Even though it is widely accepted that teacher identity is transformed as a result of teachers’ participation in a teacher community, little relevant research has been undertaken with pre-service ...teachers (Clarke, 2008). This narrative research aimed to investigate how student teachers constructed their teacher identity in an English teacher education program. By analyzing student teachers’ written and oral narratives, and their teaching practicum journals, we found that teacher identity construction involves an ongoing process and its development is constantly shifting as a result of teaching experiences and social interactions. Findings also showed that the construction of teacher identity started with some conflicts regarding teacher vocation, target language proficiency, and a misconception about the teacher education program, that student teachers faced in the process of learning to teach. Consequently, those conflicts began to be solved as they interacted with the teacher community and experienced the act of teaching. Finally, student teachers revealed how their conflicts were temporarily overcome, resulting in a new understanding of their teacher selves and recognizing new opportunities for their professional development.
A pesar de que es ampliamente aceptado que la identidad del docente se transforma como resultado de su participación en una comunidad docente, poca investigación se ha llevado a cabo con docentes en formación (Clarke, 2008). Esta investigación narrativa tuvo como objetivo comprender cómo los estudiantes-practicantes construyeron su identidad docente en un programa de licenciatura en inglés. Al analizar las narrativas escritas por los estudiantes-practicantes, sus narrativas orales y sus diarios de prácticas, encontramos que la construcción de identidad de los docentes implica un proceso continuo y su desarrollo está en constante cambio debido a las experiencias de enseñanza e interacciones sociales. Adicionalmente, los resultados mostraron que la construcción de la identidad docente comenzó con algunos conflictos respecto a la vocación docente, al dominio del idioma objeto de estudio, y a una idea equivocada sobre el programa de formación docente, que los estudiantes-practicantes enfrentaron al memento de aprender a enseñar. Consecuentemente, esos conflictos empezaron a resolverse cuando interactuaron con la comunidad de docentes y experimentaron el acto de enseñar. Finalmente, los estudiantes-practicantes evidenciaron cómo sus conflictos fueron temporalmente resueltos, construyendo una nueva comprensión de su identidad docente y reconociendo nuevas oportunidades para su subsecuente desarrollo profesional.
•Student teachers’ experiences evidence a social co-construction of teacher identity.•Introducing conflicts leads to a sequence that unveil teacher identity construction.•Understanding teacher identity construction through elements of a narrative.•Student teachers’ conflicts lead to new understandings of their teacher selves.
Abstract Classrooms at all levels of education are becoming more diverse, as they include more and more multilingual and multicultural students. Their teachers start understanding that, especially in ...foreign language classes, monolingual approaches to teaching and learning are not effective anymore, and search for other pedagogical techniques and practices that would involve their students’ linguistic repertoires as an asset in their classes. This study aimed to learn about the attitudes towards and experiences of the use of other languages in the English classroom by including the perspectives of English teachers and their Ukrainian students who, having fled their home country due to the war against Ukraine or having chosen to participate in student exchange, came to study at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. Two online questionnaires including open and closed ended questions were used to gather data. Thus, the study was both quantitative and qualitative. Even though several literature review sections in this article describe a switch from monolingual to a more holistic paradigm that includes translanguaging, this and other terms employed to describe the use of other languages were not introduced to the research participants. The English teachers’ and their Ukrainian students’ attitudes towards and experiences of the use of other languages in the English classroom are first looked at separately and then compared in the concluding section. The findings revealed that both Ukrainian students (58.3%) and teachers (84.2%) have experience of other languages being used in their English classroom. They also agree that translation into the language that students understand is used as a strategy helping the students to understand grammar and vocabulary, yet the students indicated gesturing as a strategy used to explain unknown vocabulary. Other strategies related to the use of other languages were also mentioned and described. The teachers and the students pointed out that Russian and Lithuanian were the most frequently employed other (than English) languages in their English classroom, even though the teachers believed they used mostly Russian, whereas the students believed their teachers mostly used Lithuanian.
Given the paradox between pervasive promotion of technology use in English teaching and lack of studies about teachers' technology acceptance in China, this study aims to examine intentions of ...English teachers in China to use technology in their classroom teaching. Based on the technology acceptance model, eight variables including perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU), attitude toward use, behavioral intention (BI), computer self-efficacy (CSE), technology complexity (TC), facilitating conditions (FC), and constructivist teaching beliefs (CTBs) were incorporated to examine relationships among these variables. Data were collected from 183 English teachers at 5 Chinese universities via a self-report questionnaire and analyzed using a structural equation model. Results indicated that the proposed model has a good fit. Three variables--PU, FC, and CTBs were found to be significant predictors of attitude toward use, while PEU and TC were not. Additionally, PU, CSE, and CTBs are significant antecedents for teachers' BIs to use technology. This study contributed to the understanding of technology acceptance theories by contextualizing the current study to Chinese educational context. It also provided valuable references for technology-related policy-making and teachers' professional development.
Profile was created as a forum to bring to the forefront the attempts of practitioners in doing action research. This was also an initiative promoted by scholars from different Anglo speaking ...contexts, in some cases, with different names and definitions—teacher research, exploratory action research, and exploratory practice, among others. All of them, in one way or another, highlight the fact that teacher education and educational policies confer importance to integrate research to the teaching profession.
Most of the world’s English language teachers speak English as a second or third language rather than as their first language. For many, their level of proficiency in English may not reach benchmarks ...established by their employers, raising the issue that is the focus of this article, namely, what kind of proficiency in English is necessary to be an effective teacher of English? The article seeks to provide an overview of how the role of language proficiency issue has been addressed in the ELT literature. It describes the kind of specialized language skills needed to teach English through English, explores the relationship between language proficiency and teaching ability, considers the impact of language ability on different dimensions of teaching, and raises the implications for language assessment and for the design of language enhancement programmes for language teachers.
The flipped classroom, a form of blended learning, is an emerging instructional strategy reversing a traditional lecture-based teaching model to improve the quality and efficiency of the teaching and ...learning process. The present article reports a study that focused on the implementation of the flipped approach in a higher education institution in Turkey. For this pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study, a classroom management course in a pre-service English teacher education program was flipped and its effectiveness was measured against a traditionally taught class. Quantitative and qualitative data came from 62 pre-service teachers (PTs) in two intact classes randomly assigned as the experimental and the control groups. Findings revealed a higher level of self-efficacy beliefs and better learning outcomes for the experimental group PTs in the flipped classroom compared to the control group PTs in the traditional classroom. PTs' perceptions of the flipped classroom were also positive.
Bu çalışma, İngilizce öğretmeni adaylarının ve İngilizce öğretmeni eğiticilerinin 21. yüzyıl becerileri farkındalık düzeylerini ve katılımcıların 21. yüzyıl becerileri farkındalıklarına ilişkin ...algılarını incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Çalışma karma yöntem araştırma deseninde, 2022-2023 eğitim-öğretim yılında Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi İngiliz Dili Eğitimi bölümünde öğrenim gören 167 3. ve 4. sınıf İngilizce öğretmeni adayı ve Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi İngilizce Öğretmenliği bölümünde görev yapan 8 (tamamı) İngilizce öğretmeni eğiticisi ile yürütülmüştür. Çalışmanın nicel verilerini toplamak için “Öğretmen Adayları İçin 21. yüzyıl Becerileri Yeterlik Algıları Ölçeği”, çalışmanın nitel verilerini toplamak için yarı yapılandırılmış röportaj soruları kullanılmıştır. Röportajlar, amaç doğrultusunda seçilmiş 20 İngilizce öğretmeni adayı ve rastgele seçilmiş 4 İngilizce öğretmeni eğiticisi ile çevrimiçi olarak gerçekleştirilmiştir. Nicel veriler SPSS 26.0 paket programı kullanılarak, nitel veriler ise içerik analizi yöntemi kullanılarak analiz edilmiştir. Nicel sonuçlar, İngilizce öğretmen adaylarının ve İngilizce öğretmeni eğiticilerinin 21. yüzyıl becerileri farkındalık düzeylerinin orta düzeyde olduğunu göstermiştir. Nitel sonuçlar ise İngilizce öğretmen adaylarının 21. yüzyıl becerilerine sahip olmanın önemli olduğunu düşündüklerini, İngiliz Dili Eğitiminde en etkili becerinin iletişim olduğunu, kendilerini çoğunlukla yeterli gördüklerini ve kendilerini en çok sosyal ortamlarda geliştirdiklerini; İngilizce öğretmeni eğiticilerinin ise 21. yüzyıl becerilerine sahip olmanın önemli olduğunu düşündüklerini, İngiliz Dili Eğitiminde en etkili becerinin eleştirel düşünme olduğunu, yarısının kendisini yeterli görürken diğer yarısının geliştirmeye ihtiyaç duyduğunu ve kendilerini en çok mesleki eğitimlere katılarak ve okuyarak geliştirdiklerini göstermiştir.
This study aims to investigate prospective teachers of English’ (PTE) and teacher trainers of English’ (TTE) 21st century skills awareness levels, and to examine participants’ perceptions on their 21st century skills awareness. It was carried out in a mixed method research design, and it was conducted with 167 3rd and 4th-grade PTEs studying at Necmettin Erbakan University Department of English Language Teaching (ELT) in the 2022-2023 academic year, and 8 (all) TTEs working at Necmettin Erbakan University Department of ELT. ‘21st Century Skills Efficiency Perceptions Scale for Teacher Candidates’ was used to collect the quantitative data and a semi-structured interview was used to collect the qualitative data of this research study. Interviews were conducted online with 20 purposefully selected prospective teachers of English and 4 randomly selected teacher trainers of English. The quantitative data were analysed using the SPSS 26.0 package program while the qualitative data were analysed using the content analysis method. Quantitative results showed that the 21st century skills awareness levels of PTEs and TTEs were moderate. The qualitative results showed that the PTEs think having 21st century skills is important, the most effective skill in ELT is communication, they mostly consider themselves sufficient, and they improve themselves mostly in social environments. Besides, TTEs think having 21st century skills is important, the most effective skill in ELT is critical thinking, half of them consider themselves sufficient while the other half consider themselves in need of improvement, and they improve themselves mostly by attending vocational training and reading.
Research on first language (L1) attrition typically focuses on immigrant populations in their second language (L2) environment, yet we know comparably little about L1 attrition in the L1 setting. ...This study used two lexical tasks to test L1 attrition, a time-sensitive word decision task and a video retelling. Chinese teachers of English vs. Chinese teachers of other subjects (
N
= 25/group) were recruited at a secondary school in China. The aim was to provide an exploratory basis of the L2 influence on L1 lexical attrition in the L1 environment, both on the level of lexical comprehension and production. Mixed-effects models were used to analyse multiple measures including response accuracy and reaction times in comprehension, and lexical diversity, density, sophistication, and accuracy in production. The results showed Chinese teachers’ L1 lexical attrition in the form of longer response times to high-frequency Chinese words compared to non-English Chinese teachers, and the use of significantly fewer sophisticated words in their retellings. Also, teachers of English were faster and more accurate in decisions about Chinese borrowings from English, suggesting L2-driven influence on their mental lexicon. Considering participants’ background information, analyses showed that increased L2 exposure and frequency of use can predict L1 lexical attrition.
This article is the general presentation of the project “English for the Community” set up by British Council Romania in partnership with the Romanian American Foundation (RAF), and which has as ...target group about 150 teachers of English as a foreign language in nine counties in Romania, who teach in schools located in villages or small towns. The first stage of the project took place from 2018 to 2020, and a second stage began in March 2021, and it will last until 2023. There are presented details related to the general aim of the project: to provide professional development for the Romanian EFL teachers who teach in lower and upper secondary schools located in areas which have potential to develop ecotourism. The article includes information about the way in which the project has been organized from the beginning up to now, the areas where it takes place, how it has been developing, which steps have been taken, and the impact it has not only on the members of the target group, but on the whole community as well. A special focus is on Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs), an innovative method for Romania, in the benefit of the teachers directly involved in the project. All these are further illustrated by testimonials provided by the members of the target group, the trainers, and the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the program.
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