1 / 20

Teachers reflect, teachers research:

Teachers reflect, teachers research:. Timeless principles in changing times?. CHANGE. What has changed i n : f or : you as a language teacher over the years you have been teaching?. Change and reflection.

coye
Download Presentation

Teachers reflect, teachers research:

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Teachers reflect, teachers research: Timeless principles in changing times?

  2. CHANGE What has changed in: for: you as a language teacher over the years you have been teaching?

  3. Change and reflection What is the role of REFLECTION in any of the changes you have described in the previous slide, if any?

  4. Relationship between reflection and wanting to know

  5. To know or not to know… “What it means to the life of a person to ‘know’ something…” (Allwright, 2005, p.354) “One aspect of human maturation, more important to some people than to others, is to want to know-...”(Edge 2001, p.1)

  6. The REFLECTIVE teacher What does a reflective teacher do? • ……………………… • ……………………… • ……………………… • ………………………

  7. The REFLECTIVE teacher What does a reflective teacher NOTdo? • …............................... • ……………………… • ……………………… • ………………………

  8. The REFLECTIVE teacher “The thinking teacher is no longer perceived as someone who applies theories, but as someone who theorises their practice” (Edge, 2007, p. 14)

  9. Theorising practice In a nutshell, theorising practice means, NOT to apply large-scale theories to one’s own context-specific/particular teaching but to work to understand one’s experience and to follow it to see where it leads.

  10. Theorisingpractice will lead to: • Increased awareness of self/teaching/teaching of colleagues/ and more …. • Development of new kinds of knowledge • Practical wisdom • Kind of knowledge that helps someone learn from changing situations • Kind of knowledge that helps a teacher formulate what it is that one has learned and to share it with colleagues (Edge, 2007, p.14)

  11. The ‘reflective teacher researcher’ How will the reflective teacher theorise practice? One way is to take on the role of researcher alongside the role of teacher. For Edge (2007), this involves ‘action research’ with an updated discourse, where the attitude is not to find the truth in what you do and to see what you can do to make that better, but to be able to say:

  12. Edge’s new discourse on action research “Here is my/our attempt to make things better, what can I/we learn from it?” (Edge, 2007, p.15)

  13. What do I do to learn more from my practice? • Action (considering you are in the middle of ‘action’ (e.g. your own teaching) • Observation of what is happening (of your attempts to make things better) perhaps leading to a specific interest area (challenge, puzzle, success) • Reflection (on why what is happening is happening) • Planning (based on your reflections what can you do to find out more; ask your students, ask colleagues, collect information) • Action (what to do to improve the situation) • Observation (to evaluate the changes made) (Adapted from Edge, 2001, p.3)

  14. What do you do with what you find? • Share with your students • Share with colleagues • Present in conferences • Write it up for professional journals • Feedit in to your next exploration • Share with friends and family! • ….. • …..

  15. Any resonances? Allwright (2005) on looking back on a project where he was asked to teach classroom research skills to language teachers says, “The classroom-based SLA research project was clearly taking up far too much staff time… and it was requiring staff to learn research skills that were not likely to be helpful in their lives as teachers. So it was heavily parasitic upon their normal working lives , rather than supportive of them, or integrated into them”. (p.354)

  16. Role of teacher educators What do you think are the challenges and responsibilities facing teacher educators who encourage teachers to engage in their own research?

  17. Try this in your classroom? • What are you trying to make better in your classroom? • What would you like to learn about this? • What is the one thing that you CAN do to study this so you can learn/know more about it?

  18. Changing times, timeless principles The change of attitude for language teachers: Teachers theorise their own practice, rather than apply theories to their practice, and one way they can do this is by engaging in their own research. Timeless Principle: Wanting to know

  19. THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE! ANY QUESTIONS?

  20. REFERENCES Allwright, D. (2005) Developing Principles for Practitioner Research: The Case of Exploratory Practice. The Modern Language Journal, vol.89, pp.353-366. Edge, J. (2007) Action research as attitude: Why action research matters and who it matters to. IATEFL Research Newsletter, Issue 20, pp. 14-16. Edge, J. (2001) Attitude and access: Building a new teaching/learning community in TESOL. In J. Edge (Ed.) Action Research.Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.

More Related