Course development
Models of provision
Recently qualified languages teachers’ contributions to your taught programme
The seminar consists of 3 parts, this is part 2.
Go to: Part 1 ¦ Part 2 ¦ Part 3
Part 2: Links to educational research
Faced with the task of assigning a session of the taught PGCE programme on complex assessment issues - monitoring and recording secondary pupil progress in languages – the University of Sheffield tutor team opted to invite a recently qualified former trainee to lead it, whilst providing a support framework for this guest tutor. This section will assert that this staffing decision was based soundly in theories relating to teacher effectiveness and learner needs.
Teacher effectiveness: pedagogy and the constitution of expertise
In considering these notions of teacher effectiveness and learner needs, the tutor team has demonstrated a willingness to engage with the notion of the ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’, a part of the educational lexicon attributable to Ernest Boyer (1990, 1997). He asserts that the notion of scholarship should extend beyond research, to its application, and ultimately to teaching. By implication, new approaches to ‘traditional’ practice are required.
Whilst positing a theory of “progressive” education based more on the learner’s need to be able to apply knowledge to situations, Dewey (1938) defined a ‘traditional’ model of education in which the teacher is the ‘transmitter’ of a defined body of knowledge based firmly in the past; formal qualification and longevity of experience in this model are simplistically equated with expertise, and therefore the ability to pass on knowledge. The Sheffield tutor team has, in replacing one of its own number with a relatively inexperienced school-teaching colleague, recognised that a more recent in-post experience may yield a rich vein of relevant knowledge. However, responsibility has not simply been handed over completely to the visiting ex-trainee; a supporting outline structure for the session has acknowledged the pedagogical expertise of the tutor team, and the ex-trainee’s more recent and detailed knowledge from the field of classroom practice, has been harnessed by this. Positive, end-of-year evaluation of the session by the student teacher cohort supports the claim that this combination has proved effective.
That the constitution of ‘expertise’ should be questioned and re-articulated by taught programme design and staffing is to acknowledge how rapidly the accepted base of any file of human knowledge evolves; in his seminar Grey Matters (1999), Winkley challenged teachers, who had trained perhaps only ten years previously, to reconsider their position on how children learn, in the light of massive advances in neurology.
That knowledge acquired from the field of practice requires the support of pedagogy to facilitate its communication is a current issue in the training of medical students: clinical teaching has undertaken to question the assumption that “expertise … will translate into effectiveness as a teacher” and that the identification of “important concepts and pedagogic principles, which, if known and understood by clinical practitioners, might enhance their teaching prowess and success” (McLeod, Steinert, Meagher & McLeod, 2003).
This interrogation of current practice and the quest to improve learning
experiences lie at the heart of teacher effectiveness. Herteis (2002) asked
conference participants to list the kinds of activities in which scholarly
teachers engage. Common themes amongst their responses, and identifiable
in the decisions relating to staffing and planning this Sheffield session,
are summarized here:
· are always willing to make changes in their practice;
· participate in program review and in instructional development opportunities;
· continuously evaluate their own teaching to check student outcomes
· are open and responsive to feedback from peers and students.
Gwenna
Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness
Learner needs: process, modelling, the affective aspect and ‘near-peer’ facilitation
The timing and topic of this University-based session on monitoring and recording pupil progress in languages can of course be judged to enhance its relevance in student teachers’ eyes when it comes to end-of-year evaluation; it is positioned deliberately and precisely in the programme, prior to a second school placement during which an extensive assessed curriculum assignment on assessment for, and of, learning is to be undertaken.
However, to elevate the importance of the ‘when’ and ‘what’ aspects might be to underestimate the significance of the ‘how’: the choice of the Sheffield tutor team to assign a recently qualified ex-trainee to lead this session addresses the idea that learner needs are also met by important aspects of process. Jerome Bruner asserts “ … Knowing is a process not a product.” (1966: 72).
Process is arguably more important than content in learning and especially in learning to teach. Students in Dewey’s ‘traditional’ model (1938) who are passive recipients of handed-down knowledge, never invited to question the status of either medium or content, and rely ultimately on the self-styled ‘expert’ teacher’s knowledge for their own learning, are unlikely to advance the human cause via their own teaching; modelling practice from which trainees might draw in their own teaching is at the heart of the intended learning outcomes. Bruner says “To instruct someone... is not a matter of getting him to commit results to mind. Rather, it is to teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the establishment of knowledge. (1966: 72)”
The outline structure of the session designed by the Sheffield tutor team conforms to aspects of the Nottingham PGCE tutor team’s “set of guiding principles” on process, based on its interpretation of the work of Bruner, Vygotsky, Piaget and Wood. The opportunities to listen to presentation, for discussion with their tutor and peers, for a ‘hands-on’ experience in working with exemplar materials combine to communicate that “Learning is an active process; … The process is as important …; Student teachers learn in collaborative, social situations; [they] learn equally from their peers and their tutors.” (Convery, 2006:4).
There is clear and proper emphasis here in this well-articulated course design on the affective aspect, this being as important in the field of adult as in child learning. However, the assigning of the tutor / lead role to the recently qualified ex-trainee is perhaps THE key element in addressing the learners’ emotional needs, so this is a good point at which to attempt to analyse the nature of the working relationship between Jonathan and the languages PGCE cohort. Was he tutor, mentor, or peer … or something else?
Jonathan was of course given the temporary role of course tutor in that he taught and led the session ‘solo’. In introducing himself to the group, Jonathan was at pains to portray himself as not an expert, but as a beginning professional pursuing a particular path of interest he was pleased to share, thus demonstrating mentor-like qualities of humility and professional curiosity born, Altany argues, of imagination “ … the key to not only teaching and learning, but to enjoying teaching and learning for teachers and students. Imagination is the seed for curiosity, … for realizing that in education, teaching and learning everyone is a beginner, only some are more beginners than others. “ (Altany, 2001).
If then Jonathan was a ‘beginner’ along with the rest of the group, then we are considering a version of peer collaboration that Ashwin (2003) labels “peer facilitation”. There is implicit acknowledgement in the organisation of Jonathan’s commentary on his experience teaching the University session that “To teach is to learn twice’ … a phrase that is often used in relation to the benefits accruing to students who act as peer facilitators as a result of their involvement in peer learning.” (Ashwin, 2003:5).
As well as teaching in the role of ‘peer facilitator’ enhancing his own
learning experience, his status as ‘less of a beginner’ than the languages
PGCE cohort, but ‘less of an expert’ than a tutor, suggests he has occupied
a role defined in law
teaching, school languages teaching practice in Scotland and TESL
research as ‘near peer’:
“Near peer role models (NPRMs) are people who might be ‘near’ to us in several
ways: age, ethnicity, gender, interests, past or present experiences, and
also in proximity and in frequency of social contact. … Bandura (1997a)
suggests "seeing or visualizing people similar to oneself perform successfully
typically raises efficacy beliefs in observers that they themselves possess
the capabilities to master comparable activities" (p. 87).” ” (Murphey
and Arao, 2001)
“The ‘nearness’ of the recently qualified teacher to the students’ own levels
of experience and experience is congruent with the theory of Vygotsky (1978),
who views learning essentially as a social construct. In Vygotskian terms,
there is a dual benefit to this proximity. It means Jonathan was communicating
at a level that is recognisable and comprehensible to the PGCE languages
group, and from a position soon attainable by its members whilst being,
albeit marginally, still ahead of their position in terms of experience
and learning; therefore he can be said to be still operating from the same
“zone of proximal development” (i.e. the potential range of activities than
can be performed by an individual with specifically targeted and structured
support) in relation to the PGCE group, yet has the status of “more expert
partner” (Berk,
1989, in Convery, 2006:4)
References
Altaney, A., (2001), The Poetics of Mentoring: Teachers Teaching
Teachers Mofet Institute
http://vcisrael.macam.ac.il/site/eng/files/E4A019_paper.htm,
accessed 26 July 2007
Ashwin, P., (2003), Peer facilitation in Research in Post-Compulsory
Education, 8:1, (5–18), Routledge
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content?content=10.1080/13596740300200137,
accessed 26 July 2007
Bandura, A., (1977a)., Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, in Murphey, T., and Arao, H., (2001) Reported Belief Changes through Near Peer Role Modeling in Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language 5:3
Berk, L. E., (1997), Child development. Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon in Convery, A., (2006), Inspired by Vygotsky: Developing teacher autonomy, Links 33 (4-5), London: CILT
Boyer, Ernest L., (1990), Scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: Princeton University Press
Bruner, J. S., (1966), Toward a Theory of Instruction,
Cambridge, Mass.: Belkapp Press, cited in Smith,
M.K., (2002), Jerome S. Bruner and the process of education,
the encyclopedia of informal education
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm,
accessed 26 July 2007
Convery, A., (2006), Inspired by Vygotsky: Developing teacher autonomy, Links 33 (4-5), London: CILT
Dörnyei, Z, and Murphey, T., (2003), Group dynamics in the languages classroom, chapter 4, CUP: Cambridge Language Teaching Library
Glesner Fines, B., (2000), Chapter Two: Peer Teaching: Roles, Relationships & Responsibilities, UMKC School of Law http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/profiles/glesnerfines/bgf-ed1.htm#pt1, accessed 26 July 2007
Herteis, E. M., (2002), The scholarship of teaching and learning in Teaching & Learning Bridges. 1 (2), University of Saskatchewan
McLeod, Peter J., Steinert Y., Meagher, T. & Audrey McLeod, A., (2003), The ABCs of pedagogy for clinical teachers, Medical Education 37 (638–644), Blackwell
Murphey, T., and Arao, H., (2001) Reported Belief Changes through
Near Peer Role Modeling in Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language
5:3
http://tesl-ej.org/ej19/a1.html,
accessed 26 July 2007
Winkley, D., (1999), "Grey Matters": Current Neurological
Research an its Implications for Educators
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ed/kisnet/interviews/winkley.htm,
accessed 26 July 2007
Continue seminar, go to: Part 3
