Transcript Slide 1

English Language teacher education:
Facing challenges, forging connections*
B. Kumaravadivelu
Professor of TESOL / Applied Linguistics
San José State University, California
[email protected]
www.bkumaravadivelu.com
*Based on
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2012).
Language Teacher Education for a Global Society.
New York: Routledge.
Global focus on education
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Globalization: economic, cultural, educational.
Globalization & education – expanding,
dialectical relationship.
Global capital investment in local education.
Consulting firms getting in (McKinsey & Co).
Ivy Leagues rush to open overseas campuses.
‘The International Alliance of Leading
Education Institutes.’
A global think-tank aiming to become a
dominant voice on educational issues.
Global focus on teacher
education
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Transforming Teacher Education (Alliance 2008):
“Notwithstanding their origins, commonalities
and differences, all systems of teacher
preparation have to rethink their core
assumptions and processes in the new global
context” (p. 14).
Vision of teacher education in India. (Report 2012):
“…current teacher education programmes offer
ritualistic exposure to fragmented knowledge
which is neither linked to the larger aims of
education and disciplinary knowledge, nor to the
ground realities of classroom practice” (p. 13).
Both emphasize transformative teacher education.
Shifting assumptions (1)
From a linear, discrete approach to
cyclical, holistic approach.
 Discrete courses in language structures,
learning theories, teaching methods,
etc., ending with practice teaching.
 Student teachers fail to develop a
holistic understanding.
 They are unable to see ‘the pattern that
connects.’
Shifting assumptions (2)
From transmission to transformation.
 Transmission models are informationoriented, not inquiry-oriented.
 Designed to transfer a pre-determined and preselected body of knowledge to teachers.
 Do not enable teachers to construct their own
versions/visions of teaching.
Shifting assumptions (3)
From method to postmethod.
 Transmission models and the concept of
method are both top-down exercises.
 Postmethod pedagogy (Kumaravadivelu
1994, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008).
 Needed: not an alternative method but an
alternative to method.
 Being/becoming strategic thinkers, strategic
teachers & strategic explorers.
Are we ready for the challenge?
“Education and teacher education are social
institutions that pose moral, ethical,
social, philosophical, and ideological
questions.”
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“There are not likely to be good answers to
the most important questions about
teacher preparation unless they are
driven by sophisticated theoretical
frameworks …”
(Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005, p. 2).
Accumulated entities
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Impressive work in ELT (via Education):
teacher voice (Bailey & Nunan 1998),
teacher research (Freeman 1999),
teacher freedom (Brumfit 2001),
teacher narrative (Johnson & Golembek 2002),
teacher coherence (Clarke 2003),
teacher values (Johnston 2003),
teacher experience (Senior 2007),
teacher cognition (Borg 2007),
teacher philosophy (Crookes 2009),
teacher reflection (Edge 2011),
teacher emotions (Benesch 2012), etc.
Disjoined knowledge does not constitute a cogent framework.
Need a comprehensive model
Michel Serres (2004, p. 2):
“A cartload of bricks is not a house;
we want a principle, a system, an
integration.”
Operating principles
Particularity
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Hermeneutic principle of ‘situational
understanding.’
All pedagogy, like all politics, is local.
Language teaching and teacher education
“must be sensitive to
a particular group of teachers
teaching a particular group of learners
pursuing a particular set of goals
within a particular institutional context
embedded in a particular socio-cultural
milieu” (Kumaravadivelu, 2001, p. 538).
Practicality
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Dichotomy between theory and practice.
Theorists produce knowledge, teachers
consume knowledge.
Leaves only a narrow room for teacher
self-conceptualization and selfdetermination.
Teachers must be enabled to develop the
knowledge, skill, attitude, & autonomy
necessary to construct their own
context-sensitive theory of practice.
Possibility
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Drawn from critical pedagogy (Freire).
Sensitivity to historical, political, social and cultural
factors shaping education/nation.
Teachers must become aware “both of the sociocultural reality that shapes their lives and of their
capacity to transform that reality” (van Manen,
1997, p. 222).
Language teachers cannot afford “to separate
learners’ linguistic needs and wants from their
socio-cultural needs and wants”
(Kumaravadivelu,1999, p. 472).
Demands on teacher education
The new operating principles demand that tr. ed. must
be designed to help teachers focus …
… more on the acceleration of agency than
on the acceptance of authority;
… more on the active production of personal
knowledge than on the passive
application of received wisdom; and
… more on mastering the teaching model than
on modeling the master teacher.
The KARDS model
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Modular in nature.
Consists of five modules:
Knowing,
Analyzing,
Recognizing,
Doing, and
Seeing.
About Knowing
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Knowing: “the personal participation of the
knower in all acts of understanding” (Polanyi,
1958, p. vii).
Entails “a passionate contribution of the person
knowing what is being known” (p. viii).
More than a subjective judgment; demands
intellectual commitment and inquiry.
Dialectical relationship between awareness and
action, between theory and practice.
Module: Knowing
Professional knowledge
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Received wisdom – Facts, theories, concepts;
externally produced.
Language: as system, as discourse, as
ideology.
Learning: input, intake factors & intake
processes.
Teaching: input modification and
interactional modification.
Sources: Pre/in-service programs, books,
journals, conferences, etc.
Procedural knowledge
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Management skills and strategies for planning,
implementing, monitoring, and evaluating
classroom events and activities.
Topic management and talk management.
Individual work, pair work, and group work.
Dealing with diversity in the classroom:
languages, cultures, learning styles.
Personal knowledge
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If professional knowledge is the collective
enterprise of the expert, personal knowledge is
the individual endeavor of the teacher.
Observations, experiences, reflections, and
interpretations gathered over a period of time.
Unexplained and unexplainable understanding of
what constitutes good teaching:
Teachers’ sense of plausibility (Prabhu)
Teachers’ sense-making (van Manen)
Shaped and reshaped by “continual recreation of
personal meaning” (Diamond).
Module: Analyzing
Learner Needs
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Global society/economy demand new
competencies in language, communication
and intercultural relations.
Needs analysis done by policy makers,
institutions, and employers.
Teachers can play a supplementary role:
questionnaires, interviews, observations.
Can understand learner motivation better.
Learner motivation
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Integrative vs instrumental motivation.
Current theories are inadequate because of
cultural globalization, and World Englishes.
English is now seen more as a communicational
tool than as a cultural carrier.
English language learners are now driven by the
idea of global citizenship that is firmly rooted
in local identities (Lamb, 2004).
Motivation is now being reconceptualized &
retheorised to address changing realities
(Ushioda & Dörnyei, 2009).
Learner autonomy
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Redefine learner autonomy for a global society.
Information technology has created awareness in learners.
They can play an active role in topic/talk selection.
Learner-selected materials from social media as texts.
Differentiate academic autonomy from liberatory autonomy.
Language development vs personal empowerment.
“…while academic autonomy enables learners to be
strategic practitioners in order to realize their learning
potential, liberatory autonomy empowers them to be
critical thinkers in order to realize their human potential”
(Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 141).
Module: Recognizing
Teacher identities
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Teacher activity is connected to teacher identity (Verghese,
Morgan & Johnson; Clarke; Lin; Garton).
Teacher ID shapes teachers’ perceptions about what
constitutes teaching, and learning.
Teacher ID - not a ready-made package that can be passed on.
A journey before, during and after formal education.
An on-going, never-ending process of being and becoming.
Teachers exercise their agency even amidst rigid statesponsored educational policies and practices.
Teacher education must help teachers become aware of their
subject-positions, & of the possibilities & strategies for
personal/ and professional identity transformation.
Teacher beliefs
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Beliefs are propositions that individuals feel to be true; may
not stand rigorous scrutiny.
Teacher knowledge is filtered through teacher beliefs.
Beliefs guide them in selecting and organizing knowledge and
information presented to students, and in interpreting
classroom events and activities.
Teacher education must help teachers to analyze their beliefs,
and to critically reflect on them.
Beliefs can be analyzed through teacher narratives
(Clandinin & Connelly), autobiographical reflections
(Robison).
Teacher values
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Values are beliefs with a moral and ethical slant.
A teacher is a moral agent (Dewey/Gandhi/Aurobindo).
English language teaching is “imbued with values and moral
meaning” (Johnston 2003, p. x).
Added burden: as a global language carrying global flows.
Teachers face dilemmas and conflicts in dealing with
agendas pursued by political and religious entities, or
by administrators and students.
Care theory offers “a powerful approach to ethics and moral
education in this age of globalization” (Noddings, 2010, p.
390).
Strategies for striking a balance between the ethics of care and
the ethics of rules.
Module: Doing
Teaching
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Language teacher as a transformative intellectual (Giroux).
Teaching with twin goals: maximizing learning opportunities,
and mentoring personal transformation.
Creating the conditions necessary for desired linguistic
competence to develop in as short a time as possible.
Language teaching is much more than teaching language.
Exploiting linguistic resources to give meaning to the lived
experiences of the learner.
Teachers “must be able to reckon with the fundamental
transformations of consciousness, experience, and
identity that are central to the shift to the historical
condition of globality” (De Lissovoy, 2009, p. 191).
Theorizing
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Teachers theorize when there is action in their thought and
thought in their action (van Manen).
Pedagogic knowledge “must emerge from the practice of
everyday teaching. It is the practicing teacher who is
better placed to produce, understand and apply that kind
of knowledge.” (Kumaravadivelu, 1999, p. 35).
No grand projects are required. Just keep your eyes and ears
open, and notice what works and what doesn't, with what
group of learners, for what reason, and think about what
actionable changes are necessary and possible.
A matter of learning from the classroom.
Exploratory research (Allwright), action research (Burns),
teacher research (Edge), critical classroom discourse
analysis (Kumaravadivelu).
Dialogizing
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Dialogic interaction between meanings, between
belief systems leading to "a responsive
understanding" (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 424).
Teacher development is a dialogic construction of
meaning out of which teacher identity or teacher
voice may emerge.
A community of teachers is a community of inquiry
(Wells, 1999).
Teachers show “a willingness to wonder, to ask
questions, to seek to understand by collaborating
with others in the attempt to make answers to
them” and “to engage in the discourse of
knowledge building” (Wells, 1999, p. 121).
Module: Seeing
Teacher perspective
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Seeing is critically-mediated between knowing and
doing, forging new connections between conceptual
knowledge and perceptual knowledge.
Teachers have to see what happens in the classroom because
the classroom determines the extent to which learning
potential is realized, and desired outcome is achieved.
Teachers are best suited to provide descriptions of their work,
their thinking behind it, and their interpretations of it.
Their perspectives should emerge from self-observation, selfanalysis, and self-evaluation of their teaching acts, done
in a systematic and sustained fashion.
Learner perspective
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Learners have a role in evaluating teaching acts.
Stake-holders of the classroom enterprise.
Bring a unique interpretation of what is helpful, and
what is not.
Can provide valuable feedback, on an on-going basis.
The more we gather learner feedback, the better and
more productive our intervention will be.
Observer perspective
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Ensures collaboration among interested colleagues.
Meaningful, rewarding, non-threatening feedback
aimed at professional development.
The goal is to examine philosophical orientation, and
teaching performance.
Teachers see their work in new and critical ways, and
engage in self-reflection.
No one is marginalized; no one is privileged.
Potential for mutual enrichment.
The KARDS model
Salient features
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Responsive to the demands of a global society.
Founded on particularity, practicality & possibility.
Erected on the structure of interconnected modules.
Independent: modules stand alone with specific goals.
Interdependent: each shapes/is shaped by the other.
Works in a synergic relationship where the whole is
more than the sum of the parts.
Has multiple entry points and multiple exit points.
No more than a conceptual framework; local players
have to construct context-sensitive programs.
The desirable & the doable
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There is a pattern in the history of knowledge production.
Innovation starts with the desirable; we try make it doable.
The path of innovation in education is no different.
Transmission models do not produce transformative teachers.
Teacher educators must create the conditions necessary for
teachers to know, to analyze, to recognize, to do and to
see what constitutes learning, teaching, and teacher
development.
Teachers must develop the capability necessary to theorize
from what they practice and practice what they theorize.
Requires constant and continual learning by both.
Keep the lamp burning
“A teacher can never truly teach unless he is still
learning himself. A lamp can never light
another lamp unless it continues to burn with
its own flame.”
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
English Language teacher education:
Facing challenges, forging connections*
B. Kumaravadivelu
Professor of TESOL / Applied Linguistics
San José State University, California
[email protected]
www.bkumaravadivelu.com
*Based on
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2012).
Language Teacher Education for a Global Society.
New York: Routledge.