REFLECTIVE PRACTICE FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS ENHANCING TEACHING PRACTICE

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS ENHANCING TEACHING PRACTICE BY STUDYING THE TEACHING MIND Chiara Bruzzano, School of Education, University of Leeds @chiara_bruzzano / edcb@leeds. ac. uk

Starting point: how can language teachers learn to be “good” teachers? Can’t we just teach them?

TWO LEARNING CONTEXTS Conventional Unconventional the language classroom the language teaching mind

Educational context: secondary state school Materials: textbooks, syllabi, whiteboards Object: foreign language THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM Stakeholders: teachers, learners, parents Purpose: general or specific

BELIEF S LANGUAGE TEACHING MIND CLASSROOM PRACTICE CONTEXTUAL FACTORS KNOWLEDGE (Borg, 2006)

THE LANGUAGE TEACHING MIND 1950 s: Behaviourism – teachers as enactors of prescriptions 1960 s: Cognitive psychology – teachers as active decisionmakers 1990 s: Post-method era – teachers choose in principled eclecticism Burns, Freeman and Edwards 2015

. . SO WHY DO TEACHERS DO WHAT THEY DO? Knowledge Beliefs

LANGUAGE TEACHER KNOWLEDGE DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE • Proficient use of language • Skilled analysis of language / knowledge of support disciplines (e. g. phonology, syntax) • Experienced intercultural use of language PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE • Pedagogical knowledge: environment of teaching, stakeholders, classroom management, decisionmaking • Pedagogical content knowledge: knowledge of how to organise, represent and adapt aspects of subject matter for successful instruction (Liddicoat, 2006)

LANGUAGE TEACHER BELIEFS “A proposition which may be consciously or unconsciously held, is evaluative in that it is accepted as true by the individual, and is therefore imbued with emotive commitment; further, it serves as a guide to thought and behaviour” (Borg 2001, p. 186) “Grammar is all the students want” “The American accent is the most difficult one for my students” “Students don’t need to understand every single word to understand a spoken text” Where do they come from & what are their effects?

ROOTS OF LANGUAGE TEACHER BELIEFS • Language learning experience • Life experiences • Accumulated teaching experience (e. g. “what works” with learners) • Apprenticeship (and anti-apprenticeship!) of observation • Perceptions of learners’ beliefs

LEARNERS AND TEACHERS – MUTUAL INFLUENCE shape learners’ understanding and conceptions of language learning Learners Teachers Explicit teaching of grammar Listening in English = a way to learn vocabulary influence teachers’ decisions: teachers may subordinate their beliefs to learners’ preferences

EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE TEACHER BELIEFS • Beliefs… • are predictors of behaviour, more than knowledge • can be unconsciously held, but still influence practice • can be influenced by accumulated experience • can outweigh effects of teacher education programmes (Phipps and Borg, 2009)

IMPLICATIONS Research Teacher education

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH • the “conventional” classroom context comprises learners and teachers as purposeful, dynamic, interpretive and social beings who influence each other • teachers’ actions are influenced by a variety of factors, both cognitive (the “unconventional” context of the teaching mind) and contextual • educational research should ultimately lead to improvements in teaching practice Need for a holistic and sociocultural view of the classroom accounting for teachers, learners and contextual factors

IMPLICATIONS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION Before and during teacher education courses, teacher beliefs ought to be elicited and critically discussed, otherwise. . Teachers may be given input on teacher education programmes Teachers’ beliefs act as a filter to their understanding of the input Teachers may only implement input superficially (behavioural change ≠ cognitive change!) “English is used as a lingua franca, so learners need to be exposed to different English varieties including “non-native” ones” Teacher mind: “Inner circle varieties (American, British, Etc) are the right models for pronunciation” Teacher’s behaviour: possibly introduce some “non-native” materials for a limited time

How can language teachers learn to be “good” teachers? How can classroom practices be captured to enable teachers to. . • make sense of their own beliefs, knowledge and practices about what constitutes good teaching, • acknowledge and validate what they are learning Leong, I. Y. C. and M. H. Abdullah • achieve a deeper understanding of their own (2017)

Practice Knowledge Beliefs REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

“A cognitive process [. . ] in which teachers systematically collect data about their practice and use the data to make informed decisions about their practice” (Farrell and Cirocki 2017, p. 6)

Reflection in action (present) Teacher journals Reflection on action (past) Reflection for action (future) Peer sharing Tools Video stimulated recall interviews Post-observation dialogue Blogging

Bloggin g

Video stimulated recall interviews Peer sharing A research project: Beliefs about listening in English as a Foreign Language of Italian secondary school teachers and learners Phase 1 • Learner questionnaires • Learner interviews • Teacher background interviews • Video-enhanced classroom observations • Teacher post-observation interviews Phases 2 & 3 • Video-enhanced classroom observations • Teacher stimulated recall interviews Phase 4 Peer sharing sessions

REFERENCES BORG, M. 2001. Key concepts in ELT. Teachers' beliefs. ELT Journal 55, 186 - 188. BORG, S. 2006. Teacher cognition and language education: research and practice, London, Continuum. BRUZZANO, C. (2018). WWW (What Went Wrong) ep. 1: features of connected speech [Blog]. Available at: http: //snippetsofelt. weebly. com. BURNS, A. , FREEMAN, D. & EDWARDS, E. 2015. Theorizing and Studying the Language-Teaching Mind: Mapping Research on Language Teacher Cognition. The Modern Language Journal, 99, 585 -601. FARRELL, T. S. C. & CIROCKI, A. 2017. Reflective practice for the professional development of TESOL practitioners. The European journal of applied linguists and TEFL, 6, 5 -24. LEONG, I. Y. C. and ABDULLAH, H. (2017). "Reflective practice in language teaching. " THE ENGLISH TEACHER 36: , 34 -46. LIDDICOAT, A. J. 2006. A review of the literature: professional knowledge and standards for language teaching. Babel, 40, 7 -22. PAJARES, M. F. 1992. Teachers Beliefs and Educational-Research - Cleaning up a Messy Construct. Review of Educational Research, 62, 307 -332. PHIPPS, S. & BORG, S. 2009. Exploring tensions between teachers’ grammar teaching beliefs and practices. System, 37, 380390. WALSH, S. and MANN, S. , 2015. Doing reflective practice: a data-led way forward. Elt Journal, 69(4), pp. 351 -362.

More on this at snippetsofelt. weebly. com @chiara_bruzzano edcb@leeds. ac. uk