Course No. 12-A:
English Language teaching
Roll No. : 28
Enrollment no.:
PG14101019
Prepared by: Vaishali
Hareshbhai Jasoliya
Submitted to: MAHARAJA
KRISHNAKUMARSINHJI BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
Introduction:
Second Language Teacher Education As Shifting Construct:
Second language (L2) teacher education
describes the field of professional activity through which individuals learn to
teach L2s. In terms commonly used in the field, these formal activities are
generally referred to as teacher training, while those that are under taken by
experienced teachers, primarily on a voluntary, individual basis, are referred
to as teacher development. The reader should understand that the term teacher
education refers to the sum of experiences and activities through which
individuals learn to be language teachers. Those learning to teach whether they
are new to the profession or experienced, whether in pre-or in-service
contexts-are referred to as teacher-learners.
The person of the teacher and the processes of learning to
teach have often been overshadowed. As the relative
emphasis has shifted the focus the content, the ‘second language’ to the person
of the ‘teacher’ to the process of learning or ‘education’, thus capturing the
evaluation in the concept of L2 teacher education in the field.
Definition the content and processes of teacher education presents a major set of issues.
- Understanding how people learn to teach
- The Multiple influences of teacher
- Past experiences
- They must enter and career paths they
| Linking the two, as must be done to achieve fully effective teacher education interventions, is a third critical area of work. | |||
The Gap between Teacher Education and Teacher Learning:
It is ironic that L2
teacher education has concerned itself very little with how people actually
learn to teach. Rather the focus has conventionally been on the subject matter
what teachers should know and a lesser degree on teaching methodology – how
they should teach it.
· Some have to do with the research paradigms
and methods that have been valued and used in producing our current knowledge.
· In the case of teacher education, these
paradigms….. raise to the study of teaching.
Other reasons have to do with
history.
(1)
Research-Driven,
as contrasted with
(2)
Practice-Driven,
knowledge to improve teaching performance.
Teacher
Education from knowledge Transmission to knowledge construction:
In general terms, however, it is fair to say that teacher education has
been predicated on the idea that knowledge about teaching and learning can be
transmitted though process of organized professional education to from
individuals as teachers. Teacher – learners then eventually develop their own
effective teaching behaviors over time in other classroom contexts during their
first years of teaching.
There are many problems with this knowledge – transmission view.
Principally, it depends on the transfer of knowledge and skills from the
teacher education programme to the classroom in order to improve teaching.
Since the 1980s, teacher education has moved from this view of knowledge
transmission to one of knowledge construction in which teacher – learners build
their own understandings of language teaching through their experience by
integrating theory, research and opinion with reflective study of their own
classroom practices.
Background and Research:
Effective classrooms were those in which teachers successfully applied
learned behaviors to condition their student’s mastery of language forms. Most teacher
preparation in language teaching concentrated on literature: little attention
was paid to classroom pedagogy. Thus, L2 teacher education was in many senses
an invisible undertaking, unframed by its own theory and undocumented by its
own research.
Here we find two ongoing debates in teacher education over the past two
decades.
(1). There has been the issue of how to study
the process itself and the context being learned through it, which has raised
issues of an appropriate variety in research paradigms, methodologies and what
is valued as formal knowledge.
(2). There has been the question of
participants and settings and how these influence or even shape what is tough
and learned in teacher education.
Understanding
Teaching as the Research base for
Teacher Education:
Research in teacher education has depended, with increasing
explicitness, on research on teaching. To put it simply: How you understand
teaching will shape how you educate others to do it. Process-product research,
which defined teaching as behaviors, clearly played a role in the improvement
of teaching, process-product research tended to generate abstract,
decontextualised findings which reduced teaching to quantifiable sets of
behaviors. In general, this research presents what teachers know about teaching
as largely socially constructed out of their experience as well as the settings
in which they work.
The clearest instance is the co-mingling of the terms
teacher training, teacher development and teacher education. In the case of L2
teacher education, content and process combine to create two broad strategies
for input: teacher training and teacher development. In teacher training the
content is generally defined externally and transmitted to the teacher-learner
thought various processes. In a teacher study group for example, the content
can be generated through reflection and discussion, or journal writing, or it
may be triggered by a reading or other external input.
There are several misconceptions that tend to surround these two
strategies. First, they are often presented as dichotomous and mutually
exclusive, which they are not. Both training and development depend on
information which is external to teacher-learners, which they then incorporate
through internal processes into their own thinking and practice. A second
misconception is that training and development are often couched in sequential terms.
Although it is true the training tends to be a pre-service strategy, while
development is more widely used in in-service context, most effective L2
teacher education programme blends the two. Finally, the nomenclature is not
strictly applied, so people may speak of being ‘teacher - trainers’ when in
fact as teacher educators they use both strategies.
‘What’
|
‘How’
|
‘to what effect’
|
Content
|
Process
|
Impact / outcome
|
·
Defind externally
|
·
Transmitting knowledge and skills
|
·
Externally assessed
|
·
Usually determined beforehand
|
·
Organizing access to new content
|
·
Bounded
|
· Providing access to
knowledge base
|
· Often drawing on
publicly demonstrated evidence
|
|
· External process of
presentation / articulation triggers
|
· Use leads to
usefulness
|
|
· Internal process of
incorporation
|
· Self - assessed
|
|
·
Usually generated through experience
|
·
Sense making, using articulated experience to construct
new understandings
|
·
Open – ended
|
· Determined by /in
relation to participants
|
· Often using self-
reported evidence
|
The Role of
Prior Knowledge: Before Formal Teacher Education Begins:
The role of teacher education then becomes one of reshaping existing
ideas rather than simply introducing new raw material. This view of prior
knowledge is and the forms it may take. Proposals have included such constructs
as personal practical knowledge, beliefs and values conceptions of teaching.
· The second issue then becomes a pedagogical
one: how to influence or reshape it. Here teacher education is struggling to reconceive
its educational processes so that they encompass and draw on what teacher –
learners may already know about teaching.
The challenge lies in helping teacher – learners to articulate their
prior knowledge, then in creating substantially meaningful events in their
teacher education that can transform that knowledge, and finally in supporting
the teacher – learners as they carry these fledgling new ideas into classroom
practice. To this end, programmes and courses need to muster both training and
development strategies effectively so, that teacher – learners can make sense
of what they already know and yet not be constrained by their prior values,
beliefs and conceptions of the work.
The Role of
Institutional Context: Teacher Education in Place:
Clearly teacher – learners ideas about teaching stem from their
experiences as students in the context of schools; similarly, their new
practices as teachers are also shaped by these institutional environments.
Classrooms, students and schools have been seen as settings in which teacher –
learners can implement what they are learning or have learned in formal teacher
education, in the context of in – service teacher education, the role of the
institution has been much more central. Thus, educating teachers, whether
pre-or in – service, must be seen within the context of schools and the social
process of schooling.
The Role of
Time: Teacher Education Over Time:
If schools as instructions provide teacher
education with a context in space, teacher-learner personal and professional
lives offer a similar context in and through time. This work pointed to
definite stages in the development of knowledge and practice which could inform
teacher education practices. In time between specific needs and broad
professional development, in place between the school and the teacher education
institution, and in knowledge between what teacher-learners believe and what
they should know will always be central in the provision of teacher education.
Conclusion:
Learning to teach is seen as a by-product of
three things.
1. Capable teacher learners and
2.
Capable
teacher educators
Thus, in a broad sense,
teacher education has depended largely
on training strategies to teach people how to do the work of teaching. At last
we can see that, we know that teacher education matters; the question is how,
and how to improve it.
Works Cited
Carter, Ronald. "Second Language
Teacher Education." Ronald Carter, David Nunan. The Cambridge Guide to
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Laguages. Cambridge, 2001.
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