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.
This study presents findings on the need for trauma-informed teaching to mitigate vicarious trauma transmission in English language learning (ELL) classrooms, generated from interpretations of 10 ...stakeholders' perspectives. In this study, stakeholders were either academics specializing in vicarious trauma or coordinators who oversee ELL programming. All participants are leaders in their organizations. Research began with a literature review to examine the potential for vicarious trauma of English language teachers in relation to the importance of integrating trauma-informed teaching that might benefit ELL teachers. This study was conducted qualitatively, taking on an interpretive-phenomenological methodology to reach a shared meaning of vicarious trauma's impact on ELL educators. Themes were identified in the data, and emergent ideas were analyzed against the literature about trauma-informed teaching. Relevant themes included stakeholder perspectives on the manifestation of trauma in the classroom, mitigation strategies, and teacher self-care. As an opportunity to understand the impact of teaching English to immigrant and refugee populations, we undertook a study to investigate the potential vicarious trauma of these teachers. Researchers present discussion based on these findings in relation to how a trauma-informed teaching model and classroom could be of importance to learners and teachers, and includes discussion around the organizational stakeholders in leadership positions that impact the ELL classroom. This research study identifies a gap as well as the need for further research about trauma-informed teaching practices for educators in ELL settings.
This paper presents a narrative inquiry study on agency development in student-teachers of an English language teacher program at a public university in the south of Colombia. Our goal was to ...understand how student-teachers develop agency when narratively inquiring their community by planning and conducting community-based pedagogy projects on issues they found pertinent to investigate. The data were gathered through semi-structured focus group interviews, individual journal entries, and video-recorded talks about their inquiries. As a conclusion, we acknowledge that certain social and narrative practices such as interacting within their inquiry groups, interacting with their communities, voicing their communities’ necessities, and acting upon the inquired necessities facilitated developing agency and contributed to rethinking their roles as transformative members of their communities.
In the era of modernization, people are very dependent on technology, Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education itself has important role in teaching and learning process. The purpose ...of this study was to investigate the kind of ICT used by the teachers, the utilization of ICT in learning process, the problems and solutions in teaching by using ICT, and the role of schools in assisting teachers to overcome the problems at vocational high schools in Sekayu. This study applied descriptive qualitative research design. The data were collected by using questionnaire, interview, observation, and document review. The participants of this study were the teachers of English, the vice-principal of facility and infrastructure, and the students. The findings of this study showed that the teachers of English at vocational high schools in Sekayu used hardware such as projector, laptop, speaker, headset, and smartphone, while software such as internet, dictionary application, e-book, Microsoft office, and browsing application. The teachers used discovery learning to utilize ICT in the syntax of the learning model. The main problem faced by the teacher was the unavailability of students personal ICT devices. The school also had the role to assist teachers in overcoming the problems. The conclusion was the teachers had applied ICT in the learning process however they did not fully apply ICT in each syntax of the learning model used.
Reconsideration of culture pedagogy, in terms of what culture refers to and whose culture dominates English language teaching is a prevalent issue in language teaching. Therefore, in this study, we ...conducted one-on-one interviews with 17 in-service teachers of English language at three private K-12 schools in a northwestern city of Turkey to examine their conceptualizations of culture and pedagogical orientations towards teaching culture. We analysed the data by using Jackson's seven facets of culture and Larzén-Östermark's classification of teachers' three orientations towards teaching culture. Our findings revealed "culture as learned" as the dominant facet and "cognitive orientation" as the dominant orientation towards teaching culture. However, when teaching culture in a private school, the teachers seemed to experience tensions between the goal of authenticity and the scripted curriculum from the selected textbooks. Few teachers reported parental pressure and resistance regarding the teaching of English culture. Our findings suggest implications for EFL teacher education.
This study aims to explore diverse functions of a discourse marker so used by Korean teachers of English as a foreign language. In pursuing the purpose, it describes the recurring patterns of the ...ways the so is employed in teacher-led classroom discourse. For the data collection, naturally-occurring English classes taught by six Korean teachers of English were audio- and video-recorded. The recorded data were transcribed verbatim and meticulously analyzed within the framework of Conversation Analysis. The results yield four different types of functions that the discourse marker so performs: 1) showing response, 2) consequence, 3) topic-shift, and 4) elaboration. The multiple realizations imply that the Korean teachers of English use the discourse marker so with a wide range of functional spectrum. Based on the present results, further discussion will be provided. KCI Citation Count: 2
Abstract-the role of technology as a catalyst for change and development has become irrefutable in various language learning settings. However, not all language teachers are mindful about using ...technology in their language teaching practices, owing to their lack of adequate digital competencies. The purpose of this research is to promote digital competencies and related components among the study participants. This investigation applies the Framework of Competency Profile for digital teachers. The results were obtained by quantitative analysis, using data collected from a sample of 151 language learners, all enrolled in BA English language programmes across 8 universities in Saudi Arabia. These learners are considered pre-service English language teachers, as they are near graduation. The findings demonstrated participants highest and lowest digital competences, leading the researcher to identify practical implications, particularly regarding how to conduct training to compensate for low competencies. The findings also revealed that there is no correlation between levels of study and digital competencies. There was also no influence of gender on digital competencies. From these findings, the researcher concluded that the identification of competencies is essential for instructors, educators, administrators, and policymakers, in order to design more effective and appropriate training programmes for teachers in each context. Finally, the findings provided realistic analysis of the components and sub-components related to digital competencies among the target audience.
The first years of teaching are often described as 'emotionally challenging' by English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in secondary schools in France because their professional identity and ...skills are still under construction. How, then, can novice teachers (NTs) be supported during this process? The present study focuses on 14 NTs (pre-service, Years 1 and 2 in-service teachers) who volunteered to be filmed in class and to take part in 'self-confrontation interviews'. These followed the iterative EmoDERE model where the NTs reviewed their video-recorded classroom practice, focusing on motion(s) felt during action, Description of action, Evaluation of action, Reflective search for alternatives, and Emotion(s) felt at the end of the interview. This article analyses how this model helped participants reflect on their practice through the prism of emotion (Plutchik 1980). It shows how reflexivity led them to reverse the valence of initial emotions, encouraged them to continue new cycles of reflection and allowed them to develop their growth competence, thus building their sense of self-efficacy. Limitations to this approach were seen in pre-service teachers' limited emotional granularity. The paper concludes with practical ideas for helping NTs build their emotional awareness and develop their professional reflexivity.
Although the notions of privilege and marginalization have become a common theme in research, the application of these concepts to extralocal teachers of English (ETEs; i.e., non-local, non-native, ...or native foreign English teachers who are not citizens of the national community in which they teach) in applied linguistics has been problematic. Much of this research has equated characteristics of marginalization with implicit bias and structural inequity, and privilege as immunity to such prejudice and discrimination, while other work has viewed these constructs as subjective feelings influencing foreign teacher identities. These problematic depictions of privilege and marginalization have resulted in a contradictory situation where an ETE may be simultaneously privileged and marginalized. Using an autoethnographic approach, this paper examines the first author’s experiences in developing their identity as a researcher while trying to critically resolve ethical dilemmas, potential criticisms, and feelings of academic inferiority and diffidence, which are seldom addressed in similar research undertakings. This article reports the learning journey of a developing researcher in creating a usable operationalization of the constructs of privilege and marginalization, with attention paid to the aspects of working contexts and social perceptions that emerged within the literature, and the influence of such factors on the self-image of ETEs in Thailand.
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