Power, ESL Teacher Candidates and Knowledge Base Construction

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Power, ESL Teacher Candidates and Knowledge Base
Construction

• Francis Bangou, PhD
• Douglas Fleming, PhD
• Universite d'Ottawa/ University of
  Ottawa/Faculte d'education/ Faculty of
  Education/
• ACLA 2010

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Purpose

• To analyze teacher candidates knowledge base
  construction related to 1) ESL teaching and
  learning theories 2) English Language Learners
  (ELL) and 3) Teaching ESL.
• To analyze the contributions of a blog to the
  construction of such knowledge base

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Second Language Teachers Knowledge Base (SLTKB)

• Traditionally based on
• applied linguistics
• methodology
• second language acquisition theories

• According to Freeman Johnson (1998)
• socially constructed
• should be centered on the teacher, the context,
  and the pedagogy

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Blogs

• Easily accessible and free
• Enable one to post and respond to messages on the
  web
• Promote reflective social as well as individual
  learning (Lin Yuang, 2006)
• Transfer in-class activities outside of the
  classroom (Kuzu, 2007).

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Setting the Stage

• An optional methodology course in ESL
  (3.5hrs/week for 5 weeks).
• Four blog entries (100 words) and four comments
  (50 words) that could be posted anytime during
  the session.
• As professors we did not contribute to the blog.
  

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Methodology

• 31 participants
• Blog postings and comments eight semi-structured
  interviews
• Discourse analysis (Johnstone, 2008)
• Patterns and unique experiences

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Facilitation of the reflective process

• It was fun - Yeah that was fun.
• Awareness of colleagues opinions - It just made
  me more aware of what other people were
  thinking.
• Safe space no live audience no instructor -
  Theres no instructor at the front of the
  classroom whos guiding your discussion

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• Time to process the information Within the blog
  postings people would write really thoughtful
  things and have the time to spell it out, the way
  they were thinking of it.

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Concern

• Ill be honest. It wasnt so beneficialYeah.
  And, and the reason is because the blog...there
  was an agenda for it. Like, the blog...you had
  to write something based on the readings or
  something like that. And then you were doing it
  because that was part of your mark. That
  was...so there was the motivation for doing it,
  itself . The other thing with the blog that I
  discovered was that it was really...it really was
  the same people over and over again to
  contribute. Like there was a few that I dont
  think ever did contribute, or that wouldnt
  really...wouldnt really post something that was
  more of a critical thinking type. It was more
  like, Oh yes. I agree with this. Not so much
  of questioning, ahh...you know, cause I think
  there were people who questioned about learning
  and uh-m, what do you mean...they would say like,
  What do you mean by this?

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Question

• How committed were the teacher candidates if they
  approached this exercise mostly as another
  assignment that they had to complete?

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Surviving the program

• Time management strategies - I think what
  happened was a lot of people ended up saving
  their blogs for the very end so that last week
  they really hammered out, you know, four or five
  blogs, or whatever the required amount was.
• Relying on what was written in the syllabus
• Paraphrasing the content of the course we need
  to provide support for them within the
  pedagogical context of the classrooms.

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Power relations

• As instructors, the fact that we did not
  participate in the blog discussion did not remove
  the power relations at work in the context of the
  program.

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Recommendations

• All the expectations and instructions should be
  clearly written on the syllabus and consistently
  applied
• Make it mandatory to post an entry and a comment
  every week.
• Provide explicit guidance
• Be a model

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References

• Freeman, D, Johnson, K. (1998).
  Reconceptualizing the knowledge-base of language
  teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 32(3),
  397-416.
• Johnstone, B. (2008). Discourse analysis.
  Blackwell Publishing
• Kuzu, A. (2007). Views of pre-service teachers on
  blog use for instruction and social interaction.
  Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education,
  8(2), 34-51.
• Lin, H.T. Yuan S.M. (2006). Taking blogs as a
  platform of learning reflective journal. ICWL,
  38-47