One foreign language teacher could
team-teach with one content teacher and they can teach the language
and the subject together. Alternatively, the foreign language
teacher could teach some of the content subject but then have a
chance to ask questions to the subject teacher later. Of course
this is not a new idea in itself. Primary School teachers (such as
the ones shown in the Old British Council Teaching Observed videos)
have been doing this for years. It does raise some very interesting
issues however, such as, can the publishers provide suitable
material for this sort of venture, for example? We cant train EFL
teachers to know 20 different other subjects so our choices are
to
a) help them accept their own insecurity in the other subject
areas b) help them to team-teach with subject teachers c) run
cross-curricular teacher training courses. Ideas would be given out
and then everyone
would work out the ramifications of the ideas for their subject
area. Discussion would follow on both the content and language
details implied.
d) run teacher training courses where the higher order cognitive
skills that cut across language and subject skills, are taught.
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Here is another article from our very popular series:
People who Train People All the facts in the article were true
at the time of writing but of course may have changed slightly over
the last ten years.
Penny Aeberhard runs a medical general practice with two other
doctors in Stoke Poges, England. She has been a doctor for 30
years
and regularly trains apprentices.
Training for general practice
by Penny Aeberhard
General Background Medical school training in the U.K. is
changing slowly. Over the last two decades departments of General
Practice have been set up in Universities and there are now even a
couple of professors of General Practice. There is a greater
interest in psychology and behavioural sciences. But it is still
quite possible for a newly qualified doctor to have only had two
weeks experience in practice out of five years of undergraduate
study. Most of those five years, focus on medicine as a science:
strings of cause and effect, symptoms and signs, laboratory tests
and prescriptive medication the basis of hospital medicine.
However, back in 1966, when the Charter of General Practice was
produced, it was recognised that a good General Practitioner (GP)
needed more than that. At that time General Practice was in the
doldrums. Professional respect and job satisfaction was very low.
Emigration of doctors peaked at this time too. But the Charter was
a turning point and succeeded not just in encouraging good practice
but also in winning professional respect over a time so that now
the majority of newly qualified doctors aim to enter General
Practice. Back in the 1960s too, Balint, a psychoanalyst at the
Tavistock Clinic and his group of GPs were starting to analyse the
doctor-patient relationship. This analysis continues to this
day.
From the time of the Charter, the existing training scheme for
GPs was expanded until in 1981 it became compulsory, by law, that
all new GP principals*(1) had to have undergone, after initial
qualification and one year preno -Lregistration work, three years
of approved further experience. This is two years in hospital in
four approved specialities such as paediatrics, psychiatry,
gynaecology or geriatrics, plus one year in one or two approved
practices. The scheme is overseen by a board of certification. At
present, at any one time, there are around 2,000 trainee GPs in
their General Practice year. They are organized into districts and
regions to facilitate the group meetings and discussions that occur
half to one day a week. For the rest of the time they work as an
apprentice under their approved trainer.
The Selection of Trainers Trainers do not as yet have a
nationally agreed approval board. In all areas, however, the
applicant, an experienced general practitioner, has to provide
evidence of some ability to teach, and to have a high standard of
patient care and good consultation skills, bedside manner, if you
like. In the Oxford region this selection is rigorous and three
visiting doctors will spend a whole day interviewing nurses and
receptionists who work in the practice; scrutinizing the patient
notes that have to reflect a high standard of care and
organisation; and, furthermore, assessing the trainers suitability
of attitudes and skills. The latter is done by discussion and
analysis of a videoed consultation. Trainers are now well respected
members of the profession. They no longer use trainees as just an
extra pair of hands in a busy practice but give thorough
teaching.
What is a Good GP? To select trainers, academic boards have had
to start to define what they think good General Practice is.
Quality in practice is a big debating point now and there are
attempts to define too, exactly what a
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trainer is trying to give to a trainee. The training year is not
cheap, as a trainee doctor is paid the salary of her/his last post
by the training practice and yet the training practice is only paid
2,400 p.a. Of course patients in the lucky practice get a good
deal, but the practice and the profession must justify the
expenditure.
What are these criteria at the present time, then, and how are
they being taught? Criteria for a good GP and curriculum for a
trainee are one and the same.
Some years ago, vast curriculum checklists were produced of
clinical illnesses, emergencies and procedures. Trainer and trainee
would try and collect cases to discuss at their two-hour tutorial.
But it was clear that GPs were just emulating hospital doctors and
trying to compete and be specialists in everything. It is not ever
possible to see more than a sample of conditions in a year. The
idea was bound to fail. But what is important for a generalist is
to learn that the management of a chronic illness can be similar
whether it is diabetes or arthritis. To be able to recognize that
there are medical and social aspects to these diseases is what
counts as well as the long term responsibility to these patients.
In practice one sees illness in early, unformed stages. In hospital
the disease process has crystallized into a more definitive
diagnosis. GPs have to learn at times when to be patient and wait,
for so much illness gets better spontaneously, and to tolerate
their own anxiety because over diagnosis and treatment are not
appreciated by patients. There are times, of course, when action
has to be prompt and accurate to be safe. A trainee has to gain
this discrimination by experience. A fruitful source of learning
here is the discussion, often after a long day, of the trainers
surgery*(2). Alternatively the trainee can sit in on the trainers
surgery or vice-versa or the two of them can share a surgery. This
sharing of patient care means a greater spectrum of illnesses can
be covered.
Can you teach Communication skills? Acknowledging, then, that
lists of diseases are not necessarily the best curriculum, what
should be covered? Back to the idea of what is good General
Practice. Communication has to be an important skill, until
recently undervalued by the profession but instantly recognized by
patients. How is it to be taught? Is it possible to teach a good
bedside manner or is it simply intuitive? Analysis of consultation
by different techniques, e.g., Balint-type discussion; listening to
tape recordings; interviewing patients before and after seeing the
doctor have all been used so that we now understand the processes
better than ever. Psychologists have helped us analyse non-verbal
and bodily communication too. One of the tools used in General
Practice is now the frequent use of a video camera in consultations
(with the patients permission). Trainer and trainee can then look
at different aspects of communication and different styles. One ten
minute consultation can be viewed and then ensuing discussion can
take an hour. An example here is observation of behaviour used by a
GP to attempt to end a consultation, e.g., dropping of eye contact,
pulling back from desk, writing out prescriptions, shuffling
papers, standing up or helping the patient on with their coat.
Trainees can be made aware of abrupt or rude behaviour. Though
intuitive for some, good consultations can be taught and even the
good can be bettered.
Another aspect in the curriculum for good practice is liaison
with, and respect for, other professionals (such as district nurses
and health visitors) working in the Primary Health Care Team.
The opportunity to accompany others in their jobs, and,
hopefully, seeing a good team meeting and working together is the
best education, and will lead to effective communication within a
group.
Management Skills General practitioners are independent
contractors to the Health Service and therefore the business
administration side must also be covered in training. Patients
appreciate efficient and kind receptionists, a good appointment
system and pleasant, warm reception areas. The jungle of claim
forms and regulations must mean that by the end of the year the
trainee doctor should at least be equipped with a machete and
map!
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3
Some of this can best be taught by a traditional lecturing
format in the Day Release scheme with others, but for the
information to be meaningful, the trainee should be present at the
partners business meetings, meet the accountant and understand for
example how sick pay is calculated when a receptionist is ill.
One to One Training Methods We are aware of how in a one-to-one
situation we should be able to offer a training flexible enough to
take into consideration the trainees own perceived needs as well as
the professions thoughts on what is good. Formal assessments are
needed therefore to plan the individual curriculum, as well as to
assess progress and avoid collusion between trainer and trainee to
miss out a boring or weak area. Assessments in General Practice
training have developed, not just through the professionals skills,
but have also been gleaned from psychologists working in businesses
and hospitals, and from the wider teaching profession.
Teaching assessments often go hand in hand, for instance, with
video analysis. To make the best out of video viewing and
discussion there are now many tools available. One example is the
map, a form filled in while watching the video. If the video is of
a GP/patient consultation for example the viewer can jot down notes
under headings such as Patients concerns. Patients expectations.
Involvement of patient in manage