Transcript Feedback in pre-service English language teacher training: discourses of process and power Fiona Copland.

Feedback in pre-service English
language teacher training: discourses
of process and power
Fiona Copland
Research Questions
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What are the generic features of feedback in this
context?
Which hegemonic positions are enacted and
reproduced by these trainers?
What strategies do these trainers and trainees use
to introduce, maintain and negotiate power in their
feedback sessions?
Are these trainers and trainees adequately
prepared to take part in the feedback genre?
Methodology
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Linguistic Ethnography (LE) is a growing body of
research which combines linguistics and
ethnography to produce detailed and nuanced
studies of talk in particular contexts in order to
‘understand the social processes we are involved in’
(Rampton, 2007:12).
Linguistic ethnographers believe in a set of
ontological precepts, such as rejecting ‘the
objectivism found in e.g. structuralist linguistics’ (UK
LEF, 2004:5; Rampton, 2007), and ‘the overriding
importance of reflexivity’ about their own intellectual
assumptions (UK LEF, 2004: 5).
Methodology
Epistemologically, they believe that:
‘language and the social world are mutually
shaping and that close analysis of situated
language use can provide both fundamental
and distinctive insights into the mechanisms
and dynamics of social and cultural
production in everyday activity’ (ibid:2).
What does this mean in practice?
Bringing together and integrating ethnographic
and linguistic approaches to data collection
and analysis.
What did I do?
Data Collection:
1.
Observed feedback on an intensive and semiintensive CELTA programme (four trainers; nine
trainees). Took fieldnotes – later ‘written up’.
2.
Recorded all feedback on digital recorder.
3.
Recorded some feedback on video.
4.
Interviewed trainers before and after their course.
5.
Interviewed trainees after their course, in a group.
Analysis
‘towards the later stages in particular, the
stages were simultaneous rather than
consecutive. I constantly revisited earlier
stages as I worked on later stages and
consulted all data sets throughout the
process’ (Me – my thesis!).
Problems with my analysis
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Initial confusion – what to do with all this data?
Taking the first step – was I doing it ‘right’?
A priori vs (and?) emerging categories
Speech act categorisation
Amount of time
Was I drawing the ‘right’ conclusions? Had I missed
something? Was my knowledge of CA, for example,
strong enough?
Was it obvious?
Mistakes?
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Transcribing all the data?
Analysing all the data?
Findings (funny word for this kind of
work, I think)
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Feedback at this institution constitutes a ‘genre’ with
‘conventionalised expectations that members of a social group or network use to
shape and construe the communicative activity that they are engaged in.
These expectations include a sense of the likely tasks on hand, the roles
and relationships typically involved, the ways the activity can be organised,
and the kinds of resources suited to carrying it out’ (Rampton, 2006:30).
Features of the genre include: a set of phases, the order of which
is affected by the feedback framework introduced; different role
sets for trainers and trainees; focus on pedagogy in as a topic for
discussion; sets of linguistic resources for enacting face
threatening acts such as criticising.
Gatekeeping
Trainers take on a gatekeeping role with regard to the
TEFL profession (Roberts and Sarangi, 1999).
Do this in three ways:
assessing according to the criteria
assessing according to their own ‘hidden’ agendas
(Bernstein, 2000)
assessing according to how trainees seem to ‘be like
us’ (performing the genre, accepting criticism,
accepting truth claims made be trainers and so on).
Strategies
Trainers:
 Disseminate information about ‘best practice’
 Use linguistic devices such as hedging and
performing certainty
 Control who speaks (‘probing’ questions)and about
what.
Trainees:
 Refuse to take part
 Challenge trainers’ epistemological discourses
 Play the game.
Preparedness for feedback?
No – feedback is complex and polygeneric.
Trainers learn through ‘apprenticeship’ model
(Community of Practice). Becomes an
automatic and hegemonic practice. Unaware
(I believe) of the impact of their practices.
Trainees get very little training in
‘conventionalised expectations’ of feedback.
Must sink or swim.