Student expectations have increasingly become a focus in Second Language Acquisition research. This study takes a closer look at student teachers' expectations in a Master of Arts TESOL program at an ...Australian university to investigate their expectations and sense of fulfillment of these expectations. We employed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design and conducted a questionnaire (N?=?31) and interviews (N?=?6) with student teachers. The results show that student teachers expect a well-balanced curriculum of theory and practice and consider teaching practice their top priority. While the expectations of most TESOL student teachers are met, different language profiles can lead to different expectations and potential conflict. Contrary to most previous research, this study showed that unmet expectations do not necessarily lead to unfavorable outcomes because of the student teachers' ability to adjust in various ways. The study concludes with a discussion of implications for practice and future research.
This paper reports on a study aiming to unravel the challenges that Indonesian novice teachers of English have to cope with, in terms of lesson planning and implementation, classroom management, and ...professional development. It also inquires into the teachers’ pre-service teacher education experience and support system provided by the school, which might relate to their challenges. The study is a qualitative case study involving eleven English teachers of secondary schools (junior and senior high schools and vocational schools) in Malang areas who have less than five years of teaching experience. Data were collected through open-ended questionnaires followed up with semi-structured interviews as a means to clarify and elaborate what the respondents had written in the questionnaires. The study reveals various challenges faced by these novice teachers, including planning and implementing a lesson based on the 2013 Curriculum, designing and applying motivating learning strategies and assessment procedure that would be applicable to a class of students with a relatively low level of ability, and managing a big class. It concludes with some recommendations to bridge the gap between the pre-service and in-service teacher education and professional development.
Giving Voice to Novice Teacher-Researchers Nieto Cruz, María Claudia; Cárdenas Beltrán, Melba Libia
PROFILE issues in teachers' professional development,
07/2019, Letnik:
21, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
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.
Introducing English as a foreign language (FL) has become widespread in ECE in Europe, typified by initiatives involving specialist teachers of English visiting settings for short periods of time a ...week. This paper shares data from a study in Portugal that involved analyzing collaborative practices for evidence of approaches to integration in the FL. Taking a qualitative approach to data collection, four case-study settings are described resulting from visits and interviews with ECE practitioners and teachers of English. Data were analyzed following six core themes of collaboration. Findings indicate that successful FL initiatives depend upon administrative support and guidelines that foster collaborative practices which involve communication between professionals, mutual trust, common goals, and joint responsibility for outcomes and decision-making. Implications highlight the need for more robust policy-making and training which alerts ECE practitioners to their proactive role in early English initiatives and collaborative practices.
To write a linguistic autobiography is to explore and reflect on our lived experiences with language. The purpose of this research was to gain insight into students' language experiences through ...their linguistic autobiographies and to gain a greater understanding of their relationship with and thoughts on language within their social contexts. In this socio-cultural, qualitative, single-design case study, data were generated through the linguistic autobiographies of thirty-five pre-service teachers of English. Data were analysed using an inductive thematic approach and the results uncovered five main themes. The findings highlighted issues relating to language conflict and its possible impact on linguistic identity in different contexts. The emotional undertones associated with language revealed in the linguistic autobiographies were enlightening. The study postulates that knowing how pre-service teachers position themselves in relation to language and society could assist with adjusting pedagogic practices to accommodate the linguistic needs of all in the class.
In 2018 the Indonesian Ministry of Education established a teacher certification program via a blended learning platform in partnership with teacher colleges. The program engages teacher-participants ...in online learning, face-to-face workshops on a designated campus, classroom action research and teaching practices. This study aims at exploring the impact of the certification on the teachers’ use of English in their teaching. The researchers conducted a survey and a proficiency assessment of these English teachers. The ninety teachers of English in this study demonstrated various levels of English proficiency. Then the researchers selected these teachers based on their scores, interviewed them, and observed their teaching. This study found that teachers’ participation in the certification program brought about different levels of changes in their use of English. While the immediate impact of the certification program on the English teachers’ language use was not clearly evident, some teachers showed renewed commitment to use English after several months had passed. Results of this study have yielded implications that English teachers’ sufficient proficiency is not a given capital at the beginning of teacher service. Thus, a serious collaboration among English teacher colleges, the Ministry of Education, the school stakeholders, and the professional learning communities is required to drive teachers of English to engage in their professional development continuously.
Despite rising interests in the manifestations of second language (L2) interactional competence (IC) in online language learning activities (e.g., Balaman and Sert, 2017a, 2017b), participants' ...interactional practices for managing epistemic stances in online searches remains largely unexplored. This paper examines how an intermediate level learner of English jointly managed epistemics with a tutor in a text-and-voice teleconference session designed as a conversation-for-learning. The analysis focuses on web search sequences occasioned by emergent epistemic asymmetries in the ongoing talk, and how the participants leveraged resources to negotiate knowledge positions and display affiliation during online searches. Findings reveal that epistemic stance management is a prominent aspect of the IC involved in online search sequences. For example, during an online search, the tutee demonstrates his IC by citing and attributing responsibility to the source in response to epistemic primacy challenges. In the process, he also utilised affiliative resources such as laughter and a term of endearment to delicately manage disaffiliation. By focusing on the management of epistemic stances during online searches, this study informs the use of online searches in L2 learning activities to foster opportunities to perform stancetaking practices as part of the learner's IC.
At the implementation level of the national project ‘Teaching and Learning Foreign Language in the Public-Sector Educational System for the 2008–2020 Period’, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and ...Training (MOET) provided large-scale general English proficiency training for key English teachers and classroom English training for a pilot group of teachers. This research explores in-service teachers’ perceptions of the usefulness of the training and of the changes which occurred in their classrooms as a result of the training. The findings have shown that although in-service teachers across different levels of proficiency appreciate both sets of training, they found classroom English training more relevant and practical to their teaching context. The results of the study also suggest that in contexts with insufficient numbers of qualified foreign language teachers, high proficiency standards for teachers compared with their current level of proficiency, and limited support for in-service teachers to achieve and maintain the required proficiency, classroom English training can be considered as a strategic choice and hence, should be prioritized.
With the emergence of online tools in education, the search for the new models and approaches has gained importance. Flipped Classroom Model (FCM), in which online and face-to-face instructions are ...blended and the place of homework and classroom instruction is reversed, is one of the recent models. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions of pre-service teachers of English in Turkey context on FCM and an LMS platform, Google Classroom. The participants of this study were 58 pre-service teachers of English enrolled at a state-run university in Turkey. The findings revealed that the pre-service teachers’ perceptions on FCM were quite positive in terms of motivation, effectiveness, engagement and overall student satisfaction. It was also found that they believed that more time was required to prepare before the class, being prepared was something positive in terms of motivation, each learner had to chance to learn on his/her own pace and learning by doing was encouraged through more practice. As for the platform, Google Classroom was found to be user-friendly, particularly due to its features related to assignment submission and following deadlines. It was also observed that the participants were satisfied with the instructor’s attitude in online platform.
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