Reflexions on the go: Being an effective teacher in the era of technology (original) (raw)
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Training future language teachers to develop online tutors' competence through reflective analysis
This article sets out to identify key competencies which language tutors need to develop in order to manage synchronous online teaching. In order to aptly monitor interactions with distant learners, it is proposed that three types of regulation pertaining to socio-affective, pedagogical and multimedia aspects are required. On the one hand, this research aims at specifying these competencies and, on the other hand, it seeks to identify the relevance of reflective analysis for professional development. The context of this study is a teacher training programme for Masters Degree students in teaching French as a foreign language that provides trainees with the opportunity of teaching online to intermediate-level students of French from a North American university via a desktop videoconferencing platform. This programme first endeavours to put trainees in a professional situation by getting them to prepare and administer sessions in order to confront them with the specific challenges of synchronous online tutoring. Second, it seeks to help them to gain insight into their own activity by developing critical thinking towards their own practice. The data elicited for this research derive from the tutor trainees' interpretations of their own practice when confronted with the film of their own situated activity. The episodes chosen by the trainees to feed the self-confrontation process constitute significant units because by being told and commented upon, they elucidate how and to what extent competencies are built. Three discursive strategies have been identified and used to organise the content analysis of the data: description; expression of a difficulty; reflective review of the activity. The strategies used by trainees to verbalise their own activity can inform teacher educators about the constraints of the work situation and about the resources trainees need to deploy to face up to this unknown professional situation. Results indicate that trainees concentrate particularly on pedagogical aspects that distance and faulty technology have rendered complex. The encountered difficulties are equally distributed between a repertoire of competencies pertaining to language teaching and compe-tencies more directly linked with online teaching. Finally, this study has enabled us to assess the potential of self-confrontation for teacher practice and leads us to propose directions for improving this training device.
Glottodidactica. An International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2012
Although primarily intended for language teacher educators, this latest book by Julian Edge, offers an unforgettable and profound read for anybody interested in education. The author's aim is to explore "what a reflexive teacher educator might be" (p. 8) when reflexivity in teacher education is distinguished from yet still embedded in reflective practice. The structure of the book is very clear. It comprises a preface followed by ten chapters. Throughout the book Edge refers to two Greek myths (the Icarus myth and the Narcissus myth) and insights from two American pragmatist philosophers, John Dewey and Richard Rorty. Constituting a very original introduction, chapter 1 familiarizes the reader with the dialogically philosophical climate of the book. Here the author explains his understanding of terms encompassing dimensions of being in teacher education-Copying, Applying, Theorizing, Reflecting, and Acting (CATRA)-as well as dimensions of doing in teacher education-methodological, technical, theoretical, intellectual, and pragmatic, drawing on Rorty's metaphor of "final vocabulary" and assigning his own meaning to it. At the same time he explains the subtitle of the book-the imagery of "roots" and "wings" that regularly recurs in later chapters of the book. In chapter 2, "In Praise of Reflective Practice," Edge relies heavily on Schon's conception of "reflective practitioner" and presentation of three teacher education models. In this chapter, inspired by Boxer's categories of "framing" and "interpretation," he explains a teacher educator's styles of working: instructional, revelatory, emancipatory, and conjectural, along with the potential risks involved. Chapter 3, "In Search of Reflexivity," further explains the dimensions of reflexivity, expanding on its linguistic, psychological, philosophical, and ecological aspects, as well as elucidating four useful aspects of teacher education: internal relations, consistency, coherence, and continuity. A thought-provoking question in this chapter for a teacher educator might be not what knowledge people have acquired as a result of learning, but what they have become "in the sense that the person entering the next experience is no longer the one who entered the last" (p. 42). Likewise, the questions "What difference does it make to the teacher education that I offer that it is I who offer it?" and "What difference does offering this teacher education make to me as a teacher educator?" (p. 46)
Self-reflexivity – Transversal Competence in Teachers’ Training
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013
As self-reflecting human beings, we generate thoughts on our perceptions, ideas and emotions. The mechanism that coordinates our ability to take a meta-position towards ourselves and to pass to a meta-level of analysis of our own subjective experience is the self-reflective conscience. Its products are known to us as meta-cognition, meta-communication, meta-states, and so on. By the meta-levels model we can discover how our conscience works and we can train it methodically for productive and resourceful states.This conceptualization of the meta-levels uses the insights of Korzybski, Gregory Bateson and Michael Hall on the logical abstracting levels and offers a theoretical foundation for the conceptualization of "the states about states". It also allows us to draw a methodological approach for the training of teachers in building resourceful metastates in order to increase the efficiency of the educational process. A meta-state, in an operational definition, is a state of conscience "above" or "beyond", relative to any primary state of conscience. For example, the curiosity about curiosity (intense curiosity), the acceptance of confusion (as a gate to knowledge). This study aims to set a new methodological direction in training teachers, education at a meta-level, that points towards the cultivation of self-reflective conscience. This type of conscience will allow the teachers to be trained for accessing resourceful states for teaching their clients. From the standpoint of the developmental psychology, students are in full process of formal thinking building, a good time for cultivating post-formal thinking and building abstractions on the abstract things they emit or learn in the field of educational sciences. By training these skills, the teacher-to-be adds a cross-competence to the portfolio of skills, the self-reflective conscience that will facilitate flexible adaptation to the permanent changes of the inner system, his/her own personality and the external one, the educational system in permanent reform. Selection and peer review under the responsibility of Prof.
A Tool for Reflection in Language Teacher Training
2020
Students wishing to become teachers of languages in Malta are required to follow the Master in Teaching and Learning (MTL) course offered by the Faculty of Education of the University of Malta. The two-year full-time post graduate course, which enables graduates to teach at Secondary level, according to the language of specialisation chosen, combines theory and practice by means of a Field Placement in schools throughout the 2 years of the course. This comprises a period of observation sessions in schools held once weekly, during which, with the help of a Teacher Mentor, student teachers are expected to discuss the different practices observed, followed by a five-week block practicum period in each of the two years of the course, giving particular attention to preparation and planning, reflective practice, professional skills and professional development. The Field Placement goes hand in hand with the Themes in Education interdisciplinary programme with the aim of fostering reflecti...
2019
This paper reports on the first phase of an exploratory qualitative study carried out with in-service language teachers pursuing a graduate degree in Colombia. It aims at analyzing their practices, needs, and challenges, examined under two perspectives-the teacher as a learner and the teacher as a teacher. The study made use of interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires as the primary sources of data. Data analysis included a grounded theory approach and the use of coding, triangulation, and validation procedures. Results unveiled the difficulties that current in-service teachers have in different domains (cognitive, metacognitive, and linguistic), and also inform how the teaching challenges within their specific contexts influence their beliefs, practices, learning and teaching outcomes, and their professional growth. The study presents both theoretical and applied considerations to tackle the needs and challenges reported, aiming at offering a systematic analysis and approach for the endorsement of reflection, and thus, setting milestones for the enhancement of effective professional development for language teachers in educational communities such as in Colombia as well as overseas.
Learning to Teach for Next-Generation Education: A Careful Blend of Action and Reflection
2017
This chapter examines how pre-service teachers specializing in English Language Teaching (ELT) in secondary schools can learn to teach for Next-Generation Education by developing professional skills that are in line with today and tomorrow’s technology-mediated environments. To face this challenge, some specific CALL-based ELT training combining action and reflection has recently been introduced in the Education Department at Paris-Sorbonne University. In order to examine the specific CALL-based ELT training offered in light of the set objective, its theoretical underpinnings will first be considered. The design and content of a CALL-based ELT course and of an online tutoring module will then be studied. The pre-service teachers’ perception of this CALL-based ELT training will then be explored through the results of online surveys. Conclusions will be drawn from these results and future directions will be outlined.
Reflective Teaching and Language Teacher Education Programmes: A Milestone in Yemen and Saudi Arabia
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2014
A language teacher faces constantly diverse classroom situations; he tries to adopt appropriate theory of learning, approach, technology, and tools and aids to create understanding in context. In doing so, he draws upon his experience and peer-experience to resolve problems and issues through the process of reflection. He takes help of research results, and does research work, sources specialist literature or undergoes need-based trainingnot once but repeatedly to develop competence to cope with classroom situations and remove social or psychological barriers, more particularly in the case of second or foreign language teaching. In reflective practice, the teacher summons all his faculties, experiences and appropriate theory to practise in the classroom. A language-teacher observes his students' reactions and reflects on the results after responding to such learning behaviour of the students. Following the reflection, the teacher decides to adapt or modify the theory chosen earlier. A classroom is like a laboratory where a teacher relates teaching theory to teaching practice and observes the students' responses. This paper is an attempt to give focus to the importance of reflective teaching in general with special reference to Language Teacher Education Programmes in Yemen and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as check the teachers' awareness of reflective teaching. 50 teachers of English from both the countries were surveyed and interviewed for the purpose. Index Terms-reflective teaching, language teacher education, peer teaching/interaction, ICT tools, classroom problems, teacher-training I. INTRODUCTION Reflection means, to majority of the authorities/educationists, an active, persistent and careful consideration of beliefs or supposed form of knowledge. Language teaching is more than a subject; it is complex of traditions, culture, practices and, to a great extent, communication. Language can best be taught in situations and a social setting. Reflective teaching is the driving force to innovate for better learning solutions on the part of teachers. Modern generation is tech-savvy and open-minded, apart from being fully aware of rights as human beings and behaviorally interactive; the students do no longer form a dumb classinteraction and higher expectation from the teaching community is basic to education in a classroom setting, almost in all countries. A teacher has to be updated and communicative and given to openness-encouraging students to ask questions or raise queries to clear doubts. The following studies amply support this view: John Dewey"s research studies inspired at least four perspectives on "Reflection": (a) whether reflection refers to thinking about action or whether it also implies action (Gore & Zeichner, 1995); (b) whether reflection is relatively immediate and short-term, or an ongoing process that lasts for some time; (c) whether reflection is innately problem-centred or not. Calderhead (1989) and Schon (1987) are of the view that a problem represents lack of connection, missing life experience or meaning that must be addressed, supplied, and remediedthat reflection is analytical and seeks to form connections between known and new knowledge); (d) whether reflection is a process of "critical reflection" and is concerned with conscious inclusion in reflection of historical, cultural and political values and beliefs, in order to find solutions for practical problems. Reflection as a process has been given varied descriptions. Dewey has described a logical reflective process as beginning with a perceived conflict, defined by the parameters and context of a situation. Interpretations and inferences are made concerning the interacting variables, followed by a thorough analysis of all options in order to assign meaning to the situation. The final result is that a decision is made, and a solution and a plan of action follow. It thus, logically follows from the above-mentioned abstract thought that reflection is the essence of education. A reflective teacher considers the variables in the contexts, talks to the self (engages in intra-personal communication), considers the classroom situation, again in context, and discusses the problem or his doubts about adopting a new