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Educating Second Language Teachers

Published in this series BACHMAN: Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing BACHMAN AND PALMER: Language Assessment in Practice BACHMAN AND PALMER: Language Testing in Practice BATSTONE: Sociocognitive Perspectives on Language Use and Language Teaching BRUMFIT: Individual Freedom in Language Teaching BRUMFIT AND CARTER (eds.): Literature and Language Teaching CANAGARAJAH: Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in Language Teaching COHEN AND MACARO (eds.): Language Learner Strategies COOK: Language Play, Language Learning COOK: Translation in Language Teaching COOK AND SEIDLHOFER (eds.): Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics DÖRNYEI: Research Methods in Applied Linguistics DÖRNYEI: The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition ELLIS: SLA Research and Language Teaching ELLIS: Task-based Language Learning and Teaching ELLIS: The Study of Second Language Acquisition (second edition) ELLIS: Understanding Second Language Acquisition (second edition) ELLIS AND BARKHUIZEN: Analysing Learner Language FOTOS AND NASSAJI (eds.): Form-focused Instruction and Teacher Education FREEMAN: Educating Second Language Teachers HOLLIDAY: The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language HOWATT WITH WIDDOWSON: A History of English Language Teaching (second edition) HYLAND: Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge JENKINS: English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity JENKINS: The Phonology of English as an International Language KERN: Literacy and Language Teaching KRAMSCH: Context and Culture in Language Teaching KRAMSCH: The Multilingual Subject LANTOLF (ed.): Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning LANTOLF AND THORNE: Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language

Development LARSEN-FREEMAN AND CAMERON: Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics MACKEY (ed.): Conversational Interaction and Second Language Acquisition MURPHY: Second Language Learning in the Early School Years: Trends and Contexts NATTINGER AND DECARRICO: Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching PALTRIDGE, STARFIELD, AND TARDY: Ethnographic Perspectives on Academic Writing

PHILLIPSON: Linguistic Imperialism SEIDLHOFER (ed.): Controversies in Applied Linguistics SEIDLHOFER: Understanding English as a Lingua Franca SELIGER AND SHOHAMY: Second Language Research Methods SKEHAN: A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning STERN: Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching SWAN (ed.): Thinking About Language Teaching: Selected Articles 1982–2011 TARONE, BIGELOW, AND HANSEN: Literacy and Second Language Oracy WIDDOWSON: Aspects of Language Teaching WIDDOWSON: Defining Issues in English Language Teaching WIDDOWSON: Practical Stylistics WIDDOWSON: Teaching Language as Communication WRAY: Formulaic Language

Educating Second Language Teachers The Same Things Done Differently DONALD FREEMAN

1

1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2016 The moral rights of the author have been asserted eBook Edition ISBN: 978 0 19 4427531 eBook (epub) ISBN: 978 0 19 4427548 eBook (mobi) First published in 2016 No copying or file sharing This digital publication is protected by international copyright laws. No part of this digital publication may be reproduced, modified, adapted, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, to any other person or company without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not modify, adapt, copy, store, transfer or circulate the contents of this publication under any other branding or as part of any other product. You may not print out material for any commercial purpose or resale Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims all and any responsibility for the content of such websites All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work

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To Kathleen, with thanks

Acknowledgements If I knew then what I know now, I’m not sure I would have so blithely undertaken a project of this nature. Gathering and organizing ideas from the last 25 years, and then making them useful for others is a serious undertaking. It could not have happened without the help, support, and input of many people (whom I will mention here alphabetically). At different points and critical junctures, Kathi Bailey, Anne Burns, Courtney Cazden, Caleb Gattegno, Pam Grossman, Karen Johnson, Jack Richards, Anna Richert, Katie Sprang, and Earl Stevick were each key to the thinking that has yielded this project. Sophie Rogers and Tony Wright have been critical in finalizing the ideas for publication. Kim Lier has been an indispensible sounding board, reader, and tracker of detail. And the home team has stuck through it all— many thanks. I also want to thank my colleagues and students from the MAT Program at the School for International Training (now the SIT Graduate Institute) for helping to gestate these ideas, and at the University of Michigan for helping to hone the thinking. As always, the oversights and mistakes are my own. The author and publisher are grateful to those who have given permission to reproduce the following extracts and adaptations of copyright material: p.8 Reprinted from “Teacher Training, Development, and Decision Making: A Model of Teaching and Related Strategies for Language Teacher Education” by Donald Freeman, TESOL Quarterly, Volume 23 (1) 1989: page 29; 10.2307/3587506. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.11 Figure from Teaching Teachers: Processes and Practices by Angi Malderez and Martin Wedell, Practical Teaching Guides; © Angi Malderez and Martin Wedell, 2007. Reproduced by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. p.16 With kind permission from Springer Science+Business Media; “Phenomenography: Describing conceptions of the world around us” by Ference Marton, Instructional Science 10 (1981) 177–200. p.26 “A critical look at the Communicative Approach (1)” by Michael Swan, ELT Journal Volume 39 (1), 1985. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. p.26 Abridged extract from “Against dogma: A reply to Michael Swan” by H.G. Widdowson, ELT Journal Volume 39 (3), 1985. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. p.28 Extract from “The GrammarTranslation Method” by Nancy Thuleen, www.nthuleen.com, 24 October 1996. Reproduced by permission of Nancy Thuleen. pp.29–30 Reprinted from “Language Teaching as Sociocultural Activity: Rethinking Language Teacher Practice” by Russell Cross, The Modern Language Journal Volume 94 (3) 2010; page 447; 10.1111/j.1540– 4781.2010.01058.x © The Modern Language Journal, 2010. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons Inc. p.33 Reprinted from “Language moves : the place of “foreign” languages in classroom teaching and learning” by Diane Larsen-Freeman and Donald Freeman, Review of Research in Education Volume 32 (1) 2008: pages 161–162; 10.3102/0091732X07309426. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. pp.44–45

Extract from “Are teachers born and raised (not trained)?” by Robert Bligh; The Washington Post, 13 November 2012 © 2012 Washington Post Company. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. pp.45–46 Extract from “Op-ed: Good teachers are made, not born” by Jonathan Knapp, www.seattletimes.com, 11 September 2012. Reproduced by permission of Jonathan Knapp. p.50 Extracts from the JET Programme website, www.jetprogramme.org. Reproduced by permission of Department of JET Programme Management. p.58 Extract from “Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the 21st Century” by National Standards in Foreign Language Education, www.actfl.org, 2014. Reproduced by permission of American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). p.76 Abridged extract from Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives: Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger; © Cambridge University Press, 1991. Reproduced by permission. p.77 Abridged extract from Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations by Suresh Canagarajah © 2013 by Routledge. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. pp.86–87 Reprinted from Artificial Intelligence and Tutoring Systems: Computational and Cognitive Approaches to the Communication of Knowledge by Etienne Wenger, © Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc, 1987; pages 133 and 134. Reproduced by permission of Elsevier. pp.90–91 Reprinted from “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning” by John Seely Brown, Allan Collins and Paul Duguid, Educational Researcher Volume 18 (1) 1989: pages 32, 33 and 40; 10.3102/0013189X018001032 © American Educational Research Association, 1989. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. p.91 Abridged extract from The Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) Course Trainer’s Manual by Scott Thornbury and Peter Watkins © Cambridge University Press, 2007. Reproduced by permission. pp.100–102 Figure: Active Theory Model and extracts from Developing professional vision for practice: Preservice teachers using students’ scientific ideas in simulations of practice; doctoral dissertation by Amanda Benedict-Chambers, University of Michigan, 2014. Reproduced by permission of Amanda Benedict-Chambers. pp.110, 111 Figure and extracts from Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research by Yrjö Engeström © Yrjö Engeström 1987, 2015. Reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press. p.128 Reprinted from “Eclecticism in Language Teaching” by Tony Deyes, World Englishes Volume 2 (1), 1982; page 16; 10.1111/j.1467– 971X.1982.tb00512.x. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.133 Abridged extract from Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching: A description and analysis by Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers © Cambridge University Press, 1986. Reproduced by permission. pp.136–137 Reprinted from “The Postmethod Condition: (E)merging Strategies for Second/Foreign Language Teaching” by B. Kumaravadivelu, TESOL Quarterly, Volume 28 (1), 1994: pages 29 and 32; 10.2307/3587197. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.140 Figure 8 “The Jargon Generator” from Ways of Training: Recipes for teacher training (Pilgrims Longman Resource Books) by Tessa Woodward; published in 1992. Reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Limited. pp.141–142 Abridged extract from “Communicative language teaching: Making it work” by David Nunan, ELT Journal Volume 41 (2), 1987. Reproduced by permission of Oxford

University Press. p.150,160 Reprinted from “What Is The Basic Teaching Skill?” by Richard J. Shavelson, Journal of Teacher Education Volume 24 (2), 1973: page 144; 10.1177/002248717302400213. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. pp.152,160 Figure 9.1 “A model of teacher thought and action” from the chapter “Teachers’ Thought Processes” by Christopher C. Clark and Penelope L. Peterson; From Wittrock. Handbk Research Teach 3E, 3E. © 1986 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions. pp.156,160 Figure from The Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series: Teacher Cognition in Language Teaching by Devon Woods; Series Editors: Michael H. Long and Jack C. Richards © Cambridge University Press, 1996. Reproduced by permission. pp.159–160 Figure from “Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do” by Simon Borg, Language Teaching Volume 36 (2), 2003. Reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press. p.169 Table of Contents from Teaching Practice Handbook by Roger Gower and Steve Walters; Original Copyright © Macmillan Education, 1983. Reproduced by permission of Roger Gower and Steve Walters. p.179 Reprinted from “Content Knowledge for Teaching: What Makes It Special?” by Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Mark Hoover Thames, and Geoffrey Phelps, Journal of Teacher Education Volume 59 (5) 2008: page 389; 10.1177/0022487108324554. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. p.182 Figure from Chapter 2 “Response to Tarone and Allwright” by Donald Freeman and Karen E. Johnson; in Second Language Teacher Education: International Perspectives edited by Diane J. Tedick © Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2005. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. p.207 Abridged extracts from The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action by Donald A. Schon © Basic Books, 1983. Reproduced by permission of The Perseus Books Group. pp.213–214 Abridged extracts from Early childhood teachers’ use of information to reason about and enact moment-to-moment instruction; doctoral dissertation by Rachel Erin Schachter, University of Michigan, 2014. Reproduced by permission of Rachel Erin Schachter. p.216 Extracts from Cambridge Teacher Training and Development: Training Foreign Language Teachers: A reflective approach by Michael J. Wallace © Cambridge University Press, 1991. Reproduced by permission. p.237 Extracts from Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives: Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity by Etienne Wenger © Cambridge University Press, 1998. Reproduced by permission. Sources: pp.79,80 “The CEFR Common Reference Levels: validated reference points and local strategies” by Brian North, www.coe.int, 6 February 2007. p.84 “Training ESOL teachers: The need for needs assessment” by Jack C. Richards and Nobuyuki Hino in Applied linguistics and the preparation of second language teachers: Toward a rationale edited by James E. Alatis, H. H. Stern, and Peter Strevens (Georgetown University Press, 1983). p.191 “Disciplinary knowledge as a foundation for teacher preparation” by W. Grabe, F. L. Stoller and C. Tardy in The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching edited by Joan Kelly Hall and William G. Eggington (Multilingual Matters, 2000)

Although every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders before publication, this has not been possible in some cases. We apologize for any apparent infringement of copyright and if notified, the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Preface This book traces the development of my thinking about the work I fell into as a language teacher 40 years ago. That work could be distilled in the following statement: I have always been interested in how people who teach second languages use what they know to do what they do in the classroom. The statement brings together three elements: a group of people— those who are teaching second languages—and two types of processes—a private one, using what they know, and a public one, doing what they do, with a venue—the classroom in which the content is a second language. The statement also has several loose ends, and intentionally so. I am interested in people who are teaching second languages; most may be formally trained as teachers, but some may be people who have fallen into the job as I did. Speaking a language often creates teachers out of teaching opportunities, as when a so-called ‘native’ speaker arrives and becomes a teacher because she or he speaks the language to be taught. Certainly engineers become mathematics teachers, and nurses or pharmacists become science teachers, but the process and assumptions are not the same. The central difference is they have to convert knowledge and understandings they have learned formally into content they teach from. Language, I will argue, is different. Many who teach it, whether ‘native’ or ‘non-native’, need to take something they know, often tacitly through experience, and use it to teach, which creates fascinating and unique challenges.

(Second language) teacher education Beyond this issue of content, there is the interplay of processes of thinking and doing, of the private–public relation between thought and action that is central to any teaching. Sometimes in the chapters that follow, I will drop the term ‘language’ from teacher or teacher education when discussing these processes. This is because there is a level at which second language as the content is less central, although it clearly still plays an important role. To give one example: Socialization is part of any teacher’s learning; but socialization as a language user, as a student in schools, and through professional training are woven together in learning to teach languages. Language as the content modifies and influences this process, but it doesn’t make it unique.

Borrowed ideas This same–different process happens in other ways in our field. As in other fields, we borrow concepts, sometimes uncritically, in pursuit of connecting second language teaching and teacher education to teaching and teacher education in other subject-areas. These connections are important because they place language teaching in the wider context of

schools and teacher preparation and professional development. But few people also focus on how language as content may alter these borrowed ideas. Language is the subject matter I know; I have studied and understand these teacher education ideas through it. I will argue that some of the core constructs we use to understand knowledge and thinking, and how these work in the classroom, need to be reworked to account for language as content in teaching. This core problem—how second language teachers use what they know to do what they do in classrooms—has both theoretical and practical dimensions. We need to grapple with both dimensions in order to fully understand and work with the complexities and nuances of the problem. On the conceptual side, we need to think through language teachers using what they know to do what they do, and we need to understand how language as content fits into, and perhaps changes, the conceptualization. On the practical side, we likewise need to design, implement, and evaluate programs and activities to educate people to teach second languages. This book is about both these dimensions. The strategy is to situate this work in both second language teaching and in the research and conceptualizations of teacher learning and in general education. The risk is that neither community will be satisfied. But the potential benefits of placing the content of language teaching within the wider landscape of theorizing and research in teacher education is worth that risk.

A word on the structure of the book The chapters that follow examine theories, concepts, and processes that help to understand this core problem of how second languages teachers use what they know to do what they do in the classroom. The book is set up in four parts. The first part frames the problem of teaching language teaching as I see it. The second part examines ways in which learning to teach languages has been conceptualized, and the implications for second language teacher education. The third part is about the core ideas of thinking, knowing, and reflecting that undergird the way we approach educating teachers in this field. The theories of teacher learning help to frame the problem; the concepts and processes in Part Three help to unpack it. Together they point to a set of ideas and considerations that need to be accounted for in designing second language teacher education programs and activities, which I call a design theory. It is laid out in Part Four. The appendices include some applications of this theory in designing and assessing language teacher education activities and programs.

A word on perspectives I use two perspectives to supplement and extend the book’s central argument. One is a series of narratives from my own growing up as a language teacher. These passages are specific to my experiences and do not assume any level of generalization; they are meant to offer examples through a shift of voice. The other perspective is an historical one. This is tricky because the book is not intended as a history of language teaching or language teacher education. Nevertheless there are places in the argument where the perspective of how things got to where they are is useful.

Signposting Each chapter begins with a short statement of the point I mean to make in it. This introduction lays out the logic in abbreviated form. Each chapter ends by ‘revisiting’ that initial argument both by way of summarizing its key points and by amplifying the implications. In a similar ways, each of the book’s four parts begins with a short introduction to explain the core argument and how the chapters fit into it. The hope is that these signposts make the book more usable and reader friendly. They may also serve to remind the reader that it all turns on a central argument. Language teacher education is different. Language is both the content that teachers teach and the medium through which they teach it. This dual role reshapes many ideas that are accepted from general teacher education as givens in our field; it also suggests new ways of thinking about and doing that work. The central argument that runs through this book reflects this difference. Educating second language teachers is, in the words of the subtitle, ‘the same things done differently’. The purposes, borrowed ideas, and many of the processes make language teacher education ‘the same’ as educating teachers in other content areas. But the content, and the opportunities it creates and depends on, also mean those things get ‘done differently’ in educating second language teachers. D. F. Ann Arbor Michigan and Brattleboro, Vermont

Contents List of Figures and Tables

How people use what they know to do what they do in the language classroom

PART ONE

Introduction to Part One 1 Teaching (language) teaching The chapter argument Prescriptive proposals and descriptive understandings Teaching teaching: pronominal and nominal views The isomorphic relationship Social facts and thought collectives The chapter argument revisited

2 The central challenges in second language teacher education The chapter argument The first challenge: language in the world and language in the classroom The language classroom—as microcosm or on ramp How classrooms make language content The second challenge: how classrooms (re)define language teaching Language classrooms and teachers’ technical cultures The third challenge: how people learn to teach languages Language teaching identity The chapter argument revisited PART TWO

Learning to be a language teacher

Introduction to Part Two 3 How people become language teachers: defining background knowledge The chapter argument Two views of background knowledge

The ‘born expertise’ position The ‘made over time’ position ELT programs and the notion of ‘born expertise’ Two theorizations of teacher learning The chapter argument revisited

4 Disciplinary transmission in second language teacher education The chapter argument Setting the terms—disciplinary hybrids Disciplinary communities and their vernaculars Putting the terms in circulation: a tale of two conferences The chapter argument revisited

5 Learning-in-place: situating content and professional learning in language teacher education The chapter argument The dilemma of language as situated content The dilemma of situated learning in teacher preparation Pedagogical simplification The chapter argument revisited

6 Socio-cultural views: understanding sense making and what travels in learning to teach languages The chapter argument Sense making How actions become meaningful and activity works as a system What travels Equipment, tools, and activity Levels of contradiction The chapter argument revisited PART THREE

Core processes of second language teacher education

Introduction to Part Three 7 How teacher thinking got to be part of language teaching The chapter argument Generation zero: thinking as behaving The first generation: thinking methodologically

The second generation: thinking synthetically The third generation: thinking heuristically The chapter argument revisited

8 Four representations of teacher thinking The chapter argument Horizontal connections (within educational research) Idea 1: decisions and decision-making Idea 2: teachers’ thought processes Vertical connections (in language teaching) Idea 3: an ethno-cognitive model of teachers’ decision-making Idea 4: language teacher cognition(s) The chapter argument revisited

9 Knowledge generations in language teaching The chapter argument The first generation—defining what The second generation—defining how The third generation—defining who and where The fourth generation—defining why The chapter argument revisited

10 Knowledge-geographies: a socio-professional view of what is worth knowing in ELT The chapter argument The structural map: a geography of institutions The implementational map: a geography of practices The human map: a geography of participation The chapter argument revisited

11 Reflecting: thinking and knowing in teaching situations The chapter argument (Re)conceptualizing reflection: situations of practice and action-present Implementing reflection Reflection-as-repair Reflection in situations of practice and action-present The chapter argument revisited

PART FOUR

A design theory

Introduction to Part Four 12 A design theory—Part one: social facts and communities The chapter argument The same things done differently A teacher education design theory (Part one) Tools and opportunities Social facts Local and professional languages Communities The chapter argument revisited

13 A design theory—Part two: renaming experience to reconstruct practice The chapter argument A teacher education design theory (Part two) Two forms of community Articulation Explanation Why call this theory a design theory? Appendix A Using the theory in language teacher education activities An ongoing example: the language-learning biography Using tools to create social facts: an ongoing example Pathways to content: converting time into social experience Discussion Appendix B Using the theory in language teacher education programs At the level of activity At the level of a module or course Summarizing design ideas Appendix C Thoughts on assessment Analyses

Summary References Index

List of Figures and Tables Table 1.1

Status-quo framing of second language teacher education

Figure 1.1

Language teacher education as training and development (after Freeman, 1989)

Figure 1.2

Glossary of terms (Malderez & Wedell, 2007)

Figure 1.3

Instruction as interaction (Cohen et al., 2003)

Figure 1.4

Isomorphic relationships in teacher education

Figure 2.1

German grammar-translation table (Thuleen, 1996)

Table 2.1

The IRF structure in Dan’s lesson

Table 2.2

The IRF structure—’It’s just erm’

Figure 2.2

Language teaching identity

Figure ii.1

How people become teachers: A rough continuum

Table 3.1

What language teachers need to know, how it is learned, and how that learning is organized—Version 1

Table 4.1

The disciplinary hybrids of language teaching

Table 4.2

GURT presenters: 1983, 1990, 1991, and 1994

Table 4.3

Continuity in participation: Presenters at GURT Roundtables (1983, 1990, 1991, and 1994)

Table 4.4

Coherence in the new vernacular: A content overview of GURT Roundtables (1983, 1990, 1991, 1994)

Table 4.5

City Polytechnic of Hong Kong Language Teacher Education Conferences content overview (1992, 1994, 1996)

Table 4.6

What language teachers need to know, how it is learned, and how that learning is organized—Version 2

Table 5.1

Summarizing key ideas of situated learning (after Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989)

Table 5.2

Collective arrangements: Practice teaching from a situated learning theory perspective

Figure 6.1

A tennis match as an activity system

Figure 6.2

Walking through a science methods lesson (from Benedict-Chambers, 2014)

Table 6.1

Transfer vs. traveling

Table 6.2

Two tools for adding sums (summarizing Saljo, 1982)

Table 6.3

Levels of contradiction in activity summarized by rod story

Table iii.1

Generational parallels in teacher thinking and knowledge: A snapshot

Table 7.1

Teaching pronunciation: Three contrasting practices and their underlying reasoning

Table 7.2

Correcting pronunciation: Two different languages of practice, explanations, and social facts

Table 7.3

The second generation summarized

Figure 7.1

The jargon generator (Woodward, 1992)

Table 7.4

Evolving explanations for the gap between professed and observed teaching (and its teacher education ‘fix’)

Table 7.5

Teacher thinking and role by generation

Table 8.1

Tracing the migration of ideas about teacher thinking

Figure 8.1

TOTE decision-making diagram (Shavelson, 1973)

Figure 8.2

Teachers’ thought processes (Clark & Peterson, 1986)

Table 8.2

Horizontal and vertical conceptual connections

Figure 8.3

Language teachers’ decision-making (Woods, 1996)

Figure 8.4

Language teacher cognition (Borg, 2003) –159

Figure 8.5

Four representations of teacher thinking

Table 8.3

Language teacher thinking: From decisions to cognition

Table 9.1

Four generations in language teaching knowledge: Focus and key issues

Figure 9.1

A language of practice: Table of Contents from The Teaching Practice Handbook (Gower & Walters, 1987)

Figure 9.2

Mathematical knowledge-for-teaching (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008)

Table 9.2

The mathematical knowledge-for-teaching framework applied to language teaching knowledge

Figure 9.3

A model of knowledge-for-teaching languages

Figure 9.4

English-for-teaching (Freeman et al., 2015)

Table 9.3

Movement across generations in language teaching knowledge

Table 10.1

The structural features of ELT knowledge-geography

Figure 10.1 Growth in TESOL by US and international affiliated associations (1970–2015) Figure 10.2 The number of teachers’ associations that have affiliated with TESOL or IATEFL by decade in which they affiliated (1970–2015) Table 10.2

The pluralization of interests in TESOL and IATEFL (by decade from 1974– 2013)

Table 10.3

Specialized interests: Strands in the ELT knowledge base

Table 11.1

Linda and Beth: Situations of practice and action-present in their own words

Figure 11.1 Elements of a situation of practice that shape the action-present Figure 11.2 Reflection: The dynamic between inner and outer worlds Figure 12.1 A teacher education design theory: Part one (annotated) Figure 13.1 A teacher education design theory: Part two (annotated) Figure 13.2 Entering into activity through articulation and explanation: Aligning community of activity (C/a) with community of explanation (C/e) Figure 13.3 (Mis)alignment in communities of explanation (C/e) and of activity (C/a) Table 13.1

Two summary examples of (mis)aligned explanations

Table A.1

Participatory pathways for generating social facts

Table A.2

Activity variations: Individual to collective engagement

Figure A.1

Ongoing training example

Table B.1

Organizing pathways of participation to catalyze learning

Table B.2

Using sub-groups to bring both emic and etic views to a learning experience

Table B.3

Different course; different social facts with same demonstration lesson

Table B.4

Contrasting the live demonstration with a video-taped demonstration

Table B.5

Summary of design ideas

PART ONE

How people use what they know to do what they do in the language classroom

Introduction to Part One This first part orients the book to the problem of teaching language teaching as I see it. It lays out the elements of the central argument, namely that teaching (language) teaching differs in important and useful ways from educating teachers in other content areas. For some readers, depending on their backgrounds, some of the points will be familiar—even comfortable—as a place to start. For others, particularly those who come from outside the field of language teaching, the points may be new. In either case, this initial discussion is intended to create a common ground from which to build the argument that follows in subsequent parts and chapters.

How Part One is organized The two chapters in this part bracket the central argument. Chapter One orients the overall project to the contrasting nature of language in the world and in the classroom. The chapter also examines the way terminology creates the landscape of the work in teacher education. Chapter Two frames three core questions—about the nature of language as content, about how classrooms make that content work, and about how people learn to teach it in classrooms. These questions together introduce key ideas and anchor the book that follows.

1 Teaching (language) teaching

The chapter argument This chapter lays out the core ideas of the book: that learning to teach second languages is a social process, which depends on a set of understandings (called ‘social facts’). Two elements help to elaborate this central idea. The first is the distinction between prescriptive views from the field of language teaching that, in effect, ‘wall in and wall out’ particular ideas and descriptive understandings that reflect the kaleidoscopic nature of social perceptions. The second is the interrelation of nominal and pronominal views, in which the former labels the elements in teaching and learning while the latter describes the interrelationships. These distinctions are used to unpack the central isomorphic relationship in teacher education: teaching teaching.

Narrative 1.1: Starting out in language teaching I got into second language teaching, as some people do, through the back door. I was hired in mid-August, which in the northern hemisphere (where the academic year begins in early September) generally means the school administration has discovered a staff shortage. Perhaps their planning was faulty and there were more students than anticipated or perhaps a teacher would not be returning. But however you look at it, ‘late-summer’ hires are usually filling unplanned or unanticipated gaps. The position was in a small rural high school. I saw the newspaper advertisement in the city where I was living and, fresh out of university, I figured it was worth applying. I wrote for the position of French teacher, and a week later was invited for a visit. The interview was brief. As I remember it, we mainly talked about my experience and how I’d learned French—that I’d spent time traveling and working in France, doing odd jobs. The fact that I had no training or previous experience teaching the language did not come up. A few days later, I was offered the position. It seemed I was hired based on the fact that they thought I could speak the language and not on my background as a language teacher. As I accepted the offer, the school principal added almost as an afterthought, ‘And you’ll be teaching a first-year Spanish class. too. I see from your university record that you’ve studied it.’ Although this may seem to be a story of casual, last-minute hiring or of a disorganized school administration, it actually isn’t, as I have come to see through my career as a language teacher and teacher educator. Rather the story goes to the heart of how we understand what it takes to teach languages, and how we think people learn to do this work. This book is about these core issues; it is about what people know in order to teach second languages, how they learn to teach them, and how pre- and in-service professional education is organized to support the process. The argument is not prescriptive; it is not about what ought to be, about what people should study or demonstrate they know in order to teach languages. Such proposals assume that how teachers teach is well understood and how their knowledge develops and functions in teaching has been determined. For this reason, prescriptions are by definition limiting, since they assume the importance, efficacy, and value of certain experiences, and they rule out

or devalue others. To paraphrase the American poet Robert Frost’s metaphor of stone walls in northern New England, we might ask what is being walled in or walled out by our prescriptions, and how these limitations might ‘cause offence’.

Prescriptive proposals and descriptive understandings Prescription defines things by creating and justifying categories that distinguish what is valued from what is not. In this basic way, prescription offends, but it does so for social and professional efficiency. When, for example, a job announcement calls for a certain teaching credential or a specific type of experience, it is an explicit statement of the knowledge and skill, which the credential is meant to represent or the experience to capture, that is explicitly valued. While this walling in or walling out can be useful to the efficiency and effectiveness of the enterprise, it comes with a risk that the categories are taken as given and remain unexamined. After all, as Frost famously observed, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ This is the situation in second language teacher education: There are a lot of fences, which have served well but are due for re-examination. The prescriptive categories of what language teachers should know and be able to do have supplanted descriptions of the work they do and how they learn to do it. To continue with the example: because job announcements call for certain qualifications, there is the assumption that these represent the knowledge used in language teaching. But prescriptive categories may not match the actual work. Doctors study biochemistry, but they diagnose particular illnesses in patients. Lawyers study precedents in law, but they apply them to specific cases for their clients. Teachers are prepared and credentialed, but they think and use knowledge in particular ways under specific circumstances. This book examines what we know about how language teachers carry out these processes. The challenge is to re-center our work on a descriptive understanding of what language teachers know and do and how they learn these things, so that we operate from more than simple prescription. This re-centering requires a re-examination of the theory and the explanatory relationships we posit about the basic processes of professional learning; and it requires closer scrutiny of the core concepts in language teaching, since these are the elements on which the theories have been built. In place of the imperatives and efficiency of the prescriptive categories we regularly draw on, this examination provides a comprehensive theorization of the work of language teaching and how it is learned. The aim of such a theorization is to work heuristically to move our thinking forward, to be theoretically appropriate to the nature and circumstances of the work of language teaching, and to have adequate explanatory power to deepen and probe our understanding in useful and pragmatic ways.

Re-examining the status quo The starting point is to elaborate the ideas that are taken for granted in educating second language teachers. This process of intellectual review assembles the givens to examine the basic operational thinking in second language teacher education. The review, which is fully developed in Chapter 2, is organized around three questions: content (or what is taught), the

language classroom (or where it is taught), and professional learning, which combines issues of who, when, and how the people learn to do what they do as language teachers in classrooms. Each question aligns with conventional responses from the field, in Table 1.1. Locus

Question

Status quo response (It’s …)

What

What is the content?

Language Methodology

Where

How does it function in the language classroom?

Methodology Planning, teaching, assessing curriculum, materials

Who, when, how

How it is learned?

Formal preparation Continuing professional development

Table 1.1 Status-quo framing of second language teacher education

These three questions raise challenges to the status quo by calling attention to what is taken for granted by conventional prescriptive thinking. They suggest possibilities for descriptive understanding. In the words of Frost’s poem, these three challenges ‘wall in’ some things and ‘wall out’ others, which is likely to give offense to what is assumed about what people do in teaching second languages and how they learn it.

A word on terms These walls are evident in the terms used to describe educating second language teachers. Any field of professional activity uses many different terms; the use of specialized discourse is a hallmark of a profession. Most terms in second language teacher education have been coined from elsewhere, although they may have taken on specific meanings through their use in this field. The term ‘teacher training’ is an example. While the term is widely used in second language teacher education (often in contrast to ‘teacher development’), it is avoided in general teacher education where it has a negative mechanistic connotation. In other instances, versions of a term converge, as with ‘teacher development’ and ‘professional development’. The first term has been favored in professional writing in English language teaching, while the second is more common in writing about teacher education. However, it has been brought into ELT recently with the term ‘continuing professional development’ (see Hayes, 2015). This density and overlap in terms is one indication of a maturing discourse community that is looking to make more refined distinctions and to argue for more nuanced connections between them. Using one term over others also suggests alignment with particular positions and the arguments that support them. With this positioning in mind, it is worth laying my own terminological cards on the table and to revisit the terms commonly in circulation in second language teacher education that describe the key protagonists, the roles they play, and the processes in which they engage to teach and learn teaching. In 1989, I argued for making an operational distinction between ‘teacher training’ and ‘teacher development’ as terms that could describe different processes falling under the superordinate term of ‘teacher education’ (Freeman, 1989). The distinction, represented in Figure 1.1 below, circulated widely and helped to distinguish types of teacher

learning that are often bundled together. I will continue to use the terms in this way in this book, though I modify the term ‘teacher development’ to ‘professional development’.

Figure 1.1 Language teacher education as training and development (after Freeman, 1989)

Language teacher education needs to be functionally defined as the overall process. As I argued then, and continue to believe, it is a bridge that ‘… serves to link what is known in the field with what is done in the classroom, and it does so through the individuals whom we educate as teachers’ (1989, p. 30). The ‘field’ includes the understandings and values of the so-called parent academic disciplines of language teaching (discussed in Chapter 4) as well as the local and national policy environments which often articulate them (discussed in Chapter 10). ‘Language teacher education’ differs from ‘continuous professional development’, mentioned earlier, as a superordinate, organizing term. It is used here to describe the connecting, building, and refining of knowledge and know-how through formal processes of professional preparation and further development. The term, ‘continuous professional development’, proponents argue, is focused on the learner. They cite Day’s broad definition: Professional development consists of all natural learning experiences and those conscious and planned activities which are intended to be of direct or indirect benefit to the individual, group or school, which contribute, through these, to the quality of education in the classroom. (Day, 1999, p. 4)

Second language teacher education—domain and time frame ‘Second language teacher education’ defines a domain of social activity. The definition makes a distinction between the field of second language teaching and the work of second language teacher education, which is central to reexamining what is taken for granted in the prescriptive views that undergird the latter. I argued for this differentiation in the definition I

offered in 1989: Language teacher education deals with the processes of language teaching; these other [disciplinary] areas help to define and articulate the knowledge and skill base of language teaching. It is inaccurate and misleading to imply, as we do in most pre-service language teacher education … that knowledge of these areas alone will necessarily enable or equip people to teach. We should not be so taken in by that relationship between the knowledge/skill base and its possible uses in teaching that we miss seeing how these are basically distinct. (Freeman, 1989, p. 29) This definition of 25 years ago anticipated a shift from prescription to description in documenting and understanding what teachers know and how they use that knowledge in classroom teaching. There is a fundamental difference between the academic disciplines used to define the knowledge that language teachers should know and the knowledge that those teachers use in the practice of classroom teaching (see Freeman & Johnson, 2005; Tarone & Allwright, 2005). This point, which is now widely accepted in teacher education generally, distinguishes between disciplinary knowledge and knowledge-for-teaching as interrelated yet substantively different forms of knowledge, as discussed in Chapter 9. As a domain name, second language teacher education covers a wide time frame, as Day’s definition of professional development suggests. For example, the functions of ‘preparing’, ‘mentoring’, ‘supporting’, ‘developing’, and ‘assessing’, which are all part of educating second language teachers, need to be teased apart, at least to some degree. These discussions will refer to ‘preparing’ teachers as largely a function of pre-service teacher education (sometimes referred to by the acronym PRESET), while ‘mentoring’, ‘supporting’, and ‘developing’ teachers come under the umbrella of in-service teacher education, (or INSET). ‘Assessing’ teachers and their teaching can and does happen in both the contexts. Distinguishing the time frames of initial preparation and on-going development is useful in locating certain functions, like initial teacher credentialing, and program designs (such as supervised teaching or classroom internships), in the overall chronological trajectory of second language teacher education. It is important to underscore that these time frames do not necessarily reflect differences in the basic processes of professional learning, however. Using binary distinctions like pre- and in-service teacher education can suggest that participants may be learning in different ways at these points in their careers. In fact, it is more likely that professional learning, like any learning, follows a trajectory that shifts with experience, although its fundamentals remain.

Teaching teaching to teachers—sorting out terms Determining an overall typography for second language teacher education, as in Figure 1.1, provides a map, but the territory itself remains a terminological thicket. The nature of teacher education itself contributes to the complexity, the principal task being to teach teaching to teachers. The very wording seems redundant, which reflects the isomorphic character of the task itself. Processes of learning and teaching run through this task at several levels: among

students and their teacher in the classroom, among teachers and those who are educating them, and among this group, teacher educators and those who want to talk about the entire process (as in this book). Using a stable, transparent set of terms for these various levels is a tricky job that any writer in this field has to work through. The glossary outlined by Malderez and Wedell (2007) at the beginning of Teaching teachers: Processes and practices, is an example of this process of figuring out what to call things that illustrates the messy complexity of educating teachers (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Glossary of terms (Malderez & Wedell, 2007)

In distinguishing terms like ‘learner’ and ‘pupil’, Malderez and Wedell label roles and levels of direct involvement in the teacher educating process. They also capture different social processes in contrasting terms like ‘mentoring’, defined as ‘one-to-one’, with ‘ToTing’, which works with groups. But interestingly, they use an acronym—ToTing,’ to represent the core isomorphism of teaching teachers.

Teaching teaching: pronominal and nominal views While terms are messy in second language teacher education, specifying the domain itself is equally tricky. The phrase ‘teaching teaching’ is more than a mouthful; it distills the isomorphism inherent in describing how the process of teacher education relates to its content, which is itself a process. There are several ways this relationship could be represented. The focus here is in contrasting two views—from the inside–out and from the

outside–in. The former emphasizes the perspectives of participants; the latter, the relationship of the elements.

Hawkins and the inside–out, pronominal view In his classic essay on teaching and learning, science educator David Hawkins (1974) waded into this thicket of terms and relationships making two proposals, one that has stuck and the other that is often overlooked. The first was that he used pronouns, not nouns, to discuss the interactions between teacher, student, and content or ‘It’. He sketched a triangular relationship, arguing that teacher–student engagement comes about through some content, the ‘It enters into the pattern of mutual interest and exchange between the teacher and the child’ (p. 50). The point that is sometimes overlooked is that he noted this engagement happens in a setting. Even if the teacher is not actively presenting material, simply by being put together in the social context of the classroom, ‘The teacher has made possible this relation between the child and It, even if it is just by having It in the class; and for the child even this brings the teacher as a person, a Thou into the picture’ (p. 57). It is a slippery conceptual undertaking to capture and label the spontaneous interaction and engagement of a student in some bit of content in the presence—and perhaps in some ways triggered by—a teacher. Hawkins used perspective as the building block of his analysis. Because we each see the world from our own viewpoint, for the student as ‘I’, the teacher is ‘Thou’; but from the teacher’s point of view as ‘I’, the student becomes ‘Thou.’ The only stable element within this changing equation is the thing they are engaging in, the ‘It.’ The brilliance of Hawkins’ formulation lies in expressing this essential dynamism in a set of pronouns, because it insists on keeping the point of view in the mix. The ‘I–Thou–It’ formulation captures key aspects of the isomorphism of teaching teaching, that it is not just the relationship between the two processes, but also the dynamics of the shifting point of view. In other words, where you stand—as teacher or teacher educator—defines what you see.

The outside–in, nominal view Others have described teaching as a web of relationships some of which are instructional, all of which are social or socially mediated. Cohen, Raudenbush, and Ball give a clear version of this view: What we casually call ‘teaching’ is not what teachers do, say, or think, though that is what many researchers have studied and many innovators have tried to change. Teaching is what teachers do, say, and think with learners, concerning content, in particular organizations and other environments, in time. Teaching is a collection of practices, including pedagogy, learning, instructional design, and managing organizations. (Cohen, Raudenbush, & Ball, 2003, p. 124) Like Hawkins, they picture the interaction of elements in a triangle, but unlike Hawkins, they wall off the ‘It’ by distinguishing between the content and the environment. In Figure 1.3, the roles are clearly labeled, but the point of view is omitted. The subjectivity of the pronouns, which conveyed the essential dynamism in Hawkins’

formulation, gets lost in an omniscient view translated into the nouns, as ‘teacher’, ‘student’, and ‘content’. This tension between what I will call the ‘pronominal’ view in Hawkins and the ‘nominal’ view of teaching as represented in Cohen et al. (2003) takes on a particular significance in classrooms where language is the content or the ‘It.’

Figure 1.3 Instruction as interaction (Cohen et al. 2003, p. 124)

The isomorphic relationship Inside the isomorphism—the two triangles

In both formulations, the triangle is used to represent the elements of teaching and learning, but it does not directly capture the isomorphism of teaching teaching. In teacher education, the content or ‘It’ is a process that mirrors in many ways the parent, superordinate, teaching– learning process in which it is embedded. In fact, this mirroring can become a vehicle for teacher learning, as discussed in Part Two (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6), depending on how it is focused on. The triangular structure can be used to represent the isomorphic relationships in teaching teaching at the core of teacher education (Figure 1.4):

Figure 1.4 Isomorphic relationships in teacher education

The principal interactions and relationships are in triangle (A), in which the ‘teacher’ is a teacher educator and the ‘student’ is a teacher-learner (perhaps a pre-service trainee or a teacher-participant in professional development). Their ‘content’ is the set of relationships and interactions in triangle B, but the roles change. In triangle (B), the teacher-learner (who is the ‘studentA’ in triangle A) becomes the ‘teacherB’, and the ‘studentsB’ (fellow trainees, peers, or perhaps actual language students) are (or play the part of) the learners in the

classroom in which the ‘contentB’ is the lesson. So the social processes of the embedded triangle B are the content of the superordinate triangle A.

Inside the two triangles—a dynamic, pronominal view This diagram offers a static depiction, a snapshot of how teaching can be the content of the teaching-learning process. However, if the nouns, which label the roles, are read as pronouns as Hawkins does, the relationships between the two triangles capture the complex shifts in social perspective at the heart of teaching teaching. In Figure 1.4, the teacher educator (teacherA) is ‘I’, who works with teacher-learners (studentsA) as ‘Thou’, which sets up ‘It’ as the contentA from the teacher educator’s point of view. But if this triangular relationship is seen from the teacher-learners’ perspective, they become the ‘I’ (studentsA) and the teachereducator (teacherA’) becomes ‘Thou’, which changes the perspective on ‘It’ (contentA). Triangle B (which is contentA) looks one way to the teacher-educator as ‘I’, and another way to the teacher-learners as ‘I’. This phenomenographic shift in perspective goes to the heart of both designing and researching situations in teacher education. As said earlier, where you stand in the triangular relationship determines how and what you see in it. For example, a straightforward practice teaching lesson from the teacher educator’s point of view may be a nerve-wracking, mercifully brief, live teaching performance by the teacher-learner. It is the same ‘It’ experienced from different points of view. Conversely perhaps, the simple practice teaching lesson, which is rich with possible insights from the teacher educator’s perspective, may be a proforma 15 minutes of stand-up and talk teaching for the teacher-learner. These differences in the content are represented by the shift in pronouns, which in turn makes clear a basic truth: there is not a single content or ‘It’ in teaching teaching. The nominal triangle of teacherstudent-content can be misleading in offering an illusion of stability, suggesting that what is taught is what is (or ought to be) learned. The pronominal view reminds us that the dynamics of changing roles and positions in the basic triangular relationship shifts the nature of the experience and what is taken from it. In other words, second language teacher education is fundamentally a social proposition. Each perspective contributes to understanding, with certain strings attached. The nominal view offers a stable view of the elements that is helpful in developing teacher education designs. But the stability can promote a prescriptive view of what teachers need to know and predictable ways to act. The pronominal view, on the other hand, challenges this illusion of stability by introducing the dynamism inherent in the shifting roles in teacher education settings. Participants move between being students of teaching on the one hand, in the lecture hall or training room for instance, and being a novice teachers of students on the other, in a demonstration lesson or school placement for example. The pronominal view raises the central issue of perspective in teaching teaching and how these shifts help (or impede) participants in making sense of what they are doing. In taking perspective as the building block of understanding, it is amenable to descriptive views of what teachers know and do. This sense-making and meaning carry over when the roles, perspectives, and settings shift.

Phenomenography and practice teaching The tension between the nominal and pronominal perspectives (what is sometimes also called the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ aspects in teacher education) is a central challenge in teaching teaching. Teacher educators, who are teachers of teaching, have to work with how their students, who are learners of teaching, make sense of the nominal elements of the job. The main means for this sense-making are pronominal changes in perspective; these are the experiential substance of the professional learning process. To give one example: in conventional practice teaching, one novice teacher plans and teaches a group of students, while a teacher educator supervises. This design operates from two perspectives—the novice who plans and teaches, and the teacher-educator who observes and gives feedback. Their exchange is based in the social dynamic, which delineates their respective roles. In some short-term training courses, the conventional design is altered so that the lesson is carried out by three people working together. The trio of trainees plans the lesson together, but they teach parts of it sequentially, so that one starts the lesson, the second picks up a third of the way through, and then the third trainee finishes the lesson. This training design embodies the power of the pronominal view in orchestrating different perspectives on the ‘It’ of the lesson (which would be contentA in Figure 1.4). Although the three participants have planned together, talking through the myriad details of the lesson to work them out, once it goes live, facing actual language students to continue or finish the ongoing lesson as the second and third teachers step in, creates an off-balance set of perspectives on the same phenomenon. It is almost as if the practice lesson were designed to cause a collision between the nominal view of teaching, in planning and preparing the lesson, and the pronominal view, in implementing those plans and responding in real time to what is happening. By dividing the role of teacher among three trainees, the lesson becomes a pronominal mix of perspectives, which is the substance of professional learning.

First- and second-order perspectives

现象描述分析学

Balancing the nominal and pronominal makes second language teacher education fundamentally a phenomenographic undertaking. As a research paradigm, phenomenography has a rich tradition in educational studies. Marton (1981) defined phenomenography as ‘research which aims at description, analysis, and understanding of experiences’ (p. 180). The approach turned on a distinction between two perspectives: In the first and by far the most commonly adopted perspective we orient ourselves towards the world and make statements about it. In the second perspective we orient ourselves towards people’s ideas about the world (or their experience of it) and we make statements about people’s ideas about the world (or about their experience of it). Let us call the former a first-order and the latter a second-order perspective. (Marton, 1981, p. 178) The nominal view in the instructional triangle (Figure 1.3) captures a first-order view of teaching teaching with its etic typology of teacher, students, content, and context. The pronominal view of Hawkins’ ‘I’–’Thou’–’It’ (Figure 1.4) reflects a second-order view and the central importance of perspective-taking, understanding that things look different

depending on your point of involvement; Marton framed this difference as ‘people’s ideas about the world (or their experience of it)’.

Social facts and thought collectives Social facts—the facts of the matter and the facts that matter What connects the nominal and pronominal views in teaching teaching? How are Marton’s first- and second-order perspectives on the world interrelated? How can participants’ perspectives be reconciled with the stuff to be learned? My argument is that teachers’ professional learning functions through the perspectives they take to make sense of the circumstances. In this sense-making process, social facts connect the perceptions of a group of people and with a way of thinking. These are the two senses of the phrase: the social facts are ‘the facts of the matter’—what is taken as true by a group or community—and they are ‘the facts that matter’ in that they are centrally important and definitional for that community. The notion of facts being social has been widely discussed by theorists in various disciplines (for example, Gilbert, 1992; Latour & Woolgar, 1979), and is central within sociocultural approaches to studying learning (for example, Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Wertsch, 1985 and 1991) discussed in Chapter 6. The two phrases—the facts of the matter and the facts that matter—encapsulate the key dimensions of facts as social. They are facts in that they define phenomena (as the facts of the matter) and social in defining the community that holds them (as the facts that matter). Underlying this premise is the argument that, as Fleck (1935/1981) wrote in the 1930s, ‘Cognition is not an individual process … Rather it is the result of social activity, since the existing stock of knowledge exceeds the range available to any one individual’ (p. 38). Fleck described the interplay of thinking and community that explains how facts matter: ‘The statement, “Someone recognizes something,” demands some such supplement as, “on the basis of a certain fund of knowledge”, or better, “as a member of a certain cultural environment”, and best, “in a particular thought style, in a particular thought collective” ‘ (1935/1981, p. 39). 思维集体

话语共同体

共享感知

Thought collectives, discourse communities, and shared perceptions Fleck’s thought collectives are another way to talk about discourse communities, or groups of people who share perspectives on particular activities. It is critically important to understand, for the purposes of this argument and the analyses in the chapters that follow, that individuals do not arrive at or consciously negotiate the shared perspectives of facts; they participate in situations using them. When, for example, the third trainee in the practice teaching trio above says something like ‘I’m doing the production part of the lesson’, he or she is using a specific social fact of language teaching—the Presentation-Practice-Production framework for lesson planning (Read, 1985). The term invokes a set of reasons to explain its purpose: ‘PPP … adapts well to the teaching of structures: aural exposure and teacher modeling in P1 [presentation phase]; drills or controlled practice in P2 [practice phase]; and the transference of the previously studied structures to different situations in P3 [production

phase]’ (Criado, 2013, p. 98). And it connects the trainees (and trainer) who understand and accept the term. The trainee may not know all of this background, but by using the fact he signals potential membership in that community. Social facts are the glue that connects the nominal and pronominal views of teaching teaching. The term ‘production phase’ of the lesson is nominal; the ways in which trainees make sense of it through the practice teaching experience is pronominal; the sense-making depends on participation, which creates a perspective. In effect social facts convert firstorder information that is in the world around us into the second-order facts with which the community functions. Malderez and Wedell’s glossary of terms (Figure 1.2) is a set of social facts. Even the use of acronyms in their typology highlights Fleck’s observation that the social facts bring a domain of knowledge (as Fleck puts it, ‘on the basis of a certain fund of knowledge’), a group of people who have or want to have that knowledge (in Fleck’s words, ‘as a member of a certain cultural environment’), and a way of thinking that produces it (‘in a particular thought style, in a particular thought collective’).

The book This book argues that educating second language teachers is a process of making meaningful social facts that matter to the language teaching community. Neither the facts nor the community are permanent in the sense that one does not exist without the other. Prescriptive discussions in second language teacher education assume social facts, and that the facts matter to the language teaching community. Many of these facts do; however, that makes them functional, which is different from making them true. Prescription gives the air of permanence; it reifies a nominal view of fluid social agreements. Descriptive understandings do not solve the problem; as pronominal accounts, they simply correspond more accurately to how people make sense of things. Descriptive understandings reflect the perspective taken; in this sense they are always partial. That partialness is critically important because it reminds us that educating teachers is about more than social facts, it has to be about how they matter, to whom, and under what circumstances.

The chapter argument revisited This chapter has laid out the issue of terms used to describe the people, roles, and processes of learning and teaching in teaching language teaching. The question of terms involves more than creating a glossary, however. At its core, it is about the social facts used to define and to do the work of second language teacher education. These terms are the facts of the matter and they are the facts that matter to the particular thought collective that is language teacher education. Taken by themselves, the terms risk being static unless they are examined to see what they assume and how they fit together. Left alone, the terms can be a set of labels that camouflage an architecture of assumptions.

2 The central challenges in second language teacher education

The chapter argument This chapter introduces three issues that bear centrally on educating second language teachers. Although these challenges are common to teacher education in all subject areas, the way in which they are addressed and resolved in the field of second language teaching shapes it as a unique form of teacher learning. The first challenge is defining the content: how language in the world relates to language as content in the classroom. The second challenge, which follows from the first, is how the classroom, with its social structures and expectations, defines language teaching as a particular form of pedagogical activity. The third challenge is how people, who are users of language and have been students in classrooms, learn to teach language. These three challenges take the fact of teaching languages (in contrast to other subject areas) as centrally important in shaping learning to teach it. Together they frame how this consideration overrides and reshapes most other factors in educating people to be second language teachers. Although they are listed sequentially, the challenges are not hierarchical, however; they nest within one another as a sort of DNA for second language teacher education.

Why three challenges? Some issues distinguish educating second language teachers from other forms of teacher education. These issues challenge the conceptual norms that define the types of knowledge and pedagogical skills teachers need, and indeed use, in classroom language teaching. They are, in this sense, fundamental to the nature of the work. The challenges are also operational in that they structure and constrain how teacher education programs are designed, how they are conducted, their outcomes assessed, and how teacher certification is determined. Together the challenges implicitly or explicitly guide what is done in both research and practice in second language teacher education. In the following chapter, each challenge—conceptualizing language as content, how classroom teaching (re)shapes the content, and how people learn to teach it—is taken up in turn. The argument is a cumulative one in which each challenge widens and adds detail to the picture of the larger whole of how educating second language teachers is conceived, studied, and practiced.

The first challenge: language in the world and language in the classroom Stevick on language Stevick (1976) begins the Introduction of Memory, meaning, and method with a statement about what language is and why it matters:

By speech we design great bridges and fight wars, we express our deep feelings and spiritual aspirations, and even set forth our most subtle linguistic theories. We can talk, we can talk about talk, we can talk about talk about talk, and so on forever. Language is the special treasure of our race. It depends on what we call the mind, but it comes out of the entire person. To learn a second language is to move from one mystery to another. (Stevick, 1976, p. 3) His statement distils three fundamental dimensions: purpose—that language is what we do with it; reflexivity—that language has the capacity to refer to itself; and its connection to our identities—that how we use language makes us who we are. These dimensions of purpose-asuse, reflexivity, and identity interact—and even compete in the language classroom. They provide a definitional springboard for understanding how language becomes classroom content; since content and how it is taught are central, the three dimensions can also help to outline the challenges of second language teacher education.

Purpose-as-use Understanding how language becomes content in second language classrooms is a complicated, messy, conceptual, and practical problem. The starting point of the argument is that language use is a social process under any circumstance; ‘purpose’ is a way of labeling the interrelation between the language and how it is used. When used as classroom content, language purposes are embedded in—and reflect—the particular social processes of the classroom. In this case, the social processes are educational ones; they circumscribe how the participants—teacher and students—interact, what they do, and thus how and for which purposes language gets used in the social context of the classroom. This dynamic, which is abbreviated as purpose-as-use, happens in any classroom; but in those classrooms in which language is the stuff being taught (and hopefully learned), the dynamic is altered in subtle and important ways. Understanding how purpose-as-use works in the language classroom is therefore the central challenge in second language teaching, and it is the starting point for understanding second language teacher education. Stevick’s statement outlines several layers of reasons for using language in the world in general. Each of these embodies dimensions of interaction (with whom, to do what), and form (how particular words are used). Designing bridges, expressing spiritual aspirations, or proposing linguistic theories (to paraphrase Stevick) each entail using language in specific ways; indeed the language itself differs, reflecting those uses. These purposes for using language in the world intersect, and even sometimes contravene, the purposes of learning a new language in the classroom. As teachers and students, we recognize these purposes for language in the world outside the classroom intrinsically and experientially from growing up in our first (or home or mother) language, and they carry over and shape what happens in the classroom. Studying languages for specific purposes exemplifies this carry over of purpose, as when, for example, people learn medical English to practice nursing or orthopedics. When language becomes the content for classroom teaching however, when the learning becomes ‘instructed language learning’, the ecology of purpose-as-use shifts because the social context of the classroom takes over. Therefore defining language as classroom content becomes an

educational problem as much as a linguistic one.

An educational problem But ‘educational’ here does not simply equate to classroom methodology; it has a broader meaning. Conceptualizing language in order to teach it to students in classrooms is an educational problem that involves who, how, and why. It includes who is seen as capable of teaching the content, which in language teaching introduces the misleading, geopolitical categorizations of ‘native’ versus ‘non-native speaking’ teachers. It also includes how people teach languages, as exemplified in debates over methodology and curriculum. And it includes arguments over why teachers do (or don’t do) what they do in classroom teaching as well as how they learn to do these things through second language teacher education. These aspects of the educational problem can be summed up as follows: when a language becomes a second language in the classroom, its purpose-as-use is circumscribed (and even defined) by instruction.

The language classroom—as microcosm or on ramp Purpose-as-use in the language classroom has been characterized broadly speaking in two ways: ‘instructed language learning’ can be seen as providing the learner with a microcosm of the wider social world or as an on ramp that provides social, academic, and professional access to what follows for the learner. As a microcosm, language content is meant to capture and mimic the wider world as when for example, students in communicative classrooms learn situational language, do role-plays, and try to relate purposes for using the new language to what they do (or want to do) in their first language. The underlying logic is that classroom learning prepares students for using that language for their own purposes in the wider world. In other words, since purposes in the classroom can capture those in the world, language content can be organized and packaged instructionally according to those purposes. In the microcosm view, the goal of the classroom is to represent general purposes of language use through instruction and interactions. The ‘can do’ descriptors of the Common European Framework (Council of Europe, 2001) are a contemporary case in point; they are now used to sequence classroom materials, define curricula, and determine assessment level outcomes in many contexts globally, based in the assumption that a language user who demonstrates a certain CEFR level in the classroom will be able to do certain things with that same language in the world. When language content is seen as an on ramp on the other hand, the purpose is directly connected to specific goals and uses beyond the classroom. The phrase ‘main streaming’, which is commonly used in schools with reference to English learners, is an example of the on ramp. When students are thought to be ready to move from English language support into grade-level or subject-matter classrooms, they are ‘mainstreamed’. Other instances of the on ramp view of content are found in languages for specific purposes, content-based instruction, or content and language integrated learning (or CLIL). The microcosm view versus the on ramp view actually forms more of a continuum than a

strict dichotomy, but it helps to frame the issue of purpose-as-use in language as classroom content. If the purpose of language materializes in how and why it is used, then both views are anchored in the same premise, namely that language use is a social process, which is where this line of argument began. But the distinction captured comes in how ‘use’ is understood. When language classrooms are seen as microcosms, the purpose-as-use connects the activities in them to the wider world through a generic, transversal set of purposes (like the CEFR, for example). When they are seen as on ramp, they project use into specified social contexts (like mainstreaming ELLs, for example). But the social processes of classrooms as educational settings are better suited to the on ramp than the microcosm view. Classrooms operate in particular ways and language as content fits into those processes and interactions. While the teacher can have students tell the time or role-play ordering in a restaurant, they are still studying language in the classroom, and those specific social purposes underlie those activities.

Narrative 2.1—’Je ne porte pas de montre’ I remember a brief glimpse of this dilemma of purpose-as-use while doing a regular classroom exercise of telling the time. Students were asking each other the time—’Quelle heure est-t-il?’—and since there was no clock in the classroom, they were consulting their watches. The questioning came to a student who didn’t have a watch and he waved his wrist. Without thinking, I muttered, ‘Mais, tu ne portes pas de montre alors …’ (You don’t have a watch on …). He caught what I had said and responded somewhat smugly to the questioner, ‘Je ne porte pas de montre.’ This response spread as perhaps easier, but certainly more subversive to the class activity than giving the actual time. Soon other students were taking off and hiding their watches, and saying, ‘Je ne porte pas de montre.’ Here student and teacher roles met briefly as people in a world in which you didn’t know the time because you weren’t wearing a watch. Roles were gone and with them the social dynamic of the classroom shifted ever so briefly. Students could avoid answering this classroom language question, ‘Quelle heure est-t-il?’ by not having a watch. The response was, of course, simpler since there was no need to fumble with French numbers for hours and minutes when you could just answer, ‘Je ne porte pas de montre.’ (I’m not wearing a watch.)

The dilemma of meaningfulness Students, like those in my first-year French class, arrive knowing how to use language from their first language experiences in the world, but language classrooms often seem to deny that ability, or at least to circumvent it. Students routinely ask each other their names (although they already know them); they ask about the weather (when they are inside the classroom), or how to get to the post office (when they rarely post letters anymore). And they want to know the time (when they can see the clock on the wall). These interactions take place because of how language is conceived as classroom content. When a student circumvents a norm of classroom interaction, which is to answer the question asked, by saying he doesn’t have a watch, the lesson either skirts his reality by continuing to ask and answer about the time; or

perhaps the incursion is absorbed, which can alter the nature of the lesson. It is no longer about telling the time; it becomes about whether you want to say what time it is in French. The social purposes of the classroom suggest ignoring the incursion, but the norms of asking about time in the world suggest incorporating it. Whichever course is taken, the actions are characterized as pedagogical, but they are fundamentally about the content. They arise in taking language from the world and defining it in order to teach it. This transposition from the world to the classroom creates the dilemma of meaningfulness: on the one hand, language has to work as content in the classroom; on the other it is supposed to simulate how it is used in the world. Meaningfulness is circular; it depends on the context. Social context makes language meaningful, and language is meaningful because of how it comes about and is used in a particular social context. In other words, what is meaningful in the classroom is meaningful because of how that language works in the classroom. Which leads to a dilemma: the language needs to be the content and it needs to work as language usually does. And it can’t fulfill both these functions simultaneously. When the student replies ‘Je ne porte pas de montre’, he avoids having to give a more complicated numerical response in French. By using language as it works in the world, he is breaking the question–answer pattern, which is the substance of the lesson. But the phrase itself could be useful in the world, in order not to answer when asked for the time, or because you actually don’t have a watch.

Of the world, not in it The classroom and the world are different social contexts for using language, and what is meaningful depends on each one independently. The fact that the same reply can work in both places shows an overlap of purpose-as-use in the classroom on the microcosm to on-ramp continuum. The tension comes in the fact that the student is meant to answer the question appropriately, which would mean giving the actual time; he is not meant to evade the query by not having (or pretending not to have) a watch, even though the response would work. Both responses are meaningful, but the latter contravenes the former to create a sort of circular logic that it is right to say (you don’t have a watch), but it is wrong to do so (in the classroom activity); however, it is right to do so in the world (when you don’t have a watch), but wrong to say (in this activity). This circularity is the core of purpose-as-use when language is content. The classroom, its social processes, and context, and its language are all part of the world, but they are separated from it by pedagogical purpose; they are of the world but somehow not in the world. In one sense, language classrooms are not unique. The distinction—that content which is derived from the world but works differently when it is being taught in classrooms—applies to other subjects as well, the content of elementary science or secondary history, for example, is taken from those disciplines in the world. There is a major difference, however. These content areas are often taught as on ramps, as rehearsals for using the knowledge and skill in the world. For example, in inquiry-based science lessons, elementary students might observe aquatic life in an aquarium or a pond to make their own hypotheses, which they can then investigate using the experimental method. Or in a high school history class, students might examine primary historical sources to document factors that shaped a period or event, and

then write about these sources as fledgling historians. These on-ramp lessons use content to rehearse the procedures of each discipline, with the intention that the procedures themselves will travel beyond the classroom long after the specific findings are forgotten. But language doesn’t work that way. The content and the procedures in the language classroom are isomorphic; the social interactions between teacher and student, the procedures of being students, make the language into classroom content.

How classrooms make language content Classrooms define language as content; methodologies provide the vehicle for that definition. The fundamental social processes in language classrooms—the relationship between teacher and students and how they interact—have remained remarkably stable and consistent, although the purposes have been refined from time to time. The stability is evident in how little the content has actually changed from a classroom point of view throughout the major methodological eras in second language teaching. These eras are generally described in terms of how language pedagogy has changed (for example, Larsen-Freeman, 1986; Richards & Rodgers, 1986), but this perspective overlooks the central issue of how language continues to fit into the classroom. Although each methodological era has referred to the teacher’s role somewhat differently (and therefore has redefined what teachers know and how they think, as discussed in Part Three), language has continued to function as classroom content in much the same way. Throughout each major era—grammar translation, Audio-lingual Direct Method, and communicative language teaching—content has continued to be conveyed according to the norms of the classroom as a social setting even though the particular methodological definitions have changed. In the grammar translation era, the second language provided the subject matter; the first language shared by students and teacher was the means of teaching it. The methodology wove the two languages together so that the content became how the first language could explain the second. With the advent of the Audio-lingual Direct Method teaching in the late 1960s, this distance between first and second languages was removed and classrooms were supposed to operate entirely in the target language. This would have seemed to be a radical change, and indeed it was pedagogically, but in terms of participation structures, classroom content survived in the pattern practice drills that were based on the basic Inquiry-ResponseFeedback discourse structure of student–teacher interactions (Cazden, 1988; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). In this change of methodology, the language content moved from teacher explanations at the blackboard (in grammar translation) to student utterances triggered by the teacher (in ALDM teaching), but it was still anchored in the usual social structures and processes of the classroom in which the teacher managed the lesson. The era of communicative teaching brought a progressive–constructivist view of teaching and learning to the language classroom, in which students engaged with new language based on their experiences, interests, and backgrounds. In other words, the students were meant to bring the substance for which the classroom (and the teacher) supplied the new language. Methodologically however, it is still a classroom, and as such the teacher and curricular materials organize how students engage with and use the target language. When asked what

time it is, the student ought to respond with the time and not complain that he or she doesn’t have a watch. But by vesting the substance of the lesson in students’ perceptions and experiences, communicative teaching has introduced a level of ambiguity into how language classrooms operate because what students want to say or talk about may not easily fit the fundamental social structure and processes.

Communicative purpose in the classroom The advent of communicative language teaching did not resolve the dilemma of meaningfulness and purpose in how language functions as classroom content, however. While the methodology assumed the learner would have a personal sense of purpose for engaging in communicative activities, the patterns of social interaction in classrooms usually circumscribed those purposes and continued to define how language operated as content. An exchange early in the era between Widdowson (1985) and Swan (1985a,b) reflected competing views of classroom versus student purpose in how the then-new communicative classroom would operate. Swan argued the classroom-purpose position, critiquing how the doctrinaire aspects of communicative teaching altered definitions of language use: A basic communicative doctrine is that earlier approaches to language teaching did not deal properly with meaning. According to the standard argument, it is not enough just to learn what is in the grammar and dictionary. There are (we are told) two levels of meaning in language: ‘usage’ and ‘use’, or ‘signification’ and ‘value’, or whatever. Traditional courses, it appears, taught one of these kinds of meaning but neglected the other. (Swan, 1985a, p. 3) In raising the issue of meaningfulness, Swan questioned the basic premise of the classroom as a possible on ramp to language use. He challenged how communicative teaching advocates (Brumfit & Johnson, 1979; Widdowson, 1978; Wilkins, 1976, and others) had elaborated levels of meaning to bridge the classroom and the world outside. These proponents distinguished between language ‘usage’, which focused on linguistic form, and ‘use’, which focused on meaning. Studying ‘usage’ was largely the province of the traditional language classroom they said, while ‘use’, which was something speakers of a language did in the world, could become the focus. This usage–use dichotomy, which Swan was skeptical of, made it the job of communicative language teaching to somehow bring the natural capacity for ‘use’ pedagogically into classrooms. Widdowson responded, arguing for the communicative view: The Swan dogma amounts to essentially … a reassertion of the traditional view that what learners need to be taught is grammar, lexis, and a collection of idiomatic phrases: their effective use for communicative purposes can be left for them to work out for themselves by reference to common sense and the experience they have of using their own language. (Widdowson, 1985, p. 159) The classroom was still needed to help students sort out uses of the new language, as Widdowson (1978, p. 118) had explained in earlier writing, ‘Not until he [sic the learner] has

had experience of the language he is learning as use will he be able to recognize use potential.’ [italics added] The two positions lay out the fundamental dilemma of communicative purpose. Is the role of classroom as content to provide the linguistic raw material that students will then use according to their own purposes and what they already know how to do with language, as Swan argued? Or, does classroom content need to simulate how language is used in the world in general under other circumstances, as Widdowson continues their debate, saying: Swan tells us that we need ‘to make sure that our students are trained to become fluent in whatever aspects of speaking, understanding, reading and writing relate to their purposes’. But, according to the dogma, students already know how to do these things: all they need is a knowledge of English structures and lexis and these abilities will come of their own accord. (ibid., 1985, p. 159) He ends by asking rhetorically about the role of classroom teaching, ‘So why do they [students] need any training? Why indeed do we need to bother with teaching these abilities at all?’ (p. 159). In other words, why teach language in classrooms if students already know how to do what they need to use it in the world? These debates over how language as content reflects purpose-as-use in the classroom endure. In essence, they pit the fluidity of language use in the world against the social processes and structures of the classroom. For just this reason, they are essential to educating second language teachers who need to learn to navigate using language and teaching it.

Reflexivity A second key attribute mentioned in Stevick’s statement at the start of this chapter is the selfreferential nature of language, ‘We can talk, we can talk about talk, we can talk about talk about talk, and so on forever’ (1976, p. 4). The quality, which is usually associated with metalanguage and the use of language to talk about itself in terms of grammar, is central to its role as classroom content. This type of reflexivity permits language to be made into the content of lessons, as it is in grammar translation lessons for example. Figure 2.1 demonstrates a sample grammar-translation lesson. The content is represented in the table of German pronouns to be written on the board; the accompanying explanation suggests the teacher focus on the form and ‘any discrepancies between English and German usage.’ This is the reflexive quality of language, which permits—and indeed supports—its representation as classroom content, and contributes to the enduring power of grammar translation teaching in spite of this being broadly seen as an outdated methodology.

Figure 2.1 German grammar-translation table (Thuleen, 1996)

Metalanguage is one dimension of this reflexivity of language; reflecting on use is another. The former makes possible the function of language in classroom presentation and explanation, as in the example above, and facilitates the norm of teacher–student interactions, which underscores what Widdowson called ‘usage.’ The latter—reflecting in the lesson on how language works outside—underscores its ‘use’ and the role of the classroom as a microcosm of the world. The distinction between ‘usage’ and ‘use’, as Widdowson and Swan debated the terms, highlights the second kind of reflexivity. Unlike grammar translation lessons, the reflexivity in communicative language teaching is not about usage and form but about how the new language relates to the wider social world and how it can potentially be used there. In a sense, then, the metalinguistic reflexivity of grammar translation is swapped in the communicative classroom for a functional reflexivity of use. This change depends on the notion of meaningfulness discussed earlier. Language is used outside the classroom to get things done, as Stevick says, ‘to design great bridges and fight wars’; those uses are instrumental and, by definition, meaningful to those who do them. To realize a similar level of meaningfulness in the classroom, students need to think about why they are learning particular language forms, and what they ‘can do’ with them outside the classroom. This ‘can do’ thinking entails the second kind of reflexivity about the potential use that is meant to bridge the language classroom and the world.

Tensions between form and use The Widdowson–Swan debate frames the tension between reflexivity of form and of use as an instructional problem of how to balance teaching usage and use in the classroom. Although it is manifested in disagreements over methodology, the problem is not fundamentally pedagogical; it is actually conceptual. The issue is not how to teach the content; it is how to conceptualize language as content so it can be taught in the first place. The tension surfaces most clearly in what teachers and students do in classrooms, which is why the focus is often on methodology. However, this focus skirts the more fundamental question of how to define the content to be taught, which is why the issue is a central challenge in second language teacher education. Characterizing content as a function of methodology ensures that it will fit smoothly into the social patterns and interactions of the classroom, and not disrupt them. But classrooms are not benign places linguistically; their organization circumscribes, and ultimately defines, language teaching as a social activity. Savignon (1991), another proponent of communicative teaching, observed: The constraints of language classrooms are real. Tradition, learner attitudes, teacher preparation and expectations, and the instructional environment in general all contribute to and support teachers’ technical cultures. Recommendations for methods and materials must take into account this reality. (Savignon, 1991, p. 274) This section has outlined the first challenge—how language is defined as classroom content, and what happens to its purpose in that process. The next section is about the second challenge, how teachers’ technical cultures shape the nature of the language classroom and the teaching that takes place in it.

The second challenge: how classrooms (re)define language teaching Language classrooms create content by how they are organized and what happens in them; language teachers learn how to make these things happen. Some of that learning comes through explicit training; but much of it comes from socialization as students. The second challenge in educating second language teachers is understanding how classrooms define content. In the following excerpt, Cross (2010) describes an Australian secondary school classroom in which a teacher, ‘Dan’, is teaching Japanese as a Language Other Than English (LOTE). Dan is ‘in his mid-twenties, a native speaker of English and in his second year of teaching Japanese and Humanities at Blackvale Secondary School’ (p. 443–44).

Japanese class—recording quiz grades Dan is making notes in his lesson book of the numerical grades that students got on a recent quiz. He calls on students, records the grade, and confirms it in Japanese.

1 DAN:

Jill-san? [Jill?]

2 J: 3 D:

Nineteen. juukyu. hai. Nick-kun? [Nineteen. Okay. Nick?]

4 ν: 5 D: 6 M: 7 D:

Eleven juuichi. hai. Mark-kun? [Eleven. Okay. Mark?] Twenty. Twenty … out of twenty? yoku dekimashita. Mick-kun? [Well done. Mick?]

8 M: 9 D: 10 ν: 11 D: 12 J:

Seventeen. hai. juunana. Natalie-san? [Okay. Seventeen. Natalie?] Twenty. Twenty. hai. yoku dekimashita. Jenny-san? [Okay. Well done. Jenny?] Eighteen out of twenty.

13 D:

juuhachi. hai. yoku dekimashita. Richard-kun? [Eighteen. Okay. Well done. Richard?] Twenty. hai. yoku dekimashita [Okay. Well done.] (Cross, 2010, p. 447)

14 R: 15 D:

There are several aspects of the technical culture of language teaching on display here. The activity is a routine, predictable one in which the teacher is noting down student’s quiz grades. Dan uses it as an opportunity to practice Japanese numbers receptively. The exchanges appear to be one-sided: Dan uses the target language, Japanese, while the students use their mother tongue, English. From the standpoint of communication, the exchanges work. The students tell the teacher their grades, which he records, and as he does he indicates that he has understood by saying the number in Japanese, sometimes with a passing comment, ‘hai. yoku dekimashita. [Okay. Well done.]’ The Japanese fits into this pattern of social interaction; students say the numbers in English, and Dan then repeats them in Japanese. But in two exchanges (lines 6–7 and 10–11), Dan breaks the pattern and does not use Japanese to rephrase the quiz grade. Both scores are twenty, which happens to be the maximum possible score (‘Twenty … out of twenty?’; line 7). Instead, he congratulates the student (line 7) as he has others, saying ‘yoku dekimashita’ and moves on. Which raises the question of why he doesn’t use—and even seems to avoid saying—the number twenty in Japanese? Dan’s response in an interview about the lesson reveals his reasoning: ‘I could’ve said ‘nijuu’ [20], but the students would have confused that with twelve because of those sound combinations … They’re more familiar with hearing ‘juuni’ [twelve] rather than ‘nijuu’ [twenty]’ (p. 447). Dan’s response illustrates how classrooms shape that content through the activity of teaching. If the function of the target language is to communicate, Dan would have said ‘nijuu’, which would confirm his role and identity as a Japanese user in this context. But the context of the classroom and his role as teacher alter things so that he feels compelled to keep to the Japanese numbers he knows the students are familiar with. As he explains in the postlesson interview, ‘Not that I’m saying I never use numbers in the LOTE [Japanese] over

twenty. I do. But I would only do it in a context where the students explicitly know that they’re the numbers I’m targeting’ (p. 447). As a teacher, his pedagogical reasoning, which is anchored in this instance of classroom interaction, overrides the inclination to use the language as he would anywhere else. This example illustrates Savignon’s observation about teachers’ technical cultures, and how the pull of the role and context creates the content students hear. The technical culture is enacted in the moves Dan makes, and on this level the Japanese content seems minimal. The explicit regularity of the activity—calling on students to record their grades, and recasting their English responses in Japanese—can look repetitive and even mundane to the observer. But focusing on the observed behavior, as so often happens in classroom research and teacher supervision, and overlooking the reasoning that underlies it, creates a misleading sense of routine in teaching. When Dan’s reasoning becomes accessible through the researcher’s questions, the subtle variation in this regular pattern of interaction takes on a different level of significance. What could have been an oversight—not saying ‘twenty’ in Japanese—becomes a reasoned teaching move.

Language classrooms and teachers’ technical cultures The idea that schools manufacture subject matters through the way content is enacted in classrooms is not a new one (see, for example, Anyon, 1981). Classrooms turn language from the world into content that teachers teach and students learn, as in the example of Dan’s lesson. The teacher is the principal instrument of this process, which is why the idea matters so centrally in teacher education. The concept of teachers’ technical cultures describes the larger dynamics at work in the process. The term refers to how schools create the work of teaching through the relationships between teachers and students, and through how pedagogy enacts subject matter. Introducing the term into the field of foreign language teaching, Kleinsasser (1993) drew from Rosenholtz’s (1988) work, saying that ‘a school’s technical culture represents how teachers perceive their work is to be accomplished.’ He elaborated the definition, ‘The … technical culture attempts to capture the essence and nuance of teachers’ thoughts, beliefs, and actions in their workplace … to describe how teachers define and go about their work in their particular school context’ (p. 374). Most importantly, the term is intended to describe, which is why it can be both powerful and unsettling, as Kleinsasser noted, ‘A technical culture mirrors what the organization is and not what it professes to be’ (p. 374). At the classroom level, the technical culture is most visible in the patterns of teacher– student interaction. The Inquiry-Response-Feedback (IRF) structure of classroom talk, which was mentioned earlier in connection with ALDM teaching, is the basic building block of these interactions. It provides stability of expectations and predictability in performance, which is evident in Dan’s lesson. Inquiry Response Feedback

1 Dan: Jill-san? [Jill?] 2 J: Nineteen. 3 D: juukyu. hai. [19 … yes]

Table 2.1 The IRF structure in Dan’s lesson

While the IRF sequence can be easily identified in an activity like recording quiz grades, it is not limited to such formulaic interactions. The pattern underlies most talk in language classrooms.

Talk-written-down: The example of ‘erm’ There is a freer ebb-and-flow of activity in the following example, but the IRF is still the basic pattern. In this excerpt, the teacher is finishing up an activity in which students have listened to an interview and have arranged the text, which is on strips of paper, to match what they heard: T: S: T:

Finished? Perfect. What does this—mean? [She writes on the board ‘Erm’] (Erm) ‘Erm’ is that a word? No Erm. Why’ve we got that there? (Nunan, 1996, p. 47)

As the teacher pushes towards the point she wants to make about the difference between spoken and written language, the same IRF interaction pattern is operating:

Response

T: It’s because we’re listening to it. Listening to what’s written down. So don’t worry, don’t think ‘oh what does erm mean?’ It’s just erm. And how do they say ‘yes’? Do they say ‘yes’? S: Yeah (Yeah—Australian accent)

Feedback

T: Australian accent do you think? (Nunan, 1996, p. 47)

Inquiry

Table 2.2 The IRF structure—’It’s just erm’

In this interaction, the teacher is constructing the content. Using the transcribed language on the strips of paper, she calls students’ attention to what they hear—the filler ‘erm’ or the Australian pronunciation of ‘yes’—but wouldn’t usually see written. This listening activity, in which students organize strips of paper to represent what they hear, is a common one in language classrooms. It creates content by converting what would simply be listening in the world, to reading and comparing oral and written text in the classroom. The technical culture of language classrooms allows for these aspects of talk to be written down so that oral language can function as content.

Subject-languages Larsen-Freeman and Freeman (2008) called the socio-pedagogical conversion process that turns language in the world into language as a school subject creating ‘subject-language’. We defined a ‘subject-language’ as ‘a language that has been designated as subject matter within a school curriculum and therefore has certain teaching practices and learning expectations associated with it’ (p. 148). The technical cultures of schools and classrooms attribute certain qualities to language, as in the talk-written-down example:

The imposition of certain conventions through the written language and social norms that prescribe and proscribe certain forms may give the appearance of stability. We refer to this sense of stability in language as its grammar, which in effect helps to create the content of language as a school subject (Larsen-Freeman & Freeman, 2008, pp. 161–62) In the technical cultures of schools, subject matters depend on stability and predictability so that classrooms, in essence, have to freeze content through materials, methodologies, and formulaic interactions. In the case of language, this conversion process, which Wenger (1998) described as moving from ‘participation’ to ‘reification’, creates a fundamental tension. Teachers and students know implicitly how language works; they know what Widdowson (1985) called in the earlier debate its ‘use potential’. When they meet language as a subject-language, teachers present it and students encounter it through its reified attributes—parts of speech, grammar, language skills, proficiency levels, and so on. These attributes, which are intended as descriptive, literally make the language teachable in the classroom, just as the teacher does in explaining the filler, ‘erm’, in the interview. The attributes of subject-language stabilize it as classroom content, making it amenable to the predictable interactions of the technical cultures of classroom language teaching. Subject-languages are the content of second language teacher education. Trainees learn these reifications of content in their preparation as tools of language teaching, and they use them in the classroom according to the norms and conventions of the technical cultures of schools. Learning how to distinguish subject-languages from language in the world and how to act on that difference in teaching is central in second language teacher education. The learning involves teacher identity as much as it does methodology and classroom procedure, and this is the third challenge.

The third challenge: how people learn to teach languages Learning to teach languages involves people recognizing and developing two strands of identity. One is related to language; it comes from being a user of languages, generally a first language and the one being taught (and these can be the same, as in a so-called ‘native speaking’ teacher, or they can be two different languages). The other strand is a professional one in the sense that it is related to the work of teaching. It comes from experiences as a student and develops through explicit training. These two strands comingle in the learning process to define a language teaching identity.

Narrative 2.2: The night before the first day of teaching I don’t actually remember my first day in front of a class. After I was hired that late August, I didn’t have much time to prepare. I did what I could, or what I knew how to do. I ordered some books and some materials; I prepared some general plans even though I had not had any formal preparation as a teacher. As early September approached, I tried not to worry, although in my bleaker moments I doubted what I had gotten myself into. When I thought

about standing in front of a group of students in the classroom, it was hard to feel confident about what I would do. But then when I thought about France, my recent experiences there, the work I’d done and the friendships I’d made, I got excited about the prospect of trying to pass some of these possibilities along to my new students. I was increasingly filled with this push-pull of anxiety and excitement as the first day of school approached. I can’t remember the first day of teaching, but I do remember the night before, vividly. Unable to sleep, I wondered how I would be able to survive. (Later as a teacher educator, I would hear the same concerns from new teachers as I had had about getting started in the classroom.) For me, with no formal preparation to refer to, I was lost. As I lay there that night trying to get to sleep, I realized that the first day of classes might not be that hard: I could just do what I remembered from my first day of French as a student. I could do what my teacher had done and—for better or worse—things might work out. This night-before-the-first-day-of-teaching brought together three aspects of a fledgling identity as a language teacher: knowledge (what I knew and didn’t know), activity (what I needed to do), and experience (my background and growing up). Of the three, experience is particularly complex because it involves two streams, one as a student and the other as a user of the target language. Gee (2008) summarizes the interrelation among the three aspects: Any actual domain of knowledge is first and foremost a set of activities (special ways of acting and interacting so as to produce and use knowledge) and experience (special ways of seeing, valuing, and being in the world) (p.82). These aspects accumulate and are synthesized into an identity as someone who can do certain work. As Gee puts it, ‘Physicists do physics. They talk physics. And when they are being physicists, they see and value the world in a different way than do non-physicists’ (p. 82).

Language teaching identity The same process goes on for language teachers. They teach languages; they talk about teaching languages (particularly in their initial preparation), and in that teaching identity, they differ from users of the target language. To paraphrase Gee’s statement, ‘when they are being language teachers, they see and value the world in a different way than do speakers of that language.’ This identity is not simply the outcome of initial training; it is the process of becoming and being a language teacher throughout a career. Developing the language and professional strands of this teaching identity is a continual process that starts with socialization. The dynamic of socialization is mutually constitutive; as Bolster (1983) puts it, ‘People must be considered as both the creators and the products of the social situations in which they live’ (p. 303). These interactions between people and social situations happen in school, as students, and as users of the target language. They form the new language teaching identity as well as understanding of the technical cultures of teaching. The hybrid socializations of language teaching identity are rooted in two social situations: as a student in the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie, 1975)—the time spent participating in classrooms and teaching as a student—and as a language user in the

individual’s experiences with the target language both in and out of school. These strands of experience, represented in Figure 2.2 below, reinforce and extend one another, a point that is discussed further in Chapter 3.

Figure 2.2 Language teaching identity

Professional socialization in the experience of growing up in and through school has been well documented; Lortie’s (1975) phrase ‘the apprenticeship of observation’ distils that process of acculturation. This apprenticeship is where individuals learn how to be and act in classrooms, a process sometimes referred to as ‘studenting’. Studenting—’what students are thought to do to learn as well as [the] work negotiating and managing being in schools’ (Goldin, 2010, p. 1)—creates a functional role through schooling; but this experience does not convert directly into teaching knowledge. As Lortie observed, the apprenticeship of observation is from the ‘other side of the desk’, which makes activity and social processes look very different. In Dan’s Japanese class for example, the students may have noticed that he didn’t repeat ‘twenty’ in Japanese as he was recording their quiz grades. They would be familiar with the public side of his actions; they would not know his reasoning at the moment. In this sense then, the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ establishes the behavioral side of teaching, what teachers do and how they usually do it, but it leaves inaccessible the hidden side of the work, the underlying thinking and reasoning. These studenting experiences become the basis of learning to teach. We learn to teach in relation to how we ourselves were taught. As students, there are few opportunities to hear or probe the reasoning behind the teacher actions we experience. We may figure that teachers have reasons for what they do (however fickle or unjust a particular action may seem at the time), but those reasons are not generally explained to us because the teacher’s thinking and reasoning remain tacit and largely inaccessible. This reasoning is an amalgam of social experience, but it is not disinterested or benign. Social dynamics like class, and political and economic power, can shape how teachers

reason through these socialization processes, and thus reasoning can replicate the dynamics of schools and classrooms as they are. The question becomes how teacher preparation can interrupt or change these social patterns of the classroom.

Socialization and social facts As Gee said, language teaching identity involves ways of being, talking, and experiencing the world. The means for all this are the social facts that are valued by the professional community. Second language teacher education, like any other form of activity, has its particular social facts that express recognizable shared meanings and understandings. Using these facts creates mutually accepted, shared identities. The facts are social in two ways: They belong collectively to the people who accept and believe them as facts of language teaching, and they are exchanged among people in these professional discourse communities and with newcomers who are looking to join the club and to take part in its reasoning and ways of seeing the world. Socialization as a student and as a language user is a key process through which language moves from what we know it to be in the world into how we experience it as content in the classroom. In the case of most school subjects—mathematics, the sciences, history, literature —language is principally a vehicle for something else. The content shapes how language is used in those disciplines, so part of learning the content involves learning the particular discourse of the discipline (for example, Moje, 2007). In the case of foreign or second languages as subject-languages, the content is about itself; it is entirely reflexive. That reflexivity is captured in different ways methodologically. In grammar translation classrooms, it became metalanguage; in communicative classrooms, the reflexivity focuses on ‘recognizing use potential’ (to use Widdowson’s phrase) that one will be able to use the new language as one does the first.

The chapter argument revisited Content in language classrooms is essentially social but it has a language dimension, which is what is usually focused on. The conventional view that content is language with a social dimension needs to be recast. In the language classroom, the content is social processes, which have a language dimension. The social processes are fundamental to the classroom as a classroom; the new language fits into that ecology. Methodology is meant to repackage the classroom’s social processes according to particular views of learning and teaching; more often than not it is absorbed by those processes. Learning to teach languages involves recognizing and developing two strands of identity, as a knower of classrooms and as a user of language. In most cases, second language teacher education addresses the language dimension of content and focuses on training methodology and development of reflective analysis to manage the social processes of the classroom. This approach to professional learning overlooks—and often denies—that participants have been socialized in classrooms and as language users, which facts shape how and what language teachers learn and what they ultimately do in teaching.

PART TWO

Learning to be a language teacher

Introduction to Part Two Part Two presents three views of how people learn to be language teachers, each of which has implications—either explicit or suggested—for the role of second language teacher education. The three views form a loose continuum from seeing learning to teach as an informal and contextually based process to seeing it as explicitly structured.

Figure ii.1 How people become teachers: A rough continuum

Two of the positions on this continuum (1 and 2) are tacitly held. They are embedded in different approaches to how language teachers are recruited and selected, and if (or how) they are trained. The third position (3), which is made explicit in educational policies and practices, depends broadly speaking on the mechanisms of academic disciplines and transmission models of teacher education. None of these three positions has a theory directly associated with it that describes how people learn to teach languages. However, underlying these positions are two theorizations—of learning-in-place (situated learning theory) and of learning-in-practice (social practice theory)—that can inform the assumptions and describe the processes on which the views are based.

How Part Two is organized Chapter 3 looks at how background knowledge figures in learning to be a language teacher. There are two alternative positions on how background knowledge develops (positions 1 and 2 in Figure ii.1): that it comes from natural born expertise or that it is learned over time through professional training and support. Examples of policies and practices in language education based on the born expertise position and the concept of the native speaker are discussed as reflections of this position. The alternative (position 3)—that people learn consciously and explicitly to do the work of teaching—is the position held by most educational and political organizations in what could loosely be called the ‘industry of language teaching’ (this includes training institutions, certifying bodies, professional associations, teachers’ unions, and so on). This position, which essentially formalizes the ‘know-how made over time’ view (position 2), is that learning to teach is based on formal professional preparation. Chapter 4 examines this position from the standpoint of the academic disciplines on which language teaching is based, and the learning processes associated with disciplinary learning. These ideas are complicated by the fact that language teaching knowledge draws from several disciplines as a hybrid, which affects the normative assumptions and designs in second language teacher education. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 introduce two explicitly theoretical perspectives, situated learning and socio-cultural theory, into the discussion of formal preparation (position 3). Theoretical presumptions about learning-in-place (Chapter 5) underlie the clinical and practice teaching arrangements that are central to current teacher preparation, including in second languages. Theories about learning-in-practice (Chapter 6) complicate notions of place to account for how people learn through participating in social practices, settings, and institutions over time. These theories help to anchor the different views, from contextual to formal, across the continuum of how people learn to be language teachers.

3 How people become language teachers: defining background knowledge Teacher personality traits mean much more than mere academic ability. (Bligh, 2012)

The chapter argument Two views—that people are ‘born’ with the qualities that make them ‘good’ teachers or that ‘teachers are made’ through professional study and preparation—are broadly held opposing social opinions about how people become teachers. They are complicated by the fact that people teach languages that they have learned through social participation and growing up; they likewise teach languages that they have formally learned in school. This chapter uses these two positions to frame issues of background knowledge in language teaching. Three national teacher-recruitment initiatives—the Japan English Teaching Program, the English Program in Korea, and the Chilean Centro de Voluntarios—are taken as examples of how background knowledge features in policy interventions in English language teaching.

Two views of background knowledge The debate over whether people are born or made as teachers underlies many social and policy debates about how people learn to teach. Stripped of the rhetoric of newspaper opinion pieces and internet blog posts, these are two views of the nature of background knowledge—what people have and bring to the teacher learning process. Teacher education plays a different role depending on how this background knowledge is defined and understood. The two positions, born and made, become more complex in language teaching because of how language can be learned, and its nature as a classroom subject, discussed in Chapter 2.

The ‘born expertise’ position At its core, the ‘teachers are born’ position is that teaching is a matter of personal qualities, of disposition and attitude, of openness and engagement, combined with interpersonal attributes like empathy and humor. The argument is that some people seem to be more naturally equipped with these qualities than others. The ‘teachers are made’ position is that preparation and training are the only way individuals develop the knowledge and skills needed to teach effectively. In the ‘born’ position, background knowledge is something individuals have and bring to the classroom to make them successful as teachers. In the ‘made’ position, the knowledge has to be developed over time with training and support. This dichotomy has echoes of the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debates in the social sciences, and the role of heredity and innate qualities versus learning. Both dichotomies help to tease apart what individuals bring to a social practice, in this case teaching, by distinguishing between idiosyncratic, individual capacity and learned ability. Generally speaking, the ‘born’ versus ‘made’ debate is not particularly noteworthy. The debate reflects some of the popular perceptions that underlie policy debates about quality in teaching and teacher education, as well as assumptions about how teachers are selected, prepared, and supported. However, it does connect to language teaching and to teacher education in several ways. In language teaching, the ‘born’ position embeds ‘nativeness’ and

caring as attributes of teachers’ background knowledge, while the ‘made’ position counters that teacher preparation and development are critical. Each position can play out in hiring decisions and new teacher induction, and each can be found in national policies on ELT recruitment.

‘Teachers are born’ The following column from a major American newspaper outlines the ‘teachers are born’ position: (1) I suspect that a successful teacher-training program produces good teacher candidates because of the personal characteristics of the prospective teachers it admits and graduates. Indeed, I have begun to suspect that most of what goes into making a successful K-12 teacher is in place before the teacher-to-be becomes a kindergarten student. I would say that a good teacher is born (with the right genes) and raised (in the right household), rather than ‘trained’ or ‘educated.’ (2) Pure academic intelligence (whatever that might be) is probably the least important characteristic in an effective K–12 teacher. Certainly there are plenty of extremely bright teachers, but teacher contributions to K–12 students are not influenced much by pure teacher academic ability. (3) Teacher personality traits (humane motivations, patience, sensitivity, tolerance for many circumstances that most people cannot tolerate) mean much more than mere academic ability. K–12 teaching is more of a nurturing role than an intellectual role. (Bligh, 2012) These are central features of the ‘teachers are born’ view: that key qualities are innate (point 1), that academic knowledge is less important than these qualities (point 2), and that personality is the main attribute (point 3). Background knowledge in this view comes from who the individual is. On this basis, the writer argues that selection—choosing who can enter and who can graduate from teacher preparation programs—is key to teaching quality: (4) I wish that all teacher training programs would simply acknowledge that the most important thing they do to produce effective teachers is deciding (a) who they let into the program and (b) who they let graduate. If well-chosen teacher candidates are able to demonstrate that they are smart enough to graduate from college, their success in the K-12 classroom will be directly proportional to the quality of students they are given to teach. (Bligh, 2012) If background knowledge in teaching is a matter of innate personality, then it follows that selection is the critical decision. The final assertion—that teacher success is a function of ‘the quality of students they are given to teach’—offers an out though, by saying in essence that in spite of the qualities of personality, teachers may achieve ‘proportional’ results. There are several interesting aspects to the construction of this argument. It begins with the

assumption that birth and upbringing, ‘a good teacher is born (with the right genes) and raised (in the right household)’, provide the basis of teaching. On its face, this seems to be a rather preposterous assumption; however the second point, that teaching does not depend on ‘academic intelligence’, operationalizes and reinforces the first point. If ‘the right genes and the right household’ qualify a person to teach, then it is who you are and not what you know as a teacher that leads to effective instruction. Which leads to the third assertion, the most central to the ‘teachers are born’ argument, that ‘personality traits mean much more than mere academic ability’ in making ‘effective’ teachers.

The ‘made over time’ position The counter-argument, that ‘teachers are made’, is generally articulated in print and in the blogosphere by people connected to education, which is probably not surprising. In a newspaper opinion piece titled ‘Op-ed: Good teachers are made, not born’, a teachers’ union president writes: Some people think that good teachers are born; educators know that good teachers are made. They are made over time, through education, perseverance, practice and guidance. Newly minted teachers may be shiny and bright, but teachers with experience connect with students. They are the coin of the realm for student achievement. It takes time to get from here to there. (Knapp, 2012) The writer goes on to assert that classroom teaching improves by ‘Supporting teachers in the tough job of continuously learning the craft of teaching.’ This is the ‘teachers are made’ position: Teaching takes time to learn well; it requires personal commitment and application to do so and thus the learning process needs mechanisms of socio-professional support. It follows from this position that training continues from induction into ongoing professional development, as a new teacher coach describes: ‘Effective teachers are indeed MADE.’ Even those who are born with the talent to teach have to be provided numerous opportunities for … reflection. Quality induction programs proactively address the challenging realities that teachers face … [and] are a catalyst for the … growth of beginning teachers even when obstacles persist. (Monteiro, 2013, original emphasis) In this view, since knowledge is developed from experience over time, logically teacher education must be a continuing process matched to the individual’s evolving needs for input and support. Therein lies the crux of the difference between the two opinions about how people become teachers. In the ‘born’ view, background knowledge comes from who the person is; it is brought to teaching. In the ‘made’ view, background knowledge comes from doing the work; it is developed through professional feedback and reinforcement.

The shared premise of experience

These are the two competing positions. If teachers are born, teaching becomes fundamentally a matter of personality assembled through life experience. This ‘born expertise’ is largely beyond the reach of professional training, which proponents say may even interfere with its innate character and natural development. If on the other hand, teachers are made, teaching becomes a complex set of knowledge and skills, which are assembled through experience with training as well as professional support. As polemical as the two positions can be, they share a common core premise: that background knowledge is connected to experience. Both positions take experience as the basis of effective classroom teaching practice; they differ over what is meant by ‘experience’ and how that experience is gained. In the born expertise view, experience is a by-product of living, starting from birth and rearing, and continuing through schooling and growing up. In school, it is the experience of the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie, 1975); in life, experience equates to who you are and what you have done (as it did when I was first hired to teach French). Alternatively, experience is a term for the know-how that is made over time. It is the experience of doing the work of teaching coupled with the experience of learning from it. Experience does not simply convert into pedagogical knowledge by itself, however. Preparation, training, and on-the-job support all contribute to the process of locating and learning from experience. In fact, the made over time position traces problems in teaching quality to gaps or deficits in training and professional support, while the born expertise position attributes these problems to selecting teachers with the wrong kinds of life experience, and permitting them to teach.

Dewey and experience Arguments about experience as background knowledge in teaching are usually traced to John Dewey, who argued that there are two dimensions: one is acting which creates experience; the other is undergoing or ‘experiencing’ something (1916, p. 163). But he notes, ‘A separation of the active doing phase from the passive undergoing phase destroys the vital meaning of experience’ (p. 177). As Dewey’s point suggests, the ‘born/made’ dichotomy blurs how people learn from acting and undergoing experience, which both play a part in background knowledge. Those, like the newspaper writer quoted earlier, who favor innate qualities in the making of teachers would probably allow that people do learn from the experience of teaching over time. By the same token, those who argue in favor of professional learning, like the Op-ed writer, would agree that there are some aspects of teaching and the teacher’s persona that probably cannot be explicitly trained. However, they would not accept that ‘good’ teachers stand or fall simply on the basis of these aspects of personality and background. The difference becomes salient in how the two positions view teacher education. The born expertise position would not accept that learning from experience is an efficient or effective way to improve what a teacher does. Individuals cannot be taught to teach because conscious preparation cannot take the place of what proponents see as the basic human qualities that undergird teaching. The opposite is the case for the know-how made over time position. People learn to teach through formally organized teacher education that starts with preparation and induction, and continues throughout the individual’s teaching career through continuous professional development. Ironically perhaps, I experienced both points of view

in my own entry into the field.

Narrative 3.1: A personal perspective In retrospect, I can see how the ‘born or made’ debate characterized my start as a language teacher. I was initially hired, as I explained in the first chapter, based on who I was and the experiences I brought to the job and not on the basis of any kind of teacher preparation. I had studied and worked in the country where the language I was to teach, French, was spoken. In this sense, I entered teaching based on my attributed ‘born expertise’. That background knowledge was not enough, however. What kept me in the job was the possibility that I could get better at what I barely knew how to do when I started. This learning was feasible because there was some sort of know-how involved in teaching that I could make my own over time. While I had no formal induction as a new teacher, I was fortunate to work with colleagues who were deeply interested in teaching. From those interactions, I began to dissect my experiences, to build my know-how, and to make teaching my own. These arguments about whether teachers are ‘born’ or ‘made’—like so many generic education debates in the popular sphere—can seem separate from language teaching and second language teacher education; they are not, however. The debate anchors central assumptions about who is employed to teach English, how their qualifications are documented and assessed, and how teacher preparation and development can improve classroom language teaching. The debate is helpful in exposing some of what tends to be taken for granted in policies and practices in English language teaching, in particular, assumptions that connect to how teaching language differs from teaching other content areas. How does the content, and its perceived availability and value, figure in the ‘born or made’ argument? For many people, teaching calculus or auto mechanics or Renaissance history, for example, do not depend entirely on the teacher’s personality; a person is not simply born into teaching these things. So even in the popular mind, content does matter to some degree, and it is fair to argue that teachers of these (and other similar subjects areas) are made through mastering the content they teach. In contrast, there are certainly widespread perceptions that minding young children or helping adults learn to read, or giving swimming lessons, for example, are teaching that can be done fairly well by someone with the proper disposition and commitment to the work. Someone who is caring and nurturing can mind young children; someone who is able to read can help others do so; a person who is able to swim is able to give swimming lessons. These types of teaching seem to reinforce the ‘born’ position. The question is where does teaching language fall on this spectrum? Is it like teaching someone how to repair cars or to swim? Is it more like teaching someone calculus or caring for children? Language, as a content to be taught, blurs these distinctions because it can be both.

Language content, ‘nativeness’, and ‘born expertise’ In language teaching, the ‘born expertise’ perspective surfaces in notions of ‘nativeness’ and of being a ‘native speaker’ as the primary qualification for teaching. In recruitment

advertisements, hiring policies, job entry criteria, and selection processes for teacher training courses, the term ‘native-speaking ability’ is used as a proxy for content expertise. The term ‘native-speaking’ stands for a complex set of social experiences that are seen as background knowledge one is born into. These attributes of being a so-called ‘native’ to a particular language are a function of the sociolinguistic environments in which a person grew up and was educated, in other words, of the individual’s life experiences. To paraphrase the columnist who argued that teachers are ‘born’: ‘a good teacher is born (with the right [language] genes) and raised (in the right [linguistic] household’ [italics added]. In this sense, ‘nativeness’ is a social perception, a de facto qualification attributed through experience. It is a geopolitical judgment that cannot be measured in a psychometric sense. The fact that individuals come by languages in various ways, through undergoing experiences, to use Dewey’s distinction, is central to the complexity of content in language teaching. Although the majority of those teaching languages, including English, have learned them directly, usually through formal education, the idea of ‘nativeness’ continues to impact many levels of policy and practice, particularly in English language teaching. The sociopolitics of this concept of ‘nativeness’ have been well addressed elsewhere (see Braine, 2010; Davies, 1991; Phillipson, 1992; Singh, 1998); the issue here is how the ‘born’ vs. ‘made’ debate takes on a particular nuance and meaning in language teaching, particularly in the case of English.

ELT programs and the notion of ‘born expertise’ In language teaching, and particularly in ELT, ‘nativeness’ can function as an ideology to establish policies for reform (Hutton, 2010). Three national programs, which share the policy goal of improving public-sector English language teaching, illustrate this point. The programs have the common aim of bringing fluent, usually young, English-speakers most of whom are not formally trained as teachers, into the national school system for a limited period of time. ‘Nativeness’ is a central criterion for selecting these individuals in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (or ‘JET’) Program, the English Program in Korea (‘EPIK’), and the Chilean government’s Centro de Voluntarios. Features in the procedures for identifying, recruiting, and selecting participants for these three programs demonstrate the complexities and contradictions of implementing the notion of born expertise at the level of national policy.

Japan English Teaching (JET Program) Established in 1987, the JET Program is the oldest of the three and has had the largest number of participants (some 55,000 to date). The program also has the broadest educational remit: … [to] help enhance internationalization in Japan by promoting mutual understanding between Japan and other nations. The program also aims to improve foreign language education in Japan and to encourage international exchange at the local level by fostering ties between Japanese youth and foreign youth. (JET Program, 2014a)

The other two programs have a narrower remit, focusing exclusively on English language teaching. The EPIK Program was started in 1995; its goal is to ‘improve the English speaking abilities of students and teachers in Korea, to foster cultural exchanges, and to reform English teaching methodologies in Korea’ (English Program in Korea, 2014). The Chilean government’s Centro de Voluntarios, which was started in 2004 as part of the English Opens Doors Program and has hosted 1,822 ‘volunteer’ teachers, has a similar aim. Program entry criteria

English language proficiency is central to each of these governmentally sponsored teaching programs. In the JET Program, participants can apply for one of three roles (Assistant Language Teachers, Coordinators for International Relations, or Sports Exchange Advisors), but only the application for Assistant Language Teachers (known as ‘ALTs’), ‘who provide language instruction in elementary, junior and senior high schools,’ includes eligibility criteria related to the applicant’s mother tongue. These criteria are stated in linguistic terms: Be adept in contemporary standard pronunciation, rhythm and intonation in the designated language (e.g. English for those applying from English-speaking countries) and possess excellent language ability that can be applied accurately and appropriately; have ability to compose sentences logically. (JET Program, 2014a) These linguistic criteria are geographically defined. An ALT applicant must: Be a national … of the country where the recruitment and selection procedures take place… . Those who possess dual nationality with Japan must renounce their Japanese nationality before [applying]. Applicants who have dual nationality with countries other than Japan may only apply as a national of one of those countries. (JET Program, 2014a) Part of this rather elaborate requirement seems to be administrative, based on the fact that the program is a governmental one and its recruitment is administered through Japanese embassies and consulates on behalf of Japanese municipal governments and sponsoring organizations. Nevertheless, these interlocking criteria illustrate the gymnastics of basing program recruitment on nativeness. Achieving this definition of born expertise in this instance seems to depend on residency rather than linguistic criteria. Selection

In 2013, the JET Program listed 4,372 participants from 40 countries, just under half of which have English as an official language. As the top five sending countries, Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States accounted for 89 percent of the participants. In 2013, 91 percent (4,000 people) of these were listed as Assistant Language Teachers, making it the main focus of the program. Of those 4,000 Assistant Language Teachers, 3,723 (93 percent) were listed as coming from the five countries listed above. The JET Program requires tertiary education to the Bachelor’s degree level, though ‘a Bachelor’s Degree in any field is sufficient to meet the eligibility criteria’, but ALT applicants are not expected to have preparation in language teaching although it ‘will be an

asset during the selection process’. (JET Program, 2014b) These selection criteria illustrate the tension in ‘born vs. made’ views of background knowledge as based on the applicant’s life experience, but ‘improved’ with some formal training. The selection process for Assistant Language Teachers in the JET Program has attempted to express a judgment of nativeness in broadly linguistic terms, while also using geographical and educational background criteria as a baseline.

English Program in Korea (EPIK) The EPIK Program in contrast appears more straightforward. By combining geography and citizenship with specific educational experience, the program defines its eligibility criteria purely in terms of ‘born expertise’. Applicants must hold citizenship of: [A] country where English is the primary language; … [which includes] one of the following countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States or South Africa; [and] must have studied from the junior high level (7th Grade) and graduated from a university in one of [these] seven … countries. (EPIK, 2014) These criteria, which are expressed in geographic terms, are arguably much clearer. There is a certain geo-linguistic naiveté in assuming that all citizens of these countries are fluent in English by having attended university there, however. That an applicant might have gone to a French-medium university in Canada or studied in one of other national languages in South Africa for example, and more importantly might consider a language other than English as their first language, does not seem to be part of the selection calculus.

Centro de Voluntarios Like the EPIK Program, the Chilean Centro de Voluntarios program uses nativeness as the proxy for background knowledge, although their selection statement acknowledges blurriness in the criteria. The goal of the Chilean program is described as ‘bring[ing] native and nearnative English speakers, between the ages of 21 and 35 years, into Chilean public and subsidized schools to develop the listening and speaking skills of young Chileans as well as to encourage cultural exchange’. (EOD, 2014) The program is part of a larger educational policy initiative known as English Opens Doors Program, which aims to ‘increase the English proficiency of Chilean students and teachers of English as an indispensible skill to aid in Chile’s continued development in our globalizing world’ (EOD, 2014). The website offers details of the roles that volunteers can play, which interface with other student-focused activities such as summer and winter intensive English language camps and national speaking contests.

Implementing ‘born expertise’ as a policy These three national programs aim to introduce English language and cultural resources into the public-sector system to improve student outcomes. They are instances of designing and

implementing national policies based on the notion of ELT background knowledge as ‘born expertise’. These national policies are not isolated in valuing nativeness in this manner, however. The programs also are part of efforts to maintain a competitive position for public education vis-à-vis the private sector ELT industry. (Both the JET and EPIK websites include information to potential applicants about how their programs compare to private sector employment in their respective countries.) The three programs are based on two interrelated premises. As stated in each programs’ goals, the background knowledge needed to support and improve English-language learning outcomes comes from teachers socio-geographic identities; in other words the expertise these individuals are ‘born into’. This goal is implemented through eligibility criteria expressed in primarily geographic terms. This background knowledge is developed through the applicant’s life experiences. Separating geography and life experience can be tricky as, for example, in the EPIK Program’s caveat concerning ‘Ethnic Koreans’ who wish to apply: ‘Koreans with legal residency in a country where English is the primary language can apply, but must provide proof of English education beginning from the junior high school level’ (EPIK, 2014). None of the programs explicitly seeks individuals with ELT preparation; ‘know-how made over time’ is here understood as life experience, not as professional training. The entry criteria for these three programs show how the notion of background knowledge as ‘born expertise’ survives in language teaching; English is a particular example. The proxy for this expertise is the idea of nativeness, which, as the criteria for these programs show, is basically indefinable and therefore contradictory to implement.

Two theorizations of teacher learning Knowledge propositions and implicit theorizations As views of how people learn to teach languages, born expertise and know-how made over time shape second language teacher education although they are rarely fully described. To use a metaphor from computing, each view is like an operating system that runs programs— commonly adopted policies and practices in language teaching and second language teacher education. As operating systems, the views of born expertise and know-how made over time can cross over, but they mainly function independently as sociopolitical views of background knowledge and teacher learning. As implicit ways of defining background knowing in language teaching, the views share key features (see Table 3.1 below). Each one starts from a knowledge proposition, which defines what a language teacher knows in order to teach. Each view has a learning proposition that describes how people come by the background knowledge. And each has a delivery proposition about how professional learning works for teacher education. These are propositions in several meanings of the word. They take positions, grounded in opinions and judgments of social practice and experience, on what language teachers know and how they come to know it. They remain opinions, however, because even though each proposition could be investigated, none of them has been comprehensively tested.

Born expertise

Knowledge needed to teach

How it is learned and taught

How learning/teaching is delivered

‘Nativeness’

‘Born (the right genes) and raised (the right household)’ (Bligh, 2012)

Social and individual experience in training and teaching settings

‘Through education, perseverance, practice and guidance’ (Bligh, 2012)

Sequenced instruction and evaluation

Know-how made over Particular knowledge, time skills, and dispositions

Table 3.1 What language teachers need to know, how it is learned, and how that learning is organized—Version 1

As a typology, the three propositions—about the knowledge needed to teach, how it is learned and taught, and how that learning/teaching is organized and delivered—make visible the underlying thinking in these views. There are always risks and limitations in summarizing complex ideas in a few words in a table, but laying these two views out in a comparative typology can help to identify how each contributes to defining educating second language teachers. Beyond teasing out what may be underlying problematic thinking and assumptions (the presumption of nativeness for instance), this greater explicitness can contribute to stronger, more coherent research and more efficient program design.

The chapter argument revisited Language as content knowledge comes through two forms of experience: a person can be born and socialized into it or can learn it through school. These two types of experiential foundation pit an accidental trajectory against an intentional path. They are two views of background knowledge in teaching: people grow into it through born expertise, or the knowledge is consciously developed through formal training as know-how made over time. In language teaching, the born expertise view leads to what is colloquially called nativeness or being a native speaker, a concept that is inherently indefinable in either epistemological or psychometric terms, as the policies of the three national teaching programs discussed above demonstrate. The know-how made over time argument, which emphasizes learning language content as a schooled subject, reflects the realities of the majority of the ELT teachers globally. However, it foregrounds issues of how that content is defined and disseminated that center on the role of academic disciplines and institutions in these processes.

4 Disciplinary transmission in second language teacher education Education is a field of study, a locus containing phenomena, events, institutions, problems, persons, and processes which [are] the raw material for inquiries of many kinds. The perspectives and procedures of many disciplines can be brought to bear on the questions … in … education as a field of study. Shulman (1996, p. 3; original italics)

The chapter argument This chapter examines two aspects of second language teacher education: how disciplinary terms are set and how those terms are put in circulation. Setting the terms involves the role of academic disciplines in defining the content and the processes of language teacher preparation. Circulating them involves how the professional communities that articulate and use these ideas come about. Together these aspects are referred to here as disciplinary transmission.

Setting the terms—disciplinary hybrids The word ‘terms’ is used in two senses. It means a group of labels or words and it also means the conditions or bases of an activity. It is used here in both senses, first to refer to the terms or social facts of second language teacher education and then to ways in which those social facts have become a professional vernacular, which is the basis of ELT. This play on the word ‘term’, is part of a larger argument about education as a field or a discipline that starts from Shulman’s point above. He argues that since education is a field of study and not itself a discipline, it depends on academic disciplines for its terms, its social facts. This relationship with disciplines in turn shapes both the what and the how of teacher education. Conventionally, new teachers need to learn their content area, which comes from a parent academic discipline like mathematics, the natural sciences, or history, and they need to learn how to teach that content to students. The conventional process does not map particularly well onto second language teacher education, however. Since language as a classroom subject matter does not have a parent discipline, the process of defining a set of social facts as the basis for second language teacher education is complex and murky. Language teaching has had to develop hybrid or specialized disciplinary bases, a process that starts with determining its terms. The terms of established academic disciplines are usually clearly recognizable. Biology, economics, or history, for instance, each have specific ways of developing and presenting knowledge, and each has its particular discourse—a way of talking, writing, and acting (Gee, 1990). Part of learning that content is accepting how the discipline works; this is, in a sense, apprenticing in the discourse. School curricula are now emphasizing disciplinary literacies (Ford & Forman, 2006), so that in science or history for example, students learn to think like scientists (for example, Ford, 2008) or read and write like historians (for example, Wineburg, Martin, & Monte-Sano, 2012). This approach works if the discipline is an established one, which languages are not. They are associated with disciplines (their literatures and literary studies) and they are subjects of common forms of analysis in linguistics, but English, French, and Arabic are not themselves academic disciplines. Instead, languages depend on a hybrid combination of discourses drawn from several areas. Hybrid or specialized disciplines need specific terminology, which makes the process of articulating ideas in extra- or interdisciplinary areas fraught with issues of borrowing language to express them. The ideas themselves represent new or reworked approaches to the

core issues, but the terms need to come from somewhere, usually from the parent disciplines. So interdisciplinary areas such as ecology, media studies, or neuroscience build new discourses using terms and ways of thinking drawn from established disciplines. In language teaching, the process is similar. Freudenstein writes about this process as he describes translating Lado’s book, Language Teaching, into German in the early 1980s: I opened a book entitled Language teaching, and I studied it literally word by word, surrounded by dictionaries. These were not … helpful because Lado’s ideas and concepts, his linguistic and psychological terminology, his pedagogical and methodological statements could not always be expressed in the prevalent professional language … (Freudenstein, 1985, p. 1) Finding new words for new ideas

Although he writes about translating a text from English into German, Freudenstein is describing a process of creating a vernacular for ELT as a new form of professional practice. Developing a lingua franca out of terms from parent disciplines is challenging under any circumstances. Conceptually it involves piecing together ideas to capture the activity—how do concepts from psychology relate specifically to learning another language, for example? Or how do models from structural linguistics connect to language as lesson content? Semiotically, the process involves choosing the right words, as Freudenstein describes. There are no direct referents in these disciplines for these things; it is a matter of finding the terms that work. Hybrids of a hybrid

Language teaching, and its counterpart second language teacher education, are hybrid discourses; in a way, they are hybrids of a hybrid. As forms of education, and because education is a field of study, they depend on parent disciplines. The disciplinary referents of education are hybrids, as Shulman (1996) points out. They are sub-fields within the parent disciplines—the economics, sociology, history, or philosophy of education for example. Each of these hybrid fields uses the disciplinary lenses and warrants of evidence of the parent to examine its particular aspects of education: ‘As each of these disciplinary perspectives is brought to bear on the field of education, it brings with it its own set of concepts, methods, and procedures, often modifying them to fit the problems or phenomena of education’ (Shulman, 1996, p. 3). This is how education as a field borrows from other disciplines to create its social facts. For example, the notion of ‘valued-added measures of student learning’, which looks at the comparative contribution of teaching in ‘adding value’ to student learning from one grade level to the next, is a hybrid term taken from economics that has become a social fact in education as a way to explain student progression over time. This first hybridity of education is compounded by a second one, the fact that language as content is also a hybrid. Language does not translate easily or directly into content for classroom teaching; when it goes to school, language is given attributes (grammar, levels, skills, as argued in Chapter 2) to make it more teachable. These attributes come from parent disciplines. Language teaching has drawn on several disciplines to establish itself as a formal field of study and activity and to define its knowledge-base. The first of these were linguistics

and the literature of the target language. As a parent discipline, linguistics has played the role of primary definer of content of language teaching, so that the conventional path of foreignlanguage study, particularly at the tertiary level, has included studying grammar, vocabulary, and language skills initially. Then, if language study continues at advanced levels, it usually focuses on the language’s literature, and perhaps the history and culture of its speakers. Linguistics and literature have been used to define language content from a disciplinary perspective. Psychology has been the parent discipline that frames and articulates the language learning process. However, neither parent fits particularly easily with language teaching as an educational process, so that the translation process has led to new sub-areas within these disciplines; to applied linguistics in the case of the content and to second language acquisition in the case of the processes of language learning. Other disciplines have contributed as well, for example history and anthropology in defining the content of language teaching, and anthropology and sociology in understanding the language learning process. But language teaching depends, as Table 4.1 summarizes, on a hybrid knowledge base to define its content and explain how it is learned. Content of language teaching How content is learned Disciplinary bases

Linguistics and Literature of/in the language

Psychology

Contributing disciplines

History Anthropology (culture)

Sociology Anthropology (social learning)

Disciplinary hybrid

Applied linguistics (application, see Application and specialization)

Second language acquisition (specialization, see Application and specialization)

Table 4.1 The disciplinary hybrids of language teaching The ACTFL standards as an example of disciplinary hybridity

Hybrid disciplinary definitions run through language teaching policy documents of all kinds. An example is the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) statement of foreign language standards, which begins by describing the learner and purposes for learning a foreign language in school: The purposes and uses of foreign languages are as diverse as the students who study them. Some students study another language in hopes of finding a rewarding career in the international marketplace or government service. Others are interested in the intellectual challenge and cognitive benefits that accrue to those who master multiple languages. Still others seek greater understanding of other people and other cultures. Many approach foreign language study, as they do other courses, simply to fulfill a graduation requirement. (ACTFL, 2014, p. 3) Students have diverse reasons for studying any content (history as a prelude to the law; mathematics or the sciences as a prelude to medicine, etc.) What makes language as content different is that it can be immediately usable for any of the purposes listed in the ACTFL document (and more besides); it is not a socio-professional prologue for further study.

Acknowledging and corraling the diversity of learners’ purposes sets the stage for articulating standards for language as classroom content: Regardless of the reason for study, foreign languages have something to offer everyone. It is with this philosophy in mind that the standards task force identified five goal areas that encompass all of these reasons: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities—the five C’s of foreign language education. (ACTFL, 2014, p. 3) The ambiguity and multiplicity of purposes for learning drives the hybrid approach to using the parent disciplines to frame the content. For example, the first area, Communication, draws basic ideas from psychology, sociology, and anthropology (italicized below) and national literatures (underlined below) to define the domain as content: ‘Communication is at the heart of second language study, whether the communication takes place face-to-face, in writing, or across centuries through the reading of literature’ (ACTFL, 2014: p.3). Similarly, the second domain, Culture, draws from anthropology (italicized) and sociology (underlined): ‘Through the study of other languages, students gain a knowledge and understanding of the cultures that use that language and, in fact, cannot truly master the language until they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs’ (ACTFL, 2014, p.3). The ACTFL standards illustrate, on the level of disciplinary terms, the same process of finding and borrowing words that Freudenstein (1985) described in translating Lado’s book into German. It is how hybrid disciplines like language teaching and second language teacher education have operated to establish themselves and their content.

Institutions, disciplines, and transmitting social facts The first disciplinary hybrid in language teaching is defining language as content, as in the ACTFL standards (or the Common European Framework of Reference, discussed in Chapter 5); the second is teaching itself. As part of education, teaching takes on the characteristics of educations’ hybrid definitions. Trainees are asked, for example, to write about their philosophies of teaching; they learn about the history of methods or the psychology of language learning. In each instance, the terms of the first word (in italics) are applied to the second terms in both senses, as specific concepts and as ways of thinking. This process creates social facts—agreed upon explanations—for language teaching. As a new teacher, I ran into these two levels of disciplinary hybridity, when I had to decide on classroom materials.

Narrative 4.1: Glimpsing hybridity—which book to use? After I was hired, one of my first tasks was to choose textbooks for the various levels of French I would be teaching. Here again I ran into problems due to my lack of formal training. The only textbooks I knew were the ones I’d used when I was in secondary school, and these were infused with memories of irrelevance and lack of connection to the French I’d needed and used when I went to France. I spent many hours in a well-known bookshop in Boston that specialized in foreign language books. (This was well before the internet and online research.) I also came across an educational materials catalogue from Quebec, which included textbooks in mathematics and science, published in French. As I looked over the textbooks I recognized in the bookshop, they seemed so dry and disconnected that I was pretty discouraged and also a bit panicked. So I ordered samples from the Quebec publisher in the hopes these would be more ‘realistic’ linguistically. When the boxes arrived; they were enormous, packed full of student books for Grade 3 mathematics, a teacher’s guide, and various ancillary materials. They were fascinating, but I immediately realized I had no idea how to use them to teach language. I was sure my students would know the mathematics involved (after all it was from elementary school), but how could I use these materials to help them to learn French? After wrestling with this problem over several days, and facing the imminent start of the school year, I put the math materials back in the box and ordered Mauger, Voix et Images de France (1953), the classic text from the Alliance Française that I had used as a student in Grade 7. Lesson One began, ‘C’est un stylo. Ce sont des stylos’ [This is a pen./These are pens.] and went on from there. It wasn’t innovative, but at least I could recall how it was taught to me. The struggle to choose curricular materials is emblematic of the challenges of hybridity. The experience shows the levels of the challenge, defining language as classroom content, and then defining how to teach it. On one level, the challenge is about how the content is represented. The Mauger book is an example of the hybrid version of language content; it is language that is essentially about itself. The Quebecois materials on the other hand are disciplinary. They were about mathematics; the French language is about something else. On another level, I saw the materials as a choice in role, between teaching French and using French to teach mathematics, and I felt I knew how to teach French. My ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie, 1975) in Grade 7, the socialization as a French language student, equipped me (at least in my own mind) to be a teacher with the Mauger book. The experience embodied the two levels of hybridity, in the book as content, and choosing it because I felt I knew how to use it, which captured the ill-defined nature of teaching. The irony is that had I been formally prepared as a French teacher, I might well have made the same choice. I might have decided that I could teach language with the Mauger book. The difference being that I would have had social facts of language teaching at my disposal to explain the choice and how the carefully structured and sequenced French content would help my students to master language patterns. Institutions

In the midst of this hybridity, coherence comes from educational institutions: how they are organized around disciplines, how they sustain them through research and dissemination, and how they teach them. Arranged by academic department, with faculty dedicated to research and service, tertiary institutions are the epistemological homes and social drivers of disciplinary knowledge; teaching is a form of dissemination. The knowledge which is presented to students in curricular sequences from beginning to advanced courses, can seem immutable and permanent, but it is not. Disciplines are themselves dynamic social agreements, communities of explanation that change over time: Like any other social fact, disciplines are subject to change, albeit usually gradually and at long intervals. Their relative stability is the precondition for societies to be able to accumulate knowledge and at the same time to select and forget what is no longer relevant when conditions have changed. Disciplines, like any other classificatory principle of knowledge, have the function of mediating and directing social change. (Weingart, 2010, p. 4) Application and specialization

Scholars of higher education (Storer, 1967; Weingart, 2010) describe two processes through which disciplines extend themselves: application, in which the knowledge is related to phenomena outside the core of the discipline, and specialization, in which sub-areas are defined within the parent. Both processes are ways of creating new disciplinary homes for the knowledge needed in language teaching. Applied linguistics, as the name suggests, was an ‘applied’ version of the ‘pure’ science, linguistics. Second language acquisition came about through specialization. Ellis (2008, p. 41) describes the drivers, ‘One concerned the need to investigate the claims of competing theories. The other concerned the desire to improve L2 pedagogy.’ To develop the specialization, proponents took the sub-area in psychology of first language acquisition as the point of departure (see Wong-Filmore & Snow, 2000). That subfield focused on children learning their home or mother tongue, outside instructed settings; second language acquisition shifted the focus over time to adult learners who were studying second languages in classrooms.

Knowledge transmission/knowledge construction The contribution of parent disciplines to defining what teachers need to know is a dynamic and messy one in all subject areas. In language teaching, the process has been one of application and specialization, driven by the hybrid nature of the content and the goal of teaching it. The academic communities, their social structures and interactions, shape the process of definition as much as the ideas themselves. The end game is dissemination, and transmission is the main mechanism. As a term, ‘knowledge transmission’ comes from studies of organizational behavior, although it is associated with didactic forms of teaching in schools as well. Defined broadly, knowledge transmission, also called ‘knowledge transfer’, is ‘the process through which one unit is affected by the experience of another. This definition is similar to definitions of transfer at the individual level of analysis in cognitive psychology’ (Argote & Ingram, 2000, p. 151). The definition differs somewhat from the way in which

transmission is used in education, where it describes a process of conveying information or content to learners, and tends to be contrasted with knowledge construction. The contrast between transmitting versus constructing is instructive. The term ‘knowledge construction’ refers to the work of psychologist Jean Piaget, who argued against behaviorist views of learning prevalent in the 1950s, like the Audio-Lingual Direct Method discussed in Chapter 7. In studying young children, Piaget concluded that portraying their learning simply as mastering patterned behavior through stimulus and response was inadequate; rather it seemed clear that learners were contributing in the process by constructing their individual understandings. Piaget’s followers, and others in cognitive psychology, referred to this process as ‘knowledge construction’. The differentiation between knowledge transmission and knowledge construction has persisted in educational thinking, with an interesting twist. Usually knowledge transmission is used about forms of teaching like lecturing and other types of highly directive, didactic presentation of material; by extension the term is applied to the institutional teaching–learning structures that facilitate this type of teaching. Knowledge transmission is used about teaching. Knowledge construction is used, in contrast, about how people learn either individually, after Piaget, or within social contexts (as discussed in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6). It describes learners and their activities. In this equation then, teacher learning is often referred to as a process of knowledge construction; teacher education designs, as the flip side, often depend on knowledge transmission. Teacher education

As a view of how teachers are taught, knowledge transmission has two parts. First, there needs to be a recognized set of agreed-upon knowledge and skills (and more recently also of dispositions), which is the knowledge base. Broadly speaking, this foundation defines teaching as a social, professional, and educational form of activity. In teaching language, these definitions have changed over time, as communities have used language for different ends, as discussed in Chapter 9 and Chapter 10. Underlying the knowledge base is the premise that preparing teachers according to its contents will support more effective instruction. Teachers who explicitly know and draw from the knowledge base, so the argument goes, are likely to be more effective in teaching and therefore in creating desired student learning outcomes. The second part is that this knowledge base can best be learned through explicit instruction or training, the outcomes of which can be documented and evaluated. To educate teachers, and other professionals like doctors, architects, lawyers, etc., the knowledge base is taught through a mixture of transmission and organized practice. Induction into the profession depends on individuals mastering its knowledge base and demonstrating that mastery in practice. Together these ideas—of a socially established knowledge base that is learned through professional training and can be demonstrated in practice—structure professionalization in a field; teaching languages operates in basically the same way.

Disciplinary communities and their vernaculars

Both the processes of knowledge transmission and construction depend on social facts, truths about the world that are shared by certain communities. Academic disciplines function as communities to generate and sustain social facts, which they use to explain what they do. Each discipline is, in this way, its own community of explanation. Individuals enter a community by learning its disciplinary vernacular, so that they can talk, write, and act as its other participants do. Being a member means talking the walk and walking the talk of the discipline as a community of explanation. Knowledge transmission is a way to induct new members into the community; knowledge construction is a way to describe the flip side of the induction process, how participants learn the vernacular of the disciplinary community. The vernacular, and the processes of transmission and construction, depend, however, on there being an established set of social facts, which depends on there being a recognized discipline that defines the knowledge base. This is the challenge for language teaching and for second language teacher education as its means of induction. It is the challenge Freudenstein describes of trying to find terms in German to translate Lado’s Language Teaching. The social facts, ‘Lado’s ideas and concepts, his linguistic and psychological terminology, his pedagogical and methodological statements’, Freudenstein (1985, p. 1) said, ‘… could not always be expressed in the prevalent professional language of that time.’ He is describing the evolution of general language into a professional discourse, which involves recasting knowledge according to new or changing disciplinary needs and constraints, what Weingart (2010, p. 4) described earlier as ‘mediating and directing social change.’ Developing a disciplinary vernacular, while it may feel somewhat random, is a powerful process; it determines what counts (and therefore what doesn’t count) as the social facts in the community of explanation. As participants in the evolving discourse community, the users of the vernacular put new social facts into circulation to articulate the core concerns of the new area of activity. This vernacular development process can seem more theoretical than concrete, however. One place to see it happening is in the ebb and flow of topics and speakers at professional meetings. Bazerman took this approach in researching the evolution of scientific discourse through the Proceedings of the British Royal Society in the middle of the 19th century. I found that I could not understand what constituted an appropriate text in any discipline without considering the social and intellectual activity which the text was part of… . Moreover, the rhetorical gist of entire texts evoked the larger framework of meanings within the active disciplines… . I couldn’t see what a text was doing without looking at the worlds in which these texts served as significant activity. (Bazerman, 1988, p. 4) New social facts emerge, as Bazerman describes, when participants come together in conferences or other meetings, which create socio-professional occasions to use the new language (or familiar language in new ways). The people using new vernacular are visible in the conference proceedings, but the language itself is more difficult to capture and to track. The participants offer a concrete trail to locate the new community as it develops.

Putting the terms in circulation: a tale of two conferences Two sets of professional meetings, which played seminal roles in building the knowledge base and social facts of second language teacher education, offer such concrete trails. The Georgetown University Roundtables on Languages and Linguistics have convened annually since the late 1940s to address topics in linguistics, education, and language teaching. During the 1980s and 1990s, teacher education was the topic of a series of these Roundtables. The Hong Kong Conferences on Second Language Teacher Education convened biannually in the early 1990s as specialized meetings focused on research and theorizing in the field. These two conferences shared three key characteristics that underscore how the proponents and the vernacular are interwoven in an emerging knowledge base. Both conferences were convened at universities under the leadership of senior academics, each widely recognized in the field. These individuals organized the topics and played a key role in choosing the conference speakers. The curated nature of these events made for continuity in participation, which strengthened the community of explanation generating and using the new vernacular about second language teacher education. The third shared feature is that each conference resulted in published proceedings, usually within a year after the meetings. Publication in the preelectronic times of the early 1990s, was key to wider dissemination of the ideas, and one year was a very rapid turn around. All of the presented papers could—and usually did—appear in the conference proceedings, which meant that once accepted to speak, there was minimal editorial vetting of content.

The Georgetown University Roundtables on Languages and Linguistics Started in 1949 under the auspices of Georgetown University’s School of Languages and Linguistics, the GURT Roundtables are held annually to ‘bring … together distinguished linguists from around the world to explore the newest trends and theories in linguistics and language education’ (Georgetown University Round Tables on Languages and Linguistics, 2014). They are relatively small meetings, often of no more than a few hundred people, and are usually organized as plenary sessions so that everyone could hear from all the speakers. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Roundtables were organized, and primarily curated, by the School’s Dean, James Alatis. Alatis was at the time also the first executive director of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), discussed in Chapter 10. In these two roles, he was familiar with that socio-professional community as both a potential source of participants and as an audience for the new thinking that the conferences were promulgating. Four Roundtables during the 1980s and early 1990s focused specifically on the new knowledge base of ELT and second language teacher education. The 1983 Roundtable, ‘Applied linguistics and the preparation of second language teachers: Towards a rationale’ (Alatis, Stern & Strevens, 1983), was followed by three successive Roundtables in the early 1990s: ‘Linguistics, language teaching, and language acquisition: The interdependence of theory, practice, and research’ (Alatis, 1990), ‘Linguistics and language pedagogy: The state of the art’ (Alatis, 1991), and ‘Educational linguistics, cross-cultural communication and global interdependence’ (Alatis, 1994). Together these meetings illustrate how a community

of explanation can coalesce around new ideas to develop them as social facts. Continuity in participation

There was an interesting continuity in both the content and the presenters in these four meetings, reflecting an evolving community in second language teacher education. The four Roundtables averaged 37 papers each, ranging from a high of 44 in 1991 to a low of 28 in 1994. These differences could be attributed to many factors—interest in the topic, individual speaker’s availability, and available funding, among others—so the numbers are probably not significant in themselves. The patterns of participation tell a more useful story, however. Although it fluctuated as a percent of the whole, the number of papers presented by faculty from the host institution, Georgetown University, was relatively stable (averaging 33 papers per meeting) across the four meetings. But interestingly, there were no papers from the host institution at the first Roundtable in 1983. Table 4.2 below summarizes the speakers who were invited to these four Roundtables: 1983

1990

1991

1994

Total numbers of papers (average = 37)

36

38

44

28

Of which the number of papers from host university

0

6 (16%) 4 (9%)

5 (18° %)

Working total (Total less host institution; average = 33)

36

32

40

23

New presenters

—

25 (78%)

31 (77%)

16 (69%)

Of which the number of presenters from outside the US

14 (39%)

6 (24%) 8 (26%) 10 (62%)

Of which the number from ‘BANA’ countries (Holliday, 1994a)

10 (71%)

5 (83%) 3 (37%) 2 (20%)

Table 4.2 GURT presenters: 1983, 1990, 1991, and 1994

In this basic analysis, the table uses a denominator, or working total, which is the total number of invited papers less those presented by faculty from the host institution. This is simply a crude attempt to create a common basis for comparison, and is in no way meant to minimize the contributions of speakers. It is based on the rationale that those from outside institutions have to travel to participate. By this same reasoning, the table also distinguishes the number of presenters from outside the United States, which ranged from 62 percent (in 1994) to 24 percent (in 1990). A possible explanation for the high in 1994 could be the topic, which linked educational linguistics to cross-cultural communication and global interdependence. The number of non-US-based participants is also broken down into the number who came from Australasia, Britain, or North America, the rationale being that these so-called ‘BANA’ countries (Holliday, 1994a) were centers of the Anglophone disciplinary traditions, and might be expected as immediate members of the community of explanation. To see participation expand beyond these BANA countries might suggest a widening of the new community.

What does all this suggest about the emerging vernacular community of the new knowledge base in the pre-internet era? In some senses, it could be a picture found in many academic meetings, of either well established or new explanatory communities. The number of papers presented by speakers mostly from the United States, the host country, is relatively stable. Some patterns forming the community surface among repeat speakers who were invited to more than one of the Roundtables. Taking the 1983 Roundtable as a point of comparison, the number of repeat presenters in subsequent years was 22 percent in 1990 and 1991, rising to 30 percent in 1994, which was a smaller event. In 1991, six of the nine repeat presenters had spoken at the previous year’s Roundtable in 1990, while three had spoken at the 1983 Roundtable. In 1994, there were repeat presenters from several years: one presenter from 1990 only; three from 1991 only; and two had spoken at multiple years’ meetings. Only one person, Professor Jack C. Richards, was invited to speak at all four Roundtables. Table 4.3 outlines the continuity in speakers and institutions across the four Roundtables. Roundtable dates

1990

1991

1994

Working total (Total papers less those 36 from host institution)

32

40

23

New presenters

—

28 (78%)

31 (77%)

16 (69%)

Total repeat presenters from previous GURTs

—

Of which the number were presenters from all previous years

—

Number of institutions with more than one presenter A All from 1983 B 6 from 1990 C 1 from 1990 only; 3 from 1991 only; 2 from multiple years

1983

2D

7A (22%) — 2E

9B (22%)

7C (30%)

3 (33%)

1

3F

0

D University of Hawaii; University of Southern California E Carnegie Mellon University; University of Michigan F School for International Training; University of

Southern California, Los Angeles; University of Texas, Austin

Table 4.3 Continuity in participation: Presenters at GURT Roundtables (1983, 1990, 1991, and 1994)

The invitations to these repeat speakers may have been a function of several factors (availability, proximity, or professional and personal friendships); however, their involvement did contribute to a common platform. The continuity in speakers meant certain individuals became central—for whatever reason—in the articulation of the new social facts, which helped to establish core thinking in the emerging knowledge base. It is interesting that this continuity was more individual than institutional however, if we consider the universities that were represented by more than one speaker.

Coherence in the new vernacular These patterns in participation are part of a picture that suggests an emerging coherence in the community of explanation. A second aspect is what was talked about; the content that

contributed to this discourse and the development of new social facts. A general content analysis of these four Roundtables also shows some intriguing patterns. In Table 4.4, the 131 papers from the four Roundtables are broken down into four broad categories—papers that are discipline-derived, in other words with roots in either applied linguistics or second language acquisition; papers about the work of teaching, including specific classroom issues and practices as well as pedagogy more broadly; papers about theorization (theory and practice, discussion of approaches to, or new categories of, knowledge); and papers that are either context-specific or which provide general accounts of language teaching activities. The denominator is the working total from each year explained above, to guard against undue weighting from the host institution. Roundtables

1983

1990

1991

1994

Totals

Discipline-derived

4

10

15

9

38 (29%)

Work of language teaching-related

12

11

15

7

45 (34%)

6

9

7

3

25 (19%)

Accounts

14

2

3

4

23 (18%)

Working total of papers

36

32

40

23

Theorization

131 (100%)

Table 4.4 Coherence in the new vernacular: A content overview of GURT Roundtables (1983, 1990, 1991, and 1994)

Over the four Roundtables, the focus of the 131 papers was primarily on disciplinary knowledge (29 percent) and on classroom practices (34 percent), which is not surprising in building up the social facts of the knowledge base. The 38 discipline-derived topics were closely divided between applied linguistics (22 papers or 58 percent) and second language acquisition (16 papers or 42 percent). The papers about the work of language teaching were less evenly divided: 69 percent, or 31 of the 45, focused on the classroom itself, including methodology and concerns of classroom teaching, while 31 percent (14 out of 45) concerned the work of teaching beyond the classroom, such as standards setting and teacher-research. There were few papers, 19 percent, or 25 of the 131, that explicitly addressed theorization of the knowledge base, however, and only 18 percent, or 23 papers, were accounts of actual practices. These were primarily about the work of language teaching or teacher education in specific contexts (78 percent or 18 of the 23); only 5 papers (22 percent) could be called ‘synthetic’ accounts that brought together experiences from multiple settings and attempted to generalize from them. The Roundtable content could undoubtedly be parsed in other ways, but regardless of the specific categories, the central point underscores Bazerman’s observation that he ‘couldn’t see what a text was doing without looking at the worlds in which these texts served as significant activity’ (1998, p. 4). In this relatively short ten-year period, the social facts of language teaching spread through these meetings confirmed a social process. Knowledge transmission depended on an increasingly clear articulation of content, expressed in terms of disciplinary communities, and a consensus around the skills involved in the daily work of

language teaching. The proceedings of these Roundtables offer a window into the process of self definition.

The Hong Kong Conferences on Language Teacher Education The Georgetown Roundtables helped elaborate the knowledge base primarily from a UScentric vantage point in terms of speakers and of policy. A second set of conferences was central in developing the specific research dimension of second language teacher education. Professor Jack C. Richards initiated the bi-annual conference in 1991 at the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, where he chaired the English Department. As with the Georgetown meetings, explicit attention was given to both the continuity of topics and the selection of speakers. In a sense, Richards also provided a connective thread between the Georgetown Roundtables, where he had been a regular speaker, and the new conference in Hong Kong. In setting the topic and inviting and sponsoring the keynote speakers, Richards fostered the emerging professional discourse. While this guidance focused the content, it did not control it since the Hong Kong conferences, unlike the Georgetown Roundtables, made an open call for participation, from which speakers were selected. Participation in the Hong Kong Conferences was smaller and also more focused in terms of topic. The meetings averaged 16 papers, with a high of 19 at the first conference in 1991. Compared to Georgetown, there was little continuity of speakers, which might have been due to its location and the expense of travel. Only two of the 17 papers at the second conference in 1993 were by previous presenters; and at the third conference in 1995, again only two of the 13 papers were given by repeat speakers; in both instances, one of the two was a faculty member of the host institution. Refining the vernacular

The Hong Kong Conferences are more interesting from a content perspective. They reflected an emerging vernacular that combined general teacher education research with a particular focus on second language teaching. Unlike the Georgetown Roundtables, which included multiple second languages, second language teaching in the Hong Kong conferences meant English, primarily as a foreign language. Table 4.5 summarizes the three conferences using the same content categorization as the Georgetown Roundtables. The proceedings, which appeared the year following each conference, were a further step in curating the discourse since only a sub-set of the presented papers were selected for publication.

Publication year*

1992

1994

1996

Total number of papers*

18

17

13

Discipline-derived

0

3A

0

Work of language teaching

4

5

6

… in the classroom

2

3

5

… outside the class

2

2

1

Theorization

9

3

4

Accounts of teacher education

5

6

3

‘Synthetic’ accounts

2

2

2

Context-specific accounts 3B 4C 1 * The proceedings, which included a sub-set of the presented papers, appeared the year after each conference. A = 1 paper drew from applied linguistics, 2 from second language acquisition B = Hungary (2); Japan (1) C = Hong Kong (2); United States (2) Table 4.5 City Polytechnic of Hong Kong Language Teacher Education Conferences content overview (1992, 1994, 1996)

Although this content analysis is basic, several aspects stand out. Very few papers (only three across the three conferences) had an explicit disciplinary focus; in contrast, nine papers, half of the published proceedings, from the first conference were about new theorizations. A leitmotif of practice ran against this conceptual backdrop. These two foci were split equally between the language classroom, papers that focused on language teaching as the content of language teacher education, and teacher education, accounts of its designs, and practices.

Returning to the propositions At the end of the previous chapter, two views of how people learn to teach languages were summarized according to three propositions—about the knowledge needed to teach, how it is learned and taught, and how that learning/teaching is organized and delivered. The typology contrasted the premises underlying the born expertise and the made over time views of language teacher learning. In Table 4.6, disciplinary transmission is added according to the same three propositions.

Table 4.6 What language teachers need to know, how it is learned, and how that learning is organized—Version 2

Disciplinary transmission rounds out the typology at the explicit end of the continuum. It complements and formalizes the terms of teacher learning in the know-how made over time view. The view delivers content, defined by the disciplines, through knowledge transmission, and the institutional structures and arrangements that support it. Even though there is sometimes scrutiny and debate over the specifics of content, delivery, and institutional arrangements, the premises themselves about what counts as the knowledge base are not often directly challenged (see Freeman & Johnson, 1998).

The chapter argument revisited Disciplinary knowledge plays a central role in language teaching and second language education. As it does in other fields, it provides a way into the work and defines the professional identity. But this knowledge is not inert; it is produced by groups that value it as communities and that use it to understand and explain what they do. In educating second language teachers, this process is complex for two reasons: because the core content, language, is a hybrid idea that is variously defined by different disciplines, and because teaching and education are also hybrids that draw from different disciplines for definition. In the face of these ambiguities, second language teacher education has defined itself a specialized sub-area within language teaching on the one hand and teacher education on the other.

5 Learning-in-place: situating content and professional learning in language teacher education Situations might be said to co-produce knowledge through activity. (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989, p. 32)

The chapter argument This chapter examines how learning to teach combines knowing and doing in context, which I call the Haycraft dilemma. This process, known here as ‘learning-in-place’, is premised on the idea that learning involves activity, which is doing things in contexts. The learning process is understood as situated; it looks at how knowing in situations implies creating new identities. There are two aspects of in-place or situated learning that relate to how people learn to teach languages. The first is about content, how describing language in situated terms impacts what it means to learn and to teach it in school. The second aspect is about situated teacher preparation (see Lampert, 2009) and its principal vehicle, practice teaching, which bridges the training room to the school site. Practice teaching is grounded in the idea of learning-in-place, and the central principle in situated learning theory of mastering increasingly complex micro-worlds.

Knowing and doing The tension between knowledge and application, between knowing and doing, has been central in educating second language teachers. It is the driving dynamic underlying short-term certificate level preparation, which has its roots in the work of John Haycraft and the International House group of language schools. Haycraft founded the London school in 1953 and initiated a franchise system of teacher preparation that helped establish short-term, certificate-based training as an alternative route to initial employment. (Alternative route training, which is discussed more fully in Chapter 10, refers to teacher preparation pathways that operate independently of national teacher preparation systems). In his autobiography, Adventures of a Language Traveller (1998), Haycraft describes an exchange he had with a senior administrator from the British Council, whom he calls Arthur, about how best to train ELT teachers: – We have to give training seminars for teachers, we don’t deal with students!’ Arthur said, firmly. – But how can you train teachers unless you also teach students?’ I insisted. – It’s perfectly possible to do without all that.’ Arthur scoffed. – Oh, so by training you mean lectures on literature and British life and institutions?’ – Well, that’s what most foreign teachers need …’ – I don’t agree. What most [teachers] need is to speak and understand English—which most of them, like us with French, can’t do when they leave school!’ (Haycraft, 1998, p. 304) The Haycraft dilemma

The exchange between Arthur and Haycraft (as the latter recalls it), is a version of the knowing–doing argument: whether language teachers are prepared by knowing certain things —’literature and British life and institutions’ as Haycraft describes them—or by doing particular activities, such as speak[ing] and understand[ing] English. Arthur sets out the

knowing position of the importance of disciplinary knowledge; Haycraft counters with the doing position of the value of situated learning. He argues that most teachers need practice using the language they are teaching because of a failure of situation, that schools generally are not places for language learning. But this creates a dilemma for educating second language teachers: If teacher education is meant to prepare them to teach in schools, and yet most schools do not support teaching languages as they are used in the world ‘to speak and understand’ (Haycraft’s phrase), then how can people be well prepared to teach this content? This Haycraft dilemma is the central challenge of situated learning. It is actually two interrelated dilemmas, which organize this chapter: the dilemma of language as situated content and the dilemma of language teacher education as situated preparation.

Situated learning theory Unpacking the Haycraft dilemma starts with situated learning theory. In an early paper, Collins (1988) defined situated learning ‘[as] the notion of learning knowledge and skills in contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be useful in real life’ (p. 2). This framing seemed based on a duality that separated learning and use, but that was not the intent as Brown, Collins, and Duguid explained the following year: The activity in which knowledge is developed and deployed … is not separable from or ancillary to learning and cognition … it is an integral part of what is learned. Situations … co-produce knowledge through activity. Learning and cognition, it is now possible to argue, are fundamentally situated. (Brown et al., 1989, p. 320) Asserting this integral connection between situation, learning, and thinking does a couple of things. It foregrounds doing as a process of making meaning in a shared context. Second, it argues that participating, doing things, is in fact learning to use knowledge, not simply applying it (which would assume the person knows how to use it in the first place). As the authors explain: ‘we should abandon any notion that [concepts] are abstract, self-contained entities. Instead, it may be more useful to consider conceptual knowledge as a set of tools.’ Tools, they argue, ‘can only be fully understood through use, and using them entails both changing the user’s view of the world and adopting the belief system of the culture in which they are used’ (ibid., p. 33). Using knowledge as a tool in a situation (re)shapes who the user is; in other words, identity is a function of what a person does with the tool and where they do it. These three ideas about situations, knowing, and identity summarized in Table 5.1 below, scaffold the cluster of ideas that became known as situated learning theory (see for example, Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1987; Rogoff, 1995).

Key idea

Statement (Brown, Collins, & Gloss Duguid, 1989)

Situation

‘Situations might be said to coproduce knowledge through activity.’

Doing as making meaning in a shared context

Knowing

‘abandon any notion that [concepts] are abstract, selfcontained entities… . consider conceptual knowledge as a set of tools.’

Doing as using knowledge appropriately in situations

Identity

‘using [tools] entails … changing the user’s view of the world.’

Doing (re)shapes who the doer is

Table 5.1 Summarizing key ideas of situated learning (after Brown et al., 1989) ¿Usted está a este nivel?

A story from a colleague illustrates rather humorously how these elements contribute to identity as situated. She had been visiting an elementary school in rural Mexico to observe the English teaching. She was a tall woman and in spite of her age (she was in her 70s at the time), she had decided to sit in a student-sized chair with a group of students at a table towards the back of the classroom. Of course the children seated near her were more interested in her than in the lesson. At one point, a little girl turned to my colleague and asked somewhat incredulously, Usted está a este nivel? [Are you at this class level?] Although the colleague was six decades older than the students in the class, it seemed to them that the fact she was sitting in a student chair at a student table in the classroom must mean that she was taking part in the English lesson as a student. Since she looked a bit old to be studying primary school English, the little girl felt she needed to clarify the situation. In that moment, my colleague’s identity as a participant was defined by the situation, by where she was and what she was doing, and by how she was perceived by the others who were participating. Focusing on individuals within situations can seem like a subtle change in emphasis, but it has profound implications. Situated learning theory recasts learning from being an individual cognitive process, in which a person assimilates particular content, to a process of increasingly skilled and socially grounded participation in the practices of the group or community. This hybridity situates the individual cognitive work in these social processes, which is in part how social learning theory differs in emphasis from social practice theory (discussed in the next chapter). Lave and Wenger explain the shift from individual to social as follows:

Conventional explanations view learning as a process by which a learner internalizes knowledge, whether ‘discovered,’ ‘transmitted’ from others, or ‘experienced’ in interactions with others. This focus on internalization … establishes a sharp dichotomy between inside and outside, suggests that knowledge is largely cerebral, and takes the individual as the nonproblematic unit of analysis…. Conceiving of learning in terms of participation focuses attention on ways it is an evolving, continuously renewed set of relations; this is, of course, consistent with a relational view of persons, their actions, and their worlds… (Lave & Wenger, 1991, pp. 47, 49–50) They summarize the change in emphasis: ‘The notion of situated learning now appears to be … a bridge between a view according to which cognitive processes (and thus learning) are primary and a view according to which social process is the primary, generative phenomenon and learning is one of its characteristics’ (ibid. p. 34).

The dilemma of language as situated content When learning centers on social processes, the focus changes the way language is conceptualized as classroom content. Arthur’s position in the Haycraft dilemma was that the content of language teacher education ought to be literature and British life and institutions. Delivered via the highly structured format of lectures, the learners’ participation in that content would likely be limited to listening, and perhaps asking the occasional question. Haycraft countered with a definition of language content based in the social processes of speak[ing] and understand[ing] English. Social processes here however, simply meant using the language. Language was not as fully defined, as situated learning (and later social practice) theory would do.

Language as a social process Conceptualizing language as a social process is complex. The first issue comes in defining the content as something people are doing, rather than something they meet, get, and eventually have. Language as doing challenges the idea of competence as some kind of unitary, a-situational absolute state. Instead what holds diverse users together are the situations in which they are using that language. Canagarajah outlines the logic: If languages are always in contact and communication always involves negotiation of mobile codes, we have to ask if the term ‘monolingual’ has anything more than an academic and ideological significance. Communities and communication have always been heterogeneous. [M]onolingual[s] are typically proficient in multiple registers, dialects, and discourses … (Canagarajah, 2013, p.8) He continues, ‘Users treat all available codes as a repertoire in their everyday communication …’. Languages are not necessarily at war with each other; they complement each other in communication. ‘The influences of one language on another can be creative, enabling, and offer possibilities for voice’ (p. 6). Conceptually, Canagarajah and others (for example, Pennycook, 2007) refer to this state of language use as trans-linguistic, suggesting

that languages move across situations rather than accumulating within them. Translingual practice

Canagarajah’s point that using language, which he calls ‘languaging’, is trans-linguistic changes the conversation about language as what is taught as classroom subject-matter. As suggested in Chapter 2, language teacher identity comingles professional and linguistic socialization; the former comes from the apprenticeship of observation and the latter from experiences of language in the world (see Figure 2.2). Together these socializations contribute to the content in language classrooms. Now, the comingling process is essentially the user’s experiences of situated language use over time. The Common European Framework of Reference defines this as plurilingualism: ‘… a communicative competence to which all knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which all languages interrelate and interact’ (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 4). The CEFR describes a developmental process that situates language learning in a widening gyre of experience: ‘an individual’s experience of language and its cultural contexts expands from the language of the home to that of the society at large and then to languages of other peoples (whether learnt at school or college, or by direct experience).’ (p. 4). Plurilingualism

As a situated definition of language use, plurilingualism differs from the conventional additive view of multilingualism in which widening exposure to different languages leads to greater use. The plurilingual conception of language learning argues that … [the learner] ‘does not keep these languages and cultures in strictly separate mental compartments, but rather builds up a communicative competence to which all knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which all languages interrelate and interact’ (CEFR, p. 4). As a statement of language policy, the subversive aspect of this definition comes from conceiving of language learning and use as open-ended or always partial. Competence is not a state of mastery that a language speaker has or can attain; it is a pattern of ongoing use in situations usually of escalating complexity.

Knowing in situations

Narrative 5.1: Knowing in situations—Japan, Part I After I completed my post-graduate teaching degree, I took a job in Japan, teaching at an experimental language institute. The core program was residential in which adult students immersed themselves in English for a month of intensive study and living. The philosophy was that language involved cultural understanding, which came through using the language in many ways simultaneously—in the classroom, in extra-curricular activities, at meals and at social events. The learning environment was meant to support new forms of participation and to encourage students in developing new language selves. The whole environment was different from what I was accustomed to. I was new to Japan and was making my own cultural adjustments. As a teacher, it was the first time I was teaching my own language—English—and was using the language in a myriad of residential

interactions with students on a daily basis. As a high school French teacher, I was the user of the language through my teaching identity and what I did in the classroom. In this situation in Japan, English permeated the learning environment. It was in the curriculum, as French had been in my high school teaching, but English was also supposed to be all around—in hallway chats, in the dining hall, playing volleyball, taking weekend excursions. I say ‘supposed to be’ because it was and it wasn’t. Certainly we teachers used English exclusively with each other and most of the time with students. But there was an artificiality to the process as we kept to our language and gently insisted that the students honor the social contract that made English the medium of the month-long residential experience. Immersion language programs like the one in which I was teaching in Japan embody the ideas of how knowing in situations contributes to new identities (see Table 5.1). But they raise the question of how to define the content students are supposed to learn and teachers are supposed to teach, or more accurately put, where (in which situations) to locate that content. Is it in the classroom, at the dinner table, at parties, or field trips? Or more likely is the content located in all of these situations, which then brings up the problem of how to define that content in teachable terms. The CEFR has set out an approach for doing so on the level of language policy. Much has been (and could be) written about the CEFR, how it is used and abused, as well as the many companion policy statements (e.g. the Vietnamese English Teaching Competency Framework, the Chilean Initial Teacher Preparation Standards for English teachers) and implementation documents (for example, the English Profile, 2015, and the European profile for language teacher education, Kelly, 2004) it has generated around the world. In the context of situated learning however, this discussion focuses on two aspects in particular—the goals of the Framework and the processes by which it was developed—both of which underscore the idea of how knowing in situations can contribute to new identities.

The CEFR as a translinguistic shorthand Launched by the Council of Europe in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) was developed as a group of statements that could articulate learning goals and levels across various national language standards. This translinguistic shorthand was intended to facilitate movement of people across Europe for education, employment, and exchange. North, one of the developers, described the main purposes for the CEFR: To establish a metalanguage common across educational sectors, national and linguistic boundaries that could be used to talk about objectives and language levels … To encourage practitioners in the language field to reflect on their current practice … (North, 2007, p. 21) The aim was to organize a system of common reference points, based on the Council of Europe’s Modern Languages projects. Blending somewhat disconnected purposes of metalanguage (the first goal), teacher reflection (the second goal), and policy alignment (the third goal) in one document is

intriguing. To achieve the first and third, the CEFR provided a shared set of descriptors that could anchor alignment of standards across various languages. In working toward the second goal, these descriptors were expressed as ‘can do’ statements. The aim was to combine the user’s own aims with the potential of the new language as in for example, ‘I can use simple phrases and sentences to describe where I live and people I know’ [CEFR–A1–Spoken production] or ‘I can present clear, detailed descriptions of complex subjects integrating subthemes, developing particular points and rounding off with an appropriate conclusion’ [CEFR–C2–Spoken production]. Engaging teachers in defining situations

From the standpoint of situated content, the CEFR marked a turning point in which learners’ own aims became central to how the language is defined. Those aims are expressed as participation, what learners can do in particular situations. In this sense, the framework embodies Lave and Wenger’s (1991) comment about situated learning quoted earlier that ‘Conceiving of learning in terms of participation focuses attention on ways it is an evolving, continuously renewed set of relations … of persons, their actions, and their worlds’ (p. 50). The challenge was how to capture what these situations looked like. To do so, the developers of the CEFR used a participatory methodology, which recruited classroom teachers to help articulate and validate the level descriptors. North described the process: [B]y working interactively with over 50 teachers in the series of workshops … and then calibrating the descriptors in relation to the judgments of 100 teachers in relation to their students, it has been possible to keep both the categories employed and the descriptors defining them user-friendly. (North, 2000, p. 35) The resulting statements might be, as North characterized them, user friendly; however, in terms of situating language content for learning and teaching, the process was more than that. Engaging classroom teachers in the framework’s articulation (some as developers and others as potential users), drew directly on their situated knowledge and expertise. Although this type of development process is used for some policy documents (such as the European Profile for Language Teacher Education 2004; the Vietnam English Teaching Competency Framework), it is not the norm. These processes of participatory development are meant to integrate teachers’ understandings of practice. In the case of the CEFR, the ‘can do’ statements are supposed to reflect two types of situation, those in which the speaker uses the language and, indirectly, those classroom situations in which the language is taught and hopefully learned. North (2007) talks about this second classroom situation in the second purpose of the CEFR, ‘To encourage practitioners … to reflect on their current practice, particularly in relation to learners’ practical language learning needs, the setting of suitable objectives, and the tracking of learner progress’ (p. 1; italics added). When seen from the perspective of situated learning theory, the CEFR has accomplished several things. It expresses language content as situated in terms of learner aims (albeit generically stated). Although it is disappointing and perhaps to be expected, as the CEFR has been taken up, these ‘can do’ statements have in some contexts become reified as learning

outcomes, often in order to serve as the basis for large-scale interventions in language teacher assessment and teacher training. This is contrary to intentions in creating the document. As one commentator observed, ‘it is not the function of the CEFR to lay down the objectives that users should pursue or the methods they should employ, it has to provide decision makers with options and reference points … for their specific educational context’ (Schaerer, 2007, p. 11). But he continues, reification happens, ‘Tools and documents once published lead their own lives. They tend to be interpreted, used or not used, applauded or criticized out of a wide variety of perspectives’ (ibid.). The second important accomplishment is to expose the complicated relation between learning language in the classroom and using it in the world. It is almost as if the CEFR were a policy-level response to the criticism of language learning in school that Haycraft makes to Arthur, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, ‘What most [foreign teachers] need is to speak and understand English—which most of them, like us with French, can’t do when they leave school!’ This complication frames the second part of the Haycraft dilemma—situated teacher preparation.

The dilemma of situated learning in teacher preparation The first part of the Haycraft knowing–doing dilemma is about what happens to learning languages when the process is situated in the classroom; it is about situating the content. The second part has to do with learning to teach it; it is about situated learning in teacher preparation. In their exchange, Haycraft asks Arthur somewhat rhetorically, ‘But how can you train teachers unless you also teach students?’ In reply Arthur reportedly scoffs, ‘It’s perfectly possible to do without all that.’ These positions reflect different views of ELT teaching; underlying these views are key aspects of situating teacher preparation. Haycraft’s position can be understood in two ways: that practicing teachers probably make better teacher educators, and that to be adequately prepared, new teachers need not only lectures and input but also practice teaching students. In one sense the two go hand-in-hand since they assume that teacher educators, who are at the same time working with students, are better equipped to present practical information about teaching and to coach trainees using that knowledge in classroom teaching. Arthur summarizes the opposing disciplinary knowledge–transmission position succinctly when he says (or Haycraft quotes him as saying), ‘It’s perfectly possible to do without all that … lectures on literature and British life and institutions … that’s what most foreign teachers need …’

Practice-based teacher education Their exchange shows how elements get bundled in the complicated question of situating teacher preparation; it involves not just what is presented to new teachers, but also who presents it, how, and where. These elements, which are what Lampert, Boerst, and Graziani (2011) refer to as ‘organizational resources’, are foundational in what is called ‘practicebased’ teacher education. They explain, ‘This frame trains the focus on how available resources might be used in collegial interaction across a school and how that use becomes a context for the development of shared interpretations of problems and common commitments

to solutions’ (p. 3–4). They describe the intermingled relation between the teacher-learner and the socio-professional context, saying that the focus ‘does not ignore what individual teachers know and are able to do, nor does it see individuals as independent operators who need to figure everything out for themselves’ (ibid.). Conceiving teacher learning as a situated process of using organizational resources focuses attention on the connections between the practice of teaching and the settings in which it happens, in other words on the social environment (Lampert, 2001).

Situatedness and the social environment Even if described as organizational resources, situatedness is a complicated and intriguing idea. The term can describe a state of affairs—learning that is situated in a particular place and time, among a certain group of people—and it can be a process—situating learning over time. Describing this interconnection, Rogoff (1995), a situated learning theorist, refers to the educational philosopher John Dewey: The social environment … is truly educative … [when] … an individual shares or participates in some conjoint activity. By doing his share in the associated activity, the individual appropriates the purpose … becomes familiar with its methods and subject matters, acquires needed skill, and is saturated with its emotional spirit. (Dewey, 1916, p. 26) Dewey’s notion of the social environment as educative resonates with an experience I had when I started learning Japanese.

Narrative 5.2: ‘The social environment … is truly educative’—Japan, Part II Soon after I arrived in Japan, I decided I needed to study the language. Partly it was an article of faith from past experiences with French—that since I was living in Japan I needed to know how to speak Japanese. In this sense, language learning was a form of social respect for the situation. The urge to learn Japanese was also triggered indirectly by my professional situation. I would spend my days using only English, to teach in the classroom and to socialize with students in the residential program, but this immersion felt artificial in the larger social scheme of things. Whenever I was outside the institute, there were things I wanted or needed to be able to do in Japanese—buy food, order a meal, take a train or a taxi, or mail a letter. I had high hopes when I enrolled in my first Japanese class. But I was dismayed to find a grammar-based book and a teacher who drilled us on basic sentence patterns. I would leave the class feeling that I couldn’t do anything with the language I had practiced. I was feeling farther and farther from being able to participate in any useful way in Japanese in my life outside of my workplace. As classes continued, my frustrations grew, as did those of some of my classmates. When a group of us sought out the school director to talk about the class, he listened sympathetically and then told us that this was just the way Japanese was and how it had to be taught to foreigners. Then I had a glimmer of understanding that there was something more complicated happening than a simple mismatch between classroom pedagogy and students’ aims. I began to realize that the school as a social environment was perhaps teaching something more than immediate language, that there were lessons to be learned in this situation about language and culture expectations, even if I couldn’t quite make out what they were exactly or put them into words. Dewey’s comment—that the social environment is truly educative—captures the dawning realization I had when I first studied Japanese. The lessons, the teaching, even the director’s explanations, all were organizational resources for my learning. I needed to use them to make sense of the situation. Sure I was learning to speak some Japanese; but more than that, I was learning how to be in this Japanese situation, how to be a student in a Japanese language classroom. What I experienced learning Japanese language could be, by extension, true of learning to teach. What would it take for a teacher education environment to be ‘truly educative’, to use Dewey’s phrase? The answer goes to the second part of the Haycraft dilemma—’how can you train teachers unless you also teach students?’ in both its meanings. To be educative, the teacher education environment would need to embody the entire experience, in a sense as my Japanese classes had done. As Haycraft argued, teacher education would have to involve language teachers as teacher educators, and training new teachers through teaching actual language students. These two ideas come together in what is meant by practical learning, and in clinical arrangements in preparing teachers.

Situating teacher learning The Richards and Hino (1983) example

At one of the first Georgetown Round Tables focusing on second language teacher education, Richards and Hino from the University of Hawaii presented a paper, titled ‘Training ESOL teachers: The need for needs assessment’ (1983). The paper, which reported on a small-scale survey study of expatriate English teachers working in Japan, was a needs assessment of potential applicants to their university’s post-graduate degree programs, but it offered a window into the early forays into situated thinking in ELT teacher preparation. Three aspects of their study stand out as key issues in how situations shape learning to teach ELT: who defines the situations, what is valued as knowledge in those situations, and what is perceived as practical. Who defines the situation?

It turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that defining the situations for which ELT teachers are to be prepared is essentially a socio-political move. This point is evident in the bifurcated definition of situational knowledge that emerges in who Richards and Hino surveyed. They describe the sampling strategy: ‘Subjects were members of the Japan Association of Language Teachers (JALT)… The total membership in JALT is approximately 1600, of whom 55% are Japanese … Access was provided to the JALT membership list and a questionnaire was mailed to 200 non-Japanese members’ (1983, p. 314). What is striking about this straight-forward description in retrospect is how they divided the survey sample between Japanese and non-Japanese teachers. Although the authors did note that among expatriate teachers were ‘native and non-native speakers of English’ (p. 313), the distinction echoes the native and non-native divide in equating teaching knowledge with teacher identity (discussed in Chapter 3). This point is not meant as a criticism. Rather it illustrates the complexity of defining situations in ELT teacher learning and underscores how the process can often rely on existing socio-political categories. In surveying non-Japanese members of this professional association, the study seemed to take for granted that the needs of ELT teachers who were Japanese nationals would differ from those of expatriate teachers. In explaining the sampling decision, Richards and Hino underscore this point when they describe a divided system of employment in which ‘The majority of English teachers at this level (junior, senior high school, and university) are Japanese. [In] the private sector … [which includes] private language schools and programs and some in-house company programs … the majority of teachers … are expatriates’ (1983, p. 313). What counts as knowledge in the situation?

As a view into situated teacher learning, the second aspect of the Richards and Hino study was how it portrayed situated knowledge. Their survey asked what the respondents felt they needed to know to teach ELT as well as where and how they believed they had learned it in their teacher preparation. By asking teachers about the value to them of what they had studied in their preparation, the study crossed a phenomenological line, perhaps without meaning to do so, to engage their perceptions of knowledge and learning. This approach ran counter to the prescriptive discussions that filled the field of second language teacher education and the GURT Proceedings. Richards and Hino introduce their findings with a quotation from an applied linguist, Diller (1977), who wrote, ‘The professional teacher of English as a Second Language needs pedagogical training to be a teacher, and academic training in English

language and linguistics to be a professional in our field’ (cited in Richards & Hino, 1983, p. 319). Their point seemed to assert that the disciplinary view of learning to teach (Chapter 4), which prevailed at the time, was not supported when teachers were asked in the survey responses what they valued. When these practicing teachers (N–41) were asked ‘how useful the courses you studied were in view of your present jobs’, the courses like structural linguistics and traditional grammar, which aligned closely with academic disciplines, rated in the bottom third. In contrast, ‘practical’ versions of linguistic knowledge fared better: phonology and pedagogical grammar were in the top ten, and various forms of linguistic analysis (error, contrastive, discourse) were in the top half. As if to underscore this distinction between disciplinary and situated knowledge, the version of linguistic theory, transformational grammar, which was most current at the time, was rated 28 out of 33, and English literature was second to last (32 out of 33 courses). (See Richards & Hino, 1983, p. 321.) Valuing the practical

The third aspect of the Richards and Hino study amplified the idea of knowledge in situation and what is perceived as practical. What respondents rated as most useful to their present teaching was not actually a formal course at all. It was their practice teaching. In postgraduate program designs, this term doesn’t describe a standard teaching situation. Practice teaching covers a variety of field-based teaching arrangements, from university-based teaching in intensive English programs to teaching in school settings, which can be geographically distant from the university. Further, the faculty who are responsible for these practice teaching courses fulfilled Haycraft’s criteria: They are usually practitioners in whose classes the trainee is teaching. Though it is called ‘practice’, respondents in the study felt they became knowledgeable about the work of language teaching itself. Richards and Hino concluded of this valuing of the practical, ‘Despite Diller’s plea, structural linguistics and transformational grammar were not found to be useful … The teachers in this study, like most classroom teachers, judged the value of their training in terms of its practical application and effectiveness’ (1983, p. 320). The Richards and Hino needs assessment was an early foray into situating teacher preparation; it functions here as a synopsis of the central issues in the second part of the Haycraft dilemma, what/how teachers learn about teaching as they participate in situations. These situations make new teachers participate in teaching practices in the social contexts of the classroom and the school. One new teacher is placed in an elementary classroom which has a sometimes disruptive clique of girls; another is in a school with state-of-the art technology; some trainees on a certificate course get retirees as students in the practice lessons, who come to visit with each other in the afternoon, while others get people who come at the end of the workday. These teaching situations, like any classrooms, are diverse, varied, and basically incomparable one to another. Given this diversity, a critical question arises: If learning in situations is central in learning to teach, how can teacher preparation account for the variety and complexity? Surely, learning in one classroom does not simply translate unchanged to other teaching situations?

Pedagogical simplification As part of a response to this question, situated learning theory operates through two, interrelated forms of scaffolding: structuring participation and bounding situations. The idea is that learning environments can be organized so that what is learned is more likely to be adapted to new use environments. Scaffolding situations involves recognizing which aspects can be manipulated and how, and then supporting participants to take what they have become confident at in the situation into new situations, which are more complex and uncharted for them. Wenger describes this process as ‘pedagogical simplification’: First, the areas open to simplification must be identified, as well as the nature of possible and useful modifications. Then the potential problems of scaling up from a simple to a more complex micro-world must be anticipated so that the coach can make transitions smooth and effective. (Wenger, 1987, p. 134) This process can be distilled in two principles: how to structure participation and how to bound situations. Creating micro-worlds

Pedagogical simplification centers on the idea of ‘increasingly complex micro-worlds’, in which Wenger (1987) says, ‘the succession of modifications at each step are meant to support learning’ (p. 133). Instructional designers Burton, Brown, and Fischer (1984) explain that these micro-worlds have three dimensions, which can be manipulated: ‘the equipment used in executing the skill, the physical setting in which the skill is executed, and the task specifications for the given equipment and physical setting’ (p. 139). They use the example of learning to ski, in which the three elements that are manipulated are ‘doing simple turns [task specifications], with shorter skis [equipment], on a gentle slope [physical setting].’ The goal, they explain, is to ‘allow the student to focus on the factors that are fundamental to learning a skill, rather than on factors that are not immediately relevant.’ The key to making these manipulations work to support learning, situated learning theorists argue, lies in the relation between the situation in which the task is learned and where it is actually used. The learner has to see the two situations as similar and yet not alike. Too much similarity, or oversimplification as Wenger calls it, can reduce the verisimilitude and ‘may present too distorted a view of the task’ (1987, p. 133), since it makes the task seem overly easy and predictable. The tension lies in getting the situation right, which means that the task in this micro-world is faithful to what needs to be learned and is authentic from the point of view of the community proficient in the practice. In the skiing example, the fidelity of ‘doing simple turns’ is rooted in its function as part of the larger task of skiing. The authenticity, from the learner’s point of view, comes from practicing these turns first on the beginners’ slope, but then being able to do them (often with a ski instructor’s guidance) on trails with other skiers. Beyond designing these ‘increasingly complex micro-worlds’, the equipment itself can be adapted to bridge the performance of the learner with the proficient practice. Shorter skis allow new skiers to practice the complex work of turning and stopping as experienced skiers would, by using adapted equipment.

Practice teaching: how to create authentic micro-worlds The principles of pedagogical simplification can apply in a variety of ways to the complex work of teaching. There are aspects of learning to teach that certainly involve mastering skills, and micro-worlds are devised to work on them. Practice teaching is probably the most widely used case-in-point. The task specifications are adjustable so that trainees can teach alone, in groups, or with a more experienced other. The lesson content can be left to the trainee or it can be specified; the number of language students and the duration of the lesson can vary, and so on. Each of these forms of scaffolding are used to make ‘practice’ teaching authentically mimic aspects of the actual classroom (to make the beginners’ slope like the regular ski trails, to use the example of skiing). The pedagogical simplification in practice teaching differs in what can be done to scaffold the equipment or tools. Modifying physical equipment (shortening skis) is one thing; adapting social or conceptual tools is another. Settings can be organized, and tasks orchestrated, to create a gentle slope for teaching, which is what practice teaching designs do. But the tools involved are social and conceptual, which makes it considerably more complicated to adapt them. How can ideas about teaching be simplified to support newcomers to the practice? How can the adapted versions be faithful and authentic to proficient practice? Or to use Dewey’s phrase, what makes the practice teaching environment ‘fully educative’?

Haycraft on practice teaching These questions can take us again to John Haycraft. In his first book about English language teaching, Haycraft describes the process of pedagogical simplification devised at International House in London in the 1960s to serve immediate needs for short-term training. Central to the design of their certificate courses was a sequence of practice teaching environments in which ‘first the course members taught the rest of their group; then foreign students who were brought in as “guinea pigs” ‘ (1965, p. 197). The two settings, with peers and then with language students, represented increasingly complex micro-worlds. In many practice teaching designs, trainees prepare short lessons, which they then teach to their peers. What these walk-through lessons lack in authenticity (since peers are not actual English learners), they seem to gain in the fidelity of the central work of classroom teaching— organizing and presenting content, setting up and sequencing activities, and so on. Identity and criticism

Increasing the authenticity by involving actual English learners makes the practice teaching micro-world more complex. It alters more than just the teaching–learning dynamic, as Haycraft explained of the early practice teaching at International House: Practice classes with foreign students were the greatest ordeal [for teacher-learners] as the criticisms of the students, of other course members, and the teacher had to be faced afterwards … The real battle was against the dry and the academic: often newcomers to this form of teaching tried to be historians of the theatre instead of the actors and directors they should be. (Haycraft, 1965, p. 198)

Haycraft identifies two aspects of increased authenticity in teaching practice that go to the heart of situated learning: the major one is how the situation demands a different identity (which he calls ‘the real battle’); the other is the role of the more experienced other (called here ‘criticism’). It is not surprising that practice teaching can force trainees into a different identity. They bring pedagogical identities from their socialization as students, watching teaching, and participating in the classroom from that perspective. These experiences equip them to act as ‘historians of the theatre’, to use Haycraft’s analogy, to stand back from directly doing the work and to talk about the content rather than engage students in it. The major shift in the practice teaching situation comes as trainees start to grasp pedagogically what is meant for language to play a dual role as content and medium in classroom teaching. For example, a trainee working with a group of beginning language learners tries to set up pair work by telling students to ‘Work with a partner’. When the instruction fails to produce pairs, he repeats it, saying, ‘Work with the person next to you’; and that doesn’t work so he says, ‘Work with your neighbor.’ From the trainee’s point of view these are three equivalent instructions, but to the beginning level students they sound like three different commands. Language, as the central equipment in practice teaching, is complicated to simplify. Trainees learn how to modify what they say so that students can make sense of it, as in the example, but that is only one part of the challenge. The major change is to grapple with how to teach language by using language to teach. In other words, to use Haycraft’s analogy, how language can be both the script of the drama that the trainees talk about as ‘director’, and the lines that they say as ‘actors’. Criticism, feedback, and coaching by the more experienced other is meant to scaffold that change in perspective, to help trainees realize what teaching looks like from the other side of the desk (Lortie, 1975). So attention is paid to how critical information is communicated in practice teaching. Research studies (for example, Farr, 2010; Wajnryb, 1998) and training protocols (for example, Bailey, 2006) aim to understand how feedback works and how to make the tool more effective. Ultimately, conveying critical information is the tool.

Types of practice teaching Practice teaching in teacher preparation takes many situational forms. The term covers a range of designs from in-class micro-teaching among peers, to shorter and longer structured lessons in which one or more trainees teaches a small or large group of English learners (both mentioned in Haycraft’s comment above), to in-school internships (sometimes known as student teaching) in which the trainee works along side the classroom teacher to assume greater and greater responsibility. University-based preparation courses now include many of these designs. In ELT however, the early proponents were often in alternative route designs like the intensive, certificate-oriented short courses of Haycraft and colleagues. Although these practice teaching situations vary widely as micro-worlds, they share a common aim of engaging trainees directly in the world of teaching, which they do by structuring participation and bounding the situations. The processes of structuring and bounding work through the principles of pedagogical simplification—by specifying the task, managing the setting, and modifying the equipment. In many situations of learning a skill, like the skiing example, the focus is individual, which is where situated theorists started. In practice teaching however,

each of these simplification principles depends on some sort of collaborative effort.

The goal—safe enough to let out on the road In situated teacher preparation designs, practice teaching being a prime example, the task and the setting are inherently collective. The task in these designs involves students and a teacher (or groups of teachers), and the main equipment used—language—is, as we said, a collective tool as well. The goal of these lessons is not simply to get good at the skills involved, but in the sense of the Hippocratic oath, to ‘do no harm’. As scaffolded practice, the intent is for trainees to know what to do in basic teaching situations and thus to potentially avoid making common teaching mistakes that may be problematic or damaging to students. Haycraft used an analogy in describing the early International House certificate training courses that aptly captures the core aim that trainees learn enough to do no harm: These courses were rather like driving lessons. We provided an alternative to learning through crashing into lamp-posts or running people down. At the end we, like the usual [driving] test examiner, might say: ‘Well, you’re now safe enough to let out on the road. But don’t think you’re a good driver.’ (Haycraft, 1965, p. 198) Sarcasm aside, Haycraft’s analogy does capture the way in which the design of practice teaching embodies the idea of situatedness in teacher preparation. In creating responsibility for doing the work safely that is shared collectively among the teaching group, the scaffolds of the task, the goal, and the collective organization and tools carry out the principles of situated learning theory.

Learning collectively in situations How people can learn collectively—from and with each other—in situ is the central design challenge in situated learning. The following statement from Brown, Collins, and Duguid identifies four social features that support the process: Collective problem solving… [Groups] give rise synergistically to insights and solutions that would not have come about without them. Displaying multiple roles. Successful execution of most individual tasks requires students to understand the many different roles needed for carrying out … the task. Confronting ineffective strategies and misconceptions … Groups can be efficient in drawing out, confronting, and discussing both misconceptions and ineffective strategies. Providing collaborative work skills … If people are going to learn and work in conjunction with others, they must be given the situated opportunity to develop those skills. (Brown et al., 1989, p. 40) When applied to practice teaching in short courses, it is striking how much they align with descriptions of effective practice teaching design in ELT. For instance, Thornbury and Watkins (2007) describe arrangements that are typically part of collective learning in the

practice teaching designs that epitomize short-term teacher training courses. In writing for teacher trainers on the CELTA certificate course, they list ‘factors that promote a good dynamic in [teaching practice (TP) groups’, in statements that implement the principles above: Having a shared purpose Group members understand that TP is not a competition, or ‘talent quest’, but that by collaborating, they have a better chance of succeeding Time spent together Form the groups as soon as possible, and give them as much time as possible Learning about each other Interaction For example, group planning and group feedback Proximity Make sure trainees can sit and work together, and ensure that no single member is ‘out of the group’ (original italics; p. 170). Here the social medium of professional learning is this group work of preparing, teaching, and critiquing lessons; the assumption is that ‘by collaborating, [trainees] have a better chance of succeeding.’ The collaboration involves allotting time for the trainees to spend time together to do the collective work, both of which are essential to learning-in-place. Though addressed to different audiences, the parallels in the two lists are uncanny. Brown, Collins, and Duguid outline principles of situatedness, on the left in Table 5.2, while Thornbury and Watkins’ describe how to carry these principles into practice teaching. Situated Learning Theory Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989, p. 40)

Practice teaching arrangements Thornbury & Watkins (2007, p. 170)

Goal ‘learning is a process of enculturating that is Goal [to] ‘promote a good dynamic in [teaching supported in part by social interaction.’ practice or ‘TP’] groups.’ Features Collective problem solving [Groups] ‘… give rise synergistically to insights and solutions that would not have come about without them’.

Having a shared purpose. ‘group members understand … that by collaborating, they have a better chance of succeeding’.

Displaying multiple roles Successful execution of most individual tasks requires students to understand the many different roles needed.

Time spent together Form the groups as soon as possible, and give them as much time as possible. Learning about each other …

Confronting ineffective strategies and misconceptions

Interaction (e.g.) group planning and group feedback

Providing collaborative work skills ‘If people are going to learn and work in conjunction with others, they must be given the situated opportunity.’

Proximity Make sure trainees can sit and work together.

Table 5.2 Collective arrangements: Practice teaching from a situated learning theory perspective

Thornbury and Watkins’ list (on the right) implements the theoretical features of situatedness (on the left). Read together the two lists show how learning-in-place foregrounds the collective and social context as central in learning to teach. As a form of pedagogical

simplification, practice designs support the idea of making teacher learning closer to, and in some senses contiguous to, the actual work of classroom teaching, which is the aim of situated teacher preparation.

The chapter argument revisited Situated learning theory helps to understand two dilemmas in second language teacher education. The dilemma of the subject matter lies in how to make language as classroom content more like language as it is used in the world. Situating content, as the CEFR describes, addresses this dilemma, though it leads to other issues. The other dilemma is how to prepare people to teach that content. Here the ideas of pedagogical simplification and collective learning from situated learning theory are useful in analyzing practice teaching as the centerpiece of situated teacher preparation. Situating language as content and teacher preparation together make-up the Haycraft dilemma: how to create what Dewey called an educative environment in learning to teach languages.

6 Socio-cultural views: understanding sense making and what travels in learning to teach languages

The chapter argument Two ideas are interwoven in this chapter: sense making, how teachers (or people generally for that matter) make meaning in and from what they are doing, and transfer, or what travels in learning from one context to others. Both ideas can open up in many directions; to narrow the focus this argument is about what each one contributes to understanding how people learn to teach languages. Socio-cultural views of learning provide the broader foundation for this discussion. They form a comprehensive theory that connects what is being learned and how, with who, why, where (under what circumstances) the learning is happening. Socio-cultural theory is fundamentally important in developing these ideas of sense making and what travels because it reorients the relationship among the learner (here a teacher), the contexts of the learning (from training rooms to classrooms), and the process.

A socio-cultural starting point There are excellent expositions of socio-cultural theory (see Johnson, 2006, 2009; Swain, Kinnear, & Steinman, 2015) as well as research accounts (Johnson & Golombek, 2011) that explore its richness and complexity. For purposes here, I will concentrate on a few of the key assumptions with the aim of connecting them to the ideas of sense making and what travels. A starting point is the term socio-cultural itself, which combines people (‘social’) and how they participate in meaning-making (‘cultural’) as the key elements in how people learn. Instead of making the individual the analytical focus, as we are accustomed to doing, a socio-cultural perspective reverses the focus, arguing that by taking part in activities in social contexts, individuals make meaning. A closely related theory known as cultural-historical activity theory (abbreviated as CHAT and also known as ‘activity theory’) specifies that participating in sense making (‘cultural’) happens in time (‘historical’) through what people do (‘activity’). So socio-cultural theories argue that what and how people think and know (their sense making) comes from what they are doing, which is positioned in time in two senses of the word: Time is the immediate present (what they are doing now) and time as the ‘historical’ past (the time up to now). Their sense making happens in and through chunks of doing, known collectively as ‘activity’. For this theory, the unit is the idea of ‘activity’ as people doing something for particular reasons that make sense socially (to the people they are with in the activity) and at the time.

Sense making Narrative 6.1: ‘Popular’ or ‘being avoided’? Early in my first year of teaching, I noticed that my first-year class was especially eager. When the bell rang, they would crowd into the classroom, vying to sit at the front. The desks were set up in a large U-shape with my desk in the center, and it seemed the places at either end of the U were particularly prized, so much so that students would fight to sit there. As a new teacher, I found this attention gratifying; I thought was evidence that my

students liked the class so much that they wanted to sit as close to the teacher as possible. Then one Monday morning, the classroom set-up seemed a bit different. It must have been cleaned the afternoon before, and when the desks were put back in the U, my desk was positioned at the very front of the room so that I was now able to take in everyone, including those at either end of the U. Suddenly it seemed my ‘popularity’ plummeted. Instead of fighting to sit nearby, students now wanted to sit in the desks at the bottom of the U, which were the farthest from my desk. A while later, I put it all together. The nearby desks had been in my blind spot, so I must not have called on those students. With the inadvertent rearrangement however, I could see every seat so any student was fair game. This story of the cluelessness of a first-year teacher distills the process of sense making— how meanings arise from a situation of activity and how time contributes in the process. Without the change between the previous and present versions of seating (time), which triggered a difference in student response (activity), I might not have reconsidered why students were trying to sit close (the meaning). Making sense of all this could be seen as a process of interpretation in which one explanation (the students liked me …) was supplanted by another (if they sit close, they’d be out of my line of sight), but the process is more complex and nuanced than that. My original explanation arose from several sources; it had a social history from my own experiences—in school, with people generally, and in a present context—my being a new teacher, close in age to these high school students, presenting lessons actively. These sources shaped my perceptions of the social situation of the classroom. When the seating was inadvertently altered, the social situation changed and with it the scaffolds for my explanation that ‘sitting close means liking the class.’ This interplay of past and present, of social and individual, of the setting and people’s actions in it coalesce in how sense gets made; this is what socio-cultural theory—and CHAT in particular—helps to unpack.

Social practice theory: complex, comprehensive, and terminologically dense Social practice theory is complex, comprehensive, and full of its particular terms. The label is used here as the parent name that includes socio-cultural theory, cultural-historical activity theory, as well as various theories of participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). The complexity and comprehensiveness go hand-in-hand, however. Detailing the interplay of elements of place, the participants, the social context, what they are doing, and time—how the current situation embodies previous versions—is multifaceted. There are a lot of moving conceptual parts, which are needed for the theory to have comprehensive explanatory power, and these comprehensive details need specific terms, which is where the terminology comes in. Using specific terms helps to see things by naming them; the terms can distinguish among aspects of everyday life that are often lumped together. In this way, the theory names its social facts and creates its meanings. Three terms that function in this way are the foundation for the rest of this chapter. The first is the distinction Leont’ev (1978) makes between three levels —operations, actions, and activity—in describing what people do. These levels are interrelated through the goal or object. The second is a diagrammatic representation of how activity works as a system (Figure 6.1), and the third, which is attributed to Engestrom, is the

hierarchy of tensions or contradictions (Table 6.3) he outlines that operate within and among systems. These terms help to explain how teachers make sense of what they do as they learn, and how things travel in that learning from pre-service training or professional development sessions into classroom teaching. Together the terms offer a comprehensive view of learning as a social process that is very useful and applicable to the complexities of second language teacher education.

How actions become meaningful and activity works as a system Leont’ev’s (1978) distinction in actions Conceptualizing how people make meaning out of what they are doing brings up an immediate challenge. It becomes important to distinguish the discrete, publicly observable parts of what they are doing and connect these parts to a whole, which is where the meaningfulness comes in (Wertsch, 1995). Writing in what would be called the ‘first generation’ of the activitytheory perspective (explained later in this chapter) Leont’ev (1978) differentiated three levels through which the activity itself becomes meaningful. He distinguished between an action, as the thing done, the physical efforts that go in it, which he called the operations, and the activity, as the meaning-bearing whole. These levels are intertwined as part of a goal or what activity theory refers to as an object through which they become meaningful. The distinction can seem like an instance of the theory’s wordiness, but it helps in focusing on the parts of what can otherwise seem like a routine whole. Think about students raising their hands in class for example. The operation (physically lifting the hand and holding it up) becomes an action (raising the hand), which is meaningful as an activity, the object of which is participating in the class in some way. There is a sort of loose social formula of meaningfulness, something like ‘when I do this, I mean (intend to mean), that’ which connects the goal and the individual’s action to a social meaning through the collective activity. The glue of this connection is the social norms and conventions associated with being a student. Those norms come from what we are used to doing in the classroom context; they depend on a shared past in which we have gotten used to what things mean and how to do them meaningfully, literally how to mean them in that setting. The distinction and interconnection between operation, action, and activity is useful to apply to teacher learning. For example, parsing the seating incident from my first year of teaching using these terms locates the specific mechanism of what I learned. The student’s actions were similar—they were deciding where to sit—and the object didn’t change—to minimize the chances of being called on in the lesson. But I understood their actions through two different goals, which made the actions part of different activities. In the beginning, I thought the activity of choosing where to sit showed their interest in the class. After the classroom was slightly rearranged however, I realized it had a different goal for them: to sit where they could avoid having to participate. From the students’ standpoint, the object of the activity of choosing seats remained the same throughout. From my standpoint however, there were two different activities, each with its own object—showing interest in the lesson in the first, and avoiding it in the second. The mechanism of my learning lay in making sense of the

contrast between what looked to me like different actions—sitting close by and sitting farther away from me—which to the students were essentially the same action, guided by the same goal. Shifting the analytic priority

Leont’ev’s tripartite distinction helps to connect what happens in the physical world with the meanings it brings. It also surfaces the complex ways in which those connections are made and sustained. Actions take on meaning through being intended or perceived as part of a specifically recognizable activity, which defines the dynamic between what we do and what we mean by it. This dynamic, which socio-cultural theorists refer to as the ‘relational interdependency of agent and world’, creates a different perspective on what is happening. Wertsch (1991) summarizes this shift in emphases, ‘When action is given analytic priority, human beings are viewed as coming into contact with, and creating, their surroundings as well as themselves through the actions in which they engage’ (p. 8). It also opens up a different perspective on what makes activities meaningful.

Engestrom’s diagram of systems Activity is animated by meaning, or the need to find or create it, which we call making sense. Social practice scholars Lave and Wenger, describe this dynamic of meaning-making as follows: ‘objective forms and systems of activity […] and agents’ […]understandings of them mutually constitute the world and its experienced forms’ (1991, p. 51). They make three key points: First, activities are not random or created on the spot; they exist as ‘objective forms and systems’ which participants use. Second, these given forms depend on participants to recognize them, otherwise they no have meaning. This is what is meant by ‘mutually constituting meaning.’ And third, our worlds are actually made up of these meanings for things we do; we live in a world of activity, not of actions. Here the complexity and wordiness of the social practice theory can overlap with a vengeance; the terms can seem opaque and the complexity unmanageable. Karaoke

Think about a karaoke sing along as an example. The songs that participants choose to perform are part of the activity system of karaoke; the system can even have a history— popular songs from different years that come preloaded on a sound system of some kind. The karaoke event, with its participants, songs, and sound system, is an ‘objective form and system of activity’; it exists whether or not people perform, which is an instance of the first point. When people choose songs and perform them, they are ‘constituting the activity system as meaningful’. A karaoke event only happens if there are singers who participate; an audience is helpful but not necessarily required. The singers make the event karaoke, and the karaoke event makes the singers; this is what is meant by the second point—mutually constituting meaning. Third, while we sing in many contexts, it is the context of activity that defines the type of singing activity as karaoke. If you walk into where it is happening, and providing you know what karaoke is, you will know what is going on whether you actually participate or not. This last point is central to the idea of an activity as a system, that the

meaning comes from the interaction of a complex web of elements which include not just what is happening, but where and when, and how that conforms to the norms and expectations of what should be happening under these circumstances.

‘Persons-in-activity’: mapping the triangles Activity systems are usually represented in a distinctive geometric diagram of overlapping triangles, which capture the interplay of the five elements working towards the goal (or object) of the activity. The elements sit in two relationships: the subject, the tools, and the object are the primary one; it is embedded in a larger set of relationships among the rules or norms, community, and the roles or division of labor. The representation in Figure 6.1 is often explained through the example of a game (here I have chosen tennis) probably because games are readily understood as clearly bounded activity systems.

Figure 6.1 A tennis match as an activity system

Tennis as an example

Using a tennis game as an example has the advantage of putting specific names on the five

elements in the activity system. (The sixth element—the object—is to win the match; it is a constant.) The players (called the subjects of the system) use the ball, the net, and the lines on the court etc. as tools of the activity to play the game. They use some of these tools actively— like their rackets and the ball; others—like the net, and the lines on the court—are passive tools, though they are equally important to the game. (‘Important’ here means the activity wouldn’t be a tennis game without them.) Interestingly, these passive tools carry a lot of the meaning; the lines on the court mark what is in or out, which has implications for the scoring. These implications are part of the rules that make tennis, tennis. Rules go beyond the game itself, though. They also include norms about what to say (how the score is announced for instance), what to do (players usually shake hands before and after they play), and even what to wear (tennis whites in certain tennis contexts). The subjects (players) have roles that divide the activity up and define who does what, when. For instance, one player serves and the other returns the serve. To carry out this division of labor according to their roles, they follow the rules and norms. Putting this together, the meaningfulness of the activity system comes from the tools being used ‘properly’ for tennis, the rules and norms for tennis being followed, and the roles being done appropriately for tennis. This meaningfulness depends on being recognized by a reference group or community that makes sense of the activity as playing tennis; and that these elements are working meaningfully together to be a tennis game. Breakdowns within an element, or in the connections between them, affect the meaning of the activity. So a player (subject) may play ‘poorly’ (do a ‘poor job’ of the role) or be ‘unsportsmanlike’ (contradict norms); or certain tennis shots may not be ‘ruled out’ (not applying the rules), or the tennis balls may not be ‘regulation’ (tools), and so on. The point being that these words in quotation marks are ways in which the community judges the meaningfulness of the activity.

Applied to teacher education: a peer-teaching example Viewing activities as systems offers a powerful conceptual framework for studying what goes on in teacher education (Barahona, 2015; Tsui & Law, 2007). For example, the common exercise of peer teaching, in which trainees ‘teach’ lessons to their peers and get feedback from a teacher educator, can be understood in different ways. As discussed in Chapter 5, peer teaching can be seen as a behavioral undertaking, in which the trainees need to learn certain teaching moves and demonstrate they can do them. From an activity-theoretical perspective, peer teaching becomes an exercise in meaning making, in how to think and act like a teacher. Benedict-Chambers (2014) studied trainees who were learning to teach science as part of their preparation to become elementary school teachers. She looked at how trainees and the teacher educator talked about the peer-teaching lesson. Other researchers in ELT have studied the discourse of supervisor feedback (for example, Wajnryb, 1998; Farr, 2010); what makes Benedict-Chambers’ work useful in the context of this discussion is her use of the framework of activity systems to map the interactions.

Peer-teaching in elementary school science In the following excerpt from Benedict-Chambers’ study (2014), the trainees and the teacher

educator, as the subjects of the activity system are talking about a walk-through science lesson in which fellow trainees played the part of elementary school students. The object of the activity was to learn about teaching environmental science, and specifically about enacting the ‘EEE’ (Engage-Experience-Explain) framework, an inquiry-based science curriculum framework they have been studying (Benedict-Chambers, 2014, p. 37). Figure 6.2 maps the peer-teaching walk through as an activity system (Benedict-Chambers, 2014, p. 28– 31).

Figure 6.2 Walking through a science methods lesson (from Benedict-Chambers, 2014)

The teacher educator begins the feedback on the walk-though lesson with a question: TEACHER EDUCATOR: NOELLE:

What would you revise? … what I’m struggling with most is how to integrate the investigation question into this aspect … of the observations … But I think I could have reminded students … that’s the question we want to answer. We need to collect evidence to answer this question … I think I focused so much on the process of observing and recording and what that meant that I kind of lost the content.

(Benedict-Chambers, 2014, p. 67)

In her response, Noelle, the trainee, uses terms about science teaching from the EEE framework, in italics above, as tools to talk about what she did. As the exchange continues, the teacher educator confirms her comments, and then shifts the way she is talking (in italics below): TEACHER EDUCATOR:

NOELLE:

Yeah, I was wondering about that a little bit. You did such a nice job on the process but then on the actual sense-making of the scientific content … I wonder if it would work to stop the kids in the middle of the observations and say, “Okay, remember our investigation question … can we have some initial ideas—answers to this investigation question based on our observations?” Yeah and that would be a good way for them to notice because when I was looking through the [EEE Framework] rubric I didn’t really provide an opportunity at all for them to make a prediction about the outcome (ibid.).

When she responds, Noelle again uses the tools from the elementary science methods course, in italics, this time to paraphrase the teacher educator’s suggestion, in italics just above. The rules and norms here are complex. The most evident is the norm of tool using, working with science methods terms to unpack the lesson. There is also a norm of invoking the elementary classroom as the referent community, when the teacher educator says (also in italics above), ‘Okay, remember our investigation question … can we have some initial ideas—answers to this investigation question based on our observations?’ Interestingly, in her statement the science methods terms seem to travel as tools, so that the same words can potentially work in the lesson and they can be used to talk about it. The teacher educator’s suggestion also confirms a subtle division of labor in the peer teaching, to orient the feedback within the lesson and to bridge the lesson to full teaching in the referent community. From the standpoint of meaning, the incident is complexly layered. The trainees have two roles in the activity system. As ‘elementary students’, they are supposed to use the common misconceptions children have about the topic, which they have studied, to play their roles in the lesson. Then afterwards in the discussion reproduced here, they become teachers-intraining to discuss what happened. Their main tools are the EEE framework they have been studying, and the terms from the science methods course, which is the context of the peer teaching. In the course, peer teaching is a lesson within a lesson, which established the division of labor between the teacher educator and the trainees, who can say and do what is in their roles. These layered roles—as students, as trainees, and as future teachers; as teacher educator and as fellow elementary teacher—are meaningful (which makes them roles worth playing) because of the different communities they invoke. The trainees are taught and evaluated by the teacher educator within the university course, which is one community. They also listen to her as a fellow teacher, in their roles as future teachers in an elementary school context.

How time works in social practice theory This dynamic of being trainees and listening as future teachers is a good example of how time works according to social practice theory. As trainees, the participants bring what they know and are familiar with to the peer teaching: the science methods terms as tools would be an

example, or the various norms—how elementary students act in class, how post-graduate trainees talk in discussions, etc. We could call these aspects of ‘past-into-present’ time. When they talk and listen in the role of potential elementary school teachers, there is also ‘presentinto-future’ time. For instance, a bit later in the feedback session, a trainee, Lacey, talks about her concern: Lacey: I think something that’s hard, which I was thinking about while you were doing this, because I work with fifth graders too … when students are mislabeling things … I wonder as a teacher how you deal with 25 students doing that and how you can make sure that they’re not spending their whole investigation period calling one thing another thing. (Benedict-Chambers, 2014, p. 68) In raising classroom management as an issue, she links it to the focus on the science lesson, pointing out that it could end up sabotaging the object of that activity: ‘How [do] you deal with 25 students [to] make sure that they’re not spending their whole investigation period calling one thing another thing.’ Two time frames

The two time frames—past-into-present and present-into-future—are interwoven with each other as what we generally call ‘experience’. There are two dimensions of experience. One is the experience of doing the activity as it happens: in the tennis example, playing the game; in the feedback example, talking about what happened in the peer-teaching lesson. The other is the experience of having done the activity once it is complete—after the game when the final score separates who won and who lost; in the peer teaching, considering the lesson as potential teachers. The second dimension of experience uses proxies to sum up the first dimension, so the score is a proxy for the tennis match, and the comments using science methods terms that express lessons learned become proxies for what happened in the walkthrough lesson. These proxies are products of the process of doing the activity. Not surprisingly, proxies often come in symbolic form—as numbers for scores, as words (like the science methods terms) from the peer teaching. This point is central to thinking about the second theme of this chapter, what travels in teacher education. Object and outcome

The relation between these two experiences is described in socio-cultural terms as the tension between the object of the activity—the goal—and the outcome—what happened. The tension is obvious in the tennis example where the object for the players (as subjects of the activity) is to win the match, while the outcome is that one player does win and the other loses. The distinction is less striking in the peer-teaching example; when Lacey brings up classroom management, there is an implication of an outcome: how would this procedure work in a Grade 5 classroom? The often-heard critique of teacher preparation, that it is ‘good in theory but wouldn’t work in the classroom’, could be taken as expressing this tension between object and outcome. Understanding how time works is key to understanding what travels from teacher education into teaching.

What travels A starting point Social practice theory shows how sense-making works: how actions gain meaning within activity systems and how they travel across situations. The theory also helps to rethink how time works as part of activity, particularly with the constant tension in the goal. The relationship between why a person is doing the activity (the object) and what happens in it (the outcome) creates an unavoidable struggle. The tension is between playing the tennis match to win it and what the final score is; win or lose, the struggle is resolved for the time being. In the practice-teaching example, the tension in the goal is more complicated. The trainees are learning inquiry-based science lessons in order to pass them on when they are teachers, so there is a tension between the present (object) and a future time (outcome). How will the lesson work when it is actually taught? This tension involves how an activity that is done in the present contributes to what happens in the future. This entails examining the connections between them, which is the focus of the feedback session. It is the second central idea in this chapter—understanding how ideas move, what ‘travels’ in teacher education. The discussion starts with an anecdote, the first of three that trace how one tool has traveled in my own experience of using it in different ways. I first met the tool, the Cuisenaire rods, in elementary school.

Narrative 6.2: Rod story I: from fraction trains to Japanese In the fall of Grade 3, I remember two men in suits coming to our class. They brought with them two kinds of wooden blocks. One had blocks of different geometric shapes and volumes (Dienes blocks), and the other brought a set of rectangular sticks of different colors (Cuisenaire rods). Each man sat with a group of us and asked us to do things with the blocks. The man with the Cuisenaire rods asked us to make trains using the rods, which came in ten different lengths from the white rod (one cubic centimeter) to the orange rod (ten centimeters long). I remember he spoke English with an accent I wasn’t used to, gently purring his words. He asked us to figure out how many cars (rods) it would take to make two trains, one with yellow rods and the other with blue, of the exactly the same length. Years later I realized we had been exploring the mathematical concept of lowest common denominator. It took nine yellow rods (five centimeters each) versus five blue rods (nine centimeters each) to make equal length trains: 9 cars of 5cm yellow rods = 5 cars of 9cm blue rods = 45. I didn’t run into the Cuisenaire rods again until I was in graduate school studying language teaching; they were part of a methodology demonstration of the Silent Way. We were manipulating these same colored rectangular blocks, but now the object was to figure out Japanese: ‘John-san, akai bo-o sanbon tote koko ni oite kudasai.’ (John, take three red rods and put them right here.) Transfer

The notion of traveling is referred to in educational psychology as ‘transfer of learning’. It is beyond the scope of this discussion to review the history and the literature of the concept,

which is done elsewhere (for example, Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999/2004); the main point here is the term itself. ‘Transfer’ implies something that is being moved from one context to another. It is defined as ‘… the ability to extend what has been learned in one context to new contexts’ (Bransford et al., 1999/2004, p. 51). The emphasis is on the thing itself and how it does or doesn’t change in being taken from one setting to another. Think of bringing something perishable, maybe fish or milk, home from the supermarket on a hot day; does it survive in edible form or does it spoil? ‘Transfer of learning’ has a similar sense; does what is learned in one place survive in its initial form when taken from where it is learned to where it is used? There are several issues with this view of transfer from the perspective of a social practice theory (see Sfard, 1998). The aim is assumed to be that the thing being transferred continues to be the same regardless of context (see Reddy, 1979). Context is taken as the backdrop, as a place where things happen. In a social practice view, what is being transferred is (re)defined within each context so stability is not the aim. Context is dynamic, as in the tennis game or the peer-teaching examples; it is part of what makes meaning. The idea of time works differently as well. Studies of transfer of learning measure elapsed time between contexts (near versus far transfer) to see how long an idea or a skill survives in the form in which it was learned. In social practice theory, time is part of the context; as discussed earlier, past time defines how things are in the present, and future time anticipates how the activity may be used. Table 6.1 summarizes these differences in the two views. At the most basic, the idea of transfer differentiates between learning something and using it later. In social practice theory learning and using are intertwined. Learning is a way of talking about using that describes getting more and more like those who are fluent or proficient. Transferring

Traveling

What is being moved

Stays stable

Is (re)defined in context

Context

Is the backdrop, setting

Is a dynamic social environment

Time

Measures how long what has been learned is preserved

Is part of context—the past shapes the present activity, which anticipates future uses.

Table 6.1 Transfer vs. traveling Traveling

Transfer is one way of describing how ideas move; traveling is another. It focuses on what happens as things move in time. In teacher education things travel—techniques in the training room move to the practice lesson; concepts from the seminar show up in the school practicum; all of this travels from preparation or in-service contexts into classrooms. To tackle this question of how things travel, we need to better understand the social practice view of tools, what they are and how they work. Tools

In cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), tools are one element of an activity system. They can be physical things, like the racket or the ball in the tennis example; they can also be

symbolic, like the terms from the science methods class in the peer-teaching example. While physical tools usually vary depending on the activity, the most common symbolic tool in doing activities is language. Physical and symbolic tools are often combined in an activity, such as when a teacher explains while pointing to the board or using a worksheet. Tools also come with a past, a history that creates norms for how they are to be used. This history is not something separate; in social practice theory the history is part of the tool. It makes the tool meaningful in the activity.

Equipment, tools, and activity Saljo (1982) gives a good example of how tools embed history. He compares two ways of adding numbers: doing sums and using a calculator. The first case involves using a pen and paper as tools; the second case, using a hand-held calculator or perhaps the calculator function on a cell phone. The procedure with the different tools starts in a similar fashion: you make a list of the numbers using the pen and paper or you tap the numbers in order into the calculator. Then the two procedures—the ways they divide the labor of adding—diverge. When you use a pen and paper to add the numbers up, you need to mark (or remember) the amounts that carry forward from one column to the next. When you use the calculator, you enter the numbers in sequence, pressing the + key each time, (and since you can’t see the list you need to remember how many numbers you have entered), then you tap the equals key and the sum is displayed on the screen. Time functions differently in the two tools. With the pen-and-paper list, past-into-present time is visible in the list of numbers and the amount carried forward in each column. With the calculator however, past-into-present time is invisible. You have to keep track of the numbers you’ve entered. In this way, memory is accessible with the first tool, but inaccessible to the user with the second. In fact, the tool ‘remembers’ the numbers so the user doesn’t need to. The two tools also differ in how present-into-future works. To verify the outcome in the first case, you can go over the listed numbers, checking the amounts you carried forward, and the sum that you got. In the second case, you need to repeat the process of entering the numbers from the beginning to see if you get the same answer. With the list, if there is a discrepancy in the answers, the tool allows you to see where you may have made a mistake. With the calculator, the tool is relatively opaque so that checking for mistakes can feel a bit like trial and error—you have to repeat the process until you arrive at a stable answer. Used to add a list of numbers, the object of the activity is the same but the two tools work quite differently, as summarized below.

The tool

Pen and paper

Object of activity

To total a list of numbers

Assumes the user (norms/rules*) (community)

Using the tools (division of labor)

Calculator

Is numerate Can write numbers Can perform addition

Can read and enter numbers on a keypad Recognizes + and = signs

Lists numbers vertically Adds each column Carries appropriate amount to the next column Writes the sum

Enters numbers sequentially, pressing + after each group Needs to remember where s/he is in the list Presses = key for sum

Outcome of activity

Gets the sum of the list

To verify the outcome

Can check each step

Has to repeat the steps

* Elements of activity in italics refer to Figure 6.1 Table 6.2 Two tools for adding sums (summarizing Saljo, 1982) How tools embed expertise

Saljo’s example highlights several important aspects of tools. First, tools combine the physical with the symbolic; in both cases in this example, numbers, and the way to manipulate them. Second, the new tool embeds the previous one to make it in some ways obsolete. In this case, the calculator subsumes the activity of the pen and paper list; it embeds the arithmetical process in the tool itself, which changes what the user does. The difference between using a calculator and using a pen and paper, Saljo argues, is the division of labor or how expertise is reorganized between the user and the tool. This means that expertise in a social practice view is not something people bring to what they are doing; it comes about in the activity itself. An expert pianist is a virtuoso when playing the instrument; a teacher shows expertise in the act of teaching. An expert witness plays that role in a legal trial. We use the term to describe how people use tools (including tools like words and language) in a particular activity. In a way, my experience with the Cuisenaire rods is an example. There is nothing expert about the rods themselves; they are just ten sticks of wood of different colors and lengths. Using them, however, is another matter. Over time, the uses attach meanings and history to them, which makes the rods such powerful tools.

Narrative 6.3: Rod story II: the tool takes on different meanings During my graduate training, the Cuisenaire rods and I crossed paths many times. I was fascinated by the seemingly endless ways in which they could be used. We used them literally to teach numbers and colors (‘One black rod; five orange ones’) and in applied linguistics we talked about using them to teach prepositions (The white rod is on top of the orange one), and verb tenses (First, I took two white rods, now I’m taking an orange one.), and so on. In methodology courses, I saw how these pieces of wood could trigger meanings

in the new language, which changed the rods from equipment to tools for particular forms of teaching. In the Silent Way, the teacher could combine silence (not-speaking) with visible situations using the rods to prompt students to use the new language (Stevick, 1980, p.44). In the Counseling-Learning methodology, there were metaphorical uses: these colored wooden sticks could be members of a family, or buildings in a city, or a map of a memory (Stevick, 1980, 139). As we worked with the rods that year, I got completely immersed in the ways they might function in the language classroom. While they were familiar from mathematics in Grade 3, now they seemed a tool of a different sort. Or maybe they were the same tool, but now used differently. It was akin to meeting a person a for the second time and finding they’ve changed. In Grade 3, the rods had seemed boring; now, when used to these new ends in language teaching, they seemed dynamic and engaging. Meaning comes in use, which has a history

Unlike the pen and paper and the calculator, the rods themselves did not change. Rather they were used in different ways and through those uses assumed different meanings. They were trains in Grade 3 when the object was learning about the idea of lowest common denominator; pieces to manipulate when the object was practicing rudimentary commands in Japanese; imaginary representations when the object was for my language students to ‘describe a place that no one in the class has ever been’ (Stevick, 1980, p. 139). The meaningfulness of the tool comes in its use, from how the user understands its capabilities. Use always happens in time, so these capabilities are found in the history of the tool. The calculator embeds pen and paper addition in the function of the + key. Rods as tools do not embed anything though, they carry the meaning through how they are used—in one lesson to show a grammar point, in another to tell a story, in a third to represent members of the family, and so on. Learning how to use this tool as a teacher entails figuring out its capabilities and using it in various ways. This combination of imagination and activity creates the person’s history with the tool. Like mine, that history stretched from mathematics in Grade 3, to teacher training as a new teacher, to what I do now.

Narrative 6.4: Rod story III: manipulating the tool In a graduate seminar, I began to notice that the students always sat in the same places, which meant that any group work we did involved them with the same people. Discussions became lopsided; there were pockets of the class that spoke a lot, while others didn’t contribute much. I could have asked them to sit in different places I suppose, but with 30 students the change would likely have been more chaotic than effective in scrambling things up. So I hit upon using the rods. At the start of the following class, I passed around a box with 30 rods, three of the same color (times the 10 colors). Students each took a rod; some did so without paying much attention, while others pored over the box as if they were choosing piece of candy. When all the students had chosen a rod, I asked them to gather up their stuff and move to sit with the people who had the same color rod. The reseating worked well, probably due to the novelty of the activity and the innocuous looking nature of the sticks of wood. It re-divided the labor—who talked to whom—in the class.

Later in the same term, as I used the technique on other occasions I saw that some students would attend closely to which classmates had chosen which color so as to be grouped with them. These people had learned how to use the tool; they realized that color was the salient feature and used it according to their own goal. They could take an outcome they wanted—sitting with friends—and make it the object of this reseating activity, which contradicted my object in using the rods which was to create randomly mixed groups. So I changed the rules. The next time we were reseating, after they had each chosen a rod, I told students to sit with someone whose rod was one centimeter different (longer or shorter) than theirs. This change in the norms of how the reseating activity had been working redefined the meaning of the tool—rod length rather than color became the salient feature—and had the effect of re-establishing the original goal of randomized seating—at least temporarily.

Levels of contradiction Contradictions within an activity

This story illustrates the interplay or tension between the object of an activity system and its outcome, and highlights several points about that dynamic. Different participants can (and do) have different goals or objects: I wanted to randomize seating; some students wanted to manage where they sat. These tensions in one element of the activity system are called primary contradictions. At any given moment, either color or length (or both) could be the salient feature that made the rods meaningful in a particular situation. I manipulated this primary contradiction in the tool towards the object I wanted (randomized seating). Over time students got to know the drill and learned to manipulate the tool to achieve their own goals (sitting with whom they chose). This tension between elements within an activity system —here the tool and the object—is called a secondary contradiction. In any activity, participants are bound to have differing agendas; secondary contradictions describe how they use elements—the tools, the rules and norms, the division of labor—to meet their own ends. Primary and secondary contradictions describe how the activity system works, where its dynamism comes from. The idea that the alignment among elements of the system is by nature contentious, is central to the theory. Activity systems are always unstable as the story above shows. When some students recognized how I was using the rods (as a tool to reseat people), they then could use the tool to their own ends (sitting where they wanted to). I altered the aspect of the tool that was salient (to be length not color), which changed what happened in the activity. The levels of primary and secondary contradiction happen within an activity system; in this case characterized by its dynamism and instability. Contradictions between activities

There are two further levels of tension that happen between activity systems. Tertiary contradictions are tensions that implicate whole systems, often between the previous and present versions. The Saljo example is a case in point: Doing addition using a pen and paper versus doing it on a calculator are different activities; they are alternative means to achieve

the goal, totaling up a sum. Although adding on the calculator has largely replaced pen and paper (particularly with the advent of cell phones), the two activities do co-exist. There is a tertiary contradiction between them, between the previous way of adding sums and the current way of doing so. The tertiary contradiction surfaces in tensions over speed and accuracy for example. Using the calculator is usually faster than adding sums by hand, which supports the norm of being efficient. But, when there is (or appears) to be a mistake in the total, the older way of adding using pen and paper allows rechecking more easily. A mistake when adding on a calculator can mean doing the activity all over again. The fourth level involves tensions between elements of different, usually neighboring, activity systems. These so-called quaternary contradictions, while they can seem abstract, happen all the time: in family situations when children are participants in the family and also in a peer group of friends; in cross-cultural interactions where norms and rules differ from one situation to another; in work situations when some tasks are expected by gender (for example, women serving coffee or making tea regardless of their jobs) and so on. Both levels of inter-system tension are common in teacher education. Tertiary contradictions, between present and anticipated systems, can surface for trainees between being students and acting as (future) teachers. There is a tension between the norms/rules of the two activity systems, for example when trainees receive a grade (norm/rule of being a student) for a practice teaching assignment, while the concern is how the lesson went and what they learned about teaching (norm/rule of becoming a new teacher). Quaternary contradictions, between adjacent systems, are common in teacher education as well. School placements for teaching practice or internships are a case in point. Here the neighboring systems of the university teacher education program and the school have different goals. For the university, the object is to educate new teachers; for the school, it is to educate the children who are students. To make teaching placements work, these two neighboring activity systems have to negotiate a shared goal. The norms/rules of the two communities differ, which can be evident in the tension for the trainee between dressing casually as a student at the university, but professionally as a student teacher in the school. These teaching placements create a different division of labor as well, which can surface in the postobservation conference between the university supervisor, mentor teacher, and student teacher for example. In spite of collaborative planning and good intentions, there can be tensions in role, in who gets to talk about what, and in expertise (for example, Tsui & Law, 2007). Contradictions and expansive learning

Contradictions at each of these four levels are part of how things work. CHAT theorists argue that the tertiary and quaternary contradictions are where change, or in CHAT terms ‘expansive learning’, happens (Engestrom, 1987). As Engestrom (2001) explains, this transformation takes place in activities when ‘the object and motive of the activity are reconceptualized to a radically wider horizon of possibilities than in the previous mode of activity’ (p. 137). This sense of open-endedness is what makes the learning expansive, ‘In important transformations in our personal lives and organizational practices, we must learn new forms of activity which are not there yet. They are literally learned as they are created’ (Engestrom, 2001, p. 138). Contradictions are the engines of activity, a point that Engestrom

(1999) emphasizes when he refers to them as ‘the force of change and development’ (p. 9). The levels of contradiction, which are summarized in Table 6.3, locate and describe where and how movement happens in an activity. Primary

Within an element of the activity

Rods as a tool can work in two ways (color and length) to determines where to sit [Rods story III]

Secondary

Among elements of the activity

Between the tools (above) and the object for students – to choose; for the teacher – to mix seating [Rod story III]

Tertiary

Between two activities (as in the old vs. the new ways of doing something)

Between rods used as tools – as trains (in Grade 3), and in the Japanese lesson [Rod story I]

Quaternary

Across activities, between the elements of the focal (or dominant) activity and those of neighboring activities

In graduate school, learning about using rods as potential tools with different objects in applied linguistics and methodology [Rod story II]

Table 6.3 Levels of contradiction in activity summarized by rod story Summarizing contradictions by rod story

My history using the Cuisenaire rods illustrates these contradictions. Starting in Grade 3 and continuing to the present, I have worked with the rods in different ways as a student of mathematics and of Japanese, as a teacher of language and of teachers, as summarized in Table 6.3. The rods themselves have remained the same; what has changed is how I have used them in these different activities, which has been driven by my goal, my reasons for doing so. The question is what has traveled across these various activities and uses? On a concrete level, it is the rods themselves. In terms of sense making, it is the cumulative meanings, the experiences of how I have used them. The rods took on meanings in and through the situations in which we used them. This amalgam of the thing and what it means becomes a social fact in the situation. Like any sign, the physical thing comes to signify a meaning by what is done with it. In Rod story III for example, students would choose rods and I would say which dimension—the color or the length—would mean where to sit. The social facts are what traveled, and social practice theory describes the process.

How activity creates and sustains social facts There is a final rod story, which illustrates how social facts are semiologically created as tools in activity systems.

Narrative 6.5: Rod story IV: The tool as reified talk My class of 12 adult English students was huddled around a large table. One of them, the box of rods in her lap, was gathering her thoughts in response to my prompt to tell us about ‘a place you’ve been that no one else here has ever seen.’ Hesitantly at first, she put several blue rods end-to-end. ‘The ocean is very blue there; very warm.’ Then she scattered some white rods beside of the blue rods; ‘The beach is really white.’ Standing up some brown rods, ‘There are big trees, maybe mango trees?’ Her story continued for about ten minutes, and then her classmates started to ask questions. Later they wrote up summaries of what she had told them, often pausing as they wrote to study the rods on the table as if to recall her account. As the class ended and people were leaving, one student went to gather the rods and put them back in the box. ‘Leave them that way.’ said another student, ‘We want to know that place.’ It almost seemed like that beach with white sand and mango trees was locked in those colored blocks of wood. Reifying talk

The idea of reification, as making something ephemeral permanent, is a bridge between talk and social facts. In most situations, the words that are used are soon forgotten and only their meaning persists, but when they become reified in activity though explicit attention and controlled use, they can become tools. The process is more easily seen when things, like rods, represent words as they do in this example. It is easy to confuse the physical thing with its role as a social fact, however. Here, leaving the rods on the table seemed to preserve the words, as the physical embodiment of a social experience of telling and listening to the story. They serve to recall the experience of the activity. In teacher education, as in any social practice, physical objects often come to represent activities: rubrics become social facts in conferences; course books become social facts in language classrooms; certificates are social facts of training. These physical objects embody meanings and ways of being used by groups of people, and as such they can travel from one activity setting to another. Wenger (1998) refers to them as ‘boundary objects’ that import functions and meanings from one place to another. An observation rubric, which has been introduced and practiced in the training room, then gets used in the school teaching placement for example. This process happens constantly, and yet it is rarely explicitly planned or fully orchestrated in what we do in teacher education.

The chapter argument revisited Social practice theory is richly useful in demonstrating how meaning is developed through doing things in situations. But it entails a shift in focus, or what Wertsch (1991) calls a shift in analytic priority. When activity is foregrounded, people become a function of what they do, as he puts it: ‘… action, rather than human beings or the environment considered in isolation, provides the entry point into the analysis’ (p. 8). This shift from people to what they are doing in the situation has enormous theoretical implications for conceptualizing learning to teach generally, and learning to teach languages specifically. It directs attention to activity and to the tools that participants are using in those activities. And since passing time changes things, the social practice theory focus on activity needs to include change, which it does in the concept of contradiction. The implication is that learning to teach is not a process with an endpoint, or even a trajectory from newcomer to experienced teacher; rather it is a fabric of interwoven activity systems which often challenge and even contradict each other both within systems and across them.

PART THREE

Core processes of second language teacher education

Introduction to Part Three Language teaching, like any form of teaching, is usually described in terms of the classroom work that we can see. We introduce teaching methods and techniques as things the teacher does; we observe and comment on lessons as activity that we can talk about. But this public side of teaching has a hidden side (Freeman, 2002), the mental work that makes it happen. Part Three is about that mental work, and three processes in particular: thinking, knowing, and reflecting.

How Part Three is organized The first two chapters in the section examine teacher thinking in language teaching and second language teacher education. Chapter 7 outlines how ideas about teacher thinking in the field have developed since the 1950s; Chapter 8 looks at four seminal ways the process has been represented, two from general educational research and two from second language teacher education. The next two chapters present a similar analysis of knowing. Chapter 9 follows the development of ideas about language teaching knowledge through four generations, and Chapter 10 looks at ways in which those ideas are organized socioprofessionally into the ELT knowledge-base. The four chapters balance internal and external perspectives. Chapter 7 and Chapter 9 look at how the field of ELT has defined thinking and knowing internally; the companion Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 look at many of the same issues from the outside in.

Generations as a scaffold There are accounts of the history of language teaching generally (for example, Kelly, 1969) and English language teaching specifically (for example, Howatt, 1984; Howatt & Smith, 2014). The concept of generations differs from these histories, however. The aim is to define patterns in how ideas about thinking and about knowledge in language teaching have been understood. Shifts in these definitional patterns are important in understanding how language teaching as a field has defined itself, the ideas about thinking and about the knowledge it has valued, how these ideas have come about and, when they are perceived as incomplete, what gaps push the next generational view. The chapters about the field-internal perspectives are organized chronologically. Each uses the idea of generations to frame the development of ideas about teacher thinking and knowledge. These generations loosely characterize time periods during which prevailing ideas in the field shared a common general focus and set of concerns. Since thinking and knowing are closely connected, it makes sense that the generations parallel and intertwine with each other as they concentrate on similar issues and concerns. In fact, this generational history could be an account of how understandings and definitions of teacher thinking and teacher knowledge in language teaching have converged. The table below gives a snapshot of how the concerns have coincided. Generation

Chapter 7

Concern

Chapter 9

0

Thinking as behaving

—

—

1

Thinking methodologically

What Content and pedagogy

Disciplinary knowledge

2

Thinking synthetically

How Choice

Knowledge as pedagogy

3

Thinking heuristically

Who and Where Context Knowledge in-person, in-place

Current

—

Why Purpose

Knowledge-for-teaching

Table iii.1 Generational parallels in teacher thinking and knowledge: A snapshot

As with any snapshot however, this table will likely raise more questions than it answers. It is introduced here at the beginning of the section to orient the reader—fuller consideration of the parallels is left to you. As companion perspectives, Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 are meant as a balance to the fieldinternal examinations; each offers a particular external view. Chapter 8 describes how second language teacher education brought two generative conceptions of teacher thinking from general educational research into the field, where each was seminal. Chapter 10 looks at the socio-professional dynamics that have shaped how the ELT knowledge-base has developed. These two chapters argue that second language teacher education transforms ideas in unique ways to suit the nature of language as subject-matter and classrooms as where it is taught. Side-by-side, the two chapters on thinking and the two on knowing present what the field itself has done and how it takes the same ideas from elsewhere and does them differently. The final chapter in this section is on reflecting, which is defined as thinking and knowing in particular situations. The discussion uses two ideas—situations of practice and actionpresent—that are part of Schon’s writing about reflection to build connections between the discussions of thinking and knowing and second language teacher education.

7

How teacher thinking got to be part of language teaching It is rather pointless to ask the teacher, after a routine decision has been made, what were the contents of his [sic] mind at the time of the decision. For in a very real sense, there is little he can report of any substance except that ‘It seemed like the right thing to do under the circumstances’ or ‘I did it almost without thinking.’ (David Hargreaves, 1977, p. 13)

The chapter argument Clearly language teachers think and always have; there has always been a hidden side to the work (Freeman, 2002), but how it became formally recognized by the field of language teaching is an interesting story. This chapter uses the device of generations to outline the movement in conceptions of thinking in the field. As explained in the Introduction to Part Three, these generations represent patterns of ideas; they follow a historical progression, but are not meant to be a history per se. Each generation is associated with a broad shift in the teaching methodologies considered current, the rationales and explanations for those ways of teaching, and the teacher’s role in relation to them. This evolution in definitions of thinking is in many ways specific to language teaching. It is driven in part by the fact that language, which is inherently fungible, has always been susceptible to modification as classroom content. This reinvention has taken place through methodologies, and the different ways in which language as content has been taught. The changes in teaching have catalyzed redefinitions of what and how language teachers think as they teach.

Outlining the conceptual generations To follow these changes, the broad sweep of ideas about language teacher thinking is grouped into four generations, beginning with the Audio-lingual and Direct Methods in the 1960s (abbreviated here as ALDM). ALDM teaching is taken as the starting point for these analyses, generation zero, because teaching was entirely behavioral; independent thinking was not acknowledged as part of what the ALDM teacher did as she taught. Thinking became recognized in the first generation in the 1970s, as different innovative methods vied for prominence. Each introduced a view of language teachers’ beliefs that was defined exclusively in terms of the particular social facts of the methodology. In the latter part of the 1980s, the second generation emerged through debates about eclectic teaching, best methods, and the post-method condition. In this period, thinking became a synthetic activity as language teachers chose and combined techniques to achieve particular classroom goals. In the third generation of the 2000s, teacher thinking has been positioned as a heuristic activity focusing on investigating the relationships between what happens in the classroom and student learning. Through these generations—starting from the behavioral thinking of ALDM teaching, moving to methodological, then to synthetic, and currently to heuristic—thinking has come to be recognized as a central part of what language teachers do.

Generation zero: thinking as behaving Audio-lingual and Direct Method (ALDM) was a comfortable, clearly defined way to teach, as I remember it. In ALDM teaching, the teacher’s role was to carry out clearly structured, explicit sequences of teaching behaviors. Anchored in Skinnerian behavioral theories about learning and Chomskyian theories of generative grammar about language, the job had a clear mission: The [Audio-Lingual] classroom should operate as a ‘cultural island’ with the teacher acting as a trusted guide introducing his [sic] students to the view of life as seen within the

new ‘speech community’ (Krakowski, 1961, p. 306). As it took the place of grammartranslation teaching during the 1960s, ALDM teaching brought what was seen as an advantage. Grammar-translation lessons were about the target language; students expanded their meta-knowledge but were not encouraged to use the language. In contrast, in ALDM lessons students were immediately immersed in strictly patterned language content; they were using the new language from the beginning and thus creating the cultural island in the classroom. Patterned practice: an exercise in structural dexterity

The means of this geo-psychological transformation was patterned practice, a behavioral form of teaching based on habit-formation par excellence. Brooks (1964) the leading proponent of the Audio-Lingual Method, likened patterned practice to ‘what playing scales and arpeggios is to music: exercise in structural dexterity undertaken solely for the purpose of practice in order that performance may become habitual and automatic’ (as cited in Krakowski, 1961, pp. 305, 306). The irony was that both students and teachers were trapped in this habitual and automatic form of classroom activity. Like a fast volley in tennis, each participant had a clear role in these exercises in structural dexterity. As a form of pedagogical behavior however, patterned practice was uniquely suited as a two-lane methodological bridge: the teaching packaged the target language content as defined through sentence structures, and the students learned to use that content habitually and automatically, as directed by behaviorist theory. Automaticity

To reach this goal of automaticity, as Brooks explained, ‘the [student’s] mind [needs to] concentrate on the message rather than on the phenomena that convey it’ (Krakowski, 1961, p. 306). The distinction between meaning and phonological phenomena served to organize who did what in the classroom. The teacher introduced the phonological phenomena that conveyed the message—the lines in the dialogue—and managed rapid, repetitive patterned practice of these phenomena until the students could convey the message without having to think about it. It was teaching that entailed quick reflexes but little careful or complex thought. That teachers might be doing something like pedagogical reasoning (Shulman, 1987) was not even contemplated in this view of language teaching. A behavioral approach

As a behavioral approach to classroom pedagogy, ALDM responded to several levels of educational demand. The methodology was a vehicle for the rapid expansion of foreign language teaching in the United States, particularly at the secondary and university levels. Its usefulness was probably because ALDM was fairly easy for new teachers to learn how to do, though not necessarily to do well. ALDM helped to facilitate the spread of Russian as a foreign language in the post-Sputnik era of the early 1960s (Chvany, 1995; Lipson & Molinsky, 1977). When the launch of the US Peace Corps in 1961 expanded the number of less-commonly taught languages and thus created a demand for teachers (US Peace Corps, 2015), ALDM teaching became the principal methodology. Since teachers of less commonly taught languages were not widely available in the USA, ‘educated native speakers’ were often

recruited and trained, which reinforced the idea that language teachers were born knowing their content. Teachers were assumed to have content competence and they could be prepared for ALDM teaching through short-term, straightforward behaviorally oriented teacher training. The combination of defining content knowledge through the criterion of nativeness and methodology through the behavioral classroom practices of ALDM offered a feasible way to scale up US foreign language teaching during the 1960s.

Thinking behaviorally: the ‘educated native speaker’ As a criterion for teaching knowledge, nativeness was easily invoked. The phrase ‘educated native speaker’, which was used to describe teachers’ language qualifications and student learning outcomes, was the highest level of language proficiency on the five-point US Foreign Service Institute scale (Higgs, 1984). But the standard had some unexamined implications for the intersection between content knowledge and teaching capability. The phrase conflated education with nativeness so that the scales ratings were simultaneously a measure of knowledge and of thinking. The educated native speaker had to know the target language (be ‘native’ in it) and therefore could think in it (as an ‘educated’ person). The lack of distinction between language knowledge and using it emphasized automaticity in another form; it made knowledge the central teaching attribute and thinking its logical by-product. The native-speaker criterion became a hiring criterion in many teaching contexts. The main prerequisite, nativeness, was to know the language and its culture and be able to think with it. This defined teaching knowledge essentially as socialization. The knowledge of language and culture was learned through having grown up in settings in which the language was used at home and in schools. To enact this native knowledge of content in the classroom, teachers hired for their target language proficiency often depended on prepared materials, and teaching these materials entailed faithfully carrying out ALDM pattern practice. The social and employment criterion of educated native speakers as language teachers was often abbreviated as ‘native-speaking teacher’, which underscores the collapsing of content and teaching knowledge. As a description, the phrase equated ‘native’ with knowing the language and its culture, and ‘teaching the language’ with speaking it in the classroom. Teacher thinking involved using the native knowledge and skills as a speaker to develop automatic language habits in students. In promulgating nativeness as a status-quo definition of content knowledge, and teacher thinking as the exercise of pattern practice as highly structured classroom behavior, ALDM presented a view of teaching that was completely behavioral and did not require thought. In a sense, the formulation put all teachers on a common footing. Provided they had native knowledge, which they enacted through patterned practice of classroom interactions, these individuals were teaching language. During the 1970s, challenges to this formulation emerged that became the first generation of understanding the place of thinking in language teaching.

The first generation: thinking methodologically The advent of the ‘innovative methods’ (Blair, 1982), starting in the mid 1970s and continuing

through the 1980s, diversified classroom practices from the singular view of ALDM teaching based on behaviorism. There are various groupings of these methods, which are sometimes also referred to as humanistic or designer, but they have generally included Community Language Learning (Curran, 1976), the Natural Approach (Krashen & Terrell, 1983), the Silent Way (Gattegno, 1976a), and (de)Suggestopedia (Lozanov, 1978) (see Larsen-Freeman, 1986; Stevick, 1980; also Cushing-Leubner & Bigelow, 2014). ALDM, which had been hegemonic, became one of several methodological options. Where ALDM had been the sole way of teaching, these innovative methods introduced a rich pedagogical smorgasbord of theories and techniques. Where ALDM teaching was highly formulaic, these methods were the opposite. Each thrived on idiosyncrasy. Each method introduced particular definitions of learning, which in turn supported unique views of teaching and of the teacher’s role. Each innovative method, in other words, had its own unique form of thinking.

A common end, different means, and different rationales As evidenced in the names alone, the differences among the innovative methods were so unmistakable as to make them virtually incompatible. The distinctions are clearly evident in the diversity of observable teaching practices used to achieve the same aim. These classroom techniques were not simply different public teaching practices; each one included an ideological stance towards language teaching, which made the methods themselves in effect mutually exclusive. For example, Table 7.1 details what a teacher would do to achieve fluently acceptable pronunciation in the target language. It contrasts the ALDM as the statusquo ante with two innovative methods—Community Language Learning (Curran, 1976; Stevick, 1980), and the Silent Way (Gattegno, 1976a).

Method

Observable practice

Underlying assumptions

Audio-lingual Direct Method Teaching

A The teacher models the new language. B Students repeat chorally (often several times). C The teacher nominates an individual to respond. D If correction is needed, the teacher models the correct language, sometimes exaggerating the mistake; the student repeats the correction.

Language is patterned. Language use is based on habit. Learning a new language, the student is building new language habits. The goal of language learning is to use the new language automatically, to develop ‘correct’ habits in the new language. Errors indicate incorrect or partially formed new language habits.

Community Language Learning

A From the bilingual transcript of the recent conversation, an individual class conversation, a student chooses a word or phrase in the new language to practice and says it as best she or he can. B The teacher, standing behind the student, repeats the word or phrase once after the student. C The student can say the word or phrase again, in which case the teacher continues to repeat after the student.

Language is meaning-based. Language use creates and conveys identity through meaning. Learning a new language, the student is developing a new language identity. The goal of language learning is to convey who you are in the new language, to develop a functional new language identity. Errors indicate a partially formed new language identity.

The Silent Way

A The teacher points to colored rectangle or word on a chart. (Each color represents a phonemic value in the new language). B Students try out the indicated sound as they understand it. C The teacher offers non-verbal coaching through gestures, indicating one student’s version over others, returning to the word chart, or perhaps gives a neutral response. D The students continue to say the sound at will until the teacher (or other student) moves the focus to another sound.

Language is consistently patterned sounds. Language use creates and conveys meaning through patterns of sounds. Learning a new language, the student is developing awareness and criteria for the new sounds and how they are patterned. The goal of language learning is to convey what you want to say in the new language, to express what you mean via the sounds of the new language. Errors indicate a lack of awareness or partially formed criteria.

Table 7.1 Teaching pronunciation: Three contrasting practices and their underlying reasoning

What is interesting, as others have also observed (for example, Larsen-Freeman, 1986;

Stevick, 1980), is how differently these three methods approached the same goal, in this case the goal of developing students’ pronunciation in the target language. The visible classroom practices above are so distinctive that an observer would be unlikely to confuse one form of teaching with another. Each set of practices is based on a specific ideological way of thinking. Anchored in a specific view of language learning and the learner, these views are as distinct and incompatible as the public practices they foster. In the example, ALDM teaching promotes automaticity in language production leading to fluency; Community Language Learning aims to create a new language self, based on the learner’s interests, concerns, and priorities. The Silent Way focuses on learner independence, which is realized through autonomous practice using the target language sounds to express what the learner perceives and wants to say. From this vantage point, it seems like a riddle: Are these three means to the same end of fluently acceptable pronunciation? Or, given the different ways they define the goal, is each method actually a uniquely distinctive means of its own? Methodological independence

The continued spread of innovative methods during the 1980s fed the notion of thinking methodologically. Teaching behavior, to use the ALDM frame, expressed distinct ways of thinking about language, learning, and teaching. This first recognition of thinking as part of language teaching was not explicit, however. Since the teachers’ thinking was directly linked to—or even embodied in—the form of practice itself, thinking methodologically was not distinguishable as an element of the teaching. Lessons could be described, for example, as ‘Silent Way teaching’ or ‘Suggestopedia classrooms’, or a teacher might be called (or refer to herself) as a ‘CLL teacher’ or as using the ‘Natural Approach’, and so on. When language teaching had been equated to ALDM, there was no need for such distinctions; indeed there was basically no way to make them. Classroom teaching looked largely the same and there was no need to identify different forms of thinking to distinguish it. That changed in the 1980s, when thinking differently and teaching differently became synonymous. The independence of innovative methods blossomed organizationally throughout the 1980s. The first generation promoted the notion of practitioner through teaching materials, books, and newsletters that were published independentlyNOTE 1 by the methods proponents (for example, Counseling-Learning Publications for CLL/Counseling-Learning; Educational Solutions for the Silent Way; and Alemany Press, for the Natural Approach). The methods offered training opportunities, often outside conventional academic settings, usually by their leading practitioners, that established separate communities of practitioners. And each had its own language of practice. Distinct languages of practice

The ideological distinctiveness became more evident as innovative methods developed their particular social facts and idiosyncratic ways of talking and writing. Through demonstrations, publications, workshops, and training, the methods fostered specific communities of practice that developed and promulgated their own particular language of practice. Users identified themselves, and were recognizable to others, through the ways in which they described what they did in their classrooms. The teaching pronunciation comparison in Table 7.1 illustrates these languages of practice. In ALDM teaching, for instance, student mistakes are

characterized as potentially ‘bad language habits’, but Silent Way teachers would distinguish between student ‘mistakes’ and ‘errors’. Underlying the difference in the two explanations is a way of thinking about how people learn languages. In ALDM as we have said, students are forming automatic language responses, so mistakes in pronunciation indicate imperfect mastery of the habit. In the Silent Way, the goal was to learn autonomously so when a student produced an unacceptable pronunciation, one of two things might be happening. The student may be making a mistake, the result of mis-taking one sound or word for another, although the student knew or had access to both. Or the student may be making an error, which in Silent Way thinking is the inevitable result of facing the unknown. As explained in the Educational Solutions Newsletter (Gattegno, 1976b, p. 2), ‘Errors underline the matter with which they are linked; mistakes, the person involved in the activities … Indeed, errors happen, while mistakes are made.’ Method

Classroom practice

Explanations

Social facts

ALDM

The teacher models the correct language, sometimes exaggerating the mistake; the student repeats the correction.

Students are forming ‘automatic responses’ automatic responses so lead to ‘language habits’ mistakes in pronunciation showed an imperfect mastery (or ‘bad’) language habit.

The Silent Way

The teacher offers nonverbal correction through gestures, indicating one student’s version over others, returning to the word chart.

‘Errors underline the Students make matter with which they ‘mistakes’ or ‘errors’. are linked; mistakes, the person involved in the activities … Indeed, errors happen, while mistakes are made.’

Table 7.2 Correcting pronunciation: Two different languages of practice, explanations, and social facts

These different languages of practice connect to different ways of acting and thinking in the classroom. In Table 7.2, ALDM and the Silent Way use different social facts to explain why a teacher would act in a particular way in correcting students’ pronunciation. The social facts abbreviate the explanations in providing different ways of thinking about the teaching problem, and support different ways of responding to it. In ALDM teaching (Table 7.2), in order to avoid bad language habits the teacher would orally correct the student when she heard an utterance that was wrong. In Silent Way teaching, the teacher would try to distinguish whether what the student had said resulted from an error or a mistake, which would then guide different ways of responding. With mistakes, the teacher might let students sort out the correction themselves, usually with minimal support, whereas with errors she would likely intervene to show what was different or new in the target language that may have led to the error. Thus in thinking methodologically the teacher had packaged a way to explain what was happening in lessons and to respond to it.

Towards the next generation Each of these innovative methods was a system of thinking and acting unto itself. The specific training each offered, supported by its classroom materials and teacher publications, created communities of explanation in which teachers would exchange ideas and develop their thinking using the social facts of the method. This way of thinking methodologically placed language teachers in an interesting position, however. On the one hand, each innovative method clearly depended on thinking and its language of practice. On the other, teachers faced a sort of Hobson’s choice: either learn to use a particular method as it was conceived and thus to the exclusion of other methods, or teach a-methodologically. A-methodological teaching

A-methodological teaching, which was called eclectic, meant blending techniques and practices, which led to a contradiction: since each method embodied an ideological stance towards teaching and learning, a teacher could not simultaneously use a particular method and at the same time combine elements from various other sources. Doing so would violate the thinking and explanations that undergirded the techniques. For its practitioners, the specific method served them to do, think, and talk about their teaching; they enacted its practices and drew on its social facts to explain what they did. They could participate in its language of practice in conversations and writing about their classroom teaching experiences. This form of teaching depended on methodological fidelity. In contrast, those who taught eclectically blurred lines of methodological thinking. Gaps in methodological fidelity

The contrast between teaching within a single method and the notion of eclectic teaching led to arguments, which were couched as which method was ‘best’ (for example, Prabhu, 1990). Proponents of eclecticism argued that since there was no way to determine which method worked best, it was incumbent upon teachers to consider ‘their students, [when] searching for proof that the methods worked. This, they argued, led teachers to … [find] ways to pick and choose elements of multiple methods to increase student engagement, language use, and communicative capacity’ (Cushing-Leubner & Bigelow, 2014, p. 247, 248). But teaching in this way entailed a new conception of thinking. Innovative methods supported sophisticated, if singular, thinking about the specifics of language learning and teaching. Eclectic teaching, in contrast, with its central notion of choice, offered the possibility of independence in how the teacher worked in the language classroom. Ironically perhaps, the very exclusivity and singularity of each innovative method, expressed in its own language of practice, sustained deeper thinking about teaching and learning and made the method susceptible to challenge. Logically, if innovative methods offered mutually exclusive explanations of language learning, through their particular social facts, and claimed to be effective on that basis, it was not possible to compare them. To compare methods to determine which one was best would require shared explanations of learning, along with common social facts and a lingua franca of practice to express them.

The second generation: thinking synthetically

The second conceptual generation was characterized by three overlapping challenges to thinking methodologically, although they unfolded somewhat sequentially. From the standpoint of thinking, eclectic teaching, communicative language teaching (CLT), and the post-method condition shared the common denominator of choice. Each defined the language teacher’s role as selecting techniques and practices and somehow putting them together, synthesizing them, in her classroom teaching. They proposed a different means by which the synthesis might be reasoned, but fundamentally they shared the view that language teacher thinking had to be a synthetic, combinatorial process.

Eclectic teaching Eclectic teaching became the label for teachers who combined classroom activities from different methodologies, but there was little agreement on what it meant for a language teacher to be eclectic, and the definition remained superficial. Rivers (1968) offered one of the first definitions of eclectic teaching as ‘try[ing] to absorb the best techniques of all the well-known language-teaching methods into classroom procedures, using them for the purpose for which they are most appropriate’ (p. 21). This view made eclectic teaching a smorgasbord of activity and reasoning, a sort of combinatorial pedagogy. The view had critics, however, who argued that the alternative to thinking methodologically had to be more than simply choosing among classroom activities. In outlining what he called informed eclecticism, Deyes (1982) emphasized the thinking involved. He warned that such teaching was not ‘an ad hoc use of techniques, simply because they are … fun, or because they give clear right or wrong answers… [nor is it to] … be seen in any sense as an easy way out’ (p.16). Instead, Deyes set out the core challenge to thinking methodologically when he argued that the point of eclectic teaching was that ‘techniques need not derive from any one theory of language, of learning, or of education, but should be related to the overall nature and objectives of particular courses.’ In other words, eclectic teaching could marry techniques from various methods in a synthetic process that focused on the particulars of the teacher’s setting. This, however, entailed detailing the thought processes underlying these choices. From singularity to choice in thinking

The arguments in support of eclectic teaching introduced a different view of teacher thinking. To be truly synthetic and more than a fanciful selection of activities, eclectic teaching needed to include the thinking by which the techniques and practices were selected and combined. This made the form of thinking ‘more demanding and time-consuming than using a method.’ Deyes (1982) reasoned ‘if the choice is an informed one, the teacher will need to (a) be familiar with, and understand, the range of linguistic and pedagogical considerations … [and] … (b) have some (implicit) reason for making a particular choice at a particular moment’ (p. 16). The basis of choice became the core issue for proponents of eclectic teaching. In a comment famously attributed to him, Widdowson offered an acerbic characterization of this position: ‘If you say you are an eclectic but cannot state the principles of your eclecticism, you are not eclectic but confused.’ (as cited in Pettis, 2003, n. p.) Counteracting confusion, proponents of synthetic thinking variously described it as choosing (for example, Deyes,

1982), making informed decisions (Stevick, 1980), or operating from principles (for example, Widdowson, and later Brown, 1994). These terms coalesced around the notion that language teaching was more than classroom behavior, that it entailed a dimension of thought that was individual.

The ‘best method’ debates Proposals proved less different from thinking methodologically than proponents argued, however. In essence, eclectic teaching substituted the teacher’s idiosyncratic thinking for methodological reasoning as the basis for teaching choices, thus exchanging one form of singular classroom thinking with another. Where innovative methods gave explicit explanations, supported by their social facts for particular classroom practices, eclectic teaching depended on individual reasoning. This meant that, by definition, eclecticism did not share a common language of practice; the reasons for choices could be articulated in highly individual terms. The rise of teaching advice columns in various publications (for example, TESOL Matters) during this period (sometimes titled What works), exemplified the growing individualism in explaining classroom choices. On the surface, the new view appeared to democratize thinking about teaching, but it had a different, unintended effect. When every teacher could have reasons for what she was doing, there were no common warrants for what was meant by teaching effectively. Blending methods, ‘what’s best’

Arguments about effectiveness bloomed in the best-method debates of the 1990s. Prabhu (1990) began a paper titled, ‘There is no best method–why?’, by paraphrasing discussions about methodological fidelity, consistency, and teacher choice: ‘the statement that there is some truth to every method needs to be seen not just as an epistemological observation, but as a plea for an eclectic blending …’ (p. 167). He went on to voice skepticism about eclectic teaching, pointing out that when teachers picked and chose among classroom practices, ‘such indiscriminate blending of methods adds nothing to our pedagogic understanding, since it offers no perception of what may be true about which method’ (p. 168). The idea of perception of what may be true, to use his phrase, for teaching in particular ways introduced the question of warrant. Truth by accident

The suggestion of warrant—that there needed to be evidence by which a method’s proponent could claim a classroom activity worked—changed the basis of the effectiveness debate from choice to evidence. The conversation was not no longer simply about choosing among techniques, or even the principles that informed those choices; it could now be about the evidence of what happened through those teaching choices. Without evidence and the reasoning to elaborate it, eclectic teaching was what Prabhu called truth by accident. It amounted to idiosyncratic arguments about what worked in the classroom with little or no basis for discussing practices or efficacy. The ELT arguments of the 1990s launched the idea of individual thinking in language teaching. Eclectic teaching and the best-method debates subsumed methodologically based

ways of thinking within the idiosyncratic, anything goes, truth by accident view of thinking. But there was a critical difference. The ‘thinking methodologically’ of the 1980s was ideologically exclusive; using the innovative methods made teachers part of a methodological discourse community. Thinking synthetically, no matter how reasoned, was fundamentally individual. For teachers, thinking for themselves opened a potential conceptual space between their behaviors, what they were doing publicly in the classroom, and what they might be thinking. In other words, teachers now had something to think about their teaching. Space to think

Drawing this distinction between methods and how teachers used them created a space that had not been described in the previous era when methodology and teaching were synonymous. It became feasible to ask how thinking might relate to teaching behavior and somehow shape it. In concluding the paper ‘There is no best method–why?’, Prabhu (1990) mused on this possibility: ‘Perhaps, then, there is a factor more basic than the choice between methods, namely, teachers’ subjective understanding of the teaching they do’ (p. 172). The second generation had begun to differentiate the teacher from her teaching, and the space between them constituted her thinking. He concluded ‘A method is seen simply as a highly developed and highly articulated sense of plausibility’ (p. 175), which he defined as teachers’ ‘personal conceptualization of how their teaching leads to desired learning with a notion of causation that has a measure of credibility for them’ (p. 172).

CLT and a common language for classroom teaching The debates about eclectic teaching and best methods covered a period through the 1980s and into the 1990s when teacher thinking came into its own in ELT. The problem was that this newly conceptualized independent function was evolving without a way to express it. The social facts and explanations used in thinking methodologically were less widely accepted and persuasive. Thinking became an individual process with a ready common language for discussion. To articulate teachers’ choices, to make them more than idiosyncratic, a common professional language was needed with which to publicly talk and write about teaching. To be professionally coherent, these discussions needed to be anchored in a common definition for the goal of language teaching so that the common language could be the means and the shared goal the end and to agree on a shared sense of ‘plausibility’. A means and an end

There was a common language; it had been first outlined in the ALDM era in Anthony’s 1963 article, Approach, Method, and Technique, and expanded as a professional vernacular by the popular synthetic methodology texts in the mid-1980s (for example, Brown, 1994; LarsenFreeman, 1986; Richards & Rodgers, 1986). The shared end also existed in the definitions of teaching that emerged in Communicative Language Teaching (or CLT as it became known). CLT was promoted as the predominant classroom methodology through its expanding role in curricula, published materials, and pedagogy. As a methodology, CLT offered teachers an identity; it became an increasingly shared view of how to teach and used a common language to describe it. The common language, along with this common goal of communicative teaching

both depended on teachers being seen as thoughtful, as able to choose what they were doing as they taught.

The coming of a common language: a pedagogical ‘filing system’ In Approach, Method, and Technique, Anthony (1963) had suggested a set of basic terms for language teaching. With the three terms in the title, he proposed an architecture that connected teachers’ inner worlds of belief and assumption with their external classroom practices. ‘The organizational key’, he wrote, ‘is that techniques carry out a method which is consistent with an approach.’ In his brief proposal, Anthony made a case for the need for a common language. ‘It would seem a worthwhile endeavor to attempt to limit the use of some of the more common terms when we talk professionally about the concepts of language teaching.’ He saw benefits in sharing terminology, even when disagreeing about ways to teach language: … we can refer to a framework about which we do agree, and focus clearly on the distinctions between views, we may be able to determine in what areas … [we] … employ the same terms differently, and where we use differing terminology … [about] … the same situations. (Anthony, 1963, p. 63; original italics) He described the terms as ‘definitions … presented as a pedagogical filing system within which many ideas, opposing or compatible, may be filed’ (p. 63). However, it took almost a quarter of a century for this vision to catch on and take root. From deep to surface structures in teaching

Anthony’s categories reflected the cognitive era in which he proposed them. The hierarchical relationship between approach and technique that connected teacher thinking to classroom action reflected then prevailing theorizations of language. It seemed to echo Chomsky’s (2002) view that surface structure variations in utterances were grounded in deep structural linguistic patterns. Anthony made a similar point (in the statement above) that the teachers’ varied, or even eclectic, use of classroom techniques might be anchored in a core set of beliefs about teaching and learning. This would mean that what was observable and variable on the surface of practice might be seen as a function of consistent deeper ways of thinking. Where Chomsky outlined a complex hierarchy of phrase-structure rules that moved the deep structure meaning to surface structure utterance, Anthony argued that consistency formed the connective tissue between teachers’ thinking and their actions. Time and method

Method was the bridge between public and private. Anthony (1963) defined method as ‘an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the selected approach’ (p. 65). What was radical, and at the time unremarked, was how this view conceived of time. The world of thinking was in a way outside of time; the world of classroom activity was solidly temporal and sequential; and method as the bridge connected the two. Chomsky’s view of language production and Anthony’s view of thinking were both structural in the 1960s sense of the word, that structures

in the mind generate patterns of behavior. They were based on a concept of time that connected an internal world outside to time (which was axiomatic), to the external, sequential world in time (which was procedural). As Anthony (1963) explained, ‘An approach is axiomatic, a method is procedural’ (p. 65; original italics). Bridging worlds

Anthony’s hierarchy could help make consistent what seemed to be incoherent in the classroom and explain individual practice. He explained that what an observer saw were ‘Techniques [that] depend on the teacher, his [sic] individual artistry, and the composition of the class’ (p. 66). But what was observed could not be method because it bridged worlds. He continued, ‘Teachers often feel uneasy … fearing a misinterpretation of their classes. This, in my view, arises largely out of the confusion of techniques with method’ (1963, p. 66). His notion that there is more to teaching than meets the observer’s eye had prescient quality, which seemed to anticipate the writing about language teacher observation in the 1980s. ELT writers (for example, Bailey 2006; Freeman, 1982; Gebhard, 1984) would argue that the seeming disconnect between what was observed in teaching and what the teacher said about it was a function of differences in meaning-making between the observer and the teacher, and therefore that the route to change in classroom practices lay in working through a teacher’s thinking and reasoning about what she was doing. This kind of work depended, as Anthony rightly observed, on having a shared way to talk about the teaching that was separate from the specifics of a particular method and thus could be ideologically neutral. A transcendent framework

Anthony envisioned a transcendent framework in which the specific categories needed to be fleshed out. The diversity of the innovative methods of the 1980s offered just that possibility. Here the variety of teaching practices could be related to competing axiomatic principles (see Larsen-Freeman, 1986), and the common framework was maintained. Anthony (1963) did not anticipate that the diversity of classroom practices would necessarily be problematic, noting optimistically that it might prove superficial when it was seen in the context of common thinking, ‘We might find out that language teachers do not differ among themselves as much as has been heretofore supposed’ (p. 63). Actually, the differences among innovative methods, and the best-method arguments they spawned, supported the need for a common framework of terms for language teaching.

Expanding the common language In 1986, Richards and Rodgers published their account of innovative methods, which drew on and expanded Anthony’s tripartite model. In the Preface to Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, they made a case similar to Anthony a quarter of a century earlier:

The proliferation of approaches and methods is a prominent characteristic of second and foreign language teaching. To some this reflects the strength of our profession … To others however, the wide variety of method options currently available confuses rather than comforts … Our goal is to enable teachers to become better informed about the nature, strengths and limitations of methods and approaches so that they can better arrive at their own judgments and decisions. (Richards & Rodgers, pp. vii–viii) Using their framework to describe eight methodologies, Richards and Rodgers promoted the cross-cutting advantages of a common language. They acknowledged the axiomatic bases of the methodologies they compared as ‘based on very different views of what language is and how a language is learned’ (p. vii). But they emphasized surveying rather than synthesizing them: ‘We hope that the analysis of approaches and methods … will elevate the level of discussion found in the methods literature, which sometimes has a polemical and promotional quality’ (p. viii). As a consequence of comparing methods across a common set of categories, the categories themselves took on a descriptive neutrality, making them seem incontrovertible.

Shared ways of teaching: CLT Much had changed in the world of language teaching in the intervening quarter century between Anthony’s original proposal of a methodological metalanguage in 1963 and Richards and Rodgers elaboration of it in the mid-1980s. The pluralism of innovative methods, which had led to the best-method debates, had been supplanted by a predominant view of classroom methodology. Communicative language teaching was different, which made it amenable as a common goal. Based on discipline-derived definitions, CLT seemed to eschew axiomatic principles. Classroom content was organized using the Chomskyian concepts of structural linguistics for language, and the Hymesian definitions of communicative competence for its use (see Brumfit & Johnson, 1979). While these definitions were also based on belief, they were different. The systems of those beliefs—linguistics, anthropology, sociology—were scholarly disciplines and not the axiomatic ideologies of the innovative methods. With CLT as a language of practice, teachers drew from the disciplines for their explanations of teaching. CLT thinking

The appeal to disciplinary knowledge distinguished CLT as an approach, using Anthony’s term, from the roiling variety of innovative methods, and in a sense lent it academic credence. As it took on a pre-eminence similar to ALDM teaching in the 1960s, CLT offered a straightforward rationale for action that collapsed the vying ideas of eclectic teaching into a single line of thinking. Thinking in CLT had an almost syllogistic character: The purpose of language was communication therefore the language classroom should mimic the world by creating communicative tasks. To do so, the teacher would organize these tasks, providing language input and communicative practice, and where needed negotiate correction so that the language students produced was intelligible. CLT thinking seemed largely like following a recipe of steps similar to the pattern practice of ALDM teaching, albeit ones that were mental rather than strictly behavioral. Thinking in this way seemed more complex than following a

method; for the teacher it was a matter of aligning the interactive, and therefore potentially less manageable classroom activity, with axiomatic communicative principles. Like ALDM of the 1960s, the ease of this homogeneous reasoning seemed to contribute to CLT’s rapid expansion. Based on the curricular innovations of the Council of Europe’s work on language syllabi (for example, van Ek, 1975), CLT offered a generic formulation of language teaching that fit the expansion of ELT during the 1990s. The classroom practices of CLT were somewhat amorphous, certainly in comparison to the strict definitions of the various innovative methods, making them more flexible to adopt and adapt. From a teacher education standpoint, CLT teaching became the successor to eclectic teaching; it offered a similarly combinatorial pedagogy that encouraged teachers to work synthetically using a variety of classroom activities. Pragmatically, CLT was embedded in programs of commercially published classroom materials and assessment designs, which helped to make it widely available in classroom materials and their curricular supports. In terms of thinking however, CLT represented a non-partisan view of teaching founded on disciplinary definitions, which needed a common language. This is what Anthony’s categorization, through Richards and Rodgers, supplied. A methodological metalanguage

Anthony’s (1963) terms, which were expanded by Richards and Rodgers (1986) and other writers (for example, Brown, 1994; Larsen-Freeman, 1986) into a common methodological metalanguage, described language-teaching practices in seemingly neutral, methodologically agnostic terms. The common terminology was usually introduced through initial teacher education in pedagogy courses. New teachers would then find it supported and amplified in the major, communicatively based textbook programs from which they were often expected to teach. What was actually meant by teaching communicatively, and whether teachers were actually doing so, was largely beside the point; what became centrally important was that there was a way to conceptualize and describe teaching independently of any particular axiomatic methodological approach. Using the synthetic language of CLT and methodological metalanguage, the world of classroom practices was independent of the teacher, a world that she could orchestrate through choice and informed decision-making. Thinking exposed

A loose assemblage of factors came together in the second generation to expose the private realm of language teacher thinking and make it an operational part of the public classroom work. These factors are summarized in Table 7.3 below:

Common language Anthony’s (1963) original framework outlined a basic set of terms for language teaching. Common language Used comparatively to examine innovative methods in various methodology texts, the terms function as a common language to distinguish internal private belief from publicly observable behavior. Shared view of teaching The spread of CLT as the dominant methodology supported the use of this common language. Shared view of teaching Based on disciplinary knowledge and social facts from applied linguistics, anthropology, and subsequently second language acquisition, CLT prescribed a homogenous way of thinking (phrased as ‘teaching communicatively’) that supported a heterogeneous set of classroom practices (loosely called ‘communicative techniques’). Shared view of teaching The central premise of thinking as choice and decision-making was instantiated through shared practices ranging from teacher education programs to curricular teachers’ guides. These factors contributed in redefining the mental work of teaching as the notion that teachers would choose or decide what to do, a notion that embodied thinking as a function that was separable from the public classroom practice. Table 7.3 The second generation summarized

By the mid 1990s, this perspective had helped to establish a synthetic view of language teaching, in which the public classroom work became a bricolage of techniques, practices, and materials bound together by the teacher’s reasoning. The synthetic view anticipated and ultimately supported a more heuristic view of practice in the next generation. By exposing the world of thinking, synthetic views also opened language teacher education to conceptualizations and research in general teacher education as discussed in the next chapter. These transitions were carried through in a group of discussions about the post-method condition.

The ‘post-method’ condition Kumaravadivelu’s (1994) post-method condition in many ways epitomized the second generation in its commitment to thinking synthetically. He described ‘a state of affairs that compels us to refigure the relationship between the theorizers and the practitioners of method’ (p. 28), a realignment, which was necessary because of what he and others (for example, Holliday, 1994b with appropriate methodology) saw as an imbalance between theorizers of methods and teachers who implemented them. Like the synthetic views of thinking embodied in eclectic teaching and CLT, the rhetoric of the post-method condition defined a space in language teaching for teachers’ mental activity. This agency was about choosing, deciding, and selecting among different ways of doing things in the classroom, and about rationalizing and explaining those decisions. Localizing teachers’ thinking

Kumaravadivelu’s proposals for the post-method condition were essentially political:

If the conventional concept of method entitles theorizers to construct knowledge-oriented theories of pedagogy, the post-method condition empowers practitioners to construct classroom-oriented theories of practice. If the concept of method authorizes theorizers to centralize pedagogic decision-making, the post-method condition enables practitioners to generate location-specific, classroom-oriented innovative practices. (Kumaradivelu, 1994, p. 29) This was an argument in favor of localizing teachers’ thinking in their own experiences, which he refers to above as classroom-oriented theories of practice, and in their settings, which he calls location-specific, classroom-oriented innovative practices. Here the shift in emphasis seems complete. In the first generation, thinking originated outside the teacher and was translated into practice; the initial stages of the second generation (eclectic teaching and best methods) transitioned the locus of thinking to the individual. In the post-method condition, individual teachers’ thinking was fully localized in their experiences and their classrooms. In this new calculus, teachers gained the autonomy to determine what worked in their teaching situations, guided by what Kumaravadivelu (1994) called ‘principled pragmatism’. When teachers worked pragmatically, they defined their own work, a process that differed from eclectic teaching, which he said ‘is constrained by the conventional concept of method.’ Principled pragmatism, as he put it, ‘focuses on how classroom learning can be shaped and managed by teachers as a result of informed teaching and critical appraisal’ (p. 31). Macro-strategies as an alternative to method

Two points stand out in the definition of the post-method condition that encapsulate the second generation in defining thinking in language teaching. First, Kumaravadivelu’s (1994) proposal distinguishes between classroom methods and the teachers who use them, an idea he distills in the palindromic turn-of-phase, that the condition offers ‘an alternative to method rather than an alternative method’ (p. 29). Second, he introduces a new set of terminology to enact this alternative to method, a set of terms which he called ‘macro-strategies’, to map connections between the inner world of belief and the outer world of classroom behavior. These strategies are not methods, he emphasized, but they accomplish the same bridging function, ‘A macro-strategy is a broad guideline, based on which teachers can generate their own situation-specific, needs-based micro-strategies or classroom techniques’ (1994, p. 32). Kumaravadivelu (1994) asserts, as Anthony (1963) had of his terms, that these ‘macrostrategies are theory neutral as well as method neutral’. Theory has come to stand in for the teacher’s inner world of belief and thinking, while method is a facsimile for the work that is publicly visible in the classroom: Theory neutral … means that the framework is not constrained by the underlying assumptions of any one specific theory of language, learning, and teaching. Likewise, method neutral does not mean method-less; rather it means that the framework is not conditioned by a single set of theoretical principles or classroom procedures associated with any one particular language teaching method. (Kumaravadivelu, 1994, p. 32)

The point about a new, shared language of practice, is underscored in this theoretical neutrality. The ten macro-strategies emphasize a generic view of teaching, which is part of their explanatory power. Only three refer explicitly to language as subject matter, for example, (e) foster language awareness (f) contextualize linguistic input (g) integrate language skills while the other seven are expressed in terms that are subject-matter neutral, for example: (a) maximize learning opportunities (b) (b, c) (d) activate intuitive heuristics (f) (h) promote learner autonomy (i) (j) ensure social relevance. Half of the strategies could apply to most teaching, indicating how far the discourse of language teaching had moved from its disciplinary roots and the strictly methodological basis of previous generations. From method to teacher agency

The second generation crested with the argument for an alternative to method, in favor of individual teachers defining what they do through the choices and decisions they made in enacting classroom instruction. The idea of teacher agency, which replaced the idea of following a particular methodology, had the effect of defining everything a teacher did as method. In this post-method world, thinking entailed the freedom—and indeed the responsibility—on the part of the teacher to articulate her choices and decisions and thus to work out her own method. It was a heady commitment to individual agency, but it started to surface uneasy questions about evidence and warrant of the usefulness of that agency that pointed to the next generation. What, in other words, was this independent view of method accomplishing for student learning?

The third generation: thinking heuristically The third generation addressed what it would mean for the teacher to have agency in her thinking and actions. The idea of making pedagogical choices positioned teachers to have agency over those decisions, assuming this agency implicated them in the outcomes of those pedagogical moves. The situation raised an interesting parallel: the second generation of thinking had synthetically supplanted the first generation of thinking methodologically with the idea of choice and the best-method question, but they both defined teachers thinking singularly

—one in terms of methods, the other in terms of the individual. Now the third generation was doing a similar thing. It took the idea of thinking as choice from the arguments in the bestmethod debates of the 1980s and subsumed it into the idea of agency. Teacher agency here meant the interrelation between teachers’ choices, their classroom actions, and the outcomes for student learning. The question of evidence and warrants was the fulcrum for this shift. Focusing on how teachers could know that their teaching had worked, that the choices they made accomplished their intentions, and more crucially what these choices accomplished for student learning gave the third generation a new heuristic orientation. These foci changed the orientation of thinking from what and how teachers were thinking, to how and why. The central question in the third generation was how teachers might know what their teaching was accomplishing for students’ language learning. This idea of thinking heuristically centered language teaching on learning and the classroom outcomes of that teaching. The issue was no longer fidelity in implementing particular methodological practices or reasoning behind making pedagogical choices, which were first and second generation concerns. The focus became what the lesson actually accomplished for learners. To address this question, two elements needed to be in play. First, there needed to be a group of classroom practices that represented generally accepted ways of conducting lessons. Second, there needed to be professionally accepted social facts that supported talking and writing about what happened in the lesson in order to plan for and to analyze that instance of teaching.

Generally accepted ways of conducting lessons The writing in ELT about lesson planning and the arc of lessons (for example, Harmer, 1996; Meddings & Thornbury, 2009; Woodward, 2001) provided normative ways to describe teaching practices, along with a template for organizing and sequencing them into lessons. The terminology offered the social facts of a normative view of language teaching. A training activity from the period called, rather aptly, The Jargon Generator in Woodward’s Ways of Training (1992) illustrates the convergence of normative classroom teaching and a language to express it. The activity is suggested for a point in training when ‘trainees have been wading through a lot of reading or input and are starting to complain or make jokes about the amount of terminology.’ The instructions are to make ‘pompous and pretentious sentences using jargon generator … with terminology from the course’ (p. 84). The chart (see Figure 7.1) is laid out like an ALDM or CLT language textbook to provide the raw material for generating these statements.

Figure 7.1 The jargon generator (Woodward, 1992, p. 85). © Longman (Pearson Education Limited)

To do the activity, trainees need to be able to talk about normative practices using the terms on the chart. As a teacher-learning activity, the aim is essentially to practice professional discourse in a way that is ‘iconoclastic and fun’ so that ‘the terminology may become less threatening’ (Woodward, 1992, p. 84). The activity illustrates the two dimensions of a common language about teaching: It allows participants to agree on what to concentrate on, but it also underlines the specialization of that language, here called ‘jargon’. The heuristic space

Gaining control over and using professional discourse (and even having fun with it) underscores the idea of teachers being in control, of their agency, which is the hallmark of the third generation. It is based on the space to think that was redefined by teacher agency. Rather than fidelity to a particular method or the eclecticism of assembling various techniques around a common purpose, agency offered the opportunity for teachers to think about their teaching—what was happening for students as together they did the lesson. This opportunity was heuristic in the sense that it opened possibilities to try out different ways of working and to investigate and to gather evidence about what was happening. A 1987 article by Nunan titled, ‘Communicative language teaching: Making it work’, uses this heuristic space opened up by teacher agency to explain gaps between observed and professed teaching. In observing in the classrooms of six teachers working with adult immigrants through the Australian Migrant Education Program, Nunan found that, although the teachers professed to be teaching communicatively, their classroom practices actually looked quite different:

On the surface, the lessons appeared to conform to the sorts of communicative principles advocated in the literature. However, when the patterns of interaction were examined more closely, they resembled traditional … classroom interaction … The most commonly occurring pattern of interaction was identical with the basic exchange structure found in mother-tongue classes. (Nunan, 1987, p. 137) This was an instance of the space created in thinking synthetically and using the common language of CLT to describe it. Nunan did not conclude that what he saw wrong because it did not conform to his understanding of communicative teaching, nor did he conclude that teachers were misleading or mistaken by in effect saying one thing and doing another. In terms of teacher thinking, there could be a number ways to interpret the gap between what teachers said and what they did in the observed lessons. Interpreting the gap

The inconsistency between professed and enacted teacher practice, which Nunan documented and which has been identified in various forms by other researchers (see Freeman, 1996; Hoban, 2002), establishes the central dynamic of the third generation. If in this instance, teacher thinking were seen in purely methodological terms (as in the first generation), the gap would be an issue of fidelity to CLT in how teachers were implementing the lessons, and it could be addressed through better training. If the thinking were seen synthetically (as in the second generation), the gap would be between the teachers’ intent in planning to teach communicatively and enacting that intent in classroom teaching. In this view, addressing this gap would require that the teachers pay more attention to articulating the details of the lesson through better planning or more careful teaching. If however, the thinking is seen heuristically, which is the third generational view, the gap between the lesson the teachers described and the one they were observed doing becomes a point of engagement, investigation, and personal research. In this sense, the disconnect offers a window into what might be happening in this particular instance of teaching. The table below summarizes the ways in which the gap between what teachers mean to do, the professed practice, and what the observer sees happening—the observed teaching— would be characterized according to the conceptualization of thinking in each of the generations. It also outlines the ways in which that gap would be addressed or fixed through teacher education. Teacher thinking is conceptualized

The gap between professed and The ‘fix’ observed practice described as in teacher education would be … …

Methodologically (1st generation)

Lack of ‘fidelity’ to the methodology in implementing the lesson

Better training in the particular methodology

Synthetically (2nd generation) Disconnect between planning and classroom enactment

Better lesson planning and more careful enactment

Heuristically (3rd generation) A point of engagement in what happened in the lesson

Analysis of what happened to better meet the lesson goal

Table 7.4 Evolving explanations for the gap between professed and observed teaching (and its teacher education ‘fix’)

The interrelation between the conception of teacher thinking and forms of response in teacher education is interesting. The alignment can be viewed reading left to right, that since thinking is conceptualized this way, the teacher education response would follow. Or the information can be read from right to left, that since the teacher education intervention is aimed at better training in the particular methodology for example, the underlying assumption must be a firstgeneration one, that teachers are thinking methodologically. The two ways of reading this alignment show the core challenge of the third generation, how to treat teacher thinking as a heuristic process. Arriving at the heuristic argument

The analysis that Nunan offered is solidly third generation. While acknowledging the pessimism that the gap might trigger from a second-generation perspective—’It is not necessary to be totally pessimistic about the chances of making the classroom more communicative’, he wrote. Nunan argued that the gap actually reveals the powerful role of context and socialization in shaping how the teachers think (and say) they are teaching. [P]owerful constraints exist, as do conditioned classroom reflexes on the part of teachers and learners. These will not necessarily change because of the published pronouncements of applied linguists. The essential first step in promoting change is to acknowledge and document present realities through classroom-based research. (Nunan, 1987, p. 142) Three features of the idea of thinking heuristically are important to note in Nunan’s analysis. The first is the way that ‘making the classroom more communicative’ is set out as the goal, which illustrates how CLT is the predominantly accepted classroom practice. Second is the acknowledgement that socialization, which he calls conditioned classroom reflexes, of both teacher and students are part of what shape how teachers are teaching and students are responding in lessons. These two points together change how teaching is described. Nunan does not explain the lack of teaching in these classrooms as a matter of teachers’ resistance or ineptitude in teaching communicatively. Instead he takes the dissonance as evidence of patterns of socialization and studenting in the larger fabric of schooling into which language classrooms, like all classrooms, fit. These two points pave the way for the third point, which is the heuristic argument. To engage with what is actually happening in lessons—’to acknowledge and document present realities’—as Nunan puts it, teachers need to learn through classroom-based research.

Teacher research and the culture of thinking heuristically Encouraging teachers to engage in research has continued to gain momentum in ELT. The heuristic argument to support it is couched in many ways: as classroom-based research (Allwright & Bailey, 1991), action research (Burns, 1999; Nunan, 1990), teacher-research (Freeman, 1982), exploratory practice (Allwright & Hanks, 2009). The intent underlying

these strategies is similar, that teachers can address their agency by thinking heuristically about how they teach. The heuristic lies in seeking connections between intent and outcome, between planning and acting as a teacher and seeing what happens for students. In the thirdgeneration orientation, the central question is: How does what I as the teacher planned (or thought would happen) in the lesson actually play out? This heuristic is essentially a firstperson examination since teachers are uniquely positioned to probe what their students do as they are learning, to examine how the intent and plans play out in the lesson. The agency makes this type of heuristic thinking a personal activity; it is done by the teacher about her work in her context. The heuristic focus implicit in teachers doing research also influenced the general research-practice relationship in several ways. In this generation, teaching and researching can be framed as parallel processes (Freeman, 1982; Kincheloe, 1991). Both are concerned with learning and learners—teaching with creating opportunities and research with understanding what happens with those opportunities (Hubbard & Power, 1993). When teaching and researching are seen as parallel, teachers are positioned to play a central role in both processes. The role of teaching as subordinate in the research process is recast, so that teachers can do research through what they are doing as teachers. This line of argument suggested the possibility, at least conceptually, of a different kind of knowledge, knowledge about teaching generated by teachers, which is discussed in Chapter 9.

Stenhouse and the third generation The teacher-as-researcher movement pointed to a new definition of teacher thinking, one that could be independent of disciplinary knowledge because it was grounded in the work of teaching itself, and not dependent on researchers because the knowledge was defined through the agency of teachers themselves. Decades earlier, anticipating this move towards teachers as the primary definers of the knowledge used in teaching, Stenhouse (1985) had noted that, ‘Research cannot improve teaching without … appealing to teacher judgment [which involves] offer[ing] hypotheses (i.e. tentative conclusions) whose applications can be verified because they are tested in the classroom by the teacher’ (p. 49). Though he made the comment in the context of UK curriculum reforms in the 1980s that he saw as weakening teacher input, Stenhouse’s observation went to the heart of thinking heuristically. He was describing the consequences to schooling and to research that accepting of teachers’ own agency would bring. The change would not simply be in how teaching was publicly viewed; it would be much more fundamental. Although he asked the question in the first-generation context of the 1980s, when thinking in teaching was a straightforward matter of implementing methodology, Stenhouse’s appeal to teacher judgment anticipated the heuristic thinking of the third generation. Teacher thinking was no longer about fidelity of implementation, it had matured into the individual mental work particular to classroom teaching.

The chapter argument revisited While it may now seem simplistic, there was a time not long ago when language teaching was seen as an a-cognitive undertaking that depended on consistent ways of doing things and not on analytical or reflective thought. In the 1960s, teacher thinking equated with implementing classroom behaviors in the ALDM, but with the methodological diversification of the 1970s, in which forms of reasoning were exclusive to each method, ideas about the hidden side of teaching began to change. During the 1980s, notions of teacher choice broadened the way thinking was conceived to include the teacher’s individual reasoning. The evolution has developed into the current views that teacher thinking involves understanding classroom practices in terms of how students respond to them. Table 7.5 offers a summary of this movement. GENERATION

Zero Behavioral

One Methodological

Two Synthetic

Three Heuristic

Defined thinking as …

Carrying out teaching behaviors

Working faithfully within a method

Choosing and combining from methods

Considering connections between method and learning

Teacher’s role

To perform

To implement

To choose

To investigate

Examples

ALDM

‘innovative methods’

Eclectic teaching; CLT Action and teacherresearch

Table 7.5 Teacher thinking and role by generation

With these successive generations the separation between the private, individual realm, called teacher thinking, and the public world of the classroom (variously called behavior, teaching methodology, or classroom practice) has increased. The separation has created the possibility of choice, which has matured into definitions of teacher thinking as individual agency. This redefinition in the third generation has opened up the possibility of key ideas from general education to take hold and to assume a central place in second language teacher education, a process which is described in the next chapter.

Note 1 With the exception of Newbury House Publishers, a small publisher founded to specialize in English language teaching in 1969 and acquired by foreign language publisher Heinle & Heinle in 1991, established American and British publishing houses did not enter directly into this methodological thicket, preferring instead to publish synthetic accounts of teaching methodologies (for example, Brown, 1994; Larsen-Freeman, 1986; Richards & Rodgers, 1986).

8 Four representations of teacher thinking

The chapter argument Chapter 7 outlined how thinking as mental work came to be seen as integral to language teaching, presenting an examination from within the field. This chapter looks from the outside-in at how seminal ideas from research in general education migrated into language teaching to fundamentally reshape our conceptions of thinking. This migration of ideas is reflected in four graphic representations of thinking. These diagrams distill their writers’ arguments and can reveal their assumptions; thus each offers a visual way into what is central to the ideas, what is peripheral, and what is not even mentioned. In general educational research

Decision as ‘the basic teaching skill’ (Figure 8.1)

Teachers’ thought processes (Figure 8.2)

In SLTE research

Decision-making based on BAK Language teacher cognition(s) (Figure 8.3) (Figure 8.4)

Table 8.1 Tracing the migration of ideas about teacher thinking

Shavelson’s representation of decision-making (1973) (see Figure 8.1), and Clark and Peterson’s representation of thought processes (1986) (see Figure 8.2) were both seminal in work on teacher thinking in general educational research in the 1980s. These representations are connected to Woods’ view of decision-making (1996) (see Figure 8.3) and Borg’s of teacher cognition(s) (2003) (see Figure 8.4), two key conceptualizations of thinking important in language teaching. The argument begins with the horizontal connections between decision-making and thought processes, using Shavelson and Clark and Peterson as points of reference. It then looks at the vertical connections—how these two ideas were taken up in language teaching—how decision-making became Beliefs-Assumptions-Knowledge (BAK) for Woods and how thought processes were reinterpreted as cognition(s) by Borg. These re-conceptualizations proved to be highly influential in the field, exemplary instances of ‘the same things’ (ideas from general educational research) ‘done differently’ (in language teaching). The four representations are not intended to summarize the full sweep of ideas from general educational research that have shaped work on language teacher thinking. The point is not a comprehensive review, but rather a close examination of how seminal ideas migrated.

New ways of characterizing thinking The decade of the 1990s was a unique period in the conceptualization of language teaching. It marked the transition from definitions of thinking entirely in methodological terms to viewing the language teacher as someone who chose or decided what she would do in her classroom. These ideas about teacher agency democratized thinking and opened up a new conceptual terrain through ideas of eclectic teaching and the best method debates. The consolidation of CLT as the predominant framework created a language of practice with which to talk about this agency. All of which seemed to culminate in statements about the ‘post-method condition.’ The dynamic underlying these changes was unique, however. The ways in which

the content (language) and how it could be taught mutually redefined each other was specific to language teaching. The evolution of how thinking was conceived in the field is the narrative of this yin–yang relationship, as discussed in the previous chapter. This interplay of changing ideas about content and methodology reshaped the teacher’s role, thus implicating a different view of the mental work. This reshaping of conceptualizations happened from the inside–out essentially, as language teaching scholars rethought the field itself. In the 1990s the dynamic changed, however, as ideas from beyond the field were introduced and took hold. The arguments about language teachers’ agency and that their thinking was a synthetic process of combining methods and ideas seemed to create a space for different ways of characterizing thinking, which attracted ideas from outside into the field. The successive generations, in defining language teacher thinking—from implementing methods, to selecting among methodological possibilities, to investigating the impact of those choices—continued the focus on how the inner work of thinking supported the outer work of classroom teaching. But they did not describe the process of thinking itself. It was here that ideas from general educational research on teacher thinking offered constructs that might anchor this needed description. Like an oyster creating its pearl from a grain of sand, the field changed what it took, however. So as language teaching and its new sub-field of second language teacher education (SLTE) research took up these concepts, they were refined in unique ways to suit their work.

Marking new intersections Importing ideas is a heady intellectual process. New terms can often name aspects of familiar phenomena, aspects that have been tacitly recognized, though not as centrally important. New relationships among these terms can help to rethink assumed connections. In this process, the ideas generate new social facts and professional explanations. All of which happened, in different ways and to varying degrees, as ideas from research on teacher thinking in general education were taken up in language teaching. The evolving recognition of SLTE as an area of research (discussed in Chapter 6) was the soil in which these connections were made. The most visible vehicle for this importation were conceptual reviews of teacher thinking, or teacher cognition as it was also known (for example, Borg, 2003, 2006; Freeman, 1996, 2002), which recapitulated research literature from general education and introduced its key ideas into the conceptual vernacular of second language teacher education. These reviews had several impacts. First, they drew intellectual links between the field of second language teacher education and research on teacher learning and thinking. Underlying these connections was a critical de facto assertion: that language functioned as a subject matter similar to mathematics or science, and therefore that what teachers thought about as they taught it could be understood using some of the same constructs. This assertion anchored a new generation of research studies in second language teacher education focusing on teachers (for example, Freeman & Richards, 1996). This led to a second impact. As SLTE researchers began to study teacher thinking, they naturally drew on research methods that were appropriate to focusing on teachers’ mental work. These qualitative research methods

with their emphases on meaning and social context were fairly new in English language teaching (see Lazarton, 1995). They quickly became the over-arching approach to studying teacher thinking (see Burns, Freeman, & Edwards, 2015), and specific strategies such as stimulated recall and narrative studies (see Barnard & Burns, 2012) were used for data collection.

Horizontal connections (within educational research) The third and most fundamental impact were the new constructs for thinking themselves, two of which emerged as central to second language teacher education. The first was decisionmaking; the second, which followed and elaborated on the first, was the idea of thought processes. These two constructs, along with clusters of related ideas, started to align conceptualizations of thinking in language teaching with mainstream views of teachers’ mental work. It is unclear precisely where the idea of teacher thinking as decision-making originated, although most work in general education references Shavelson’s (1973) article titled ‘What is the basic teaching skill?’ (original italics). The phrase ‘teachers’ thought processes’ is the title of Clark and Peterson’s (1986) review in the Handbook of Research on Teaching, and figures as its major organizing idea. Together these two ideas are the point of departure for this discussion of importing ideas about teacher thinking into language teaching.

Idea 1: decisions and decision-making The phrase ‘decision-making’ had actually been in language teaching, with Stevick’s (1980) idea of informed decision making, for example, before, it surfaced in second language teacher education in the 1990s (see Nunan, 1992). But it had gained currency in research on teacher thinking starting almost 20 years earlier. In introducing the notion, Shavelson put the role of thinking in teaching succinctly, ‘Any teaching act is the result of a decision, conscious or unconscious’ (p. 144). In the article’s title ‘What is the basic teaching skill’, he had pointed out the gap he saw between the then-prevailing skill-based view of teaching and the ways in which teachers actually worked in classrooms, which he elaborated: Previous research on basic teaching skills examined alternative teaching acts (for example, explaining, questioning, reinforcing) without examining how teachers choose between one or another act at a given point in time … What distinguishes the exceptional teacher from his or her colleagues is not the ability to ask, say, a higher-order question, but the ability to decide when to ask such a question. (Shavelson, 1973 p. 144) In articulating the cognitive side of teaching in this way, Shavelson moved thinking as decision-making into the domain of research on teaching in general education. Understanding was shifting from seeing teaching as a set of procedural moves and behaviors to seeing it as an activity involving thinking in and about context. The work was simultaneously complexifying the whole notion of contexts as geographically located spaces. Conventional definitions included specific settings of students and classroom, but others argued that the

term could also refer to the inner contexts of the teacher’s mind, identity, and experience, what Cazden (1982), referred to in research on first-language literacy as ‘the contexts in the mind’.

The TOTE model Drawing on then-current cognitive theories based on theories of information-processing, Shavelson (1973) proposed a model (Figure 8.1) in which a teacher’s decisions flowed logically from making a judgment in a situation, to acting on the judgment, to evaluating if the action had the intended effect.

Figure 8.1 TOTE decision-making diagram (Shavelson, 1973)

With its cybernetic-sounding title, ‘Test-Operate-Test-Exit’, Shavelson’s model linked thinking with action through this series of decisions based on the teacher’s judgments of the ‘congruity’ and ‘incongruity’ between what she intended and what happened. Or, in other words, the ‘congruity’ between the context ‘in her mind’ and the context in her classroom.

A unit of thinking Shavelson’s proposal did several important things. It effectively located where thinking happened: in the teacher’s judgments of ‘congruity’. It defined how thinking happened: by the teacher matching intention with action. Politically it underscored what should have been selfevident, the teacher as the person thinking was centrally important in classroom teaching. Most basically, however, Shavelson was proposing a unit of thinking that could be studied in research and could be designed for in teacher education. From a research perspective, there were many aspects of teachers’ decisions that could be documented (for example, Lowyck, 1986): what the decisions were about (the content); when they occurred (which situations triggered which decisions, etc.); how they might change over time (the role of the teacher’s experience); if decisions were generic or idiosyncratic (the place of individuality in decision-making); and so on. From the standpoint of teacher education, activities could be designed to focus on trainees’ decisions. Prescriptive interventions, for instance, when a trainer might use directive feedback to supervise a trainee, could focus on changing trainees’

decision-making; while reflective activities, for example, when trainees might evaluate the impact of particular teaching moves, could focus on self-improvement. It is difficult to overestimate the impact of labeling decisions as a unit of thinking. In effect the construct opened up a cognitive world, and did so in a descriptive way. Arguments about ‘good or bad’ or ‘skilled or unskilled’ decisions aimed at prescribing ways to think that were common in the second generation of thinking methodologically could be recast as empirical questions, open to documentation and research. Part of this utilitarian genius lay in two aspects: that as a unit of thinking, the scale of decisions was inherently flexible, and as label for thinking, it was content-neutral. One always had to specify, decisions about what? In terms of scale and content, a teacher made decisions about which student to call on or who worked with whom in a particular exercise, but she also decided how to order activities in the lesson, if and how to use technological aids, or often how to sequence the curriculum, and so on. In this inherent flexibility of definition lay the enduring strength of the construct. Conceptual problems

The fluidity of scale and content in defining what constituted a decision was also a source of conceptual confusion. The strength came from acknowledging that there could not be a standard measure of thinking; instead the question was one of impact—how the teacher’s thinking connected to actions in the classroom. Decisions could only be understood through how what happened played out in the external world. This led to two conceptual problems. First, in its flexibility, decision-making could potentially encompass all thinking, which would make a rather blunt, over-generalized construct. Second, it was anchored in cognitive theory and psychology, which left aside the social world. Since teaching and learning are inherently social activities, this focus on the individual teacher’s thinking as decision-making left unexplored many dimensions of what teacher thinking might entail.

Idea 2: teachers’ thought processes The idea of teachers’ thought processes was the second major construct from general educational research to shape conceptualizations of teacher thinking in language teaching. Coming more than a decade after Shavelson’s paper, Clark and Peterson (1986) suggested a broader framing of thinking as thought processes. Where thinking had been represented through the cybernetic models of decision-making (Figure 8.1), thought processes offered a more fungible overarching idea that allowed their review to deal with a range of constructs about teacher thinking. It thus opened up the cognitive dimension of thinking to a social world. In organizing their survey of current research in this way (Figure 8.2), Clark and Peterson focused attention on the relationship between the individual and the social.

Figure 8.2 Teachers’ thought processes (Clark & Peterson, 1986)

The circle on the left, which actually represents teachers’ thinking, reflects elements in the terms of the day: ‘pre-active and interactive thoughts and decisions’ as well as ‘beliefs and theories’. The circle on the right represents elements of the social world in the ‘actions and observable effects’ of the teacher and students. Connecting the two is a simple, unlabeled arrow, which leaves unlabeled the unit of thinking. Instead the diagram emphasizes this interplay of the inner cognitive world and the outer world of actions and effects. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the diagram is the acknowledgment of a loose grouping of social factors labeled ‘constraints and opportunities’. These remain unspecified, except for their potential influence—as negative limitations (‘constraints’) or positive possibilities (‘opportunities’). Opening a social world

In contrast to the TOTE representation of decision-making, Clark and Peterson’s portrayal of thought processes situates thinking in a range of contextual elements, making it broader and more inclusive. The representation shows the cognitive activity (on the left) and the interpersonal, social realms (on the right) as potentially comparable in complexity and importance. All of this takes places within the broad, yet undefined influences that can limit or create possibilities. The representation includes time in a very elementary way. Whereas time in the TOTE model is a constant, instantaneous present in which decisions are acted on, and evaluated, the idea of ‘constraints and opportunities’ shaping thought processes suggests that time and place shape social activity. In this sense, this representation of thought processes seemed to anticipate a broader socio-cultural view of thinking that would follow in the 1990s

(for example, Johnson, 1992). The movement from Shavelson’s (1973) TOTE diagram of decision-making to Clark and Peterson’s (1986) representation of thought processes reflected the conceptual development of teacher thinking in general educational research. Tracing horizontal connections between these two diagrams (the solid arrow) shows how what was initially conceived within the cognitive, information-processing tradition as a sequence of judgments (Figure 8.1) evolved into a looser conceptualization as a socially situated fabric of nested processes, anticipating a socio-cultural perspective (Figure 8.2). The vertical connections (the dotted arrow) will examine how these two ideas were taken up in language teaching and second language teacher education.

Table 8.2 Horizontal and vertical conceptual connections

Vertical connections (in language teaching) Adopted and elaborated: the two ideas move to language teaching The ways in which the ideas of decision-making and thought processes were taken up in language teaching are instances of the same things done differently. As they had in general educational research, the two ideas strengthened the argument that teaching included—and indeed depended on—mental activity. These representations of thinking fit teaching languages as they would any subject area. The constructs were changed in language teaching, however, particularly in how they were used in second language teacher education research. Two adaptations—Woods’ (1996) elaboration of language teachers’ decision-making (see Figure 8.3) and Borg’s (2003) synthesis of work on language teacher thinking (which he referred to as ‘cognition’)—altered the core notions in important ways to suit the nature of language teaching. When researching teacher thinking in other subject areas, the content area remained one part of what was studied. It did not become the primary focus. Only in language teaching were these ideas from general educational research recast and elaborated in this way.

Woods’ and Borg’s proposals (Ideas 3 and 4) placed the ideas of decision-making and thought processes in the work of language teachers, their preparation, their classrooms, and their socio-professional roles. Using ideas from outside language teaching was part of building social facts and explanations about teachers’ thinking for the language teaching community. An alternative, more narrowly focused approach could have been taken in using these core ideas. Researchers could have limited themselves to simply re-interpreting the ideas of decision-making and teachers’ thought processes from the point of view of language as a subject matter. This approach, which is common in much educational research, applies a core idea to different types of teaching—usually by content area or student grade-level; the constructs of personal practical and pedagogical content knowledge discussed in Chapter 9 are examples. Woods’ proposal for language teacher decision-making and Borg’s summary of language teacher cognition emphasized the person and the role of language teacher. They are examples of how language teaching recasts the same ideas from the overall educational discourse differently.

Idea 3: an ethno-cognitive model of teachers’ decision-making Introducing his study of language teachers’ decision-making, Woods (1996) focused on the individual teacher, in keeping with the synthetic view of thinking of the 1990s described in Chapter 7. The study would address ‘an implicit neglect and disregard for what the individual teacher brings to the learning experiences of the students in the field of second and foreign language teaching’ (p. 2). He saw the commitment as critical to addressing a major gap in language teaching research: There is still relatively little research on what the second language teacher brings to the process of second language learning … The role of the teacher has remained a relatively peripheral component in language teaching research throughout the years, and of current theories of classroom second language acquisition. (Woods, 1996, p. 2) Filling this gap in research would strengthen conceptions of language teaching itself and the status of language teachers within the field. Woods’ arguments were the essence of the same things done differently. The way in which he positioned the study revealed a shift in how teacher thinking was being understood in language teaching. Rather than focusing on the subject matter, he focused on the field of second and foreign language teaching, within which he talked about the role of the teacher. Emphasizing the field itself and the role of the teacher within it is an interesting move that positioned teaching languages apart from other subjects. Second, Woods focused on student learning, explicitly linking ‘the individual teacher [to] experiences of the students’. Third, he referred to current theories of classroom second language acquisition, as if to suggest that these field-specific learning theories, which were so central in language teaching research, ought to encompass language teachers’ learning as well. The parts of Woods’ model

Woods’ proposal was ambitious in pursuit of these goals. The ‘model’ of language teachers’ decision-making processes he presented focused on the lesson, but included the thinking that might anticipate and follow the lesson. The model was divided into three essential elements: ‘decisions being carried out as classroom actions and events … the planning processes by which future events and actions are chosen and organized’ and ‘the interpretative processes, including background knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs, by which these classroom events and actions are understood and evaluated’ (1996, p. 49; italics added). Like Shavelson (1973), decisions are the core of the model. However, this model of decision-making is prefaced by a second category, which Woods called ‘the planning processes’, that happen as teachers prepare their lessons. The distinction was in keeping with the then current literature on teacher decision-making; Shavelson had likewise distinguished between ‘pre-active decisions’, made before the lesson, and ‘interactive decisions’, made during teaching. From a research standpoint, the two types of decision-making needed different strategies for data collection: while the thinking involved in planning (‘pre-active decisions’) might be captured through interviews, teacher journals, and planning protocols, the impact of ‘interactive decisions’ could be observed in the classroom. BAK

Woods added a third form of decision-making to pre- and interactive decision-making, which he called ‘interpretative processes’. This area is where the full elaboration of the ‘same things done differently’ becomes most visible. He posited that this third form of decisions involved the teacher using her ‘background knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs’ to interpret —or think through—the impact of planning and teaching. In a sense, he was elaborating what Shavelson (1973) had earlier called ‘judgments of congruity’ and their impact in this interpretative process. As an amalgam, background knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs were the basis for the teacher’s judgments of efficacy. Woods’ acronym, BAK, became a new social fact in language teacher thinking, which was unique to its research base. Language teachers’ ‘use of their BAK’ was often cited as a paraphrase of decision-making itself. However, teacher decision-making in other subject areas did not identify BAK as a separate element or locate it directly within the decision-making process. Time and decision-making

Time was a major feature of Woods’ ‘ethno-cognitive model of teachers’ decision-making’. There was time before the lesson (planning processes), time during the lesson (interactive decisions), and time after the lesson (interpretative processes). It is interesting that the pre-, during, and post- framing echoed—and probably reinforced—the conventional lesson planning structure in communicative language teaching that was used to plan specific skillbased activities. (There are usually pre-, during or while, and post- parts of reading or listening lessons.) Woods organized the three types of decision-making in sequence in a circular representation: (See also Figure 8.5.)

Figure 8.3 Language teachers’ decision-making (Woods, 1996)

The phases—action/event (at the top of the diagram), understanding/interpretation (to the right), and planning/expectation (to the left)—follow on each other sequentially. Woods chose to represent the sequence iteratively as a circle (or a line connected to itself). This visual was similar to Clark and Peterson’s (1986) two circles and arrows, but different from Shavelson’s (1973) linear, flow-chart diagram. It is interesting that when time is represented in this way, it actually becomes part of the thinking process rather than a backdrop for it. In Woods’ diagram, the temporal sequence of decision-making seems to drive the thinking and to reconnect it to itself. It seems to suggest how decisions might build into experience through time. From the research standpoint, Woods (1996) put his view of decision-making within the process–product framework of the day (Dunkin & Biddle, 1974; Freeman, 1996), although his study was actually more hermeneutically oriented. He wrote that ‘Classroom discourse can be considered the product of the decision-making process that creates it’, again showcasing the role of language in the process. In fact, he seemed to be co-opting the terms ‘process’ and ‘product’ from their usual sense of cause leading to effect, and using them to describe the fluid meaning-making central in language teaching. Woods’ (1996) description of a process– product-like distinction ‘between the structure of the course—the events and actions … and

the structuring of the course—the process of decision-making which results in the above product’ (p. 13; original italics) is a similar example of this looser meaning of terms.

Contributions of Woods’ model of teacher decision-making Woods’ model of teacher decision-making distinguished between the teacher’s thinking and how that thinking was carried out in the lesson. In this way, he echoed the arguments of Prabhu (1990), Kumaravadivelu (1994), and others in the second-generation thinking synthetically discussed in Chapter 7. His model accomplished several key things in how language teacher thinking would be studied and promoted in second language teacher education. In the elaboration of BAK as integral to decision-making, he made decisions about the unit of thinking and he filled that unit with beliefs, assumptions and knowledge as differing sources of meaning. This elaboration advanced the agenda of recognizing teachers and their cognitive worlds as central in language teaching. Including time as pre-, inter-active decisions, and interpretation within the decision-making process, Woods’ broadened conceptualizations of thinking to potentially include reflective practices. Teachers had to think in order to teach and their thinking could be studied independently, and indeed promoted through teacher education. The role of place

The main gap in the BAK model of language teachers’ decision-making, however, was in how place was conceived. Although Woods was addressing the context in the mind through BAK, and his framework did acknowledge the critical importance of classrooms as the principal places in which decision-making happened, these sites were represented as contexts for the cognitive activity and not seen as central drivers. Later studies on the growth of expertise in language teaching (for example, Tsui, 2003) would expand Woods’ definition of decisionmaking through the notion of cognitive activity in a setting. These studies examined how time converted to experience and how teachers’ decisions accounted for differing layers and complexities in classrooms. In its most hermeneutic reading, Woods’ model portrayed decisions as applying meanings to make sense of settings and activities. It is a view of how time and place shape teachers’ decisions which would later evolve into socio-cultural interpretations of classrooms as sources, rather than settings, for thinking.

Idea 4: language teacher cognition(s) Woods’ (1996) study of decision-making marked the beginning of the research trajectory of thinking in language teaching. He elaborated the idea of decision as the basic unit of mental activity in teaching, and he recast the process, with the addition of BAK as a social fact, as language teacher decision-making. Thus the idea was refined in terms of language teachers and language teaching, and the same thing was done differently. Almost 15 years later, Borg (2003, p. 81–82) followed a similar process of redefining the construct of thought processes as ‘cognition’. Borg began his review of research on language teacher cognition with a summary framework (see Figure 8.4), which he described as ‘… a schematic conceptualization of teaching within which teacher cognition plays a pivotal role in teachers’

lives.’ He continues the introduction with a clear statement of the same things done differently: ‘It is within this framework, grounded in an analysis of mainstream educational research that language teacher cognition research has emerged …’

Figure 8.4 Language teacher cognition (Borg, 2003, p. 82)

Borg’s framework elaborates four areas—schooling, professional coursework, contextual factors, and classroom practice—that contribute to teacher cognition. He takes the latter two, which were elements in Clark and Peterson’s (1986) framework (see Figure 8.2), and he makes them more general factors in teaching. Borg’s four main categories of influence are interesting in that they are not commensurate, (although he does not claim them to be). Schooling and professional coursework are historical in the sense that they contribute to teachers’ background and the formation of their thinking, while contextual factors and

classroom practice are categories of the present environment for thinking. Of these two, classroom practice, which includes practice teaching, is specifically about place; classroom experience and contextual factors are catch-alls for elements that may contribute to shaping instruction.

Thought processes become cognition A major difference is how Borg (2003) elaborates and refines the background category of constraints and opportunities in Clark and Peterson’s (1986) conceptualization. Some of Borg’s detail is attributable to general education research on teacher thinking in the intervening decade between the original 1986 representation and his first reference to it in 1997 (Borg used the 1997 paper as the starting point of the 2003 review). More fundamentally, however, the changes are another instance of the way in which core ideas from educational research have been reworked as they are applied to language teachers and their work. Borg’s use of the term ‘cognition’ is another example. In the diagram (Figure 8.4) and throughout the review, the term is used in two ways: as a mass noun (cognition), defined as ‘the unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching’ (p. 81) and as a count noun, (cognitions), which refers to the parts of the whole. The two uses of the term are often interwoven. For instance, Borg describes contextual factors that ‘influence practice either by modifying cognitions or else directly, in which case incongruence between cognition and practice may result’ (p. 82; italics added). The part—a cognition—can be enumerated (many cognitions) —but it can also stand in for the whole—cognition. In a way, this ambiguity is probably unremarkable. However, it is an instance of the same things done differently: decisions are elements of decision-making; thoughts constitute thought processes, but in language teaching, cognitions are cognition.

Time The explanatory language, which wraps around the outside of the diagram (Figure 8.4) to elaborate each category, forms a narrative statement, which when read together suggests a left-to-right, top-to-bottom ordering in time. In the framework, two types of time—past and present—are interwoven in language teacher thinking. The factors that shape cognition move from ‘schooling … which defines early cognitions’ to ‘professional coursework … which may affect existing cognitions’, to ‘contextual factors … which influence practice’. These three factors culminate in ‘classroom practice’, which is ‘defined by the interaction of cognitions and contextual factors’ (2003, p. 82; italics added). In the left-to-right sequence at the top of the diagram, time progresses from early to existing cognitions. The bottom of the diagram is about present time in which contextual factors and classroom practice come together in the particular lesson, unit, and curricular year. This Z-like movement in the explanatory text connects past and present in a way that Clark and Peterson’s representation only alluded to. It reflects a progression in thinking over time as teachers learn through what they experience.

The chapter argument revisited When put side-by-side (Figure 8.5) these four representations of thinking in teaching show an evolution, which, although it was not likely conscious on the part of these scholars, is emblematic of how understanding of teachers’ thinking has moved.

Figure 8.5 Four representations of teacher thinking

The horizontal connection between Shavelson’s (1973) depiction of decision-making as TOTE (see also Figure 8.1) and Clark and Peterson’s (1986) representation of thought processes as socially situated (see also Figure 8.2) reflects the movement in general educational research. A lot changed between 1973 and 1986, however. The process–product paradigm waned in favor of the qualitative–hermeneutic paradigm as the prevailing research orientation (for example, Creswell & Miller, 2000). Likewise, conceptions of thinking moved away from the cognitivist views of information processing to favor situated cognition (Chapter 5) and ultimately socio-cultural theorizations (Chapter 6). In this conceptual environment, ideas about teacher thinking likewise grew more complex. Representations of thinking as socio-cognitive interaction characterized it as making meaningful connections between inner and outer worlds, which were shaped by constraints and opportunities in that outer world. This took the place of the view of thinking as a set of sequential, cognitive processes, exercised through pre- and interactive decisions. In language teaching, these ideas were refined and done differently, which is the vertical

connection in the diagram (Figure 8.5). Wood’s (1986) ethno-cognitive model reformatted the linear view of decision-making as cyclical. Decisions continued to be the unit of thinking, but they were elaborated as BAK. The language teacher’s thinking process unfolded from planning to enacting to reflecting on the lesson, which embedded time in this cyclical representation of the thinking process (see also Figure 8.3). Borg’s (2003) framework also reworked time in relation to thinking. His categories and explanatory narrative brought together the sequential ideas of decision-making captured in Shavelson’s (1973) TOTE model with the broader, inclusive gestalt of Clark and Peterson’s (1986) interacting circular domains. In Borg’s framework, thinking was a process (cognition), of combining individual parts (or cognitions), which made the term ambiguously useful (see also Figure 8.4). Cognition could refer to the unit of thinking happening at a particular time in particular circumstances, classrooms, and lessons. The term could also refer to the process that integrated sources of decisions—from the teacher’s own schooling, from her professional preparation, and from her past and present teaching. Thinking

Woods (1996)

Borg (2003)

The unit

Decisions

Cognitions/cognition

Based on

Beliefs, Assumptions, and Knowledge (BAK)

Schooling; professional coursework; contextual factors, classroom practice

Emphasizes the process as

Cyclical

Integrating sources of knowledge

Table 8.3 Language teacher thinking: From decisions to cognition

Woods’ view of decision-making and Borg’s of cognition, together with the research drawing on their ideas, played a major role in defining thinking in language teaching. The evolution from decision-making, to thought processes, to BAK and language teacher cognition(s) has shifted how thinking is conceptualized from an individual, internalized process to an interactive, socially grounded one. Each conceptualization describes a unit of the thinking, the foundation of that unit, and suggests—diagrammatically at least—what the thinking process involves. This shift from decisions to cognition(s) as the primary way of conceiving thinking suited language teaching, given the nature of classroom activity as highly interactive, and the subject matter as enacted through those interactions.

9 Knowledge generations in language teaching We live not in a settled or finished world, but in one that is going on, and where our main task is prospective. Where [the task is] retrospective … it is of value in [what] it affords our dealings with the future. (John Dewey, 1916, p. 178)

The chapter argument This chapter, like Chapter 7, uses the idea of generations—as patterns of ideas rather than as history—to describe the development of ideas about language teaching knowledge, starting in the 1950s. Similar to ideas about thinking (Chapter 7), each of these successive generations responded to a loose group of precipitating factors. Table 9.1 summarizes the generations and the key issues that separated them.

Table 9.1 Four generations in language teaching knowledge: Focus and key issues

The first two generations were largely focused internally on language teaching, however the third generation, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, was marked by the importation of ideas about teaching knowledge from general educational research, which proved to be seminal in many ways. Like the evolution in definitions of thinking, these external ideas helped to refine the ways in which language teaching knowledge was understood. And like the ideas about thinking, they were modified—or done differently—as they came into the field.

The first generation—defining what Teaching knowledge as disciplinary knowledge In the first definitional generation, language teacher knowledge was essentially synonymous with disciplinary knowledge, particularly linguistics and psychology. In 1969, Kelly published a book with the modest title, Twenty-five Centuries of Language Teaching: 500 BC to 19691, in which he described an uneasy alliance between these two disciplines: ‘While linguistics, in its traditional dress as grammar, has long had a connection with language teaching, it is only in the last century that psychologists have attempted to rationalize what

teachers have known from experience’ (1969, p. 301). Until the 20th century, Kelly noted, linguistics had defined the content to be taught, largely through various formal analyses of language, while philosophy, as the ‘queen of sciences’, had described the learning process and the learner. When psychology separated from philosophy in the 19th century as an empirically based discipline, it assumed the role of theorizing learning (see Polkinghorne, 1983). The development of psychological understandings of learners and learning led to increasingly detailed disciplinary definitions in general education and in language teaching. In the spirit of things done differently, language teaching seems to be unique in claiming its own specialized sub-discipline of psychology, second language acquisition, as its source of definitions and discourse about learning. While candidates preparing to teach other subject areas will study how students learn that content, they usually do so within the general domain of educational psychology. In contrast, language teachers’ disciplinary training involves a set of social facts that are specific to the language as content and how it is learned (or acquired) in the classroom and in the wider world. Language teacher knowledge became increasingly specialized as it was defined through linguistics and psychology. There were implications of this specialization. However, as Kelly (1969, p. 301–302) described, ‘Control over separate disciplines has gradually passed from the teaching body to the analytic scientists who legislate what is to be taught and what methods are to be used.’ Reflecting the dominance of behaviorism in the 1960s, he continued, ‘Concepts of language have changed from those directed towards the teaching of analysis and rhetoric to behavioral ideas.’ The Audio-lingual Direct Method (ALDM) was the instantiation. Supported by structural linguistic definitions of language as content, the methodology was the translation of behaviorist theory into classroom teaching practices, which came to define this first generation of language teacher knowledge. The relationship between behaviorism and the ALDM in the first generation initiated a key role for theories of language and language learning (or acquisition) in language teaching knowledge. Language was defined as a phenomenon in the world, not simply as a school subject; therefore theories about how it was learned, specialized though they were in language acquisition, had the weight of general learning theories. This unified view of content and learning process, which was the hallmark of the first generation, also became its weakness. As new methodologies developed during the 1970s and 1980s, they differentiated themselves as innovative in contrast to ALDM, as outlined in Chapter 7. This climate affected teaching knowledge, fracturing the uniformity of behaviorism-ALDM, leading to gaps and a new definition of knowledge-as-pedagogy in the next generation.

Gaps in the first generation Focusing on defining the what in language teaching through the disciplinary perspectives of behavioral psychology and structural linguistics, the first generation left the how of methodology largely unexplored as part of teaching knowledge. During the decade and a half from the mid-1970s through the end of the 1980s, language teaching was changing dramatically, however. The hold of structural linguistics on content was challenged by

Chomskyian analyses of the generative nature of language, which were accompanied by theorizations of the generative capacity of speakers to create and use those language structures. Psychological theorizations of learning were also changing. The ‘cognitive revolution’ (Chomsky, 1959) contested behaviorism and grew into a broad group of theories about learning and learners (see Pinker, 2002), which manifested in the work of the innovative methodologists (defined in Chapter 7). Each method was based on a particular view of how students learned languages, which translated into particular ways to teach. The net effect of these competing proposals was to reframe the focus of language teaching knowledge from what was being taught, as defined by the disciplines, to the how of the various methodologies.

The second generation—defining how Teaching knowledge-as-pedagogy The second generation defined teaching knowledge in terms of pedagogy. Initially that pedagogy equated to exclusive use of a single methodology, which was subsequently refined as a matter of pedagogical choice among classroom techniques. Initially the fact that each innovative method was complete unto itself meant that teaching knowledge was expressed exclusively through the social facts of that teaching approach and supported by the socioprofessional community using them. These methods were conceived as complete and axiomatic, which made them fundamentally incompatible forms of thinking and reasoning. To fully implement one of these methods, a teacher needed to think about language and how it was learned in its terms. There was, of course, choice; teachers could opt for one method or another, but once they had made the choice, the method offered a complete world of knowledge defined in its own idiosyncratic terms. This exclusivity meant that the methods defined a solipsistic view of teaching knowledge within the pedagogy itself. For example, as described in Table 7.1, a teacher using the Silent Way, who saw language learners as autonomous from the beginning of their work with a new language, would not probably also believe that they were going through a five-stage process of developing new language identities, as proposed in Counseling Learning/Community Language Learning (see Stevick, 1980).

Pedagogical choices During the 1980s, the view of knowledge-as-pedagogy began to assume a second meaning, as the knowledge entailed in making pedagogical choices. Competing views of methods gave rise inevitably to debates over effectiveness and which was the best, thus introducing the idea of choice into teaching knowledge. In the first generation, a teacher could know the what as it was defined through the disciplines. In the second generation, however, she had also to know the how of various methodologies and more crucially have (or find) a basis on which to choose among these different ‘how’s. This meant an increasingly plural view of teaching knowledge-as-pedagogy, which included the teacher both knowing different methodologies and potentially making choices about them for her classroom setting.

Krashen as an example of pedagogical choice The idea of making pedagogical choices flourished in a period that was rife with competing explanations of how languages were learned. Responses to the work of Stephen Krashen were an example of this tension between the budding field of SLA research and classroom language teaching. His proposals for language learning (for example, Krashen, 1981) had enormous intuitive appeal and popularity among teachers, although they were widely challenged by SLA researchers of the period (Gregg, 1986; McLaughlin, 1987). Looking at the situation retrospectively, Wheeler (2003) attributes the controversy to a conflict between what he calls ‘art’ and ‘science’ in defining language teaching knowledge. He quotes an SLA scholar, Gregg, writing a negative review of Krashen’s book, The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications in 1986, ‘It is very disturbing to see how well-received the theory [the input hypothesis] seems to be. ‘The fundamental message of Krashen’s theory is that you do not have to know very much to be a good language teacher’ (p. 121). Of this conflict between methodologist and SLA researchers, Wheeler (2003) concludes, ‘Krashen’s theory threatens to expose, it is feared, that science and language teaching do not always mix. It shifts the balance away from science and technology back toward teaching as an art. It strengthens that age-old, exasperating belief that anyone with an education can teach’ (p. 98). First generation nostalgia

The debate exemplifies a maturing of teaching knowledge in the second generation. Gregg’s criticism, which Wheeler (2003) refers to as the ‘science’ position, seems almost nostalgic for the first generation with its certainty grounded in disciplinary sources of knowledge. When SLA theorists of the day like Gregg disagreed, in some cases vehemently, with Krashen’s (1981) ideas about the ‘acquisition/learning’ distinction or the ‘input hypothesis of I + 1’, they appealed to the ‘science’ of their version of psychology to challenge these comfortably intuitive formulations of how languages were learned. To their point of view, the alternative, ‘art’ position, as Wheeler (2003) calls it, seemed non-professional. How could language teaching depend on any particular knowledge if ‘science were discounted’? As Gregg put it, ‘anyone could teach.’ When anyone could propose a learning theory, as the ‘innovative’ methodologists like Krashen were doing, the socio-professional consensus around scientifically developed knowledge was discounted. Theoretical anarchy?

Although reaction to Krashen’s work remained unsettled as professional knowledge throughout the 1980s, the arguments always seemed to return to the language classroom and the work of the teacher (for example, Stevick, 1980). The proposals in favor of methodological diversity, and the debates about them, at the core of the second generation, changed the nature of teacher knowledge by expressing it as an individual matter. Wheeler’s debate between art and science and Gregg’s concern that anyone can teach could be read in this new way: that teaching knowledge could be the province of the individual teacher and not of the sponsoring discipline. There seemed to be a fork in the road: thinking as pedagogical choice could lead either to a sort of theoretical anarchy or to the individual teacher’s freedom and agency. Or, a third possibility: that theory could be found to explain choice and agency.

Articulating a common language—a truce in the methodology wars The advent of pedagogical choice as a form of thinking created the need for a shared way of describing language teaching that could facilitate choosing among teaching options. A common language for classroom teaching could function as a common denominator across the different methodologies, fostering a disinterested set of social facts that articulated a neutral form of teaching knowledge. In contrast to the partisan directives of the various innovative methods, this language was almost comfortingly descriptive. It could be used to talk about classroom teaching without assuming the distinctive views about language and learning that were the hallmark of the innovative methods. A common language could bring a sort of theoretical truce in the methodology wars, like the arguments of the second generation between Gregg (1986) and Krashen (1981). The emerging common language

The Teaching Practice Handbook by Gower and Walters (1987) is an illustration of this truce through the articulation of a common language for classroom language teaching. The Table of Contents (reproduced in Figure 9.1) of the book, which was written to prepare trainees on certificate courses for the practice teaching component, divides the content into categories and sub-headings. The five categories, excluding the first and last sections which are about the practice teaching, include ‘teacher, classroom management, teaching strategies and teaching techniques’. None of them are particularly about language teaching (although a few of the sub-headings are).

Figure 9.1 A language of practice: Table of contents from The Teaching Practice Handbook (Gower & Walters, 1987)

The sub-headings detail a language of practice which includes classroom behaviors (for example, 2.1—eye contact; 3.5—using students’ names), teaching skills (for example, 3.3— setting up pair and group work; 4.1—writing lesson plans), and what would now be called ‘dispositions’ (for example, 2.7—rapport; 3.8—the group: its dynamics and the needs of individuals within it). Altogether the Table of Contents gives the sense that this is what one needs to do in order to teach a language. A grammar not a hierarchy

Unlike methodology texts, this language seems to translate directly into classroom teaching in a neutral, almost clinical way. The categories, and the elements of classroom work described within them by the sub-headings, seem almost generic. But interestingly, they are not commensurate. In other words, this list is a compendium and not a Linnaean classification of the work of language teaching. The categorical organization of the Table of Contents suggests a sort of grammar for the language of practice, which is methodologically agnostic. Expressed in the language of competencies and performance, only nine of 30 topics in the five sections are clearly about language teaching, while the balance could be about any form of teaching. The Teaching Practice Handbook, and other similar books (for example, Ur, 1996; Harmer, 1991), were addressed to a specific audience unique to language teacher preparation —trainees in short-term certificate programs. These alternative-route programs played a central role in developing teaching knowledge, as discussed in Chapter 10, particularly in the second generation. Positioned extramurally beyond the discipline-based academic structures of university-based preparation programs, these alternative-route training programs had the latitude to develop a new set of social facts and discourse for classroom language teaching. Further, they assessed trainees based on actual classroom performance so they needed to express teaching knowledge in a language and using social facts that could easily travel from the training room and practice teaching to the world of the language classroom.

Gaps in the second generation The development of a language of practice to describe classroom teaching opened new territory. Teaching knowledge could be expressed in methodologically non-partisan terms and language teaching itself could be described, critiqued, and explained using those terms. Underlying this means of talking and writing about what was happening in the classroom was something more fundamental: the idea that individual teachers fashioned what they did as they taught. Knowledge-as-pedagogy, which had meant knowing how to follow methodological directions, was being reinterpreted as the teacher knowing what she wanted to do in the classroom and how to do it. So a new gap was created. The first generation, which had transformed the disciplinary knowledge of linguistics into applied knowledge and of psychology into second language acquisition, had created a gap in how to apply that knowledge in language teaching. The second generation of knowledge-as-pedagogy had addressed that gap, first through the specific protocols of the various innovative methods and then in the idea of pedagogical choice. But choice introduced a focus on who was doing the choosing and how the situation of a particular classroom might shape that choice. This was the gap leading to the third generation in language teaching knowledge, which located that

knowledge in person, in place.

The third generation—defining who and where Teaching knowledge as knowledge in person, in place Situating teaching knowledge in the work of individual teachers with their students in specific classrooms, as the third generation did, started out as more of a political than an epistemological move. Concluding his essay, ‘Dysfunctions of the theory/practice discourse’, Clarke (1994, p. 23) made the political case: ‘The key point, I think, is for teachers to keep their own counsel regarding what works and what does not work and to insist on an interpretation of events and ideas that includes, implicitly or explicitly, a validation of their own experiences in the classroom.’ The phrase, ‘teachers keeping their own counsel’, captured the sentiments of many writing on English language teaching at the time (for example, Kumaravadivelu, 1994), including me (Freeman, 1996). The intent, which was initially to position teachers as knowers of their own teaching, quickly became complicated, however, caught between two views of individuality that were at odds: the individuality of idiosyncrasy and the individuality of exemplification.

The risk of idiosyncrasy: the problem of exemplification To describe knowledge on the basis of what individual teachers were thinking, as ‘a validation of their own experiences in the classroom’ as Clarke does above, ran the risk of making it all about personal opinion. This was the risk of idiosyncrasy, that teaching knowledge would be defined so particularly that there could be little in common across various language teachers working in vastly different classroom contexts with students with diverse cultures, personalities, and needs and expectations. So the political assertion of the importance of teachers’ knowledge would collapse into millions of idiosyncratic versions of what mattered to individual teachers. On the other hand, generalizing across these individuals could create the problem of exemplification: how could a description of the knowledge of one teacher represent the teaching knowledge of many? This was where, as it did with understanding thinking, the field of language teaching gravitated towards two ideas from general educational research: personal practical knowledge (Elbaz, 1983; Clandinin, 1986) and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987). These two constructs, which were influential on research in second language teacher education, addressed the role of the teacher and of the classroom setting in defining teaching knowledge. They each described teaching as enacting instruction, as dealing with a particular content and classroom, which made the knowledge a function of the person of the teacher (Elbaz, 1983; Clandinin, 1986) teaching in a particular place (Shulman, 1987). Together the ideas spoke to this teaching as enactment and how knowledge worked in the person of the teacher and the place of the classroom, which was the gap emerging at the end of the second generation.

Personal Practical Knowledge (PPK) The idea of personal practical knowledge, which came to be known as PPK, was one of the first conceptualizations of the knowledge-in-person view of teaching knowledge. Taken from general educational research in language teaching primarily by Golombek (1998) and Golombek and Johnson (2004), the idea was first described as ‘practical knowledge’ by Elbaz (1983) and then elaborated as ‘personal practical knowledge’ by Clandinin (1986) (also Clandinin & Connelly, 1986). In the initial proposal, Elbaz wanted to situate that practical knowledge, which she noted was more than teaching behaviors: ‘We might imagine that practical knowledge is simply knowledge of how to do things … but it is important to recognize that teachers do have knowledge of content … and that such knowledge it usually undervalued’ (1983, p. 13). Taking ideas of practical knowledge from Polanyi (1974) and Ryle (1949/2009) as her point of departure, she situated the knowledge in the person of the teacher rather than in the activity of teaching as Shulman (1987) would do in pedagogical content knowledge. Elbaz identified five dimensions of this practical knowledge as the ‘situational, personal, social, experiential, and theoretical orientations’, each of which ‘generates questions and assumptions about the teacher’s use of knowledge’ (1983, p. 13). Of the five orientations, the personal became focal, as Elbaz explained: … to speak of the teacher’s knowledge as personal is to operate within a framework which sees the teacher as the ultimate practical authority on what kids do in classrooms, and to view his2 [sic] practical knowledge as the result of his effort to assume that authority … (Elbaz, 1983, p. 17) Clandinin and Connelly (1986) expanded this personal orientation as the ‘moral, affective, and aesthetic way of knowing life’s educational situations’ (p. 89). Putting these ideas together, Golombek (1998) explained, gave a definition that ‘highlights teachers’ knowledge as being dialectical, situated, and dynamic in response to their personal and professional lives, embodied in persons’ (p. 448). Individual stories

As a construct, personal practical knowledge embodied the perspective of individuality as idiosyncratic. Individual teachers thought differently, knew different things about teaching, and handled content and their classrooms differently because they were different people, with distinctive backgrounds, experiences, and views. Researching these idiosyncrasies involved gathering the teachers’ accounts, or stories, which amalgamate the knowledge and the telling. As Golombek (1998) puts it, ‘teachers’ knowledge interacts with and is reshaped by the reconstruction of their experiences through stories’ (p. 448). Stories are both a form of knowledge and a device for telling and changing it: ‘As teachers tell their stories in classes and meetings for the practicum, they can begin to become accountable for the choices they make in their classrooms by becoming cognizant of the reasoning behind these choices’ (Golombek, 1998, p. 462).

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)

What personal practical knowledge did to define knowledge-in-person, pedagogical content knowledge did for knowledge-in-place as the other element of the third generation. In 1987, Shulman published his first proposals for teaching knowledge, arguing that the what + how conceptualization which packaged the delivery of content through pedagogy, was inadequate: The key to distinguishing the knowledge-base of teaching lies at the intersection of content and pedagogy … [The] teacher transform[s] the content knowledge he or she possesses into forms that are pedagogically powerful and yet adaptive to the variations in ability and background presented by the students. (Shulman, 1987, p. 15) The core of his proposal was this idea of transforming the content through teaching it. In his view, methodology didn’t convey, but created the content, and the social context of the classroom was key to this transformation. Nancy, the teacher with laryngitis

Shulman introduced PCK with ‘a portrait of expertise’ of Nancy, a US secondary school English teacher, who was teaching Moby Dick to Grade 11 students (1987, p. 1–3), by describing the sophistication in questioning that she used to build students’ understanding of the text. He explained that the observer returned to Nancy’s class a few weeks later to find that she had laryngitis and was fighting the flu, so she had to teach using a combination of handwritten notes and whispers. These two lessons showed the same teacher—one who spoke and one who temporarily couldn’t—transforming content in different ways. ‘For a teacher who managed her classroom through the power of her voice and her manner,’ Shulman mused, [not being able to talk] ‘was certainly a disabling condition. Or was it?’ (1987, p. 3). He then continued, describing an engaging lesson in which ‘the class had run smoothly, and the subject matter had been treated with care.’ Shulman’s insight was that Nancy transformed her ‘style’ and the specifics of what she did in the two lessons in response to circumstances— her own health, the students, and the texts they were reading. This process is the core of PCK as Shulman says, ‘The teacher can transform understanding, performance skills, or desired attitudes or values into pedagogical representations and actions’ (1987, p. 7). PCK does not simply combine content and pedagogy as forms of knowledge; rather the concept describes how the act of teaching something changes or transforms it. As Shulman explains, PCK is ‘the capacity of a teacher to transform the content knowledge he or she possesses into forms that are pedagogically powerful and yet adaptive’ [to circumstances] (p. 15). Pedagogical reasoning

This transformation in PCK takes place through what Shulman called ‘pedagogical reasoning’, which he explained as follows: ‘[T]eaching … begins with an act of reason, continues with a process of reasoning, culminates in performances of imparting, eliciting, involving or enticing, and then is thought of some more until the process can begin again’ (1987, p.13). This reasoning, which is a form of thinking, draws from seven domains of knowledge: ‘content, general pedagogical, curriculum, learners, educational context, “ends, purposes, and values” and PCK’ (1987, p. 8).3

Knowledge as enactment The third generation defined language teaching knowledge through how it was enacted by teachers in classrooms. The personal embodiment of teaching in PPK and the transformation of content through pedagogy in PCK shifted attention from what teachers knew per se to how they used that knowledge in what they did. Though disciplinary knowledge was still part of the discussion, the focus had moved to the activity of teaching. In the second generation’s view of knowledge-as-pedagogy, practice was portrayed as the application of theory (as in Wallace’s 1991 applied science model). With PPK and PCK, the classroom took on a dual role as the source of knowledge and the venue for using it. This dual role of place both generated and legitimized teaching knowledge in the third generation. Focusing on the classroom

The new role of the classroom also seemed to address the twin issues of idiosyncrasy and exemplification. (As discussed earlier, the problem of idiosyncrasy reflects the fact that teachers have distinct approaches in the classroom and therefore can be expected to generate unique knowledge in teaching, while the problem of exemplification suggests that this range and variety would be difficult to organize and to codify.) PPK described the individual idiosyncrasy, while PCK offered a way to deal with exemplification through its categories, which could consolidate that variety. Through PPK, and related narrative methods, second language teacher education research examined who language teachers were, as well as what their various identities contributed to how they taught (for example, Golombek & Johnson, 2004; Johnson & Golombek, 2002; Pierce, 2000). In describing individual identity as shaping classroom teaching, the idea of knowledge-in-person became established. Wrestling with the messiness

A number of scholars in language teaching wrestled with this third generation issue of the messy relation between content and methodology. Some proposed leaving the issue entirely up to teachers to customize methodology by who they were (person) and where they were teaching (setting). To do this, Kumaravadivelu, for example, outlined ‘three pedagogic parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility’ (1994, p. 545) as principles by which teachers might choose and customize methodology to their students. Other scholars advocated putting the whole issue within the larger frame of post-modern thinking. Pennycook for example argued that: … rather than trying to understand our practice [in language teaching] according to some form of totalizing or universal discourse, we need to recognize the complexities of language teaching and its contexts, and strive to validate other, local forms of knowledge about language and teaching. (Pennycook, 1989, p. 613) Attributes of language teaching knowledge

Still others argued that the messiness was essential. Describing teaching knowledge as ‘contextual, contingent, and developmental’, Freeman and Johnson (1998) made the case for attributes of teaching knowledge that drew on the ideas of in-person, in-place. ‘Contextual’

described the central role of place and of the classroom found in PCK; ‘contingent’ foregrounded the relational aspects of activity and interaction in teaching knowledge. And ‘developmental’ suggested that the knowledge was learned over time, as in PPK. These three attributes were meant to challenge the idea of teaching knowledge originating beyond the teacher to be applied in the classroom. Part/whole relationships

As conceptualizations, PCK and PPK seemed to respond to this challenge of seeing teaching knowledge as entirely individual and idiosyncratic. Both were offered as general typologies —Elbaz (1983) proposed five orientations and Shulman (1987) outlined seven types of knowledge—that allowed organized teaching knowledge by sub-feature. This approach differed from the two previous generations, which had described teaching knowledge in terms of different sources (disciplines in the first generation or pedagogies and their assumptions in the second). As constructs of knowledge-in person, in-place, PPK and PCK offered unitary conceptualizations that included multiple dimensions within them. As if to underscore this integration, one element emerged as the first among equals to become synonymous with the typology. For Elbaz (1983) and Clandinin (1986), personal, which was one of the five orientations, became personal practical knowledge; for Shulman (1987), pedagogical content knowledge, which was one of the seven forms of knowledge. Re-titling the typology with a particular dimension underscored the driving premise in the third generation: that knowledge was situated in the person of the teacher doing the work in the place of the classroom and school.

Gaps in the third generation Situating knowledge in the person of the teacher, in the place of the classroom, school, and community, the third generation of language teaching knowledge addressed the gap created by choice in the second. The idea of individuals making pedagogical choices had raised issues of the idiosyncratic ways in which different teachers might combine techniques from particular methodologies to their own ends, along with concerns for a common structure to organize and exemplify those choices. These concerns for consistency and coherence were at the heart of debates over eclectic teaching and best methods. In focusing on classroom teaching as the source and venue of teaching knowledge, the third generation turned the whole issue on its head. Focusing on what teachers did, their agency in the classroom promoted the central importance of the teacher as an individual working within particular circumstances; methodological consistency became a non-issue. This drive for coherence exposed the gap, however, captured in the following riddle: If teaching knowledge resided in the person of the individual teacher working in the place of her classroom (as affirmed in the ideas of PPK and PCK), how could the logic in classroom practices across a range of classrooms be defined? What would determine the soundness of pedagogical choices made by different teachers in their own settings? How could a teacher’s individual personality and agency be reconciled with the collective aims of classroom teaching?

The fourth generation—defining why Knowledge-for-teaching As with the earlier generations, the fourth version has absorbed the conceptualizations that preceded it. The central notion of teacher agency, first conceptualized in the third generation as principled eclecticism, was expanded by borrowing the ideas of PPK and PCK from general education research. However, this reconceptualization raised the issue of purpose: teacher agency to what end? Though it was always assumed, student learning was not made the explicit goal in third generation versions of teaching knowledge. This gap has emerged in the fourth generation with the focus on questions of purpose, which emphasize why rather than how. Student learning as purpose

Purpose is not an abstract or philosophical idea, however. Under the influence of the third generation, purpose has been firmly situated in how teachers teach particular content to learners in the classroom. The third generation defined teaching knowledge as a product of the person—the teacher in her teaching situation (as argued in PPK)—in the place, transforming content through classroom pedagogy (as argued in PCK). Student learning provides a common purpose or deep structure that shapes how teaching knowledge is used. Teaching creates opportunities for that learning to happen, hence this generational view is referred to as knowledge-for-teaching.

Initial conceptions in mathematics teaching Early conceptions of knowledge-for-teaching were developed in the 2000s in teaching elementary mathematics (for example, Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008; Lampert, 2001). Ball and her colleagues defined mathematical knowledge for teaching as responding to the question: ‘What do teachers need to know and be able to do in order to teach effectively?’ This orientation they note, ‘places the emphasis on the use of knowledge in and for teaching rather than on teachers themselves’ (Ball et al., 2008, p. 394). Their representation (Figure 9.2), which drew on Shulman’s (1996) original conception of PCK, divides knowledge into two areas, subject matter (on the left) and pedagogical content (on the right). Subject matter is broken down into common, specialized, and horizon knowledge, while pedagogical content relates this to students, teaching, and curriculum.

Figure 9.2 Mathematical knowledge-for-teaching (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008)

This model of knowledge-for-teaching resembles its antecedent PCK, with two major differences. First, the model uses content as the bridge to connect the what of content on the left side of the diagram and the how of pedagogy on the right. This explicitness, one could argue, draws attention to the transformation process of pedagogical reasoning with content that was central in Shulman’s definition of PCK. Second, in the category of horizon content knowledge in the model (see A, Figure 9.2) Ball (1993) embeds time in how the content is conceived, which previous versions of teaching knowledge did not do. Ball et al. (2008) define horizon content knowledge as ‘an awareness of how mathematical topics are related over the span of mathematics included in the curriculum … It also includes the vision useful in seeing connections to much later mathematical ideas’ (p. 403). Including this category broadens conventional ideas of knowledge to include this notion of ‘horizonal’ understanding as ‘awareness’ and ‘vision’ of where learners are heading with the content, ‘First grade teachers, for example, may need to know how the mathematics they teach is related to the mathematics students will learn in third grade to be able to set the mathematical foundation for what will come later’ (Ball et al., 2008, p. 403).

Applying the model to language teaching As a framework, knowledge-for-teaching can apply to language teaching, with modifications. The framework reflects a central role for disciplinary knowledge in defining content, which is not surprising given the content basis in mathematics, but which is complicated in language teaching, as we have said. The categories of common and specialized content knowledge on

the left-hand side describe the areas of teacher command of the target language (common knowledge) and of language awareness expressed in the metalanguage of applied linguistics (specialized language). Breaking down content knowledge into students, teaching, and curriculum on the right-hand side of the diagram transposes well in language teaching as the conventional disciplinary areas of second language acquisition, teaching methods, curriculum, and materials respectively. These areas, which provide the foundation of most language teacher preparation, align with the disciplinary perspectives, which are unique to language teaching. These parallels are summarized in Table 9.2: Subject matter knowledge

Pedagogical content knowledge

Mathematical knowledge-forteaching

Language teaching knowledge

Mathematical knowledge-forteaching

Language teaching knowledge

Common content knowledge (CCK)

Teacher command of target language

Content and students (KCS)

Second language acquisition

Specialized content knowledge (SCK)

Language awareness and applied linguistics

Content and teaching (KCT)

Language teaching methods

Horizon content knowledge

[A]

Content and curriculum Curriculum, materials, and assessment

Table 9.2 The mathematical knowledge-for-teaching framework applied to language teaching knowledge

The problem of horizon knowledge in the language classroom The third category, horizon content knowledge, is intriguingly problematic in language teaching (marked as [A] in Table 9.2 and in Figure 9.2). It needs some redefinition as an example of things ‘done differently’. The problem is that since it anticipates future possibilities, language is always horizonal. Language is generally treated as sequential content like mathematics in most school curricula. Course books are sequenced; students are tested to place and move them through curricula, which are organized in levels. Even though lesson content can be recycled with greater complexity, as iterative curricula emphasize in the spirit of building an expanding horizon, classroom teaching of language still has this teleological quality which runs counter to the fluid use of language in the world. Where is the horizon?

The intersection between language and teaching it in the classroom is where the idea of horizon content knowledge does not fit easily. When the concept of horizon is based on an agreed-upon, disciplinarily derived sequence of unfolding content as it is in mathematics, there is a clear orientation that separates the current content from what is coming next month or next year. This orientation is muddy in language teaching, linear language curriculum designs notwithstanding. Unlike mathematics or other school subjects, in language classrooms, the medium becomes the message. Language in the classroom plays two roles simultaneously, as we have said earlier, as the lesson content and as the means of teaching that content. Other content areas

certainly have particular discourses, but these do not function as the content per se; they are the representational resources (including the terms and social facts) to expresses it. In a mathematics class for example, the language used in instruction is one of the dimensions to which the teacher attends as she is teaching the mathematical content. When explaining a concept or correcting a misconception for example, the teacher may choose different words or moderate her language so that the students understand her explanation. A language teacher may well operate in a similar fashion, but faces a choice in doing so. The teacher can make the language content more accessible by either moderating how she is using the target language or she may use a shared first language if one exists in the setting. In the mathematics class, the teacher does not face that choice. She has twin aims, which is Ball’s point about horizon content knowledge: the teacher wants the explanation to make sense to the students and to remain accurate to the mathematics content. The basic difference is that the horizon content knowledge in a language classroom has to be artificially defined, by the curriculum and how the teacher enacts it. The activities, and the language the teacher uses to carry them out, create the content that brings language from the world into the classroom. But the horizon is in how the language is used in the world and not from how it functions in the classroom, with the refinements of its disciplinary definitions and sequences. This fact shows up regularly when students find the English they are taught in classrooms is not necessarily the version they may see, hear, or even use in the world. A colleague gives a wonderful example of this mismatch she heard from a fellow passenger on an airplane flight when the cabin personnel were distributing special meals: ‘If you’re looking for the fish, it’s me’ (Larsen-Freeman, personal communication). It is difficult to parse this language situation for its horizon content.

Knowledge-for-teaching languages A model of knowledge-for-teaching languages needs to address the problem of horizon, and particularly how to represent the dynamic of language that both creates and conveys the subject-matter in the classroom. It needs to capture another aspect of this dynamic, that the language that is used to teach language can also be the professional language of language teaching. When mathematics teachers meet professionally to discuss their work, they use the local language appropriate to the setting. However, when language teachers meet, there is a premium put on using the language they teach to talk about how they teach it. Professional meetjngs of ELT teachers often take place in English; teachers of Mandarin discuss their teaching in Mandarin, and so on. This makes the fourth generational knowledge-for-teaching languages a hybrid.

Three uses of language Language happens three ways in the work language teachers do. It is the content of the lesson; it is the means of teaching that lesson; and it is the professional discourse that conveys the teacher’s identity in the world of language teaching. These three uses can align when they are all in the target language, which usually happens for people teaching their own language. But more commonly, the three uses differ, which they often do for people for whom the target

language is a second language. In this case, although the content is in the target language (in the curricular materials), the teachers may often use their own language to teach it, as in grammar translation lessons. And they may not be confident or fluent enough in the target language for it to be their language of professional discourse. This distinction in how the uses play out in the classroom and professional lives for teachers is often shorthanded as ‘native’ and ‘non-native’, in which the three uses are aligned for the former but mixed for the latter. The assumption that the uses ought always to align is more socio-political than empirical, however. The model of knowledge-for-teaching languages in Figure 9.3 represents the three uses and their interrelation. In the classroom (on the left-hand side), language is the content and means of teaching. This language expertise can move into the professional world (on the right-hand side) when teachers use the target language to talk or write about what they do. It is facilitated to some extent by the fact that much of the language used as the means of teaching converts easily into use in the professional world. For example, in a lesson a teacher may give instructions for an activity, ‘We’re going to do pair work now, so turn and talk to your neighbor about your favorite movies.’ The italicized terms can likewise function professionally, when ‘pair work’ is a social fact used in pedagogical discussions, and ‘turn and talk’ can be a direction in a student textbook. This socio-professional process converts the know-how used in daily classroom teaching into recognizable professional knowledge that can be used with fellow teachers and colleagues in the field. The diagram below shows how these two domains of knowledge-for-teaching languages can connect.

Figure 9.3 A model of knowledge-for-teaching languages

Teaching about vs. teaching in the target language The three uses of language point to a further level of integration that depends on how a teacher uses the target language in teaching. As suggested previously, they may use the shared first language to teach, organize lessons, manage students, and so on, which positions the target language simply as the content of the lesson. Experience and some research (for example, Coleman, 2011; Graddol, 2006) suggests that that kind of teaching is probably the global norm—for better or worse—in most English as a foreign language classrooms in schools, although research suggests it is less effective than using the language as a means of teaching it (Chacón, 2005; Zakeri & Alavi, 2011). ‘Teaching about’ the target language defines a form of teaching knowledge that uses the first language in conjunction with metalanguage terms to explain the target language and how it works. The problems are twofold. First, teaching about the language can make it seem less real; when the target language is not used regularly in the classroom, it is essentially portrayed as unreal and nonfunctional, good for content but not for means of teaching and running the classroom as a social and interactive space. Second, teaching about the language depends on social facts, such as metalinguistic terms, that reify the target language itself. Consider two instructions —’Make sentences using the past tense’ versus ‘Talk about what you did yesterday’. The first freezes the target language in its formal linguistic properties; the second uses it as an interactional command. Since the ‘communicative revolution’, however, professional norms have emphasized teaching in the target language. Beyond the simple fact that it makes the new language more real because it is actually part of classroom interactions, using the target language to teach interweaves the two types of language shown on the left-hand side of the diagram in Figure 9.3. The means of teaching and classroom method are integrated as the teacher uses the language to manage the classroom, give instructions, monitor students, give them feedback on activities, and so on. In this way, the target language becomes a vehicle of knowledge-forteaching. As she uses it to do these functional classroom tasks, the teacher draws on her overall language competence to connect content and classroom interactions, thus creating opportunities for students to learn.

English-for-teaching It turns out that this interplay of language in teaching is fairly predictably organized in classrooms (see for example, Freeman, Katz, Garcia Gomez & Burns, 2015). It is highly scaffolded in two ways which overlap: by tasks that teachers do regularly in teaching, such as calling the role, giving instructions for activities, correcting student output, etc. and by the curriculum they are expected to teach. Figure 9.4 represents how this interaction between language as content and as means of teaching plays out in the case of English-for-teaching (Freeman, Katz, LeDrean, Burns & Hauck, 2013). It shows how the teacher’s language knowledge is deployed in her classroom (on the left side of the diagram) and within the content she is teaching (on the right). These two contexts of use situate the teacher’s language knowledge so she can accomplish particular things with the content via certain interactions. The tasks—for instance, encouraging students,

asking them to speak louder, assign them homework, etc.—organize her instruction and scaffold doing these things in English as the target language. The performance of these tasks can connect this classroom work to the other dimension of knowledge-for-teaching languages, the professional world, as shown in Figure 9.3 and the earlier ‘pair-work’ example.

Figure 9.4 English-for-teaching (Freeman et al., 2015)

While there is no empirical evidence that language teaching knowledge functions differently if it is in the target language, there can be important differences to teachers’ socioprofessional participation and identity. When the three uses of language are in sync, the alignment can create a through line to professional identity from content and using the target language as the means to teach it. This in turn can contribute to strengthening confidence and command of the professional discourse about language teaching in the target language. This trajectory supports a professional identity as a teacher who can teach in and represent her classroom practice through the target language. Being able to use the target language in professional interactions seems to bring with it a certain socio-professional prestige, particularly in the internet world where opportunities are plentiful and feasible. At its core,

however, the cachet of this professional alignment of the three uses of languages reflects a legacy of the valuing of ‘nativeness’ as criterion for being a ‘good’ language teacher.

The chapter argument revisited Defining knowledge in language teaching has moved from seeing it as a product of disciplinary understandings to a process of knowing situated in the teacher’s immediate work context and the context of her experience. Two loose sets of ideas have influenced that evolution: changing ideas about language as classroom content and how it was to be taught, and developing ideas about the ways in which teachers create and use knowledge in the process of teaching. The first set is particular to the field; it tracks the internal perspective on the development of language teaching knowledge. The second set of ideas is drawn from outside the field, from general educational research. The interplay of these two sets of ideas over four knowledge generations has shaped how language teaching knowledge has come to be understood. Each succeeding generation has addressed a space in the current thinking, a gap that the social facts of that generation could not readily explain. Table 9.3 summarizes these movements: Generation

Key issue

Versions in ELT

Disciplinary knowledge (what)

If this is the knowledge needed to teach languages, how is the knowledge used?

1.0: linguistics + psychology 1.1: + literatures 1.2: + sociology & anthropology

Knowledge of pedagogy (how)

If this is how to teach languages, Are differences in teaching deficits in knowledge evidence of individuality?

2.0: + ‘innovative methods’ & SLA 2.1: + Communicative Language Teaching 2.2: + eclectic teaching; ‘best methods’; ‘post-method condition’

Knowledge-in-person; in-place (who and where)

If this is how individuals use knowledge in teaching, if personal experience and context shape what they do, what do language teachers have in common?

3.0: PPK & identity 3.1: PCK & transforming subject matter in teaching 3.2: knowledge as ‘contextual, contingent, and developmental’

Knowledge-for-teaching (why)

If this is how knowledge works in the process of teaching …

4.0: Knowledge-for-teaching languages 4.1: English-for-teaching

Table 9.3 Movement across generations in language teaching knowledge

The third generation drew on two key ideas about the nature of teaching knowledge from research in general education, PPK and PCK. These ideas focused language teaching on how knowledge could be a function of individual teachers and their experiences in context and over time. With knowledge-for-teaching, the current generation continues that path. Coming from outside of language teaching, these ideas have also revealed what is unique about teaching language as content, which has contributed to the same things done differently conceptual dynamic in second language teacher education.

Notes 1 Kelly’s (1969) work proved to be truly seminal in two senses. It presented a comprehensive, historical view of language teaching, including both classical and modern languages and it helped to launch Newbury House Publishers that was to articulate key positions in American ELT through the work of Earl Stevick and others through the 1970s and 1980s. 2 Regarding the persistent issue of pronoun use in writing about teachers and teaching, Elbaz notes ‘my solution to the dilemma is to use [pronouns of] both [genders]; female pronouns will predominate, however, just as women tend to predominate in the field of teaching’ (1983, p. 27). 3 Shulman’s proposal for PCK became immensely popular both in researching teacher knowledge (for example, in science: Abell, Park Rogers, Hanuscin, Lee, & Gagnon (2009), Van Driel, Verloop, & de Vos (1998); in mathematics: An, Kulm, & Wu (2004); in English language arts: Dudley-Marling, Abt-Perkins, Sato, & Selfe (2006); in social studies: Monte-Sano (2011), Harris & Bain (2010)) and in designing pre-service teacher education programs and activities (for example, Loughran, Mulhall, & Berry, 2004). It has also been extended to English language teaching (for example, Liu, 2013) and technology (Mishra & Koehler, 2006).

10 Knowledge-geographies: a socio-professional view of what is worth knowing in ELT

The chapter argument The previous chapter looked at how definitions of knowledge and knowing have evolved within the field of language teaching. The perspective was internal to the field itself, tracing a definitional arc from knowledge as something that is learned and held to knowing as something that is enacted. This chapter examines these ideas from the perspective of how that knowledge is formed and promoted socio-professionally. Using the notion of knowledgegeographies, the argument outlines three metaphorical maps. The structural map describes the primary structural features shaping the ELT knowledge-base: the parallel teacherpreparation pathways offered by national educational systems and so-called alternative routes. The implementational map describes common features of how ELT teaching knowledge is organized and delivered, and the human map looks at the various ELT teaching knowledge communities in professional associations and how these have diversified since the 1970s. Together these maps overlay three perspectives on the socio-professional landscape of ELT teaching knowledge and how that landscape shapes and reinforces how it is defined.

A knowledge-geography Defining what teachers know has always been a conceptually elusive, politically fraught endeavor; writing about it can be even messier. As a metaphorical device for these discussions, the idea of a knowledge-geography lays out the terrain in terms of what people take as worth knowing, in this case in English language teaching. This can be mapped according to what knowledge is valued and the role this knowledge plays in teaching. The metaphor also suggests that people—the groups or communities that share these views of the value and role of the knowledge—are centrally important. And it suggests different ways of organizing the features of each map that highlight certain aspects.

The structural map: a geography of institutions Providing and certifying teaching knowledge This map starts with the basic features of the knowledge-geography, its topographical structure. In language and in other school subjects, this map includes socio-professional features of providing and certifying teaching knowledge. Socially there are the institutions that formulate and deliver the knowledge (like universities and teacher training programs), and professionally there are the organizations that recognize and certify it (such as professional associations and national ministries). In most core school subjects, these two structures are fairly tightly coordinated: tertiary institutions like universities do the teacher preparation while governmental agencies, in some countries working through examination authorities, handle the certification. There are certainly areas of school education in which this through-line from preparation to certification is less firmly articulated—the arts (music, the visual arts) or early education (early childhood teaching) are two examples—but overall new teachers meet and acquire the knowledge-base of their school subject area in their

preparation and are evaluated for what they know and can do with it to enter into the classroom. In English language teaching, this socio-professional structure of providing and certifying teaching knowledge is an instance of the same things done differently, however. Where most school subjects have one form of preparation, there have been two broadly acknowledged pathways to preparation for English language teachers. There are national systems, and there are alternative routes. National teacher preparation systems operate through tertiary institutions such as universities and teacher training colleges; alternative routes operate through language schools often in conjunction with examination boards. Outside of Australia, the UK, North America, and—sometimes referred to as the ‘BANA countries’ (Holliday, 1994a)—national systems operating through tertiary education, are responsible for most of the preparation of ELT teachers who will teach in the primary and secondary public schools. In this way, these systems prepare ELT teachers for public-sector teaching as they do mathematics or science teachers. ELT is also taught in a range of private institutional settings —from language schools to businesses to not-for-profit institutions—which has led, since the 1960s, to the development of a flourishing group of alternative routes. The routes operate in ways that are specific to ELT through syndicated training pathways, which lead to various types of extramural qualifications. The University of Cambridge teacher preparation scheme of Certificates and Diplomas of English Language Teaching to Adults’ (CELTA and DELTA), with various sub-awards, is the best known of these alternative route designs (see Pulverness, 2015), though there are others ranging from similar international qualification systems to local training certificates.

Defining ‘alternative route’ These alternative routes function as parallel pathways to national systems of teacher preparation. The term ‘alternative route’, is taken from US teacher education policy. In this case, it succinctly defines how these teacher preparation pathways operate: they offer alternatives to nationally established and recognized teacher certification systems and they use training designs, or ‘routes’, that differ from those embedded in tertiary institutions. Alternative route programs independently define their own teacher preparation curricula, establish their own criteria for the training faculty who deliver it, and operate autonomous assessments based on it, generally with the goal of creating internationally recognized, portable certification for participants. In contrast, national systems of teacher preparation, functioning through universities and training institutions, implement the structures of teacher preparation in place in their countries; they work within national policies and standards for preparation, curricula and assessments, responding to governmental guidance and directives, to produce teachers according to national needs and expectations—teachers who are certified to teach within that particular national educational system.

Borderless expertise As a key topographical feature of the ELT knowledge-geography, these two pathways into teaching create a tension in the knowledge base. National systems concentrate on the goals

and needs of their school systems, in other words they are geographically focused on teaching knowledge. Alternative route designs do the opposite. They focus on a sort of ‘borderless expertise’, a knowledge base that works across teaching settings, with the goal of producing teachers who are certified transnationally. In historically English-medium countries, some post-graduate MA-level training can have a similar focus on borderless expertise. This contrast between the geographic boundedness in national teacher preparation and the lack of geographic boundaries in alternative route preparation is a basic feature of the structure of ELT knowledge-geography. Teachers of most other school subjects do not experience the same level of internationally portable recognition for their professional knowledge and skills as do ELT teachers. The geographic boundedness works in favor of knowledge bases that are locally articulated and recognized. Borderless expertise, which is a key feature of English language teaching has had implications for the knowledge base. In terms of employment, the portable certifications earned in the alternative route pathway are meant to translate into teaching opportunities that are open and unbounded geographically. This form of preparation has created a class of English language teacher who can travel the world as what Johnston (1999) called the ‘postmodern paladins’ (euphemistically comparing them to 10th century crusaders). In contrast, most credentials that are earned through tertiary education are bounded in terms of recognition and employment. This preparation inducts teachers into national education systems, which in turn translates into teaching opportunities that are local. This localness can be pronounced even within countries. In the United States for example, teacher certification operates through the fifty individual states so that a new teacher who is qualified in one state has to apply to transfer credentials in order to be able to take a teaching job in another state. While there are reciprocity arrangements among many states, this state-level control of certification persists as bedrock in the American teacher preparation system.

Native-speaking knowledge as borderless expertise The idea of native-speaking knowledge is closely linked to the idea of borderless expertise. As argued in Chapter 3, nativeness has been a geopolitical feature of language teaching knowledge. In terms of the knowledge base, nativeness is conceptually indefinable as a knowledge category, so various surrogate measures (such as where an individual grew up, was educated, and so on) are often used. As a feature of the geography, nativeness has historically mapped fairly neatly on to the different preparation pathways, with ‘native’ English speakers being the main participants in alternative route designs while ‘non-native’ speakers were prepared mainly in national education systems. The major exception to this observation were countries in which English was or is a national language, and thus native or first language speakers would become its public-sector teachers. In the last two decades, as nativeness has become increasingly problematized as a knowledge standard, it has receded somewhat, though it certainly remains one feature of the ELT knowledge-geography.

Two maps, one territory These two pathways—national education systems and alternate route preparation—share

certain features, which each has defined differently. These features include the training provider—which institutions deliver teacher preparation; the goal—what is the central purpose; and the primary employment sector—where the knowledge will be used in teaching. Table 10.1 summarizes the differences. Features

Bounded

Borderless

Pathway

National education system

Alternative route

Provider

Tertiary institutions

Independent institutions (and some MA programs in so-called ‘BANA’ countries)

Purpose

National credentials

Portable certification

Primary employer

Public-sector education

Private-sector institutions

Particular characteristics

Locally relevant teaching practices Local knowledge Local/national evaluation

Standardized teaching practices Globalized knowledge Transnational assessments

Table 10.1 The structural features of ELT knowledge-geography

National education systems, with their geographically bounded focus, quite rightly emphasize local relevance and needs. The link between teaching credentials and subsequent employment depends on that relevance. In alternative route preparation, the emphasis is the opposite. The central purpose is to credential teachers with a commonly recognized set of knowledge and classroom skills. This sets up a certain level of standardization in order to allow teachers to travel globally so that their certifications are portable from one institution to another. The two pathways, in spite of differences, show the fundamental dynamic of the knowledge-base: the connection between how teaching knowledge is valued and how it is used in teaching. This difference points to a second version of the ELT knowledge-geography, the implementational map.

The implementational map: a geography of practices A second view of ELT knowledge-geography concentrates on how the knowledge base gets implemented. As with the first map, there is a great deal that could be said and it would take a much fuller treatment to do it full justice. This analysis, however, focuses on three features: how the basic design for the knowledge base works in teacher preparation, the assumptions that anchor the design, and how the design translates into teaching knowledge over the span of a teacher’s career.

‘Learn-then-apply’: the common design of teacher preparation There is a common design for preparing teachers across subject areas and grade levels. It functions almost like a computer operating system to drive how most preparation, operating

within what Wallace (1991) called the ‘applied science’ model, is organized and the learning is sequenced. The design, summarized as ‘learn-then-apply’, begins by establishing the knowledge and the value in having it, and then moves to its role and how to use it. The aim of this design, as it is used across various school subjects, is to create teaching knowledge by transforming disciplinary knowledge into a form that is usable in the classroom. In most national education pathways for example, teacher candidates are expected to develop their subject-matter knowledge in their first years of university study, and to then refine it as they apply it in practice teaching and school settings in the later years. The learn-then-apply design in these teacher education sequences moves candidates from being students of the content to becoming teachers. Language, specifically English, as a subject area is treated no differently in most national teacher preparation schemes. Initial university study usually focuses on candidates’ English language proficiency (sometimes including knowledge of literature) and methodology, which knowledge is applied in the teaching placements in the later years. Alterative route pathways operate somewhat differently, although they adhere to the same basic operating system. In certificate programs for example, the cycles of learn-then-apply are much shorter—often a matter of days. Trainees learn through input sessions and then apply what they learn in situations that escalate in social and pedagogical complexity from teaching peers to teaching real students, as discussed in Chapter 5. In advanced diploma programs, the connection is often reflective as trainees apply the new input they are learning to rethink what they have usually done in teaching. A major difference between the two pathways lies in how they treat subject-matter knowledge. In national education preparation, although a baseline proficiency is assumed, a candidate’s command of English often needs to be developed, which happens in the first years of teacher preparation. In alternative route preparation on the other hand, English fluency is stated as an entry criterion. In the mid 1980s for example, syllabus documents for the Royal Society of the Arts/Cambridge Certification of Teaching English as Foreign Language (CTEFLA), the predecessor of the CELTA, stipulated that candidates ‘should have a standard of English, both written and spoken, equivalent to that of an educated native speaker for whom English is a first language.’ This requirement was subsequently recast with the launch of the CELTA in the 1990s as ‘an awareness and a competence in both written and spoken English, which will enable them to undertake the course …’ (cited in Johnson & Poulter, 2015, p. 183–184). While the difference might seem to be simply a functional refinement, it is more profound. The previous definition referred to the geo-political standard of ‘educated native speaker’, while the current one defines English competency internally, with reference to the course itself. This shift stems from how disciplinary knowledge is viewed as the foundation of teaching knowledge.

Anchoring assumptions: the value and role of disciplinary knowledge The relationship between disciplinary knowledge and teaching knowledge is a deeply embedded feature of the ELT knowledge-geography, as argued in Chapter 4. This is due to a complex of factors from the geo-political to the institutional. The expansion of English teaching since the 1950s has depended in part on teacher education, as Trim (British

Association for Applied Linguistics, 1997) observes: … a number of universities [in Britain] had set up departments of applied linguistics, largely to provide the professionalisation of the teaching of English as a foreign language which the British Council considered to be necessary in the national interest, especially at a time when the common use of English was seen to be an important factor in the survival of the Commonwealth as an effective political and economic partnership (n. p). (British Association for Applied Linguistics, 1997) The drive to promote English for political and economic reasons has continued, as others have written (for example, Braine, 2010; Medgyes, 1992; Phillipson, 1992; Reves & Medgyes, 1994); what is interesting here is how disciplinary knowledge worked as part of the promotion. The geo-political value of applied linguistics, like other disciplines, has likewise been well suited to—and even promoted by—the institutional structures of universities as the primary providers in the national teacher preparation pathway. University faculty members generate, teach and publish the knowledge, and form the academic communities that recognize and value it. Thus it is not surprising in English language teaching to find academic departments, and the disciplinary perspectives they represent, vying to define what is—or should be—central for teaching knowledge. As proponents of disciplinary, knowledge in ELT, Grabe, Stoller, and Tardy (2000) make the case succinctly: Language teaching … is a complex endeavor. It is our strong feeling that exposure to and an understanding of knowledge from a range of disciplines [linguistics, anthropology, psychology, and educationNOTE 1] provides teachers with tools to address those complexities effectively and to meet the multifaceted needs of their students. (Grabe et al., 2000, p. 193) Academic disciplines create and validate the knowledge; delivering that knowledge is, Grabe et al. argue, the job of teacher education: Teacher educators must strive to help new language professionals understand the value of this knowledge and the critical role it will play in making sound pedagogical decisions, planning classes, developing materials, delivering instruction, evaluating student progress, and conducting meaningful action-research projects to improve one’s teaching. (Grabe et al., 2000, p. 193) Grabe et al. represent a common position on ELT teaching knowledge in pre-service teacher preparation and higher education. It is a view that emphasizes the value of disciplinary knowledge in supporting the day-to-day work of language teachers in planning, teaching, and assessing students. (Their argument also includes improvement, suggested here through action research ‘to improve one’s teaching’.) Teacher education needs to make the case, they say above, for ‘the value … and the critical role [disciplinary knowledge] will play in making sound pedagogical decisions.’ The mechanism of this support is the learn-then-apply design, which continues to

predominate in teacher preparation even though disciplinary knowledge has become less central in teaching knowledge over the last 50 years. In moving from its disciplinary roots in linguistics and psychology, to methodology, to knowledge-for-teaching, ELT teaching knowledge morphed from something that is learned and then used, to a process of knowing, which is embedded in the specifics of teaching. These conceptual changes seem to have had little impact on the learn-then-apply framework, which has endured as the basic operating principle underlying both national and alternative route preparation designs. They have had little influence on how teaching knowledge is treated throughout a teacher’s career, which is the final feature we consider of the implementational map.

Learning over a teaching career: front loading and updating Sociologist Daniel Lortie (1975) observed that teaching is often seen as ‘a one-step career’, meaning that the job the teacher does on the day she is hired seems—publicly at least—to be the same as the job she does on the day she retires. His observation speaks to the problematic notion of how teaching knowledge develops throughout a career. The teachers are born vs. made debates, reviewed in Chapter 3, are part of this puzzle of development, as are discussions of reflection and the role of experience in learning to teach, in Chapter 11. From the standpoint of teaching knowledge, however, the image of the one-step career has been reinforced by teacher preparation pathways that emphasize front-loading a teaching career’s worth of professional knowledge. Front-loading teaching knowledge

The ‘learn then apply’ design of teacher education affected the design of initial teacher preparation, with the expectation that most of the knowledge and skills needed for a career of classroom teaching can be front loaded. The de facto approach of most national credentialing policies assumes that pre-service preparation will equip new teachers at the start of their careers with the foundational knowledge to then continue to learn on the job, usually independently, though sometimes with sporadic support (as, for example, with mentoring mentioned in Chapter 3). In many national systems, the credentialing process involves stages, so the new teachers move from probationary to fully licensed (sometimes called ‘tenured’) status. However, this progression is usually more a function of time in the teaching position than a reflection of mastering additional teaching knowledge. And although teachers are usually expected (and in most national systems often required) to continue their professional learning through periodic teacher development activities, the fact that this process is referred to as ‘updating’ simply reinforces the assumption that the core knowledge comes in initial preparation at the start of teaching. Left unaccounted for in this front loading approach is how experience doing the job in the classroom, contributes to and refines formal teaching knowledge. Alternative route pathways have taken a somewhat different approach to front loading teaching knowledge. The largest of these designs generally outline a progression from preservice preparation (recognized by initial certificates) to in-service development (certified by diploma-level work) (Borg & Albery, 2015; Cambridge Teacher Development Scheme, 2015). This progression in learning to teach challenges the assumptions, found in university

preparation, that teaching knowledge is exclusively disciplinary. The general sequencing in major alternative route designs from immediately applicable (called ‘practical’) knowledge and skills in certificate training, to more disciplinarily based knowledge (called ‘theoretical’) in diploma courses extends the one-step career rather than front-loading it. With their emphasis on classroom-oriented preparation (sometimes called in their promotions ‘what you need to teach on Monday morning’) alternative route designs have raised a more fundamental question of what language teachers need to know at the start of their teaching. Far from trivializing teaching knowledge, the focus on its immediate, potential usefulness has forced a different way of conceiving what would be valuable for new teachers to know. This ‘just-in-time’ approach (to borrow the name from supply chain management) to preparation is seen as a viable alternative to front-loading. Just-in-time preparation has become a key part of many alternative route programs in other subject areas (for example, Teach for America in the United States) as well as for many volunteer teaching initiatives like those discussed in Chapter 3 (see also Freeman, Coolican, & Graves, 2011).

The human map: a geography of participation A knowledge base is more than an abstraction; it works through people. Those who embrace the particular knowledge and its language of practice become its community; they use its social facts to explain their practices. Doctors use medical language in the course of their work; lawyers use legal cant as they practice law, and so on. In ELT, although they both prepare teachers, the two pathways have distinct professional communities. In the alternative route pathway, the University of Cambridge scheme of CELTA and DELTA trainers and assessors are an example of a community, while university professors are an example of the community in the national education pathway. These are the teacher educators and trainers who literally make the pathway. There are also communities of people who recognize each pathway and value its particular outcome. Language school administrators who advertise for and hire teachers with alternative-route certifications are an example in the world of alternative routes; school principals and district administrators who select candidates prepared for public-sector teaching positions are an example in national systems. These groups of trainers and administrators form two loosely defined overlapping communities—of practice (those who do the work) and of explanation (those who recognize and value it). The groups have distinct functions although their memberships will overlap: the first (the trainers) promulgates the teaching knowledge while the second group (administrators) accepts it and makes it worth having. The third map of the ELT knowledgegeography focuses on this dynamic of creating and recognizing teaching knowledge. It does so by tracing how people use ideas as communities of explanation in ELT through the development of two of the major professional associations in English language teaching, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). As they formally recognize particular roles and categories of work, the associations provide venues and access to peers in those roles, all of which helps to express the knowledge base. In this way, changes in organizational structures of these associations can offer a window into the evolution of the

knowledge base.

The dynamics of diversification and pluralization Two dynamics have driven this expression of what counts as ELT teaching knowledge. The first, the diversification in teaching roles, distinguished between kinds of teaching (often by age of student or type of context); it also incorporated work beyond immediate classroom teaching into ELT. This diversification in roles brought about the second dynamic, a pluralization of the knowledge that would make up the base. These terms are two sides of the same coin, in a sense. People in different roles needed to know different things. Diversification is a useful way to look at how the changes in the demand for and delivery of ELT—who was being taught, where, and to what end—reshaped what counted in the knowledge base. Pluralization refers to the ways in which the unitary view of language teaching knowledge was both broadened and specialized with these different roles in diverse work environments. Diversification of uses of teaching knowledge drove pluralization in how that knowledge was defined and articulated. This third map examines what has been expressed as knowledge professionally in the structure of these associations and how ELT teaching knowledge developed and diversified with these specialized roles and applications.

Two professional associations The two major professional associations in English language teaching, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), were started perhaps not coincidentally in the same year. Both associations were founded in 1966, TESOL by James Alatis and IATEFL by William Lee; each experienced rapid expansion and membership growth throughout the 1970s and 1980s. This growth took place both in the associations directly and through developing connections with affiliated teachers’ organizations that were often geographically local versions of each professional association.

The dynamic of diversification TESOL’s growth

Both organizations grew rapidly, although not in the same way. IATEFL has had a singular focus on teaching English in international contexts, while TESOL’s organizational structure has been geographically ambiguous. From the start, TESOL membership has combined USbased associations, focused primarily on English as a second or additional language (usually for schooling), and international affiliates, whose focus is similar to IATEFL’s. (In fact some organizations affiliate with both associations.) Membership and organizational affiliations started to grow almost immediately. In the case of TESOL, in 1970 there were seven affiliates, all of which were in the United States; by 1980, the number had grown to 49 affiliates, of which 35 (or 71 percent) were US-based. The growth in affiliates continued throughout the next two decades, with the majority of expansion happening in international affiliates, meaning those outside the United States. By 2010, more than half of the 98 TESOL

affiliates were outside the United States. This interplay of US-based and international affiliates, represented in Figure 10.1 below, highlights the geographically ambiguous structure of TESOL as an association.

Figure 10.1 Growth in TESOL by US and international affiliated associations (1970–2015)

IATEFL’s growth

The patterns of geographical expansion in IATEFL were completely different. Founded as an association focused on English as a foreign language, IATEFL-affiliated organizations were exclusively outside of Britain. Between 1990 and 1994, IATEFL had three associated organizations; from 1995 to 1999, 42 organizations became affiliated. As of 2004, 13 more organizations had joined as associates. Between 2010 and 2015, 55 additional organizations became affiliated, including seven in 2015 alone. In gross, both associations experienced dramatic growth in their geographical footprints, particularly during the 1990s and 2000s. IATEFL’s expansion has continued at a striking rate in the first half of this decade. Figure 10.2 shows the number of affiliates that joined each association in each decade. (The data is based on the year the organization affiliated with TESOL or IATEFL, not when it was founded). These numbers, although displayed side-by-side, should not be read comparatively, since they do not show total numbers of affiliated members. The chart shows an expansion across both associations, which reflects the diversification of geo-professional opportunities to access and participate in the ELT knowledge base through events and conferences, publications, and other forms of localized dissemination.

Figure 10.2 The number of teachers’ associations that have affiliated with TESOL or IATEFL by decade in which they affiliated (1970–2015)

Diversification and the broader landscape

As with many analyses suggested here, the ways in which the expansion of the affiliates of these two associations contributed to the dissemination of the ELT knowledge base is a complex story, shaped by internal organizational and external geo-political forces. The latter have centered broadly on the changing role of English in the world, as it has shifted from a language of political and economic colonization to a lingua franca (for example, Graddol, 1997, 2006; Jenkins, 2009). In contrast to other school subjects, English has been promoted and marketed through everything from globalizing high education, to publishing, to the public diplomacy pursued by the American and British governments. These efforts have contributed to reshaping not only the definitions of English as classroom content, but perhaps more profoundly to the professional identities of those who teach it. The TESOL and IATEFL affiliates are part of a fabric that is disseminating these changing ideas. As they diversify local access to ideas, they also create socio-professional channels for new thinking to flow from the classroom to the wider global community. For example, in offering professional development through meetings and conferences, this fabric of TESOL and IATEFL-affiliated associations provides teachers with locally based learning opportunities, thus they position the organizations as loci for articulating professional knowledge within local contexts. These affiliated organizations are, in this sense, the front line of the glo-cal dynamic that shapes the ELT knowledge-base; it is an on-going tension and interaction between global and local, between borderless and bounded knowledge.

The dynamic of pluralization This process of knowledge articulation has been reflected in the structures of these associations themselves. From the outset, the associations supported specialized foci (known as Interest Sections in TESOL and Special Interest Groups—SIGs in IATEFL), which allowed for the pluralization of the knowledge-base. The creation of these Interest Sections and SIGs gives a picture of how teaching knowledge became differentiated: how different types of learners were identified, the content was detailed, pedagogical strategies became accepted, and new professional roles were spun off as part of ELT. These developments created opportunities for conversation among like-minded groups of people; the developments fed the articulation of new social facts and communities of explanation to use them. Common patterns

Looking across the two associations, a few patterns stand out. Generally speaking, there is a large degree of overlap in the foci of these interests. Of the 21 current TESOL Interest Sections and 15 IATEFL SIGs, 12 of them have foci that overlap in whole or in part. There are some logical differences—for example, TESOL has an English-as-a-Foreign-Language Interest Section, which is its largest, while IATEFL does not, given that it is the mission of the entire organization. Other knowledge areas have been reclassified (and thus renamed), showing how terms in the knowledge base are refashioned over time. This is particularly the case in technology. In both associations, computers were an early focus, first in IATEFL with the Computer SIG which started in 1982, and the Interest Section on Computer-assisted Language Learning in TESOL, begun two years later. The IATEFL Computer SIG was renamed 20 years after its founding as Learning Technologies, reflecting the updated term. Similarly, the interest groups about video were started in the mid-1980s, and later were renamed. In TESOL, the Video Interest Section became Video and Digital Media in 1989; in IATEFL the Video SIG was combined with Media (which had started in 1996) and with Literature and Cultural Studies (started in 1989) to become the Literature, Cultural and Media Studies SIG in 2003. Table 10.2 below, which puts the initiation of groups in the two associations on a common timeline, shows the unfolding of the knowledge-base. TESOL Interest Section

Date

Adult Education

1974

Applied Linguistics

1974

Bilingual Education

1974

Intensive English Programs

1974

English as a Foreign Language

1974

Elementary Education

1977

Higher Education

1977

Secondary Schools

1977

IATEFL Special Interest Group

Refugee Concerns

1983

Teacher Education

1983

Computer-Assisted Language Learning

1984

1982

Computers (renamed Learning Technologies, 2002)

1985

Teacher Development

1985

Video (combined with Media and Literature and Cultural Studies into Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, 2003)

1986

Learner Independence (renamed Learner Autonomy, 2006)

1986

Testing, Evaluation and Assessment

1986

Pronunciation

1987

Young Learners (renamed Young Learner Teaching, 2009)

1988

Business English

1988

English Language Teachers Management (renamed Leadership and Management, 2010)

1988

Teacher Training and Education

1989

Literature and Cultural Studies (combined with Video and Media into Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, 2003)

1991

Research

Program Administration 1984

Materials Writers

Video (renamed Video and Digital Media)

English for Specific Purposes

1986

1989

1992

International Teaching Assistants

1993

Intercultural Communication

1996

Speech Pronunciation and Listening

1996

Second Language Writing

2005

Nonnative Speakers of English in TESOL

2008

Social Responsibility

2009

1994

English for Specific Purposes

1995

Global Issues

1996

Media (combined with Video and Literature and Cultural Studies into Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, 2003)

2001

English for Speakers of other Languages

2013

Materials Writing

Table 10.2 The pluralization of interests in TESOL and IATEFL (by decade from 1974–2013)

Unfolding pluralization From the standpoint of knowledge dissemination, the areas around which professional work and interests have coalesced reflect concretely the pedagogical concerns and identifications of teachers and others as association members. This unfolding pluralization shows which areas have been emphasized and the order in which those interests have been collectively recognized. These topics of interest have reflected a level of professional momentum of subgroups within the ELT world that could position themselves as a specialized community of explanation, usually with a particular language of practice to differentiate them from the general ELT public. During the 1970s, eight Interest Sections were organized in TESOL of which only one—Applied Linguistics—directly concerned the content of language teaching. Interestingly, IATEFL has not had a similar SIG, perhaps because the British Association for Applied Linguistics had been started with this focus in 1967. (The US counterpart, the American Association for Applied Linguistics was begun a decade later in 1977.) The other seven addressed teaching particular types of language learners, who were distinguished by grade-level or age (for example, elementary, secondary, or adult education) or by setting (for example, intensive English programs, bilingual education, or English as a Foreign Language, EFL). The concerns of these initial groups set out the core of the ELT knowledge base as

pedagogy under particular teaching circumstances. Thus, for example, teaching students who were English language learners in English-medium elementary classrooms (elementary education) was differentiated from teaching students in intensive English programs housed at English-medium, usually American, universities (Intensive English programs). During the 1980s, expressions of teaching knowledge extended to pedagogy and to professional roles in both associations. New pedagogical knowledge focused on the use of technologies, computers, and video mentioned above, and also on aspects of learning (for example, IATEFL’s Learner Independence SIG, 1986). In IATEFL, interests in content extended beyond applied linguistics to include Literature and Cultural Studies and Business English, though the latter SIG focused on the role of ELT teachers working in corporate settings as well. IATEFL’s Pronunciation SIG was also started during this period (1986), but sustained attention to pedagogy and particular teaching skills happened later in TESOL, with the creation of the Speech Pronunciation and Listening (1996) and Second Language Writing (2005) Interest Sections. One major difference in how the knowledge base has unfolded in the two associations has had to do with the focus on learners and settings. As mentioned above, the first decade in TESOL was largely taken up with distinguishing among different groups of English learners. In IATEFL, by way of contrast, only three SIGs have been created with foci on specific types or ages of learners: Young Learners (1983), Business English (1986), and English for Speakers of Other Languages (2001); otherwise the default seems to be teaching adults general English. There could be many reasons for this difference but the attention to borderless expertise seems more evident in the organizational structure of interests in IATEFL, while TESOL’s interest structure has continued to reflect and to wrestle with this geographical hybridity of focus. Teacher credentialing functions at the state level in the United States and this has created a patchwork of definitions and expectations particularly in ESOL. Because of this, TESOL has taken on a sociopolitical role as an advocate of the ELT knowledgebase within the US national educational system.

Pluralizing knowledge by role As the two associations became established socio-professional communities, differentiating educational roles became a major vehicle for creating distinctions and specializations in the knowledge base. During the 1980s, five professional roles became areas of specialized interest. Three of these were in one association or the other: the Testing, Evaluation, and Assessment (1986) and the Business English (1988) SIGs, mentioned earlier, in IATEFL, and Materials Writers Interest Section (1986) in TESOL. Two groups were similar in both associations, however: Program Administration/ELT Management and Teacher Education. These roles, which likely reflected the expanding demands of ELT globally, were not neatly defined; each involved defining specialized practices (for example, in testing and evaluation or materials writing) as well as roles that were identifiable socio-professionally. Like any specialization, establishing these as separate interests helped to articulate the areas of knowledge that each group used in their work, which also created a tension. By distinguishing these types of work from classroom teaching, the development of specialized knowledge helped to concentrate teaching knowledge in the work of teaching itself. A teacher would not

simply become a test designer, program administrator, or a materials writer solely on the basis of teaching knowledge; there was more to learn and to know in order to play these roles and do this specialized work effectively in the eyes of the larger ELT community.

Teacher education In many ways, the most intriguing new groups to emerge in the differentiation of general ELT knowledge of the 1980s were those focused on teacher education (TESOL’s Teacher Education Interest Section in 1982, followed by IATEFL’s Teacher Development SIG in 1985, and Teacher Training and Education SIG in 1988). Unlike the other groups concentrating on learners in specific settings, these interests were concerned with a completely different constituency, with language teachers, and only indirectly with their students. Like program administrators, testers, or materials writers, language teacher educators had a distinctive professional brief in the ecosystem of language teaching. As the focus of language teaching knowledge shifted from applying disciplinary knowledge, concern for specialized training increased with it, and teacher education took on a distinct role. The specialized interest of the teacher education community was also unique in another regard: it created an overlay on the existing knowledge base, a meta-discourse about how people learned and used knowledge in teaching. This evolution was taking place as language teachers’ thinking was becoming understood as a process of synthesizing ideas and combining pedagogies (thinking synthetically as discussed in Chapter 7) and teaching knowledge was being defined in the person of the teacher and the classroom (as knowledge in-person, inplace, discussed in Chapter 9). The two associations provided venues and communities to propose, argue, and affirm these emerging ideas.

Revisiting diversification and pluralization The human map presents how the ELT knowledge base was articulated; it does so through people and their interests. The diversification of people is represented in the expanding network of language teaching organizations that affiliated with the two major professional associations, TESOL and IATEFL. This geographical diversification distinguished among kinds of ELT work, such as teaching by age of student or type of context as well as functions, such as materials writing, administration and testing, that lay beyond immediate classroom teaching. This diversification brought with it a pluralization of the knowledge that would make up the base of ELT. The development of the specialized interest groups within the professional associations which, combined with the expansion of affiliated local organizations and branches, demonstrates how language teaching knowledge was evolving. Table 10.3, summarizes the specialized interests in the knowledge base in five strands: learners and settings; teaching content; pedagogy; professional role; and teachers. TESOL Interest Section

IATEFL Special Interest Group

Comments

Learners and Settings Adult Education (1974)

English for Speakers of Other

Parallel also to TESOL’s Refugee

Languages (2001)

Concerns

Bilingual Education

—

Intensive English Programs

—

English as a Foreign Language

—

Elementary Education (1977)

Young Learners (1987)

Higher Education

—

Secondary Schools

—

Refugee Concerns (1983)

English for Speakers of Other Languages (2001)

Parallel also to TESOL’s Adult Education

—

Learner Independence (1986)

Renamed Learner Autonomy (2006)

Renamed Young Learner Teaching, (2009)

Teaching Content Applied Linguistics (1974)

—

—

Literature and Cultural Studies (1989)

English for Specific Purposes (1992)

English for Specific Purposes (1994)

Intercultural Communication (1996)

Global Issues (1995)

Combined into Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (2003)

Parallel also to TESOL’s Social Responsibility

Pedagogy Computer-Assisted Language Learning (1984)

Computers (1982)

Renamed Learning Technologies (2002)

Video (renamed Video and Digital Media) (1989)

Video (1985)

Combined Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (2003)

Media (1996) Speech Pronunciation and Listening (1996)

Pronunciation (1986)

Second Language Writing (2005)

—

Social Responsibility (2009)

Global Issues (1995)

Parallel also to TESOL’s Intercultural Communication

Professional Role Program Administration (1984)

English Language Teachers Management (1988)

Materials Writers (1986)

Materials Writing (2013)

—

Business English (1988)

—

Testing Evaluation and Assessment (1986)

Renamed Leadership and Management (2010)

Research (1991) Teachers International Teaching Assistants (1983)

—

Teacher Education (1983)

Teacher Development (1985) Teacher Training and Education (1988)

Nonnative Speakers of English in TESOL (2008)

—

Table 10.3 Specialized interests: Strands in the ELT knowledge base

Using these categories, a synopsis of this information shows learners and setting as the major focus (nine groups across the two associations, of which three align. The categories of content, pedagogy, and professional role, with four, five, and five groups each respectively, show a higher degree of alignment. This would make sense given that the knowledge base has generally been defined by what (content) and how (pedagogy and role), as argued in Chapter 9. The last category, teachers, is in some ways the most intriguing. It highlights two aspects of the ELT knowledge base: one (educating teachers) links to general education and other forms of teaching; the other (non-native teachers/international teaching assistants) showcases teachers’ geo-political identities—a concern unique to language teaching. A caveat

This analysis does not attempt to be definitive in any sense. There are certainly other ways these interests could be parsed and subdivided; some might cluster groups under different names, or might place specific groups in different categories. The point here is to show the topography of this human map, how interests have coalesced around certain foci, which has created features of the ELT knowledge base. Like any features of a landscape, these distinctions in the ELT knowledge base are now accepted and even taken for granted. But it is worth remembering it was not always this way. In reaching into language teaching contexts that were increasingly diverse (in terms of ages, cultures, politics, and social issues), the singular one-size-fits-all version of teaching knowledge anchored in behaviorism could not accommodate the work to be done. This expanding demand led to new and specialized knowledge, to address learners’ needs and expectations, to incorporate new pedagogical tools and technologies, and to specify roles teachers were assuming beyond the classroom, all of which redefined how the work of teaching itself was done.

The chapter argument revisited The geography-map metaphor, which organizes this chapter, is a somewhat incongruous one. Human geographer Diarmid Finnegan (2013) points out that the phrase, ‘geography of knowledge’, which is the basis of the chapter’s title, ‘is, at first glance, an unexpected combination of terms. ‘Geography’ suggests descriptions of the Earth. ‘Knowledge’, on the other hand, implies an immaterial realm of ideas and human cognition’ (n. p.). This combination of two seemingly incompatible terms can serve an important function in reminding us of the interplay of people and ideas in creating and sustaining definitions of what is worth knowing. Tracing the socio-professional face of knowledge is complicated particularly in English language teaching, given the two pathways through which people prepare to teach. The metaphor of knowledge-geographies is meant to help tease apart some of the complexity. Each of the three maps highlights particular features of the overall ELT knowledge landscape. The basic structure of dual pathways divides teacher preparation between national education systems, focused on geographically bounded needs and outcomes, and alternative routes, which credential a borderless version of teaching expertise. The map of implementation shows features common to both pathways that shape how ELT teaching knowledge is presented to new teachers. The human map lays out the socio-professional dynamics of the knowledge base through the development of TESOL and IATEFL as the leading ELT teachers’ associations. Overlaying the perspectives of these three maps shows that things are not neat, that one single map cannot really match the territory, and it highlights some of the dynamics which make the knowledge base of ELT unique. As the geographer Finnegan (2013) says of this process, ‘Locating knowledge or tracing its migrations unsettles these common perceptions and points to the material and social nature of knowing’ (n. p.).

Note 1 While Grabe et al. (2000) include education as a discipline, others—particularly in the field of education itself (for example, Shulman, 1996) have argued otherwise. (See also Chapter 4.)

11 Reflecting: thinking and knowing in teaching situations When we go about the spontaneous, intuitive performance of the actions of everyday life, we show ourselves to be knowledgeable in a special way. Often we cannot say what it is we know. We try to describe it, we find ourselves at a loss, or we produce descriptions that are obviously inappropriate. (Schon, 1983, p. 49)

The chapter argument Reflecting, a mental activity that teachers do as they think in teaching situations, is examined here from two dimensions. The chapter looks at how reflection has been conceptualized by Schon (1983, 1987) in the key ideas of ‘situations of practice’ and ‘action-present’ and how second language teacher education practices have implemented these ideas. In using these concepts, teacher education has translated concepts of reflecting into a professional notion of reflection-as-repair that can be managed in teacher education. The idea of reflecting has been turned into a ‘Technical Rational solution’ for the problem of thinking and knowing in teaching situations. In narrowing the concept to reflection-as-repair, much is lost that can help to better understand how reflecting, thinking, and knowing interrelate in teaching.

Reflecting, thinking, and knowing An immediate question that comes to mind is how reflecting is related to thinking (discussed in Chapter 7 and Chapter 8) and knowing (discussed in Chapter 9 and Chapter 10). The short answer is that these are three ways of referring to the mental work teachers do, each highlighting particular aspects. A slightly more nuanced response would be that reflecting combines knowing stuff with using it to think with in particular situations; this is the line of argument pursued here. Further, this combining creates opportunities to intervene in and to operationalize aspects of thinking and knowing, which is what teacher education activities try to do. Reflecting can be seen as offering a way into the less accessible aspects of the teacher’s mental work. This access depends, however, on how reflecting is conceptualized. Clearly defined concept or catch-all?

Of the various ideas that have taken hold in educational policy and in second language teacher education, reflection is probably the most widespread but the least well understood. Rhetoric that calls for teacher to ‘engage in reflective practice’, to ‘reflect on what they do’ has now become fundamental in both pre-service preparation and in-service professional development across educational systems at the policy levels of national teaching standards (for example, in Chile and in Vietnam) and in the statements of professional associations, for example, TESOL (Gottlieb, Katz, & Ernst-Slavit, 2009). Reflection is also central in program design and in forms of teacher assessment, for example, in portfolio assessment (Fernsten & Fernsten, 2005). Likewise, reflection has been articulated in the ELT literature from the early work of Wallace (1991) and Richards and Lockhart (1994), to the work of Farrell (2004, 2007, 2013) and others. But the prevalence of the term raises some basic questions about what it means. Is ‘reflection’ a clearly defined concept or has it become a catch-all? And how does it connect thinking and knowing in teaching?

(Re)conceptualizing reflection: situations of practice and actionpresent

Starting from Dewey and Schon Discussions of reflection generally describe its broad outlines as a process of thinking that is triggered in a particular space and time. Thus it is not accidental that the concept was introduced and took hold in second language teacher education during the 1990s, when the third generation of conceptualizing thinking (Chapter 7) and knowing (Chapter 9) were defining the mental work of teaching in situated terms as thinking heuristically and knowing in-person in-place. In the preface to their book, Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms, published in 1994, Richards and Lockhart argued that ‘experience alone is insufficient as the basis for [teacher] development’ and that ‘critical reflection can trigger a deeper understanding of teaching’ (p. 4). Thus, to paraphrase Schon, on whose work the notion of reflection in education largely rests, reflection became the term for how teachers as professionals think in action. Dewey and ‘habitual vs. intelligent action’

Conceptualizing reflection in teaching is usually traced to the work of John Dewey. In How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process, Dewey (1933) drew a distinction between what he called ‘habitual’ and ‘intelligent’ action. The former is the result of habit, of experience that automated a response to a situation. The latter comes from considering the situation as a way into acting on it. An everyday example of the distinction for me is how students decide where to sit when they come into class. If it is a regular class that is on-going, they will often sit where they usually do—next to a friend, at a seat they like because of where it is (the view, proximity to the door, etc.). This is habitual action. If the usual seat is not available (it is already taken, the friend is absent, or perhaps if the student wants something different or needs to leave early, so wants to be near the door), he chooses a different place to sit. This action is ‘intelligent’ in Dewey’s meaning of the word because the student engages his intellect as he considers factors in the situation to make his decision. In this process of acting intelligently, his habitual response is problematized—he reflects on it—as he thinks about both the factors and the decision. Applying this distinction to situations in teaching, Dewey defined its locus: ‘The teacher must have his [sic] mind free to observe the mental responses and movement of the student … The problem of the pupils is found in the subject matter; the problem of the teacher is what the minds of the pupils are doing with the subject matter’ (1933, p. 275). When teachers respond out of habit, they are unlikely to see ‘what the minds of the pupils are doing with the subject matter’. When teachers think about what students are doing—engaging their intellect—they shift attention from the subject matter to the minds of the student. This process, which is reflecting according to Dewey, may result in a different response or it might affirm the usual action. Thus reflecting results in thinking, but not necessarily acting, differently. Schon and Technical Rationality

Schon (1983) makes a similar distinction. He calls ‘habitual action’ a ‘Technical Rational’ response, which he argues bases ‘professional activity … i n instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique’ (p. 21). This thinking differs from professional thinking, or ‘intelligent action’ in Dewey’s terms, that happens in

‘problematic situations characterized by uncertainty, disorder, and indeterminacy’ (1983, p. 15–16). Schon attributes his language here directly to Dewey (endnote 37, p. 357). He calls these ‘situations of practice’. They are ‘messes’, Schon says quoting Russell Ackoff, whom he identifies as ‘one of the founders of operations research: Managers do not solve problems: they manage messes’ (p. 16). Each situation of practice is distinct, which means it is not amenable to general principles, and therefore to a Technical Rational approach of habitually used solutions and generalizations.

Situations of practice—perceiving what is messy Schon’s definition makes a subtle but fundamental point. The situation of practice is, according to him, a function of a way of seeing what is happening; it is not in the situation per se. So for instance, one teacher may see a student who is confused and respond to the confusion by re-explaining the point; but another teacher, who may know the student’s background with the topic, may ask a question to pinpoint the difficulty. Neither way of acting is ‘good’ or ‘bad’; the difference lies in how each acts in the situation—the first teacher uses the familiar response of further explanation, while second responds heuristically to engage with the situation. Schon is making a phenomenological argument here that the uniqueness is not in the situation itself, but in how the individual approaches, thinks about, and ‘frames’ it, ‘professional practice has at least as much to do with finding the problem as with solving the problem found.’ Locating what is puzzling or problematic in a situation of practice and engaging with it is what Schon calls ‘problem setting’, which to him is a ‘recognized professional activity’ (1983, p. 18). The point about perceiving situations as needing intelligent action (instead of a habitual, Technical Rational, response) is deceptive, however. The fact that perception can operate in any situation does not mean that the goal is to act intelligently in every circumstance. To do so would be physically and mentally impossible, both Dewey and Schon argue, so people choose which situations to examine reflectively. But choosing introduces a second issue. As a phenomenological orientation, one person cannot perceive the situation on behalf of another. This means that problem setting depends on the individual’s awareness in the situation, to which many things can contribute (energy, interest, self-confidence, and so on). Together these points raise the difficulty of implementing reflection in teacher education. To give two examples: while they can identify needed actions in a classroom situation, trainers cannot see them on behalf of the trainee. Or in an in-service setting, a supervisor may choose aspects of a lesson to focus on in a post-observation meeting and the teacher may accept these aspects because of the power relationship. However, the teacher may not actually perceive the aspects as problematic him/herself. Problem setting

Problem setting is using professional knowledge in practice, as Schon describes it, ‘In order to convert a problematic situation to a problem, a practitioner must do a certain kind of work. He [sic] must make sense of an uncertain situation that initially makes no sense.’ He outlines the steps in the process: ‘When we set the problem, we select what we will treat as the “things” of the situation, we set the boundaries of our attention to it, and we impose upon it a

coherence which allows us to say what is wrong and in what directions the situation needs to be changed’ (Schon, 1983, p. 40; italics added). Schon argues that professionals think in different ways depending on the problem they are facing. They can see a situation as a problem, which then connects it to a solution, or they can see the situation as a problematic, which opens it to possible avenues of action. In other words, that the situation shapes—and indeed drives—the thinking as a problem or as problematic, rather than the reverse. Professional thinking is not simply applying what is known to the problem at hand; it involves determining the parameters of the situation, what is and is not problematic. The problem and the problematic

In distinguishing between perceiving a situation as a problem and as problematic, Schon offers a different way of characterizing how people think and use what they know in situations. The noun ‘problem’ represents a fixed version of a more fluid situation; that reification allows for—and supports—the Technical Rational approach of problem solving. The adjective ‘problematic’ describes an orientation to the situation, perceiving that the habitual response does not (or may not) work under the circumstances. The distinction also brings with it different verbs. A situation may be ‘seen or perceived’ as problematic, but it is ‘defined or understood’ as a problem. Both terms describe the person in the situation, but with different emphases. Calling a situation a ‘problem’ focuses on the situation itself and potential ways to address it, whereas calling it ‘problematic’ allows for how the person thinks about the situation. This distinction led Schon to argue that the main work of the professional lies in reframing the situation from problem to problematic, which he calls ‘construct[ing] a new way of setting the problem.’ Problem setting is triggered by curiosity, by the professional’s perceptions of certain attributes of the situation, which Schon identifies as ‘complexity, uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict’ (p. 18). In other words, there is in the situation something that the person feels does not fit or feel right, that is working differently (better or worse) than expected. In the classroom seating example, the intelligent action for the student of finding a new seat might be triggered by seeing the usual seat is taken, or by wanting a change of scene, or choosing to sit with someone different. The point being that these triggering circumstances may be small, even trivial, but more often they arise, as Schon notes, from more serious value conflicts.

‘Action-present’—making a difference in the situation Schon argues that the second key aspect of reflecting on a situation is the time frame. He calls this time frame, ‘action-present’, which he defines as ‘the zone of time in which action can still make a difference to the situation’ (p. 62). Action-present is a period of time as perceived by the individual, in which she sees actions as potentially making a difference in reaching a desired outcome. The idea has several interesting facets. Schon uses a hyphenated term, compounding the action with when it happens to underscore current time and suggest a contrast with past or future actions. The temporal quality is open-ended, however, which is

key. The ‘present’ in ‘action-present’ is bounded by the person’s perception of the actions potential to influence the situation. This definition again shows Schon’s phenomenological orientation—that time is also a perception that shapes how the person thinks about and uses knowledge as a basis for acting (which, we have to remember, can also include the action of not doing anything). Temporally bounding the situation of practice in this way (by the individual’s perception that the action may affect it) seems to make action-present a circular idea, but this is where its conceptual power lies. For Schon, the professional defines the situation of practice by perceiving in it some ‘uncertainty, disorder, and indeterminacy’ and then acts based on the perceived temporal horizon of action-present, during which time she believes she can affect the situation. This process of reflecting—of thinking and using knowledge in the situation— involves, at its most basic, finding meaning in a set of circumstances that appear confusing. As Schon puts it of ‘making sense of an uncertain situation that initially makes no sense.’

The two forms of reflection, in and on action These two ideas of ‘situation of practice’ and ‘action-present’ are key to how Schon theorizes the process of reflection, but they are generally overlooked in favor of his use of the prepositions ‘in’ and ‘on’ action. Because a ‘situation of practice’ and its ‘action-present’ horizon are in the mind of the individual, they remain essentially inaccessible. They have to be recognized, defined, and articulated by the individual. In contrast, reflection in and on action seem easier to get at and to work with publicly, in the context of teacher education, for example. Schon describes reflection-in-action as happening while the action is happening, which he contrasts with reflection-on-action, which takes place after the action is seen as complete. Of the two forms of thinking, reflection-in-action is the most often misrepresented because it is inaccessible. It happens as Schon describes it, ‘When [the practitioner] finds himself [sic] stuck in a problematic situation which he cannot readily convert to a manageable problem, he may construct a new way of setting the problem’ (p. 63). The fluidity and evanescence of the process makes it difficult to capture or manipulate, which is why its ex post facto counterpart, reflection-on-action, is usually the focus. As Schon describes reflection-on-action: Practitioners do reflect on their knowing-in-practice. Sometimes, in the relative tranquility of a postmortem, they think back on a project they have undertaken, or a situation they have lived through, and they explore the understandings they have brought to their handling of the case. (Schon, 1983, p. 61) There can be diverse reasons for doing so; he adds. ‘They may do this in a mood of idle speculation, or in a deliberate effort to prepare themselves for future cases’ (ibid.). The irony is that this process of looking retrospectively has the effect of converting acting into action, and thinking while acting into thoughts about actions. It seems to accomplish exactly the reification of thinking that Schon meant to avoid. Reflection-on-action has been the more widely emphasized in education and in language

teaching. This idea of rethinking a course of action and its effects, and learning from experience as Dewey (1933) described it, has an intuitive logic that has made it widespread in teacher education. There are also implementional reasons for this attention to reflection on action and the ‘relative tranquility of a postmortem’ to use Schon’s phrase. These reasons (taken up in later in the chapter) have to do with the nature of the relationship between thinking and using language about an event. But to Schon, the whole in/on-action distinction seemed much less rigid than it is often made out to be: ‘When a practitioner reflects in and on his practice, the possible objects of his reflection are as varied as the kinds of phenomena before him and the systems of knowing-in-action he brings to them’ (p. 62).

Linda and Beth: two incidents of teaching in two early-childhood classrooms Schon’s ideas of situations of practice and action-present are key ways of understanding how the notion of reflection operates. The two ideas help to locate the aspects of the situation that shape how thinking and using knowledge work in context. Schachter (2014) offers two examples of what this looks like as teachers talk about their work. These examples come from her study of the ways in which early childhood teachers use ‘pedagogical reasoning’ (discussed in Chapter 9) as they are teaching. To gather data in reasoning, Schachter interviewed teachers using a stimulated recall protocol, which is itself a process of reflection-on-action. In the procedure, the teachers were videotaped during an agreed-upon episode of teaching. They then reviewed the tape with the researcher, Schachter, and talked about what they were thinking at the time (see Schachter & Freeman, 2015). The following examples from Schachter’s study illustrate how teachers frame situations of practice and define action-present as they reflect on-action using the stimulated recall technique.

Linda—the difference between ‘sister’ and ‘daughter’ In the first incident, Schachter had filmed ‘Linda’, working with children in a literacy activity. Shortly afterwards, they reviewed the video and Linda commented on what she was doing. CONTEXT:

LINDA:

Linda is asking the children to tell her words that start with the letter ‘D’. Some of the children are having a difficult time thinking of words. Linda is giving clues to one boy, ‘Your sister, she is your mom and dad’s … what …? Not a son but a …’ Then Cameron helps out and answers ‘daughter’. A third child says, ‘I thought it was a sister.’ ‘… I said, “It’s Mom and Dad’s [leaves a blank space]” because they didn’t know that word. That was a hard concept for them. But I try to explain it and engage them so that they can distinguish between the different words and thoughts and classifying them. Because I’m a teacher.’ (Schachter, 2014, p. 123)

Linda explains the confusion she saw happening in the situation as these three-year olds were prompted to come up with ‘daughter’ as a word beginning with ‘D’. She frames the problematic aspect between ‘sister’ and ‘daughter’ as ‘distinguish[ing] between the different words and thoughts and classifying them’, and she acts immediately to remedy it. Among the many explanations she might give for focusing on the difference, Linda mentions her role ‘as a

teacher’. As complex as the specifics of her reasoning may be, Linda’s explanation goes to a social fact essential to her thinking, that the teacher’s work is to make sure children grasp categorical meanings of words.

Beth—rewriting the number ‘2’ The second incident illustrates how a small, seemingly inconsequential classroom move— rewriting something from the board—is framed as potentially problematic. Schachter explains she was interviewing ‘Beth’ about what had happened during ‘circle time’, an early literacy activity during which the children take turns telling stories and anecdotes while sitting in a circle. Beth stops the video to explain why she had taken the time to erase the number ‘2’, which she had written on the board. Schachter quotes directly from Beth’s explanation: I’ve got to remember the right way to make a 2 because the 2’s have changed, … there’s no little loop or anything … I need to have everything the correct way on the board. Because it’s print and … the kids take in so much on a secondary level they don’t know they’re learning and if they see something and it’s done the wrong way on the board they’re just going to internalize it. Whether it sticks or not nobody’s really going to know for a while. But I just like it to be the right way so I try not to make a big deal about it and just … erase and write over it and do it that way. It’s just a thing that to me is important. (Schachter, 2014, p. 47) The situation of practice revolves around this tension in how Beth thinks about this small act of rewriting the 2. Her reasoning starts from the premise that ‘if [the kids] see something … done the wrong way on the board, they’re just going to internalize it.’ But then she immediately concedes that only time will tell, ‘whether it [the correct form] sticks or not nobody’s really going to know for a while’. Her action-present in this instance is open-ended. While she erases the 2 immediately, she recognizes that it is hard to know if or when the action will matter to the children’s learning. In this exchange, Beth confesses both the temporariness and the temporality of this small action in her teaching, when she sums the situation up as ‘just a thing that to me is important.’ Situation of practice

Action-present

Linda ‘distinguish[ing] between [between sister and daughter] the different words and thoughts and classifying them’.

‘I said “It’s Mom and Dad’s … [leaves a blank space] because they didn’t know that word [and] because I’m a teacher.”‘

Beth

‘I’ve got to remember the ‘Whether it sticks or not nobody’s really going to know for a right way to make a 2 while. But I just like it to be the right way … It’s just a thing that because the 2s have to me is important.’ changed [and … I need to have everything the correct way on the board].

Table 11.1 Linda and Beth: Situations of practice and action-present in their own words Getting at thinking and knowledge

In some ways these two teaching episodes are not that different from one another. Linda and Beth are each teaching little children; the lessons both focus on early first-language literacy practices; and the incidents themselves seem very minor—clarifying the difference in meaning between two similar words or erasing and rewriting a number so it is easily read. However, when what each teacher sees as problematic in the incident is unpacked, thinking is revealed that might go unnoticed. Suddenly there are thoughts underlying actions that seem trivial, there are particular reasons, all of which can become accessible to others, in theory at least. This dynamic of reflection-on-action—that it can potentially make public a whole world of thinking and using knowledge that would otherwise be hidden from the outsider’s eye—helps to explain its widespread popularity in teacher education. Conceptually it makes sense that part of a ‘professional’s thinking in action’ (to use Schon’s title) involves thinking about—reflecting on—those actions. While reflection-on-action is essentially done individually, it is often shared through using language to talk or write about what has happened. This sharing makes it public, with the assumption that the private reflections and the public talk or writing about them are one and the same.

Languaging reflection-on-action Language offers a way into reflection-on-action in the public realm, as the accounts given by Linda and Beth illustrate. As users of professional knowledge, Linda and Beth share a common aim—to support their children’s learning—and each works with that aim in mind. The incidents might have gone unremarked, but for Schachter’s involvement as a researcher. Through the use of the stimulated recall procedure, we gain access to how the teachers explain what they do and thus their private thinking becomes public. Language is the means. As they watch the videos and talk about what they see, Schachter plays the role of interlocutor as each teacher reflects on what happened. This private-into-public process, which is often connected to reflection-on-action, creates a sort of voyeuristic access, as Schachter remarks about the incident with the misshapen 2, ‘An observer of this moment of practice would not be able to see the complex process of pedagogical reasoning informing this teacher’s decision to erase the number and rewrite it. She is using various strands of information to reason about this moment of practice’ (p. 47).

Implementing reflection Reflecting, as a process of thinking and using knowledge in situations, became an established practice in second language teacher education for reasons having to do with the nature of the relationship between thinking and languaging an event. Since live-action data collection measures are largely impractical in the context of a highly interactive, social activity like teaching, the accounts generated by the reflective process are ‘on’, rather than ‘in’, action. The ‘relative tranquility of a postmortem’ of reflection-on-action, as Schon called it, lends itself directly to talking and writing. When people use language about an activity they are

involved in, they tend to narrate it, which creates a separation between the lived present and a languaged past. In the two excerpts from Schachter’s study, Linda and Beth attach language to the specifics of the incident as they narrate what they did. Languaging the incidents gives reasoning a certain ‘postmortem’ quality that makes reflection-on-action amenable to designing activities in teacher education, and to researching how they work.

Reflection in second language teacher education As the entree to the space between habitual and intelligent action, reflection-on-action has provided the foundation and the rationale for inquiry-oriented strategies in second language teacher education. As Richards and Lockhart (1994) asserted, ‘Critical reflection examining teaching experiences is a basis for evaluation and decision-making and as a source for change’ (p. 4). Wallace argued that reflection defines being professional: It is (or should be) normal for professionals to reflect on their professional performance, particularly when it goes especially well or especially badly. They will probably ask themselves what went wrong or why it went so well. They will probably want to think about what to avoid in the future, what to repeat, and so on. (Wallace, 1991, p. 13) Reflection in teacher education, as Wallace’s statement suggests, has usually been translated into questioning classroom actions with an eye to improvement—’what to avoid in the future’—or perhaps understanding—’why it went so well’. In pre-service contexts, the goal has been to develop the orientation and interest among new teachers to do this type of thinking as they begin their careers. In in-service professional development, the intent of reflective activity is generally to revive and support engagement in classroom teaching through reestablishing Dewey’s focus on ‘what the minds of the pupils are doing with the subject matter.’ Both pre- and in-service approaches to reflection usually center on the concept of inquiry as a starting point for the process. Inquiry

Inquiry-oriented teacher education strategies range from the primarily individual (for example, Farrell, 2013) to collaborative work among peers (for example, Farrell, 2004; Richards & Lockhart, 1994). Across this spectrum, however, Schon’s framing of inquiry has been lost or shortchanged. The reflective process, Schon argued, is triggered by problemposing, which he defines as a gap or lack of alignment between how the practitioner is seeing the situation and the usual actions taken to deal with it. But in teacher education activities, this dissonance in perception can often be reduced to problem-solving; to prompting the teacher to respond to some discomfort over what is not working in the classroom and to fix it rather than to figure out what is happening.

Reflection-as-repair Second language teacher education builds this version of reflection-as-repair into many designs: in clinical teaching arrangements like peer and practice teaching, in planning and

evaluating lessons, in portfolio assessments of practice, and so on. These activities make the ex post facto analyses of reflection-on-action part of learning to be a professional. There is a premise that, as a form of teacher education pedagogy, learning to think reflectively professionalizes teaching by aligning thought processes with those in other lines of work (such as clinical psychologists and architects in Schon’s (1983) examples). In this push to teach reflection, with the accompanying assumption that it will professionalize teachers’ thinking, the underlying mechanics of the process are often lost, which is the point of this close reading and analysis.

Reflection in situations of practice and action-present The emphasis on post-mortem reflection is well established in second language teacher education from an implementational standpoint. That said, however, it is worth reexamining the generally accepted definition of reflection-as-repair, as the process of problem-solving aimed at improvement. This definition can overshadow the reflective process with a Technical Rational expectation that improvements are solutions. Expert teaching then becomes in effect recognizing and solving problems drawn from this repertoire of experience. Instead of the companion ideas of problem and solution, we can go back to the process of reflecting as one of perceiving, as argued earlier. Recognizing that the perception defines the situation, and that ephemeral designation triggers ideas about what to do, gives the process a different focus. Consider two ways of framing a situation. The teacher might observe the students were ‘noisy’ or ‘bored’ by what was happening in the activity. This orientation could point to possible actions that would make the students ‘quieter’ (‘less noisy’) or ‘engaged’ (‘not bored’), thus possibly solving the problem. Couched differently though, as a perception that the students seemed ‘noisy’ or ‘bored’, can reorient the teacher towards if and why this might be happening, and it leaves what to do about the situation as a separate matter (at least for now).

Reflection as perceiving Focusing on reflection as perceiving introduces questions of where to look, which reintroduces the overlooked ideas of ‘situation of practice’ and ‘action-present’ discussed earlier. If reflecting is understood as thinking and using knowledge in situations, as I have said, then the central question becomes how ‘situation’ is defined in space (as a ‘situation of practice’) and in time (as ‘action-present’). In terms of space, Schon outlines three parts of the situation: the person’s role in it [A], which is related to how he or she is perceiving what is problematic [B], and the values [C—E] that seem to be dissonant. These values include, according to Schon, the norms [C] for what ‘usually happens’, ideas about why it may be happening [D], and affective reactions [E]. Together these elements can reframe the situation of practice as well as action-present as the time horizon for taking action. As Schon summarizes, ‘Conscious of the dilemma, [the practitioner] may attribute it to the way he [sic] has set his problem, or even the way he has framed his role. He may then find a way of integrating, or choosing among, the values at stake in the situation’ (p. 63).

Figure 11.1 Elements of a situation of practice that shape the action-present

An example from peer teaching: ‘You mean in the lesson? Or next time?’ To put these terms in a context, let us suppose a trainee is ‘teaching’ a practice lesson. The norms [C] associated with role [A] of teacher assume the trainee is in charge of what happens in the lesson [D], and there are feelings associated with what it means to do so ‘effectively’ [E]. How the trainee has played the role of teacher ‘sets the problem’ [B] and becomes the focus of the feedback discussion as the group ‘reflects on’ how the lesson went. Imagine the following exchange:

‘At the beginning,’ one trainee might comment to the peer who taught, ‘you seemed really nervous [feelings], at least from the way you were talking … But then you got into it and looked more like a teacher [norms] when you were assigning the groups [strategies], and I think that part went really well.’ ‘What does “really well” mean in this context?’, the trainer might ask, reframing the situation of practice. ‘Well, the students were working well in their groups’ [norms], another trainee might say. ‘Except for the threesome in the corner; they were off task [problem setting] … looking at their mobile phones’. ‘What could you have done to get them back into the activity?’, the trainer might say opening up the action-present. ‘You mean in this lesson or next time?’, asks the trainee teacher looking for a definition of action-present. This type of feedback session, which seems fairly typical of reflective activities in second language teacher education, asks the trainees to reflect-on-action by framing problems in the practice teaching situation, the solutions to which are meant to apply beyond the specific situation. This ambiguity in the time horizon—caught in the trainee’s query, ‘You mean in this lesson or next time?’—removes the individual’s ability to act from the idea of action-present. The comment that ‘the threesome in the corner were off task’ is taken as a fact—not a perception—of the situation, which makes it a ‘problem’. Then, when it is reframed by the trainer as hypothetical with the question, ‘What could you have done to get them back into the activity?’, the trainee has to imagine a course of action that might apply sometime in the future. Languaging experience

The device of separating the present and future is endemic in reflective teacher education activities, with at least two potential consequences. It makes reflecting a post hoc form of thinking and it removes agency—the teacher’s potential to act—from the immediate equation. In designing activities to use or ‘stimulate’ reflection, teacher educators will usually situate the work in the present while asking trainees to comment on past actions. Language provides, as we have said, the mechanism for this repositioning. Farrell (2013) notes this temporal gap as he outlines how to use writing as a reflective activity for teachers: ‘When writing, a person must pause for a short time … in order to organize thoughts somewhat before putting them on paper … This pausing is the first step in reflective writing because it is the launching pad for what is to follow’ (p. 57; original italics). The pause punctuates what is happening in the immediate present to provide the space to put it into words. In the peer teaching example, the pause comes when the lesson ends and the talk of the feedback session starts. These acts of languaging have the effect of converting a messy present into what can sound like a more ordered, reasoned past. Audience

Farrell goes on to contrast the ‘pausing’ that occurs in writing with what he calls the ‘spontaneous nature of speaking’. This way of languaging experience can seem more

immediate and closer to the messiness of what is happening in the lesson. He explains, ‘When people talk, most just say what is on their mind within reason and with a slight bit of prior thought … Speaking is typically relatively instantaneous and interactive with another person or persons …’ (p. 57). Any time we use language, we assume an audience to whom what we say or write will make sense. In writing, that audience might only be the teacher writer herself or it could include others, but in speaking the audience is obvious: They are the others who are present. In the peer teaching example, the audience is the group; they are the people who are trying to make sense of what happened in the lesson, and the trainer’s voice is privileged by his position. Farrell concludes by contrasting these two forms of languaging and underscoring the implicit formula in which reflection is equated with reflection-on-action: ‘The time needed to write is a natural check on these tendencies of spontaneous speech. The act of writing (as reflective practice) has a built-in reflective mechanism that makes it an ideal tool for helping teachers pause and thus engage in systematic reflections of the practice’ (p. 57).

Inner and outer worlds Reflection, as it is practiced in teacher education activities, is a process of reframing the outer classroom world using inner resources of meaning and experience. This dynamic of how the inner impacts the outer work is driven by perception, which can trigger different ways of thinking about the situation—as ‘a problem’ or as ‘problematic’. As Figure 11.2 suggests, how the situation is perceived can lead to what Dewey called ‘habitual’ or ‘intelligent’ actions in response. When this dynamic between inner and outer worlds is captured in language through formalized teacher education reflective activities, it gets frozen in time, and separated from the immediacy of the current situation.

Figure 11.2 Reflection: The dynamic between inner and outer worlds

The chapter argument revisited Arguments for reflection in teaching and teacher education depend on distinguishing kinds of thinking. Routine or habitual thinking reacts to situations using existing knowledge to frame and make meaning of what is happening; these are Technical Rational responses that make the situation fit existing explanations and actions to address the problem. In contrast, reflective or intelligent thinking draws on sources of knowledge beyond the immediate first reaction. This form of thinking allows the actor to see the situation of practice as inconclusive and messy, thus opening up a range of possible actions. The argument is that this second type of thinking suits classroom teaching. Using knowledge in teaching situations is more complex and messier than simply applying it. Since any classroom situation has aspects that are unique, it follows that the knowledge base of teaching needs to include more than disciplinary concepts and accumulated wisdom of practice as sources of Technical Rational solutions to teaching problems. Reflection is meant to counteract this view. Reflective activity in teacher education is generally based on two premises. First, improvement in teaching comes when teachers can turn actions that are automatic and routine into ones that are considered. Second, this shift from automatic to considered actions supports a more professionalized view of teaching. To paraphrase Schon’s (1983) title, when teachers ‘think in action’ in this way, they are acting as ‘professionals’.

PART FOUR

A design theory (Parts one and two)

Introduction to Part Four The two chapters in this final part of the book introduce a design theory for teacher education. As a ‘theory’, the statement outlines a social learning process, which is based on the notion of social facts that circulate through two forms of community—of activity and of explanation. The central premise is a socio-cultural one: (discussed in Chapter 6) that as teachers use the social facts of their professional community, they are ‘renaming’ their experiences, which allows then to ‘reconstruct’ what they are doing in practice. The renaming involves using the social facts of the community in place of their usual way of talking and thinking. The reconstruction can be as subtle as understanding something in a different way, or as major as doing something differently. Renaming is the semiotic version of reconstructing; it addresses the hidden side of teaching, while reconstructing alters the public side. The statement can also serve as a blueprint for organizing, evaluating, and studying what happens in pre- and in-service teacher education, which is what makes it a ‘design’ theory. While it is derived from my work as a second language teacher educator, the fundamentals are applicable to teacher education or other forms of professional preparation and learning. There are seeds of this design theory, starting in Chapter 1, where the core idea of social facts is first introduced. In both Parts Two and Three, the use of social facts as a form of professional explanation is mentioned, particularly in the context of evolving understanding of thinking (Chapter 7) and knowing (Chapter 9). The full theory is laid out here, at the end of the book, to help unify these preceding arguments and to provide a bridge to the use of the ideas.

How Part Four is organized The last two chapters describe the two parts of the theory. Chapter 12 lays out the elements— social facts and communities—and Chapter 13 discusses how these elements work together in learning and change. Readers may find the summary figures (Figure 12.1 and Figure 13.1) helpful as maps of the overall argument, as well as the diagrammatic representations in Figure 13.2 and Figure 13.3. The three appendices outline uses of the theory in designing language teacher education at the level of activities (Appendix A) and programs (Appendix B), as well as thoughts about how the theory explains teacher education assessment practices (Appendix C). The discussion is in generic terms (rather than in specific case studies) in order to hopefully broaden its potential applicability and usefulness.

12

A design theory—Part one: social facts and communities Design problems are usually among the most complex and ill-structured kinds of problems … encountered in practice … because they have ambiguous specification of goals, no determined solution path, and need to integrate multiple knowledge domains. (Jonassen, 2000, p. 80)

The chapter argument This chapter resumes the argument, begun in Chapter One, that second language teacher education has been largely defined by prescriptive ideas about what the content should be and how it should be taught. An alternative, based on a social practice theory (discussed in Chapter 6), is proposed as a design theory that supports organizing as well as studying teacher education activities and programs. The theory starts from social facts and how these developed and circulate among participants to establish communities.

The same things done differently The premise There is a premise threaded through previous chapters about how second language teacher education relates to teacher education in other subject areas. It is captured in the phrase, ‘the same things done differently’. There are ways in which educating second language teachers is similar to educating teachers in other content areas—the ‘same things’ part of the premise. But second language teacher education is not simply a version of teacher education generally— and that is the ‘done differently’ part. While it borrows and uses terms, concepts, and even research findings from general teacher education, the ways in which these are used differs in second language teacher education. These differences stem from language; unlike other content areas, in second language teacher education the content to be taught (language) is also the means of teaching it and further, it is also the means by which people learn to teach it through teacher education. Second language teachers study language as content through language as process. This fundamental isomorphism, which was introduced in Chapter One and diagramed in Figure 1.4, creates a unique set of circumstances for language teacher learning as well as a distinctive set of conditions in which to design language teacher education, and through which to carry out its activities. This chapter shifts the conversation to how to create and manage second language teacher education opportunities, given this basic isomorphism. It is about how to do ‘the same things’ (the practices of teacher education) ‘differently.’ But the proposal outlined here applies equally to educating second language teachers as well as to educating teachers in other content areas or circumstances. The same things done in the same ways

There is an intricate syllogistic argument underlying this last point, however. To say that language is like any school subject matter, defines second language teacher education as a version of teacher education in one particular content area. In this view, language teachers are prepared to teach languages just as science teachers are prepared to teach science. But language doesn’t fit this equation since it is both the content and how that content is taught, as discussed earlier. Nevertheless, language is often taken as just a content area based on disciplinary views of content learning and teaching discussed in Chapter 4. This approach, which is common to most teacher preparation in tertiary education institutions, makes second

language teacher education essentially ‘the same things done in the same ways.’ Different things done differently

The inverse position—that language works differently from other subject matters—is also problematic, however. To say that second language teacher education is a unique form of teacher education underscores the nature of language as content and how that content circumscribes and redefines every aspect of educating second language teachers. This position has underwritten, however tacitly, the development and expansion of short-term alternative route training discussed in Chapter 5 and Chapter 10. The spread of English globally (for example, Canagarajah, 2013; Graddol, 1997; Kumaravadivelu, 2012) has supported these intensive training designs (as discussed in Chapter 10), which are more established and widespread in English language teaching than other subject matters. Basically, the designs argue that ‘different things’ (language teaching) can be ‘done differently.’

The shared assumption of the primacy of content These two positions—the ‘same things done in the same ways’ and ‘different things done in different ways’—share a common assumption about the primacy of content: that what the teacher is to teach must be the centerpiece of teacher education. Both positions underscore the view that learning to teach involves mastering content and how to teach it, or knowing content in its teachable form, although they arrive at different conclusions about how to organize that professional learning. Neither position is based in an explicit theorization about how teachers actually learn to teach the content in the context of formal preparation. Rather, they adhere to the general approach to learning embedded in the social environment: knowledgetransmission, which still predominates in tertiary settings, as discussed in Chapter 4, or situated learning, which supports the design of intensive, alternative route training, as discussed in Chapter 5. There is a third position that offers a synthesis in this ‘same-same’ or ‘different-different’ dialectic. It takes what is ‘different’ about educating second language teachers as a basis for understanding how people learn to teach under any circumstance. A proposal like this, while it needs to be theoretically grounded, needs to elucidate the successes and problems in various ways of educating teachers. In other words, it needs to help us understand what works and what doesn’t work, and to suggest why in either case. To do these things, the proposal should meet several conditions: it needs to be conceptually robust, with clear antecedents to general theories of learning and it should address the unique specifics of second language teacher education. Most importantly it needs to translate easily and directly into the practices of teacher education, which accomplishes two things—it allows a better understanding of what is believed to work (or not to work) in teacher education, and it supports the design of new activities and programs.

A teacher education design theory (Part one) These three conditions define what a ‘design theory’ does; it is a theory that both explains what is happening and helps develop new ways of doing things. As a theory, it describes how teacher education happens and represents those processes for analysis. The design aspect emphasizes that the theory can be used proactively to plan and evaluate teacher education practices. A design theory is not intended prescriptively; the aim here is not to describe good language teaching or good language teacher education. Rather it is meant to describe and represent the elements that go into teacher education. This design theory of teacher education is anchored in second language teacher education as the first point of reference:

Part one Teacher education provides tools and opportunities to use them, which allow participants to rename their experiences and thus to (re)construct what they do (their practices) as users of language who also are teaching it. The tools are the social facts of the teacher education environment. People participate in this environment on two levels simultaneously: They do certain things (activities) and then come to think in certain ways about what they do. These ways of doing and of thinking constitute communities.

Part two To join, participate, and to be taken as a member of a new group on these two levels, individuals articulate what they do (their experiences) in terms that make sense to the group by using their social facts. Over time, using these social facts becomes second nature to explain what they do. In this way, an individual is part of the group when these articulations are no longer remarked on; the social facts blend in and are accepted as explanations by the group. The theory is meant as a descriptive representation of the elements that can create teacherlearning opportunities. To my way of thinking, a design theory captures what is going on, in this case as people are learning to teach. It should represent the processes that are at work and how those processes are orchestrated, and propose elements and relationships between them that can describe current practices as well as ones that might be developed. The description is broken into two parts. The first is, in a sense, the ‘theory’ dimension of the design theory, and the second represents its use in ‘design’. Part one (see Figure 12.1), which is the topic of this chapter, addresses how groups come about as communities by using particular social facts. The discussion continues in the next chapter, with Part two (see Figure 13.1), which elaborates how people enter into and become fully part of communities through how they use social facts. Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 together unpack the key elements of the design theory. The aim is to connect the elements to previous arguments and to explain them in terms that can be operationalized.

Figure 12.1 A teacher education design theory: Part one (annotated)

The annotations in Figure 12.1 and Figure 13.1, refer to the sections that follow in which

that element is developed.

Tools and opportunities [A] The design theory defines the central function of teacher education as providing participants with tools and opportunities to use them. Both the ideas of tools, and opportunities for use come from social practice theory discussed in Chapter 6. The tools become meaningful as they are used, so when trainees refer to the ‘PPP’, they are using it as tool to divide the temporal flow of the lesson. As a social fact, the acronym ‘PPP’ packages this temporal organization in one single label that is shared and recognized by other members of the community. The opportunities to use this particular tool might come in planning the lesson or discussing it afterwards; interestingly, they will not occur during the lesson itself unless a trainee is addressing other teachers. In other words, this particular tool is one that teachers use about teaching. But during the ‘practice’ phase of the lesson, the trainee may decide to ‘use group work’, and there would be opportunities for him or her to use this tool in teaching, perhaps telling the students, ‘We’re going to do group work’, as well as about the lesson, as in ‘I thought the group work went really well.’) This view of tools and opportunities differs markedly from the broadly held view that the goal of teacher education is to provide particular knowledge and pedagogical skills, and to develop teacherly dispositions. This conventional goal, which is shared equally by general teacher preparation at the tertiary level and in alternative route programs, focuses designs on disciplinary knowledge as the basis of teaching content (discussed in Chapter 4), which combines with practice-based settings like internships and practice teaching arrangements to develop pedagogical skills (discussed in Chapter 5).

Social facts [B] Recognition and use In making the goal of teacher education to provide tools, the design theory takes a slightly different tack. A tool has two dimensions, its recognition as a tool and its use in that way, which are essentially two sides of the same coin. In using a particular tool, the individual invokes recognition of the activity of which the tool is a part; that recognition entails a group or community. Think about children playing soccer with a soccer ball. The tool is the soccer ball and how it is used creates an activity that is recognizable as a soccer game. The children could be playing the game with a ball they made (out of plastic shopping bags, perhaps) and if they follow the rules of the game (using their feet to kick and pass the ball, not using their hands to touch it, for example), the activity would likely be recognizable as a soccer game. A tool carries with it the normative ways of being used. These normative ways of use are held by the groups who use the tool (or who aspire to use it), which connects to the element of ‘communities’ [D] in the design theory. Unlike the soccer ball, however, the tools used in educating teachers are mostly symbolic ones. These tools are the social facts that the teacher education community recognizes. The

term ‘social fact’ calls attention to ‘facts’ as forms of social agreement, which can seem to contradict the notion of facts as ‘objective’ and incontrovertible. The difference is a non-issue though. Whether one holds facts as objective truths about the world or as socially agreedupon views of that world, the facts need to be accepted in order to circulate and be used. Accepting facts is not the same as agreeing with them as true or explanatory. Actually, arguing about or disagreeing with a particular fact or group of facts simply underscores the social nature of facts. Social facts and belonging

As discourse terms, social facts demarcate those who know and who do not know what they mean. Knowing how to use social facts appropriately defines a person as part of that community; neologisms and acronymic use accelerate this social process. This dynamic of belonging creates an identity as an insider within that community. The terms prescribe ways of seeing and being in the world. Continuing with the ‘PPP’ example, this social fact can be used to divide lesson time into three parts by designating different purposes. Using PPP as a social fact, new teachers can organize time into activity, know the ostensible purpose of each segment of the lesson, and perhaps learn to assess what they do in terms of that purpose. These teachers can talk and write about what they do, using these distinctions. Social facts simultaneously circumscribe ways of seeing and being in the world. A new teacher using the social fact of ‘PPP’ would have a way to distinguish between sitting and chatting with students and teaching a lesson. Parts of the lesson can be associated with the different, incremental purposes of presenting, practicing, and producing the target language. It also means that spending time doing other things falls outside these three categories. By ascribing value to certain forms of perception and behavior, social facts define worlds of thought and action and thus they function as tools within socio-professional activity. Social facts over time

Social facts are not static. Like any tools, they are influenced by where, when, how, and even with whom they are used. A prime example are the shifting terms used as social facts in the United States to refer to students who come to school speaking a home language other than English. There are at least three terms, without a full exegesis, that have been used over the last 50 years: ‘English as a Second Language student’; ‘Limited English Proficient student’; and ‘English Language Learner’. Each term links the individual’s control over English with the fact that he or she is a student in school, while not making explicit that English is the medium of instruction. As social facts, the various terms arguably serve the same purpose of differentiating among the school-aged population in relation to the language of instruction, English. Each term does so in distinct ways that emphasize and proscribe different features of the situation. ‘English as a Second Language student’ says that the student has another ‘first’ language. ‘Limited English Proficient student’ changes the basis of definition to a deficit view, by implying that students who are not ‘limited’ in their English must all otherwise be proficient. This turns control over, and proficiency in, English into a vehicle for intelligence with content.

‘English Language Learner’ suggests similarly that students who are not referred to in this way must already know, and therefore not be learning, English. By this logic, a student in Grade 1 and one in Grade 10 must already know the English they need for their respective studies and not have somehow learned it along the way. The idiosyncratic shortcomings of each term, while secondary, illustrate two aspects of the creation of social facts. First, social facts are driven by a discerned need—in this instance, for a term to describe the student in terms of the language of instruction. This need arose in United States public education in part through the application of civil rights law to schooling in the 1960s. The rapid acronymization of each term—as ‘ESL student’, ‘LEP student’, and ‘ELL’—is further evidence of both the need and its use. Second, the social facts change although the underlying phenomenon remains. As the terms re-label the situation, the social facts shift, and this can often only be seen in retrospect. For example, a new term, ‘emergent bilingual’ is now in circulation and will perhaps replace ‘ELL’. Interestingly this new version of the social fact drops reference to ‘English’ entirely and makes no reference to schooling or language of instruction. It focuses instead on psychologizing the individual’s core abilities and identity, which further rejects the deficits implied in the terms ‘LEP’ and even ‘ELL’.

Local and professional languages [C] Social facts, like the terms above, generally come from social and political discourses, but there are clearly other sources as well. The socio-cultural setting plays a central role in creating a local vernacular. As tools, social facts function in two spheres: one, which could be called professional language, and the other, local language. The former draws its facts from the academic disciplines and professional practices of the community, like the various terms for English learners in schools discussed above; the latter generates meaning out of local experience, that is bounded by specific time and place (actual or virtual). While particular words themselves can and do move between the two forms of language, the referents are anchored in these two distinct realms of discourse. The word, ‘English’, in the example of naming students, obviously functions in both the professional and local languages of English language teaching. When it is part of a label used to determine a student’s academic identity, ‘English’ is a disciplinary-professional social fact. It refers to a constellation of socio-participatory issues that are part of academic oracy and literacy in the language of instruction. An example of this crossover in social facts is the elaboration of English as a Foreign Language, and its acronym ‘EFL’, which has been adapted as an acronym to Mandarin Chinese and ‘CFL’. Changing the language reference from English to Chinese doesn’t fundamentally alter the social fact, but it does import many of the ramifications. For instance, ‘CFL’ teachers are usually assumed to be ‘native speakers’ as ‘EFL’ teachers often were during 1960s and 1970s, when the social fact was coined. Combinations and permutations in use create the fabric of social facts that function as tools in learning to teach. In using disciplinary and professional social facts as tools, new teachers build an identity in the activity of teaching. As in the ‘PPP’ example earlier, they start to sound as though they know what they are doing when they start to talk, write, and sound like language teachers. As

Gee (2008, p. 82), quoted in Chapter 2, put it: ‘Physicists do physics. They talk physics. And when they are being physicists, they see and value the world in a different way than do nonphysicists.’ This identity remains an abstraction until it is localized, however. The social facts, and professional language, do not function detached from a specific context. To put it another way, a language—whether professional or local—only functions if others can understand it. Users of social facts need to make the facts work for them where and when they use them. The process by which social facts make sense in terms of where and how they are used is shorthanded in the term ‘communities’.

Communities [D] Orientation to the lived texture of situated experience The term ‘community’ is widely used in education, but it is usually not unpacked, perhaps because the definition can seem self-evident. Groups loosely referred to as ‘communities’ exist on two levels, the actual and the virtual. Communities can be—and usually are—seen or observed; they are also encountered through what they say and do. Rampton (1998) captures this overlay of visible and semiotic when he refers to the term ‘community’ [as an] orientation to the lived texture of situated experience (p. 12). The term brings up issues that are both definitional and functional, however. The complication is that a group’s purpose or function contributes to—and indeed even circumscribes—how it is defined. So is a group a ‘community’ because of what it is or because of what is does? Communities of practice

In educational writing, most definitions draw from situated learning theory, which describes a community as ‘a set of relations among persons, activity, and world, over time and in relation to other tangential and overlapping communities …’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 98). This statement describes a group as a ‘community of practice.’ But rather than clarifying the definition, the term—’community of practice’—actually compounds ambiguities. Rock (2005, pp. 77–78) points out, ‘Clearly the term [community of practice] involves communities— collectives of people—and practices—frameworks for doing… [A]s a whole, [it] presents a particular combination of practice and community … being defined simultaneously by each and underpinned by social negotiation’ (original italics). These two elements combine to describe a group of people doing something with some sort of interaction. The function of the group is glossed as a ‘practice’: ‘shared “behaviors” or shared “ways of doing things” through talk, convictions, or norms’ (Rock, 2005, p. 78). Working together

As a term, ‘community of practice’ suggests shared reasons for working together; these are referred to by Wenger (1998) as ‘mutual engagement’ and ‘joint enterprise’. There is also a commonly accepted means, or ‘shared repertoire’, to accomplish what they are meant to do. In this instance, the social facts used by a group are its shared repertoire. In the ‘PPP’ example, the group of trainees are jointly ‘engaged’ in the ‘enterprise’ of practice teaching (to use Wenger’s words) using the ‘shared repertoire’ of terms about teaching, such as ‘PPP’.

These three attributes make them—for that period of that activity—a community of practice. This definition introduces two points that are worth emphasizing. First, communities are not permanent entities, as the conventional sense of the word suggests; they exist in and for a particular activity. Second, intention and purpose are key. A group comes about as a community because they have something (the joint enterprise) they want to do together (their mutual engagement). Thus in this analysis, a group of students in a classroom may—but doesn’t necessarily have to—be a community of practice. Simply being together in time and space doesn’t make the group a community; they need to have a reason to work together and they need to be involved in that shared work. Language teaching methodologies are, in this view, ways of attempting to generate mutual engagement and joint enterprise among students as they go about doing particular activities. Doing a substitution drill as a joint enterprise in an ALDM classroom may engage students behaviorally, but not mentally, whereas doing gap-fill, problem-solving activity in a communicative lesson may strengthen their fuller mutual engagement. In the first activity, the shared repertoire is limited to the language patterns they are using; in the second, it expands to include students’ experiences and knowledge related to the gap-fill. Purpose and cross purpose

In social practice theory, as discussed in Chapter 6, purpose is key; it is how meaning comes about in doing the activity. Learning teaching is a complex process. It can involve diverse purposes—the teacher educator has one intention, which the participants may share, collectively or individually, and they may have their own purposes. Simply saying that trainees working together are a community of practice begs the question of how these purposes coincide or diverge. As Little put it: If we theorize about the significance of professional community, or make claims [about them]. we must be able to demonstrate how communities achieve their effects. This will require examining the specific interactions and dynamics by which professional communities constitute a resource for teacher learning and the formation of teaching practice. (Little, 2003, p. 917) To understand how purpose works, we need to look more closely at how social facts get used by participants to gain entry into and become full members of a community that is learning to teach. This is the subject of the next chapter, which continues the design theory.

The chapter argument revisited To my way of thinking, a design theory serves as a descriptive representation of what is going on, in this case as people are learning to teach. It represents the processes at work, how these processes are orchestrated, and it proposes elements and relationships between them that can describe current practices as well as ones that might be developed.

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A design theory—Part two: renaming experience to reconstruct practice Things like words, artifacts, gestures, and routines are useful … because they are recognizable in their relation to a history of mutual engagement [and] also because they can be re-engaged in new situations … All have well-established interpretations, which can be re-utilized to new effect … (Wenger, 1998, p. 83)

The chapter argument This chapter continues the discussion of the design theory for language teacher education by examining how individuals participate in the activity. There are two aspects to participation: joining the group and being a full member. The theory differentiates between two forms of the group, as a community of activity and a community of explanation, which interact in how individuals use social facts to enter and participate in activity. It argues that these two communities have distinct functions, but use one set of facts, which leads to tensions and misalignments in social explanations. These tensions, like the levels of contradictions in socio-cultural theory (detailed in Chapter 6), are productive; they create learning and the possibility of change.

Two parallel communities The first community is defined by its participants and by what it does. The starting point is a community as a group of people; this collectivity is defined in actual, visible terms. There is a second virtual and tacit community that functions in parallel. This other community is defined by what it does together as well as by how it thinks. The first community exists through what it does as collective activity. It is observable, which is community in the generally understood sense of the term: a group of people who see themselves (and are usually recognized by others) as doing or being involved in a recognizable form of activity. A classroom is a community by this definition; it is a group doing activities to support learning of a particular content. While we see what they are doing, we are also ascribing meanings to their activity. An observer, for instance, might refer to the classroom as an ‘advanced-level English class’ or ‘Grade 4 class’ or even ‘the class from hell’, each of which are meanings that are attributed to what is observed. This recognition happens in and through language. Language can be used to describe what the group is doing and to label the activity; it is language about what is happening. This language combines and overlaps with the language that is part of doing the activity, its shared repertoire, which we could call language in the activity. The ‘advanced-level English class’ might be ‘discussing a newspaper article’, for example; this language is about the activity that describes what is going on. A student might say, ‘This article says that …’, and a classmate might disagree, saying, ‘… but it’s a right-wing newspaper so what do you expect?’ This language is being used in doing the activity. The same words are being used in different ways for different purposes.

Narrative 13.1—At program orientation The orientation for this year-long post-graduate program in language teaching was an intensive and inclusive event. There were self-introductions by students and faculty, groupbuilding exercises, and presentations on the program structure and course sequence. At one session on the program philosophy, faculty held a ‘fishbowl’ discussion about two of the central tenets in the program: the relation between language learning and teaching and the notion of autonomous learning. They talked about how two program principles

—’Learning tells you how to teach’ and ‘You are your own best resource’—were manifested in the program’s activities and curriculum. Students listened; some asked questions, but it was a pretty cerebral undertaking. Ten months later at the end of the program, there were the usual celebratory events, including a dinner followed by student and faculty skits. One group of students mimicked the opening of the program, playing each of the faculty and imitating particular gestures, speech mannerisms, and even clothing. The skit’s discussion probed the meaning of the ‘two program principles’—’Learning is a peach’ and ‘You are your own best racehorse.’ Students and faculty laughed uproariously, while family members and friends were confused and somewhat amused. Afterwards, one person asked a student, ‘What was that about the peach?’ In one sense, this is a story about the common language that developed in this learning community. But the terms ‘common language’ and ‘learning community’ disguise the complexity of the process, and particularly how language and community develop in relation to each other.

Language about/language in activity Language is the main resource used in most communities, the principal shared repertoire. Wenger (1998) describes the shared repertoire of a community of practice, it as ‘resources for negotiating meaning’ which include ‘routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions, or concepts that the community has produced or adopted in the course of its existence, and which have become part of its practice’ (pp. 82–83). The epigrammatic statements, Learning tells you how to teach and You are your own best resource, fall in this loose category of what Wenger calls ‘words, tools, [and] ways of doing things’. They functioned as social facts, common, meaningful resources for students and faculty that distilled operating principles about teaching and learning and about how one was supposed to learn to teach in the teacher education program. Although they were about how the program operated, the statements were also part of language in its ongoing activity, starting at orientation and persisting in the shared repertoire of the community to the formal closing event. Social facts circulate primarily through language used by the community. They form the repertoire of meanings for the group. As Wenger says, ‘I call a community’s shared set of resources a repertoire to emphasize both its rehearsed character and its availability for further engagement in practice’ (1998, p. 83; original italics).

A teacher education design theory (Part two) Returning to the design theory, Figure 13.1 builds on Figure 12.1 to summarize how social facts work through local and professional languages to create and sustain communities.

Figure 13.1 A teacher education design theory: Part two (annotated)

Terms of reference Social facts function referentially in two ways. They circulate within a community as its shared repertoire to define what is and can be talked about; as argued in Chapter 12, they ‘prescribe and proscribe’ a world. ‘World’ is used here in the sense of Stevick’s often quoted

(1982, p. 6) ‘world of meaningful action’ (see Arnold & Murphey, 2013). Without language, and without the social facts it expresses, the group literally has no way to refer to what is happening. This language in the community is how the group refers to what it does; it is how the group works together to take actions that are (or can be) ‘meaningful’. Social facts can be referential in another way, however, when the language is about what the community does. This form of reference doesn’t always show up as talking about what the community does; in other words it can be more than linguistic. Language about the community can manifest as humor, as happened with the two epigrammatic social facts that were parodied in the closing skits. Joking, humor, sarcasm, parody all depend on knowing the reference, which is what the social fact provides. These forms of language play anchor the group in and to itself by including those who ‘get the joke’ and understand its reference. They can also leave others outside that world of meaning and action, although not necessarily intentionally.

Two forms of community Just as in the story of the two program principles (Narrative 13.1), social facts are defined by the communities that use them. To capture this process, the design theory differentiates between two forms of community, which helps both to understand how communities work as well as how to design teacher education activities that create and use social facts. The summary of the design theory in Figure 13.1 says that people participate in the teacher education environment on two levels simultaneously: One involves doing certain things; the other coming to think in certain ways about what they do. These two forms of participation are identifiable in different ways and they show up differently in what the community does.

C/a—Community of activity[D] Conventionally, as we have said, communities are defined in terms of what they do. ‘Doing’ here means more than physical activity; in Wenger’s (1998) definition of community of practice, it includes sharing purposes, ways of working, and tools and resources. In the design theory, this form of observable collective work is referred to as a community of activity, which coincides with conventional uses of ‘community of practice’ in much of the educational research literature. A community of activity (C/a) is a group of people who are doing a recognized or recognizable activity—for example, queuing in line, having a classroom discussion, squaredancing, or ordering a meal in a restaurant. The particular form of activity has a past or heritage, which is what makes it recognizable; because we have seen others do the activity in a similar fashion, we can give it a shared meaning, as when we might say, ‘Oh, I wonder what they’re queuing for?’ or ‘We’re not discussing that right now.’ This recognition also allows us to make value judgments about how the activity is being done, as in ‘You dance well; I enjoyed being your partner’, and to disagree about another participant’s judgment, as in ‘That waiter was really slow when he took our order’ …’Really, I thought he was fine … Just very

attentive.’ Visible, recognizable, and sensible

There are three aspects of a community of activity: 1 the actions are visible and 2 recognizable as meaningful 3 and/or sensible to others within that community. ‘Recognizable’ here means that others in the community of activity know what is going on, while ‘sensible’ means they can understand—or make sense of—why the actions are happening. These two aspects—being recognizable and making sense—are closely intertwined, but heuristically it is useful to separate them. For instance, the first time I observed a Japanese classroom in which students stood to answer the teacher’s question, I recognized the action must have something to do with nominated turn-taking in combination with showing respect for the teacher’s role. But given my own cultural background and perspective, it did not strike me as a sensible way to manage participation. In a similar vein, a trainee may recognize an activity, say putting students in groups, from socialization as a student and the apprenticeship of observation, but may not be able to make sense of it from the perspective of being the teacher. These elements of visibility and recognition are in a sense tautological, which is how they are meant to be: the actions are recognized as meaningful by those who know what they are. As Vygotsky (1963) and other socio-culturalists (for example, Wertsch, 1985) have argued in outlining the idea of the zone of proximal development, this tautology is a basic learning mechanism that provides entry into the community. Individuals who are new to the group can exercise their potential for membership by taking part in the activity—by doing what others do—even though they may not yet make sense of it completely. Acting ‘as if’ is actually a common experience in everyday situations such as a new job or social settings, as well as more obvious ones like cross-cultural encounters. Practice teaching designs, for example, are, in essence, performances in which trainees are supposed to act visibly as teachers so that they can make sense of what they are doing.

C/e—Community of explanation[D] There is a parallel form of collective life in the group, how the participants make meaning together, which is where social facts live. This form of the group is a community of explanation, a group of people that share common ways of reasoning about the world, or particular aspects of it. The design theory hinges on the interrelation between this virtual community, which makes and uses meanings, and its visible counterpart, the community of activity. The most recognizable instance of a community of explanation are speakers of a language. The notion of ‘speech community’, developed by Hymes (1974) and Gumpertz (1982), shifted the focus from language to ‘the situations, uses, patterns, and functions of speaking as an activity in its own right’ (Hymes, 1968, p. 101). As Rampton (1998) pointed out, the term

‘postulates the basis of description as a social rather than a linguistic entity’ (p. 3). A community of explanation, as one form of speech community, uses a common language, which shows up in and as social facts just as in the program orientation example (Narrative 13.1). Linguistic analysis can examine and document how language does this work of making social facts for a community of explanation, but the point here is that communities of explanation can be located in and through the language they use about what they do (although it is not the sole means of documenting them).

Alignment between communities of activity and of explanation The two forms of community—one of activity and the other of explanation—are the operational fulcrum of the design theory. As defined here, a community of action does recognizable activities and a community of explanation captures reasoning about those activities that can make them meaningful and perhaps sensible. The relationship between these two forms of community brings up the question of how actions and reasoning connect, or how communities of activity and of explanation align. As Rampton (1998) noted somewhat acerbically, ‘… “community” can’t only be seen as co-participation in locally embedded practice—analysis has to extend to the ways in which “community” serves as a symbol and sign itself’ (p. 14). There does not seem to be a one-to-one relationship between the two forms of community; if there were, everything we do would make sense to us and, more crucially, there would be little space for dynamism or change. If our actions always made sense to us, if we always operated in ways that were always meaningful, reasoned, and reasonable, the system would be solipsistic; everyone would always make sense and nothing could or would change. This isomorphism between activity and explanation does exist, some might argue, in extreme forms of political or religious ideology: in most cases the alignment is partial and changing. Plurilingual uses of explanatory resources

People use multiple explanatory resources to make meaning or sense in and about their actions. In figuring out why we do things, we draw from many sources of explanation, which may be more or less salient to the situation. The connections are largely based on our experience and how we generally explain a particular type of action. But the explanation also depends on circumstances: on what we are doing, why it needs explaining, and to whom. To be able to function in these two ways, explanation has to be plurilingual. We draw on whatever meaningful resources we have (and can) that will make sense within and to the given community. For instance, in a class discussion when a few men take and hold the floor and a woman comments that ‘Men do that a lot’, the explanation appeals to gender as a community of explanation—to other women and perhaps men who agree and recognize that behavior. She might have said, ‘My brothers do that a lot’, which shifts the community of explanation to family as well as gender. Using plurilingual resources allows participants to explain actions within a present community of activity by referring to social facts drawn from other communities of explanations. This function of displacement, which is a widely acknowledged function of symbols and signs (for example, de Saussure, 1913/1983), is what permits explanations to

travel across time and space. We know that we can use language to speak or write about things and people who are not physically present; we can use explanations in similar ways to make sense of the present in terms of communities that are not actually there. As discussed in Chapter 11 for example, the community of activity might be a group of teachers who are reflecting on their individual classrooms. They draw explanatory resources from various communities of explanation—their classes, their experiences, their professional training—but ultimately they need to make sense to each other, and to the group itself.

Articulation[E] Participating in activities through using certain symbolic tools is central to theories of situated learning, as discussed in Chapter 5. The process, which has been described as an ‘apprenticeship’ (for example, Rogoff, 1998) or ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991), is about achieving membership or belonging. This idea is central to how communities of practice operate. Individuals can come into a community that is new to them through what they do, through how they participate in the particular social practices of that community of activity. They try, in effect, to ‘walk the walk’ of the new community. In this design theory, the process of negotiating entry to a community of activity and explanation is called articulation.

Articulation as working to be recognized As a social process, articulation is how people work to become fully recognized participants in a given community of activity. As social-cultural theorists have pointed out, what unfolds is essentially a process of learning that comes about through participating as an individual in a social setting. Wertsch (1991) outlines this interrelation, quoting Minick on Vygotsky (1978): ‘[A]ctions are at one and the same time components of the life of the individual and of the social system’ (p. 47). Articulation, as it is used in this design theory, is the process of coming to act as if one were a full member of the given community of activity. It is judged by how the individual is using its explanatory resources to accomplish its activities. In using the social facts partially or inappropriately, the process becomes visible to members of the given community. It is evident in the actions and words that the individual, while working to enter the community, is not yet a full member. The process of articulation shows this partial fit, which is why it is noticeable. Once the alignment between the community’s activity and how they use social facts is achieved, participation becomes part of the social and semiotic fabric and is no longer remarked on. In other words, articulations then become socially appropriate explanations.

Explanation[F] Explanation is a parallel process to articulation. It occurs when what the individual does and says is no longer remarked on by others in the community. When participants are using social facts in ways appropriate to that community of explanation, they fit in and belong. The explanations are unmarked in the community of activity because they are ‘walking the talk’.

As Fleck (1979), cited in Chapter 1 explained about social facts, ‘The explanation given … can survive and develop within a given society only if this explanation is stylized in conformity with the prevailing thought style’ (p. 2). Striving to gain this fit is key to how newcomers use social facts; first they articulate the community’s activity and then as they become full participants, they are able to explain it.

Entering into activity through articulation and explanation The interplay between articulation and explanation is the central dynamic of the design theory: Over time, using these social facts becomes second nature to explain what the community does. They come to belong to the group when these articulations are no longer remarked on; they blend in and are accepted as explanations by the group. Figure 13.2 shows the interplay of these two processes.

Figure 13.2 Entering into activity through articulation and explanation: Aligning community of activity (C/a) with community of explanation (C/e)

As newcomers participate in the activity of the community (C/a), they articulate its principal activities using the social facts of that community of explanation (C/e) to others in the community (C/a). This process of articulation is how they can make sense of what is going on to themselves for the rest of those involved. The process moves into explanation as participants use the semiotic resources—social facts—according to the conventions and norms of the community of explanation (C/e). The orientation fishbowl (Narrative 13.1) was an instance of launching social facts—the two principles, ‘learning tells you how to teach’ and ‘you are your own best resource’—into a new community of activity (the teacher education program) as a fledgling community of explanation. The words used to describe this process of gaining membership (articulation) and achieving full participation (explanation) in the community—to notice/noticeable; to remark on/remarkable; and to recognize/be recognized or recognizable—outline a rough progression through which a newcomer to a community of activity moves towards full participation. The orientation fishbowl was designed to make the students as participants aware of the program principles as key social facts. Socio-cultural theorists (for example, Vygotsky, 1963; Wertsch, 1991) described this same progression in the use of signs as tools. Initial attempts to use the

community’s social facts—its words, discourse, gestures, and ways of acting and being—may get noticed by participants because the attempts do not conform with the ways in which the collective uses those facts. The lack of alignment, which is noticeable, may not be remarked on unless community members recognize what the newcomer is trying to do, in other words unless the community’s participants can see how the newcomer is trying to use its social facts. So recognition marks an acknowledgement that this use of social facts makes sense to the community within its framework of explanation.

Re-balancing order Explanations have the effect of restoring the social order and meaning within the community of explanation. The following illustrates the process of rebalancing social norms by using an acceptable explanation. It comes from a study of professional development in which Lillge (2015, p. 146) documented how teachers’ thinking was impacted by a literacy training intervention. How to convey to students the notion of purpose in writing arose as a major concern: should their teaching focus directly on the formulaic elements of various written genres that embody different purposes? Or should teachers work in more organically responsive ways to help students learn to identify how audience and purpose connect through choices of writing genre? In one interview, a teacher talks about a student called Damien, who had graduated from high school and was now enrolled in a pre-session academic program before beginning at university. TEACHER:

In the summer, Damien had to take an English class, and he would e-mail me his papers, [but] in college your professor’s not going to give all this instruction on format. And that’s why to me it’s so important that my kids can format any essay prompt that they’re given.

The essay topic involved describing an event that ‘had had an impact’, which seemed relatively straightforward. The teacher explained: T:

Damien was so lost; he sent me this paper … He started off … : ‘Hi, my name is Damien Brown.’ His professor didn’t say, ‘This is an argument essay. And this is a synthesis essay. And this is a compare-and-contrast essay.’

The teacher concluded when Damien wasn’t given a format to follow, he reverted back to middle-school writing. The speaker, his former teacher, reconciles Damien’s essay writing misstep (‘he wasn’t given a format to follow’) by using the social fact of ‘he reverted back to middle-school writing’. The explanation resolves a noticeable misalignment in what he had to do by describing how what did/did not make sense to him and why. She explains teachers know that students rely on the names of essay genres (‘formats’) in the process of maturing as writers through high school. In other words, these formats—’argument essay … synthesis essay … compare-and-contrast essay’—were social facts in this community of activity teaching high school writing, but they aren’t used explicitly as facts in the university writing class. Damien,

as a writer new to the university setting and not finding the familiar facts to cue him, writes a self-introduction. Her comments show how a group uses social facts to create explanations that are meaningful to them. This circular quality of belonging—that explanations are meaningful to those who recognize them—is the central dynamic of social learning and participation. It is like watching the world go around from the carousel: you have to get on it and once you’re on the carousel, you see the world from that perspective and what was static now goes around. The circularity of articulation and explanation is central to the design theory. It suggests that what makes teacher education activities work (or not work) hinges on this dynamic of belonging and alignment (see Appendix A). Participants will have multiple ways to explain what is happening, so the challenge is to establish the social facts of the teacher education community as the accepted ones. When working on spelling with adult learners in literacy for example, the explanation that a student ‘hasn’t yet mastered sound–symbol correspondence’ supplants the explanation that he ‘is a bad speller’.

Misaligned situations: tensions, currency, and portability in social facts Tensions

Because activities, like the essay writing above, happen in social worlds, they are messy. Something you do that makes sense and is unremarkable in one setting can seem misaligned and noticeable under other circumstances. A joke told to the right listener is funny; but told to a different person, or even to the same person under different circumstances, may fall flat. This dynamic of how social facts play out in situations is central to their use. Situations in which the activity and its explanation are misaligned create tensions. These tensions are commonplace because there is never a one-to-one relationship between a community of activity and its corresponding primary community of explanation. Like the levels of contradiction in activity systems described in Chapter 6, tensions provide the dynamism connecting activities and explanations. People draw on explanatory resources plurilingually from across their communities of explanation to reconcile the tensions and misalignments they encounter in the activities they are doing. It is natural to look for the explanation that seems to hold the greatest value, meaning it is most recognizable and persuasive to the community. In the process of aligning explanations, participants try to address and resolve tensions between the specifics of the activity and the community to whom it needs to be explained. The explanatory dynamic depends on social facts being shared in the community, a community that is determined by being recognizable in what they are doing. So the activity delineates the community, which uses the social facts. Damien’s former teacher explains what he did as if she were talking to her peers as fellow teachers of high school writing. Her explanation shows both the displacement of the social facts, discussed earlier, and the way in which they can summon a community. This process of (re)aligning explanations with activities reestablishes parity and balance between what has happened in the activity and the explanation. It gives that sense of the familiar, ‘So that’s why that happened.’ ‘That’s why they did that.’ ‘That makes sense …’, in which ‘that’ refers to an activity which the rest of the statement explains.

Currency and portability

The (re)alignment process depends on two things. First, that the social facts particular to the tension perceived in the situation have currency, that these facts can explain what happened. Our worlds are full of social facts that have currency but are not actually accurate; for example, the notion that ‘sitting in a draft can bring on a cold’ has wide currency but is medically inaccurate. The currency supports the second key attribute of explanations: that specific social facts can travel between different communities of activity, in other words that they are portable. These two aspects are referred to here as: currency (how the social facts are used to address a particular tension in an activity) and portability (how the facts can travel across circumstances and settings). They are central to how social facts do the work of communities. The currency and value of the facts come from resolving tensions to restore what is seen as normal and expected about the activity in the social situation (how essay writing is talked about among this group of high school English teachers, for example). They can only function in this way if the social facts offer some portability, meaning that they can be moved across circumstances and settings with reference to a common activity (from essay writing in high school to essay writing in university, for example). The community of activity (in this example, essay writing) in these two settings (high school and university) may use the social facts differently (essay formats are explicitly discussed in high school but seem to be tacitly assumed in the essay prompt in university). The social facts (here, essay formats) may have different currency in the two communities of explanation, but they still serve in explaining what happened with Damien’s essay draft for this community of high school literacy teachers. The explanatory power of the facts is portable. Clearly this portability is key to teacher education, like most professional training. The aim is to introduce and learn to use the social facts of language teaching in initial preparation, and then to see those facts travel into the ongoing work as a classroom teacher. This portability shapes how teachers make sense of what happens in their teaching, and to whom, as in the example of Damien’s English teachers.

Two communities with distinct functions and one set of facts The phrase—two communities with distinct functions, and one set of facts—summarizes the whole design theory. Two parallel communities: People take part in two parallel communities, one of activity that is visible and public (C/a) and the other parallel community of explanation (C/e) that offers collectively recognizable explanations for those activities. With distinct functions: Each community has a particular function—the community of activity does the work and the community of explanation makes sense of it. Creating and using a set of social facts: Social facts are the glue connecting these two communities; they are used to signify or value the activity as meaningful to the community of explanation. Against this collective backdrop, individuals make sense of a particular activity they are doing (or they see or hear about others doing) using their community’s social facts that explain it.

These points could describe a closed, tautological system in which activities were solipsistically explained, except for the fact that individuals are always part of multiple communities of explanation and draw from those semiotic resources. Because a person has access to multiple ways of making sense of an activity, what we have called ‘plurilingual explanations’, they can potentially make sense of the same activity in different ways. These various explanations can be in tension with each other. To address and resolve the tension, individuals choose the social facts that work to explain the activity to the community by which they want to be recognized. Belonging to a community drives all this; it creates an identity. Contrary to the Groucho Marx aphorism, people do want to be part of a club that would have them as members. Figure 13.3 is a diagrammatic summary of the design theory.

Figure 13.3 (Mis)alignment in communities of explanation (C/e) and of activity (C/a)

An individual [X] is doing an activity [f], which is typically explained under the circumstances in the setting using social fact SFf1; the solid line connects a community of activity [C/a1] with a particular community of explanation [C/e1]. Facing an essay without a prompt, Damien writes a self-introduction, which would fit with his high school essay writing experiences. However, the person [X] can also draw on explanatory resources [Explanation–SF#], the dotted line, connects other communities of practice [C/a# …] and of explanation [C/e# …] for the activity [f’]. Damien emails his high school teacher the draft, seeking confirmation that he is writing the appropriate essay, which suggests he is noticing a potential misalignment in the genre. The two activities [f] and [f’] may be similar, but they can be explained differently because they each invoke distinct social facts [SF1 versus SF#]. Essay writing is essay writing, except that it isn’t. In high school there are scaffolds available in the prompts; in university there may not be. These alternate forms of explanation will be in tension with each other because they offer different ways of making sense of the same activity [f]. The tension in explanation hinges on whether the activity is seen as ‘the same’ or as ‘different’. The same things done differently

Recognizing a meaningful connection between the activity [f] and [f’] depends on the currency, or explanatory power, of the two explanations to the community of explanation [C/e1]. It depends on the extent to which the social facts of the alternative explanation

[Explanation–SF#] are portable, that they can be applied meaningfully to activity [f]. In this sense, the phrase ‘the same things done differently’, describes this process by which ‘different’, alternate social facts are used to explain the ‘same’ activity.

Two summary examples Two examples illustrate this process: 1 In an applied linguistics class, the professor writes on the board ASmoking is forbidden and asks, ‘What is the word “smoking”?’ A student says, 1’In elementary school, we used to call it an -ing word.’ 2’Actually here it is a gerund’, the professor replies. 2 After observing a lesson, the supervisor asks the new teacher how it went. 1’I was disorganized; everything felt choppy … ‘, the teacher blurts out. 2’Maybe you were nervous?’ the supervisor offers, ‘It’s a new class with these students, and with me here observing.’ In these scenarios, the social facts used to explain the situation are couched in professional language of the professor or supervisor, which glosses or translates the local language explanation offered by the student or new teacher. The explanatory power of the facts lies in the situation, that a member of the professional community is using them. Their social and professional relationship dictates that the student or new teacher will use the new language, at least in this situation. As someone seeking entry to the new community of explanation in order to be identified with it, it makes sense to do so. Example

Applied linguistics

Lesson observation

Activitya

Explaining a grammatical termA Discussing the lesson

Explanation1

an -ing word

‘disorganized … felt choppy’

Explanation2

‘a gerund’

‘nervous [because] a new term with these students, and being observed’

Tension ​/​ (Mis)alignment

Between previous term and the one used in applied linguistics

Why the new teacher felt less than competent

Explanatory fact

Explaining ASmoking as a 2’gerund’

Explaining teacher’s feeling as 2’nervousness due to …’

Table 13.1 Two summary examples of (mis)aligned explanations

Three points are worth underscoring here. First, the new social facts are offered in the situation; it would be impossible to separate them from it since that is how they are meaningful. Second, belonging and identity are what drive the use of the new facts. This offers an alternative way to look at the dynamics of power and role. It emphasizes the postulant’s motivation (the student or new teacher in these examples), which is generally implicit in belonging, that ‘I want (or need) to sound and be like you’. Third, all explanatory resources continue to be available. The student can still refer to smoking as ‘an –ing word’ and the new teacher can still feel ‘disorganized by the choppiness of the lesson’. But now each of them has two ways to explain it.

These multiple forms of explanation allow social facts to travel, to be portable, and to have currency across situations, circumstances, and activities. And to endure, which I realized was happening in the case of the program principles in Narrative 13.1.

Narrative 13.2: social facts endure In one of the first studies I did of language teacher learning (Freeman, 1993) I followed students from the graduate program into the field to observe them as teachers. Many ideas emerged from that experience to become the seeds of this design theory. These were often triggered by what didn’t seem to fit or make sense to me as a researcher. One example came in interviewing these newcomers to language teaching. They would talk about what didn’t work in the lesson (as new, and even experienced, teachers often do), about how their expectations and what happened didn’t match up. But what struck me was that they never said these problems could be explained by the fact that students could not learn the language. They might talk about their students as ‘bored’, ‘unmotivated’, ‘uninterested in the content’, but they simply never said the student was incapable of language learning. In the schools, they certainly heard about students who ‘couldn’t write’, or ‘were mathphobic’, or ‘couldn’t do chemistry’. These seemed to be the often used, readily available explanations, but these newcomers never used them. As I thought about it, I began to see a connection. The newcomers I was interviewing had just completed a teacher education program in which one of the basic social facts was expressed in the aphorism that ‘Learning tells you how to teach’. This social fact was not debated; it simply was. It undergirded how they learned to talk about teaching generally and what they did themselves as language teachers. In examining language learning—the theories, the research, as well as their own experiences—they came to assume the language-learning capacity as given. This social fact made their job how to access and support that capacity, to let it ‘tell you how to teach’. The social fact seemed so enmeshed in their work and thinking that, when I was there with them, it shaped how they explained to me what they did.

Why call this theory a design theory? The question—why call this theory a design theory?—is a reasonable one to end on. The theory is meant to work in two ways. One is to serve in understanding what goes on, for better or worse, more or less effectively, in what is done in teacher education. In this sense, it should function descriptively to offer a set of terms to label what is done to a new set of social facts. This is its use as a ‘theory’. The other use, which is closely connected to the first, is the ‘design’ dimension. Here the framework can function proactively to prescribe to ways of doing teacher education. However, these prescriptions will not be based on disciplinary history, professional whim, or institutional fancy. Instead, the design theory ought to provide a reasoned basis on which to evaluate, to reform, and to innovate in educating second language (as well as other) teachers.

Appendix A Using the theory in language teacher education activities The design theory presented in Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 arose primarily out of my own work as a language teacher educator. But to be honest, it had less to do with getting that work done—organizing and implementing teacher education activities as well as the larger programs that housed them—than it did with figuring out what seemed to make these things work. This concern for process usually involved sorting through participants’ formal and informal feedback, in conjunction with my own observations and those of my fellow teacher educators. There was a productive interaction, and at times tension, between these two types of information—the participants’ and the teacher educators’. It promoted a kind of metalanguage about the work we were doing, and thus began to make accessible certain key ideas, which became the building blocks of the design theory. These building blocks are a good way to approach how to use the theory in organizing and implementing teacher education designs.

Design moves from the theory In Chapter 12, the design theory argues that social facts are central to how communities of explanation make sense of what they are doing. These social facts are generated through what individuals do (or don’t do) as participants in a specific community of activity. Access to these processes starts with the social facts to be established and the social activities that create and sustain them. The principles of this access can be laid out as a group of design moves, which are like a set of operational corollaries to the theory itself. For instance, if social facts [SFs] come about through what participants do in a community of activity [C/a], then defining that community of activity, and describing what it should be doing, offers a place to start.

An ongoing example: the language-learning biography Early on in a methodology course, the trainer asks the trainees to recall their experiences learning other languages formally and informally and write briefly about them. This activity could be organized in various ways. The different participatory pathways contribute to generating social facts, which are articulated in the reporting phase in this activity. The three variations in Table A.1 illustrate how pathways of participation animate different types of communities of activity (C/a). In the table below, the pathways are arranged on a continuum from those that focus more on individual participation (on the left) to more collective engagement (on the right). The theory holds that the more participants interact in scaffolded ways, the more likely they are to need the new social facts and have occasion to use them.

Circulating

Using tools

Reporting

The trainer could have the trainees talk with one another about what each had written: i) with a partner ii) in a ‘cocktail party’ circulating freely iii) with a goal—in a sequence of brief conversations with at least three other people.

The trainer could use some sort To close the activity, the trainer of tool in this process: might: i) a worksheet with two i) ask trainees to reread and columns, for formal and annotate their own lists informal learning, which based on comments they the trainees complete had heard a) before they start to talk ii) collect observations about formal and informal learning b) while they are on circulating a) a poster paper Or the trainer might give each trainee: b) the whiteboard ii) a handful of different iii) have trainees look at how colored Cuisenaire rods many rods each has (see Chapter 6), with the collected and which colors instruction to give one to (which shows from whom); each person she or he talks discuss what this might to. show about participation.

Table A.1 Participatory pathways for generating social facts

In Table A.2, the pathway in the left-hand column [Ai, A-2, A-3] is a basic reflective activity with a partner discussion; the one in the middle column [B-1, B-2, B-3] increases trainees’ interaction, though somewhat randomly. The pathway on the right [C-1, C-2, C-3] involves more interaction, which is scaffolded by a metric (talking to at least three people). Set-up: Trainees recall experiences learning other languages formally and informally and write briefly about them. Activity Design

A

B

C

Circulating

[A-1] Talk with a partner.

[B-1] Talk in a cocktail [C-1] Talk to at least party. three people.

Using tools

[A-2] Two-column worksheet before.

[B-2] Two-column worksheet while.

[C-2] Different colored rods to show who talks to whom.

Reporting

[A-3] Trainees reread and annotate own lists.

[B-3] Trainer collects observations on a) poster paper or b) the whiteboard.

[C-3] Trainees look at who has which rods, and talk about what this data means.

Table A.2 Activity variations: Individual to collective engagement

Circulating This phase in each pathway sets up slightly different assumptions about participation: exchanging ideas with one specified person in column A, with several other people in column

B, or with a defined number of unspecified people in column C. From a trainee’s standpoint, it is tacitly underscored that knowing what other people think, and what their experiences are, matters [column A], that there is likely variety in those opinions and experiences [column B], and/or that the variety matters and should be consciously harvested [column C].

Using tools Two different physical tools are interwoven into these pathways: the two-column worksheet and the Cuisenaire rods. The first tool records a distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ learning; the second creates a visible trace of who has talked to whom. These tools are combined differently in each pathway. If the trainees write before talking with peers [A-2], the worksheet is a tool to record their own ideas. If they write while they are circulating [B2], it becomes an impromptu record of their conversations. As in the way the circulating is organized in the activity, there are assumptions implicit in the different ways of using the same tool. Writing first [A-2] underscores individual experience; writing during the activity [B-2] turns the worksheet into a social record.

Reporting The trainer’s decision (whether planned or spontaneous) about timing turns the worksheet into a slightly different tool when it comes to the reporting phase of the activity. If the trainees write about their own experiences before they circulate [A-2], the tool can be used comparatively when they return to the worksheet afterwards to annotate what they have written in relation to what they have heard [A-3]. If the trainees record ideas while they are circulating, the worksheet becomes a collective record. The reporting, when the trainer collects their thoughts [B-3], can substantiate this collective value. Using poster paper [B-3 (a)] versus the whiteboard [B-3 (b)] in the general discussion sets up different assumptions and values about the collective record. The poster as a record may survive the activity to be brought back at a later time. (The whiteboard, which is most likely erased at the end of the session, is an evanescent record.) As a tool, the Cuisenaire rods also focus the activity differently. Using them to track who is talking to whom while they exchange experiences [C-2] makes participation patterns visible. The trainer might have different motivations for using this tool. Perhaps participation has been uneven and some trainees have tended to dominate or to avoid working with others. Or perhaps the trainer wants the activity to serve two purposes, as a discussion of language learning and also to set up subsequent study of participation patterns. As the trainee hands out the three rods, the tool can track a path through the social space, of the ‘cocktail party’ [B-1], with a specific metric of talking to three people [C-1]. In reporting on the activity, the trainer uses this visible record as a basis for discussion [C-3].

Using tools to create social facts: an ongoing example The ways these tools are used leads to different social facts.

The worksheet captures trainees’ language learning experiences and defines a way to categorize them as ‘formal’ or ‘informal’. The rods track patterns of participation (who talks to whom). Both tools let trainees articulate aspects of their experience, either as language learners or as participants in the activity. It would be misleading to see the worksheet-tool as connected only to the content of the activity and the rods-tool to the process, however. Both tools create and sustain content, although it is different content used in different ways. There are several levels of potential content: individual trainee’s experiences learning other languages formally and informally the variety of those experiences among individuals and the commonalities within that variety. The way the trainer decides to report on the circulating activity helps to establish which of these levels is the central concern. The trainees’ individual notes on the worksheet ([A] and [B]) reinforce distinctions among them, but leave the commonalities open. The trainermediated collective closing discussion facilitates (and actually forces) some articulation of common patterns across these experiences.

Pathways to content: converting time into social experience The design of the activity—whether it is fully intentional, partially thought through, or simply carried out—lays out pathways of participation for trainees. The actual content of the activity is established through those pathways. This process of fashioning meaning is what Gattegno (1987) referred to as ‘converting time into experience’, which he defined as the goal of education.

Setting up/doing/closing activities Participation takes place over time, which is clear in the stages of the training activity detailed in Table A.1 and Table A.2. The way an activity is set up positions the content that will come from it; that content unfolds and is built through how the activity is done. The tools used in the activity facilitate the process. In this example, the worksheets are records of experience; the rods track who has talked to whom. How the activity is closed—the reporting phase in this example—establishes its meaning within the community of activity. Individuals have their own experiences of the activity and thus may derive different meanings, but the closing can name what become the take-away social facts. The tools used in closing an activity can show the social facts that have been developed. Writing up common themes on poster paper [B-3 (a)], or capturing the same information on a whiteboard [B-3 (b)], which would inevitably be erased, illustrates this catalyzing process. The poster creates what Wenger (1998) called a potential boundary object, which can ‘serve to coordinate the perspectives of various constituencies for the same purpose’ (p. 106). By

leaving the poster visible in the training room and even perhaps referring to it subsequently, the contents become part of the fabric of the community of activity.

Sense-making and social facts Teacher education activity designs that create opportunities for individuals to summon, identify, and voice their own experiences are fundamental to sense-making. To the extent that these designs allow comparison among individual experiences, they build the community of activity. If individual experiences are aggregated using a shared set of terms, they can become the social facts of that community. Comparison is the central mechanism of sense making. Anyone learning to be a language teacher brings two sources of experience to the teacher education process: experiences as a student in schools and organized educational settings, and experiences as a user of the language. This is discussed in Chapter 2 (see Figure 2.2). These two forms of socialized experience are generally intermingled. Whether the language has been learned in the world and is now to be used by teachers in school (which trajectory is referred to as ‘native speaking’ ability in Chapter 3) or the language was learned in school and is now used by new teachers, these experiential sources comingle as foundational in learning to be a second language teacher.

Creating social facts from experience The language-learning biography activity discussed above could be one example of how a preparation program might unpack the two socializations. In setting up the activity as a contrast between ‘experiences learning a new language formally and informally’, the training situation highlights two sources of experience as potentially relevant to teaching. The way in which the activity unfolds creates content out of these two experiences. The comparative structure (‘learning languages formally and informally’) sets up a social fact—that there is something in the discourse of second language acquisition called ‘instructed language learning’. This idea of instructed language learning is an example of how new social facts unfold. The fact arises out of a comparison with language learning in the world (perhaps called ‘uninstructed’). It suggests that the role of language teaching methods is to bridge that distinction by making language learning in the classroom more like language use in the world. The various ways the activity could unfold create content that gives meaning to this distinction. At first the meaning is individual, but then, through the design of the activity’s participatory pathways, the meaning becomes increasingly shared and collective. The poster paper, as a tool in closing the activity, is a boundary object representation of both the social fact and the participation that generated it within and for this group of trainees and their trainer as a community of activity.

Discussion This example illustrates several aspects of social facts and how they are created in and through communities of activity. A social fact is an indivisible unit of meaning used within the community of explanation.

A fact is an abbreviation that the community uses and accepts; it works as shorthand for complex thinking. For example, people talk about ‘getting sick with the flu’, but the medical community has a different social fact for the same phenomenon. The common flu is around every winter during ‘flu season’; the medical social fact is distinguished by ‘strains of flu’ that are circulating at a particular time. It is misleading to think of social facts in solely linguistic terms; they exist in many semiotic forms. It is a social fact of teaching, for example, that in most classroom environments, the students will sit facing the teacher. The specific form of address for the teacher is another social fact of teaching: in some classrooms, teachers are called by their family names, in others by their given name, in others by their title. The social fact is that there is a way to address the teacher; it is manifested through different ways of doing so. Social facts are not always reducible to particular terms or words. This irreducibility is part of their power, usefulness, and their emblematic importance in furnishing social explanations that connect a community of activity to a community of explanation. A social fact is either right (and unremarkable) or wrong (and stands out). However, the boundaries of a particular fact may be negotiated. For example, would reading aloud to a child be an instance of instructed language learning? Would that depend if it happened in a classroom? At home before bedtime? Negotiating what is and is not part of a particular fact is part of the meaning-making process. Social facts are referenced and used, but they are rarely defined directly or explicitly. They come up and are meaningful in what the community is doing, through its activities. The distinction between articulation and explanation (described in Chapter 13) hinges on the appropriacy of use of the facts of the community. The following scenario from the training example illustrates how that process can work.

Summarizing the example Figure A.1 summarizes the ongoing training example. The worksheet and the rods used as tools help to explicitly create the new social facts. They provide tangible, kinesthetic evidence of both the meaning of instructed language learning (the worksheet) and of how that meaning evolved in the community of activity (the rods). In this way, the two tools together make apparent to participants the overlap between the two communities of explanation (C/e), of being a student and of being a language learner (represented by the overlay in Figure A.1).

Figure A.1 Ongoing training example

When the fact is used appropriately, it goes unremarked within the community; this is the process of explanation. When it is used inappropriately, the use may be corrected or more likely just ignored; this attempted use is articulation. But to the degree that the use attracts attention, it can help those who are new to the community to sort out the parameters of meaning.

Appendix B Using the theory in language teacher education programs Teacher education is a hybrid setting, in which one community of activity with its accompanying community of explanation is being used explicitly to ‘teach’ or introduce another. In language teacher education, for example: The community of activity could be a pre-service training or alternative route course. The communities of explanation could include not only the professional language of the course or program, but a number of local languages from the socialization experiences of being a student and of being a user of the target language (sometimes called ‘cultural knowledge or background’). The explicit, foundational social facts would be ‘student’ and ‘teacher’ roles, and ‘content’ to be learned (like the example of the language-learning biography ‘instructed language learning’ in Appendix A). The tacitly held social facts would include those from socialization like ‘studenting’ and using the target language (see Figure 2.2). Learning new social facts, like any novel meanings, is a process of sense-making; it is essentially learning terms in a new discourse. Many of these terms will rename aspects of activity, so, for example, greeting students at the start of the lesson might be renamed in professional terms as ‘setting a class climate’. Trainees in a course or program are drawing on two communities of explanation (being a student and being a language learner) to build these new social facts. The explanatory resources of these two communities create a hybridity in second language teacher education designs. Trainees are caught between the studenting in the training room and the teaching-learning practices of the language classroom, which combination generates new social facts.

Designing in explanations The central process in the design theory is how articulation becomes explanation, in other words, how newcomers become part of a community of explanation by taking on its discourse. This process is clearly located at the level of program design. The twin processes of articulation and explanation happen in the sequence of programmatic learning opportunities offered by the teacher education program. This sequence is usually organized into input and practice followed by application of those inputs. This trajectory generally holds both within individual lessons and modules, as well as across the course or program. As social processes of joining and belonging, articulation and explanation happen; they can be taken for granted or more explicitly planned. The more the opportunities are engineered (as in the example in Appendix A), the more likely it is that articulation can catalyze into explanation, thus converting newcomers to the discourse into fuller members of the community. If this

conversion process is left to happen untended, individuals may or may not successfully engage with the new community of explanation.

Catalyzing new explanations This conversion process may happen in many places in the sequence of a teacher education program; catalyzation is basically a way of designing for, and thus accelerating and to some extent shaping the conversion. The basic sequence of input, practice, and application, which undergirds teacher education as a fractal structure in the organization of activities, courses1, and programs, helps to organize how conversion can be catalyzed in professional learning.

At the level of activity The ongoing training example in Appendix A illustrates how a new social fact might be catalyzed through the ways in which pathways of participation are organized. Referring to Table A.1, imagine the following version of the activity: Participation pathway

Scenario (from Table A.1)

Circulating using tools

Trainees circulate in a ‘cocktail party’ (B-1) using a worksheet (B-2) with the goal of talking to at least three people to find commonalities (C-1).

Reporting

The trainer closes the activity by collecting their worksheet observations on a poster (B-3, a).

Table B.1 Organizing pathways of participation to catalyze learning

The conversion from articulation to explanation may be catalyzed depending on how the trainer manages this phase of the activity. The more the trainer puts the studenting experience and the language learning experience at odds (see Figure A.1), the more these two communities of explanation will surface and vie with each other. Consider the following vignette. In the closing training activity, the trainer divides a poster into three columns: ‘formal language learning’, a blank middle column, and ‘informal language learning’. In the first column are written: ‘took tests’, ‘studied from a book’, ‘asked questions of the teacher’. In the third, there might be: ‘listened a lot’, ‘tried things out’, ‘pointed to show what I meant’. Then a trainee comments: TRAINEE:

It helped me to be corrected when I made mistakes in the new language.

The trainer writes the comment in the middle column, which has been left blank, between the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ lists.

TRAINER: TRAINEE: TRAINER: TRAINEE: TRAINEES: TRAINER:

Corrected by …? I meant corrected by a teacher. Does it have to be a teacher? Yes No, not necessarily … OK, we’ll leave it here in the middle column for now.

This vignette brings up the role of explicit correction in the social fact of instructed language learning and engages the two communities of studenting and language learning with each other. But the point is not to resolve the engagement, but to let it stand. By doing so, the trainer signals the complexity of the new social fact and the explanatory resources that it assembles. If the summary poster with the trainees’ comments about ‘instructed language learning’ is brought back in subsequent sessions, the tension between the two communities of studenting and using the language is reintroduced semiotically. I have found, interestingly, that trainees will often refer to these artifacts by pointing to and sometimes talking about them, almost as if the physical representation is a reminder of the tension between forms of explanation and an affirmation of the new fact.

At the level of a module or course Catalyzing tensions in explanation can be a central part of designing teacher education courses or modules. Here it is helpful to think about within- and across-course designs: Within-course designs involve sequences of activity, which take place over time within the same course or module, that create circumstances to develop explanatory resources and catalyze tensions in explanation. These designs are generally within the control of an individual teacher educator. Across-course designs involve applying these same principles across several different courses or modules in a program. These designs often involve several faculty members and can entail negotiation around a common objective. Although they can be more difficult to accomplish, across-course designs usually have more impact precisely because they engage the teacher educators who are designing them in fashioning a shared community of activity to generate particular explanatory resources. Narrative 13.1 would be an example.

Within-course designs The challenge is that the course itself is a community of activity, usually with a predominant community of explanation from the course topic. For example, courses in second language acquisition or in methodology are each associated with particular facts and explanatory resources; these would be instantiated in particular ways of studenting within the topic. In a second language acquisition course, trainees might be expected to participate by listening to teacher-led input and by reading more extensively from certain genres (such as accounts of research studies). In a methodology course, they might also be expected to take part as learners in demonstration lessons and to peer teach. In both instances, there are certainly ways to organize the input so that it is presented through participatory pathways that ‘walk the

talk’ to align with the new community of activity of classroom language teaching. The language-learning biography example in Appendix A outlines an activity that could be used appropriately in either course. The challenge is engineering tensions within the explanatory resources. This generally means setting up explicit comparisons either via sub-group experiences with the larger community of activity (as in the three pathways in the example in Appendix A), or within individual participants over time (as happens with reflective activities). Comparisons via sub-group experiences

This strategy entails organizing specific sub-group experiences which align with particular social facts. In the methodology course for example, a demonstration lesson might subdivide the class into learners and observers of the lesson. This takes a single community of activity (the whole class) and divides it into two sub-communities, each with a distinct role and way to participate. To define participation pathways in the lesson, the trainer might ask some learners to participate as language learners, and others to be observers. The trainer could assign the observers specific tasks and give them tools to do the task. This instruction sets up two distinct forms of participation—being a language learner versus being an observer of the language learning process. These two forms of participation could then converge in closing the activity if the observer-learners were asked, using their emic and etic perspectives, to assemble a view of one person’s language learning in the demonstration. This within-course design, summarized in Table B.2, draws on different explanatory resources within the same overall community of activity of the course. Orchestrating a contrast between emic and etic perspectives in the demonstration lesson introduces considerable complexity into what could be taken as the singular experience of ‘watching’ and ‘experiencing’ a teaching method. Closing the activity in a way that emphasizes the perspectives of learning and observing learning and interweaves the experiences of individuals and of groups in each role, supports a range of new facts.

Demonstration lesson Discussion

Explanatory resources

Emic

Being a language learner Experiences of learning Resources in – emic in the lesson in the lesson— perspectives commonalities and 1) as an individual differences learner 2) as shared by the group

Etic

Being an observer of that learner

Experiences of Resources about – etic observing the perspectives commonalities and 1) as an observer differences (of the a) of an individual observed learner and as learner observers) b) of the class 2) as shared by the group

Table B.2 Using sub-groups to bring both emic and etic views to a learning experience

The same demonstration lesson could generate different social facts depending on the course, as a community of explanation, that was housing it, as shown in Table B.3. In a second language acquisition course

Descriptive versus introspective studies of language learning Positivist versus phenomenological orientations

In a methodology course

Individual learning experiences within a method Fidelity of the methods implementation

Table B.3 Different course; different social facts with same demonstration lesson

The perspectives as a learner and as an observer, as well as the levels of individual and shared experiences in these roles, establish reference points that are catalyzed through the activity of comparative analysis. In this process, trainees articulate the new facts; it is important to understand that this articulation is not simply verbal and language-based; it is more broadly semiotic. The learner and observer roles create temporary identities that articulate different perspectives—emic and etic—on what is happening. Organized in this way, the class as a community of activity actually instantiates the structure of the social fact. In contrast, consider how having the entire class watch a video of the demonstration lesson would create a different community of activity with little catalytic opportunity to articulate these facts. Everyone, trainees and trainer, would be observing a demonstration at a remove so their common experience would be as viewer of the video. The discussion could only be descriptive, with no first-hand personal referents. Experience as participating in an activity about something

The contrast of the live versus the videotaped demonstration lesson illustrates a central distinction in how experience can be tapped in the development of social facts. In teacher education at all levels, from activity to course to program, experience can be parsed as participating in an activity about something. Table B.4 summarizes this difference. Participate (activity)

in (pathway)

about (experience)

Explanatory resources

Live demonstration lesson

As learners

Language learning (emic; in the lesson)

Own learning

As observers

Language learning (etic; Observed learning immediate as observers) Observer experience

As viewers

Language learning (etic; Descriptive information removed via video) of lesson

Video-taped demonstration lesson

Table B.4 Contrasting a live demonstration lesson with a video-taped demonstration

In this example, in the live demonstration, trainees participate in the activity of either learning a new language or observing that language learning, whereas in the video-taped demonstration, everyone watches the lesson. The topic is the same but the participation pathways are very different, which leads to distinct experiences and thus to using different explanatory resources. The design principle can be summarized as experiences create explanatory resources within an activity.

Across-course designs Across-course designs bring a level of complexity and coordination, which is both a strength but can also make them harder to organize. Most university based pre-service teacher preparation takes places in a socio-professional culture that emphasizes individual teacher educators and their teaching. While programmatic collaboration in planning and delivering teacher education programs is now fairly common, these efforts exist against the backdrop of ‘the academy’ as the community of activity. Decisions and functions from staffing to scheduling, from assignments to grading, from student admissions to student advisement, all contribute to this community and the way it does business. These views are very rarely fully shared across teacher education faculties, with the consequence that building robust new communities of explanation in these programs is harder to do. Alternative route training programs often differ markedly in this regard. They are generally cohort-based and intensive, which means that participants become socially invested in the group. They usually set their own schedules, which are often separate from the timetabling of the larger institution. Evaluation often differs from the conventional grading paradigm, and trainers or teacher educators usually work in teams. These organizational features, which are found in professional schools (see Mertz, 2007; Philips, 1998), increase opportunities for across-course design.

Summarizing design ideas

Table B.5 summarizes the design ideas discussed in Appendix A and Appendix B. Terms

Elaborations

Community of activity [C/a]

1 Activities happen in time and place. 2 Recognizable activity defines the participants doing it. 3 Norms make an activity recognizable to participants and to others. 4 A community of activity is recognizable through the shared activity and its norms.

Community of explanation [C/e]

5 Doing the activity, and expressing norms about it, involves making sense of it. 6 A community of explanation is identifiable in its use of shared meanings to make sense of activity. 7 Participants use shared meanings to explain the activity. 8 Newcomers try to use shared meanings to articulate activity in noticeably inappropriate ways for that community.

Social Fact(s) [SF]

9 Are commonly used meanings shared by the community of explanation.

Tensions/contradictions [T/C]

Table B.5 Summary of design ideas

10 Tensions occur when various social facts are/can be used to explain the same activity. The contrast in explanations highlights the different communities that hold those facts.

Appendix C Thoughts on assessment The ways in which explanatory resources play out in teaching experiences are probably most evident in the assessment process.

Three scenarios A In a short-term intensive alternative route program, the trainee’s performance during the series of practice teaching sessions is evaluated by peers and by the trainer, drawing on expectations and practices from the training curriculum. At the end of the course, an assessor (who also trains using the same curriculum but in another institution) visits the course, meets with trainees and reviews samples of their work to corroborate the trainer’s evaluations, and notes outlying judgments and procedural anomalies. B In a residency teacher preparation program, trainees spend a full academic year in various forms of scaffolded apprenticeships in the school. The trainee, classroom teacher, and the residency supervisor meet periodically to evaluate the trainee’s performance using school and residency program goals, which are laid out in the detailed rubric for classroom practice. C university-based pre-service teacher preparation program culminates in the trainee spending several months working full time in one classroom. The university supervisor observes the teaching periodically and meets with the trainee, and sometimes with the classroom teacher, to evaluate the trainee’s performance in terms of teacher preparation program standards. These scenarios position the worlds of teacher education and of classroom teaching differently. From the vantage point of the design theory, the differences surface clearly in how the assessment practices depend on—and indeed promote—a common professional language among participants. How do the teacher education and teaching worlds as communities of activity structure the use of their respective social facts and explanatory resources?

Analyses Scenario A: the alternative route program In scenario A, the alternative route program is designed as a community of activity (C/aCERT) to promote to a single set of facts and explanatory resources through the training curriculum, which provides a common language of teaching and learning (C/eCERT). The assessment of practice teaching is local and intra-mural by the trainer. It is corroborated by the external assessor, who uses the same social facts (C/eCERT) to validate

these judgments. The primacy of a single, overarching community of explanation (C/eCERT) arguably focuses trainees’ participation on using those explanations. Articulation with the social facts of the curriculum happens continually in the course. The teaching experience is another setting with its new subcommunity of activity (C/aPT) (of trainees-as-teachers, trainers, and students) in which those facts are used to talk about the teaching that is happening there. As they learn to articulate what ‘is going well’ and what ‘needs improvement’, trainees use the facts of the alternative route program as a community of explanation (C/eCERT>PT). The visit of the assessor provides an opportunity for trainees to glimpse the explanatory import of the facts beyond the local setting. It is somewhat like a visit by a fluent ‘native’ speaker to a school language class, which lets students ‘really’ use the target language.

Scenario B: the residency program This community is a unified community of explanation, organized around a single set of social facts. The community of activity is the school, and the teacher education program is organized as a residency within that setting (C/aRES). This shapes the communities of explanation and the social facts they need and use (C/eRES). There is a common professional language of teaching and learning (as in scenario A), which is used during the assessment conferences and documented in the various observations tools (such as rubrics, performance expectations, etc.). These facts do not necessarily travel beyond the residency design as a community of explanation (C/eRES), unlike in scenario A. The design clearly prepares trainees to teach in the setting; the degree to which that setting is replicated and recognized beyond itself is less clear. This makes the assessment practices a leap of faith from the trainee’s perspective.

Scenario C: the university-based hybrid programs There is one, often fragile, community of activity here: the student teaching placement (C/aPLCMNT). It is architected out of two robustly existing communities—the university teacher education program, (C/aUNI) and the school, (C/aSCH)—each of which has its particular, potentially competing, community of explanation, (C/eUNI) and (C/eSCH). There is often little common language between them. In discussions following the observations, the university supervisor uses facts, which usually come from work the trainee has done in university (C/eUNI). As explanatory resources, these facts may or may not coincide with the school site as a community of explanation (C/eSCH). These tensions often surface in comments about student teaching, such as ‘university training is too theoretical’ or ‘forget what they taught you at the university, this is how we do things here’. These archetypal comments suggest the underlying positions between the two settings in which the school, although it hosts the

student teaching placement, often remains subordinate to the university. Programmatic initiatives such as laboratory schools, professional development schools, or school-university partnerships have sought to redesign this interface in order to strengthen a common community of activity (C/aPLCMNT) and balance the two communities of explanation, (C/eUNI) and (C/eSCH). Where successful, these initiatives actually create an amalgam community, which can evolve its particular vernacular of explanations. Often though, the facts used in the vernacular explanations are drawn from the two ‘home’ communities of explanation (C/eUNI) and (C/eSCH) and re-voiced as explanatory resources for the placement experience.

Summary These three scenarios illustrate the complex ecologies of participation and meaning that underlie teacher education designs. Activities call for explanations, which is simply to say that, in doing things, trainees talk. In talking, they use language to make sense of what they’re doing, to others in the activity and to themselves. Trainees explain what is happening to each other and in that process to themselves. This becomes the basis for assessing what they do.

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Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z (Page numbers annotated with ‘t’, ‘f’ or ‘n’ refer to tables, figures, or notes, respectively.)

A academic language 184n across-course designs 263 266–7 ACTFL see American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages action research 143–4 action-present 211–13 217–21 activity theory 93–4 95–101 105–12 agency 138–44 148 176 Alatis, J. 64–5 194 Allwright, D. 143 alternative route training 73–4

90–2 168–70 185–205 269–70 American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) 58–9 a-methodological (eclectic) teaching 127 128–30 166–70 Anthony, E. 131–3 134 135 137 anthropology 57 59 applied linguistics 57 61 Arnold, J. 239 assessment 10 269–71 Audio-lingual Direct Method 25 119–23 124 125–6 164–5 Australian Migrant Education Program 141 authenticity

87 88–9 134–5 automaticity 121 122 124 autonomy (learner autonomy) 124 166

B background knowledge 5–7 41–2 43–54 BAK model 147–8 154–8 161–2 Bailey, K. 143 Ball, D. 12–13 176–7 179 Barahona, M. 99 Barnard, R. 149 Bazerman, C. 63–4 68 behaviorism 120–1

164–5 Benedict-Chambers, A. 99–103 Biddle, B. 157 Bigelow, M. 127 Blair, R. 122 Bligh, R. 44–5 53t 70t Boerst, T. 82 Bolster, A. 35 borderless expertise 187–8 189t 197 200 205 Borg, S. 147 149 153t 154 158–60 161–2 193 ‘born expertise’ 41 42 43–54

70 bounded activity systems 97–9 Bransford, J. D. 104 British Association for Applied Linguistics 190–1 Brooks, N. 120–1 Brown, A. L. 104 Brown, J. 74–5 86 90 91–2 Brumfit, C. 26 Burns, A. 149

C C/a (community of activity) 240–4 245 248–51 257–9 Canagarajah, S. 77 Cazden, C. 25 150 C/e (community of explanation)

242–3 244–5 248–51 257–9 261–7 Centro de Voluntarios (Chile) 49 50 52 Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) 90 186 190 193 Chacón, C. T. 181 CHAT see cultural-historical activity theory Chile, educational policy 49 50 52 208 Chomsky, N. 132 165 Clandinin, D. J. 171 175 Clark, C. 147 149 152–4 157 158–9 160–1 Clarke, M. 170–1

classroom talk Inquiry-Response-Feedback structure (IRF) 22–3 25 31–3 Teacher–student interaction 29–33 88–9 141 155–62 180–2 classrooms 7 21–7 174–5 seating arrangements 94–5 108–9 cognitions 147–8 158–60 161–2 Cohen, D. 12–13 collective learning 90–2 collegiality 82 Collins, A. 74–5 90 91–2 Common European Framework 22 59

77–8 79–81 communicative language teaching (CLT) 24 25–7 128 130–6 148 communities 18 193–204 234–52 of explanation 60–1 63–71 126–7 194 234 242–3 244–5 248–51 257–9 261–7 of practice 194 234–6 240–4 245 248–51 257–9 Community Language Learning 122–4 166 conferences 64–71 179 Connelly, F. M. 171

172 content xi–xii 7 20–9 78–9 82–3 180–2 228–9 form vs. use 28–9 purpose-as-use 20–4 27 reflexivity 27–9 55–9 reification 33 111–12 situated content 76–81 171–5 theoretical models 172–5 176–82 context 21–4 26 74–5 immersion programs 78–9 82–3 180–2 and teachers’ thinking

152–62 and time 104–5 156–8 160 continuous professional development 7 8 9 45–6 192–204 Coulthard, M. 25 Council of Europe 22 77 79 134 course content see content course design xii 225 227–36 237–52 Cross, R. 29–31 Cuisenaire rods 103–4 107–9 110–12 255 256 cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) 93–4 95–101 105–12

Curran, C. 122 124 Cushing-Leubner, J. 127

D Day, C. 9 10 de Saussure, F. 243 decision-making 149–52 154–8 161 DELTA see Diploma of English Language Teaching to Adults design theory xii 225 227–36 237–52 Dewey, J. 47 49 82 83 87 163 208–9 210 212 217 220–1 Deyes, T. 128–9

Diller, K. 85 Diploma of English Language Teaching to Adults (DELTA) 186 193 disciplinary communities 60–1 63–71 126–7 194 234 disciplinary knowledge 9–10 55–71 115–16 139–43 163–5 190–2 diversification 194 195–7 202–4 Duguid, P. 74–5 90 91–2 Dunkin, M. 157

E early childhood education 213–15 eclectic teaching 127 128–30 166–70

education policy 22 49–52 59 77–8 79–81 208 Edwards, E. 149 Elbaz, F. 171–2 175 184n Ellis, R. 61 Engage-Experience-Explain framework (EEE) 99–101 Engestrom, Y. 110 English language teaching 49–52 56 73–4 78–9 81 83–6 173 181–2 234 knowledge-base 185–205 English Opens Doors Program (Chile) 52 English Program in Korea (EPIK) 49 50

51 52 errors (learner errors) 123t–4t 125–6 evidence-based practice 130 138–43 exemplification 170–1 174 175 experience 9–10 41 42 43 45–54 256–8 266 expertise 70 106–7 borderless expertise 187–8 189t 197 200 205 ‘born or made’ debate 41–2 43–54

F Farrell, T. 208

220 feedback 88–9 123t–4t 125–6 219–20 Finnegan, D. 204 205 Fleck, L. 16–17 244 Ford, M. 56 Forman, E. 56 Freeman, D. 8–9 32–3 71 115 119 141 143 149 157 170 174–5 251 French language teaching 5 22–3 48 59–60 Freudenstein, R. 56 59

63 Frost, Robert 6 7

G games 98–9 Gattegno, C. 122 124 125 256 Gee, J. 34 56 234 generations 115–16 119–45 145t 163–83 generative grammar 120 132 165 Georgetown University Roundtables on Languages and Linguistics 64–8 83–6 German language teaching 27 28f Goldin, S. 35 Golombek, P.

172 Gottlieb, M. 208 Gower, R. 168–9f Grabe, W. 191 205n grammar translation method 25 27 Graziani, F. 82 Gregg, K. 166 167 168 group work 90–2 Gumpertz, J. 242 GURT Roundtables see Georgetown University Roundtables on Languages and Linguistics

H habitual action 208–9 220–1 Hanks, J. 143 Hargreaves, D. 119 Hawkins, D. 11–12

13 Haycraft, J. 73–4 76–7 81 83 87–9 90 Hayes, D. 8 heuristic space 139–43 higher education institutions 60–1 186 269 270–1 Hino, N. 83–6 historical perspectives, second language teaching xi 115–16 119–45 145t 163–83 history 57 59 Hoban, G. 141 Holliday, A. 66 186 Hong Kong Conferences on Second Language Teacher Education 64

68–70 Hubbard, R. 143 hybrid disciplines 55–71 179 Hymes, D. 242

I IATEFL see International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language identity 33–6 60 75–6 88–9 124 170–5 179 251 immersion programs 78–9 82–3 180–2 implementational maps 189–90 initial teacher training (ITT) 7 10 185–205 269–71 residency teacher preparation programs 269 270 see also qualifications

inner vs. outer worlds 220–1 input hypothesis 166–7 inquiry-oriented teacher education 217 Inquiry-Response-Feedback structure (IRF) 22–3 25 31–3 in-service teacher education 7 8 9 10 45–6 192–204 inside-out view, teacher education see pronominal view, teacher education institutions 60–1 82 intelligent action 208–13 220–1 interdisciplinarity 56 see also hybrid disciplines International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) 194–204 International House 73 88 90 IRF structure see Inquiry-Response-Feedback structure

isomorphic relationships 11–16 242–3

J Japan Association of Language Teachers (JALT) 84 Japan English Teaching (JET Program) 49–51 52 Japanese language teaching 29–31 82–3 Jargon Generator (training activity) 139 140f job interviews 5–6 Johnson, J. 190 Johnson, K. 26 Johnson, K. E. 71 174–5 Johnston, B. 187

K Katz, A. 208 Kelly, L. G. 164

184n Kincheloe, J. 143 Kleinsasser, R. C. 31 Knapp, J. 45–6 ‘know-how made over time’ 9–10 41 42 43 45–54 knowledge background knowledge 5–7 41–2 43–54 147–8 154–8 161–2 BAK model 147–8 154–8 161–2 borderless expertise 187–8 189t 197 200 205 disciplinary knowledge 9–10 55–71 115–16 139–43

163–5 190–2 ELT knowledge-base 185–205 horizon content knowledge 176–8 knowledge-as-pedagogy 165–70 knowledge-for-teaching 176–82 knowledge-geographies 185–205 and reflecting 207–13 situated knowledge 73–5 78–9 84–5 170–5 184n social facts 16–17 35–6 56 57 60 63–4 125–6 158 230 231–3 234 236 238–40 244–52 253 257–9

transmission and construction of 61–2 93 101–5 107–8 132 163–83 194–204 253–9 Korea, educational policy 51–2 Krakowski, M. 120 121 Krashen, S. 122 166–7 168 Kumaravadivelu, B. 136–8 157 170 174

L Lado, R. 56 63 Lampert, M. 82 176 language, definition 20 language as content xi–xii 7

20–9 78–9 82–3 180–2 form vs. use 28–9 purpose-as-use 20–4 27 reflexivity 27–9 55–9 reification 33 111–12 situated content 76–81 171–5 theoretical models 172–5 176–82 language classrooms 7 21–7 174–5 seating arrangements 94–5 108–9 language ideology 49 language pedagogy Audio-lingual Direct Method 25 119–23 124

125–6 164–5 communicative language teaching (CLT) 24 25–7 128 130–6 148 Community Language Learning 122–4 166 eclectic teaching 127 128–30 166–70 grammar translation method 25 27 macro-strategies 137–8 pedagogical simplification 86–9 Silent Way 104 107 122–3 124 125–6 166 and teaching knowledge 165–70 language policy 22 49–52 59 77–8

79–81 language proficiency, measurement of 50–2 121–2 190 232–3 language socialization 35 60 142–3 language teachers see second language teachers language uses, theoretical models 179–82 language-learning biographies 253–4 languages of practice 125–6 148–9 167–70 languaging 77–8 220 Larsen-Freeman, D. 32–3 133 179 Lave, J. 76 80 95 97 234 243 Lazarton, A. 149

learner autonomy 124 166 learner errors 123t–4t 125–6 learners 10 11f learning activities 86–9 245–7 253–9 261–3 authenticity 87 88–9 134–5 patterned practice 120–1 122 sense making 93 94–103 107–8 tools 105–12 learning outcomes 52 62 81 121–2 learning-in-place 41 42 73–92

170–5 184n 234–5 243–4 learning-in-practice 41 42 93–112 227 230–43 learn-then-apply design 189–90 192–3 Lee, W. 194 Leont’ev, A. N. 95–6 lesson planning 17 18 139 142t 155 156 Lillge, D. 245 linguistics 57 132 164–5 Lipson, A. 121 literature 57 59 Little, J. W.

236 local languages 233–4 Lockhart, C. 208 216 Lortie, D. 35 46 60 89 192 Lozanov, G. 122

M macro-strategies 137–8 mainstreaming 22 Malderez, A. 10–11 17 Marton, F. 15–16 mathematics 176–7 179 Mauger, G. 60 McLaughlin, B. 166 meaningfulness

23–4 26 mentoring 10 11f metalanguage 27–9 55–9 131–3 148–9 167–70 232–3 method 132–6 micro-worlds 86–7 modules, design of 263–7 Molinsky, S. 121 monolingualism 77 motivation 58–9 Murphey, T. 239

N narratives xi 5–6 22–3 34 47–8 59–60

78–9 82–3 94–5 103–4 107–9 110–12 238 251 nativeness 48–52 121–2 188 Natural Approach 122–3 Newbury House Publishers 145n 184n nominal view, teacher education 12–17 North, B. 79 80 Nunan, D. 32 141 142–3

O outer vs. inner worlds 220–1 outside-in view, teacher education see nominal view, teacher education

P part/whole relationships 175

patterned practice 120–1 122 pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) 172–5 183 184n pedagogical simplification 86–9 peer teaching 99–101 102–3 104 105 219 220 Pennycook, A. 174 personal practical knowledge (PPK) 171–2 173–4 175 Peterson, P. 147 149 152–4 157 158–9 160–1 Phelps, G. 176 phenomenography 15–16 Philips, S. U. 267

Piaget, J. 62 Pinker, S. 165 pluralization 194 197–201 202–4 plurilingualism 77–8 243 249 Polanyi, M. 171 Polkinghorne, D. 164 ‘post-method’ condition 136–8 Poulter, M. 190 PPK see personal practical knowledge PPP framework see Presentation-Practice-Production framework Prabhu, N. S. 129–30 157 practice teaching 15 73 85–90 269–71 practice-based teacher education 81–2 prescriptive vs. descriptive approaches 6–7

Presentation-Practice-Production framework (PPP) 17 231 pre-service teacher education 7 10 185–205 269 270–1 see also qualifications primary contradictions 109 111t problem setting 210–11 218f 219 professional associations 194–204 234–6 professional development 7 8 9 35–6 45–6 60–1 139–41 192–204 conferences 64–71 179 professional languages 56–9 63 233–4 239

240f 250 261 269 270 pronominal view, teacher education 11–12 14–17 pronouns 27 28f 184n psychology 57 59 164–5 Pulverness, A. 186 pupils 10 11f purpose-as-use 20–4 27

Q qualifications 5–7 48–52 121–2 186–9 international recognition of 187–8 short-term certificates 73–4

90–2 168–70 186–8 269–70 quaternary contradictions 109 110 111t

R Rampton, B. 234 242 Raudenbush, S. 12–13 recruitment 5–6 43 122 Reddy, M. J. 104 reflecting 117 130 207–21 reflexivity 27–9 55–9 reification 33 111–12 reporting 254t 255–6 research-practice relationship

141–4 147–62 residency teacher preparation programs 269 270 Richards, J. 66 68 83–6 133–4 135 149 208 216 Rivers, W. 128 Rock, F. 234–5 Rodgers, T. 133–4 135 Rogoff, B. 82 243 Rosenholtz, S. J. 31 Ryle, G. 171

S Saljo, R. 105–7 109 Saussure, F. de 243

Savignon, S. 29 31 scaffolding 75 86–90 115 181–2 249 254 269 270 Schachter, R. 213–16 Schon, D. A. 207 208 209–13 216 217 218–19 221 science, teaching of 99–101 seating arrangements 94–5 108–9 second language acquisition 57 61 second language teacher education alternative route training 73–4 90–2 168–70 185–205 269–70

assessment 10 269–71 ‘born or made’ debate 41–2 43–54 design theory xii 225 227–36 237–52 historical perspectives xi 115–16 119–45 145t 163–83 inquiry-oriented teacher education 217 isomorphic relationships 11–16 242–3 learning-in-place 41 42 73–92 170–5 184n 234–5 243–4 learning-in-practice 41 42 93–112 227 230–43 peer teaching

99–101 102–3 104 105 220 practice teaching 15 73 85–90 practice-based teacher education 81–2 program design x 53–4 189–93 225 227–36 237–52 reflecting 117 130 216–21 research-practice relationship 141–4 147–62 teacher thinking 115 119–45 145t 147–62 173 terminology 8–11t 55–9 125–6 131–3 148–9 167–70

232–3 second language teachers identity 33–6 60 170–5 179 251 native-speaker teachers 48–52 121–2 188 recruitment 5–6 43 47–52 122 role diversification and pluralization 194–204 technical cultures 29–33 35 179 secondary contradictions 109 111t sense making 93 94–103 107–8 257–9 Sfard, A. 104 Shavelson, R. 147 149

150–2 153–4 155 160–1 short-term certificates 73–4 90–2 168–70 186–8 269–70 Shulman, L. 55 57 121 171 172–3 175 176 184n Silent Way 104 107 122–3 124 125–6 166 Sinclair, J. 25 situated learning theory 41 42 73–6 80–1 86 90 91–2 170–5 184n 234–5

243–4 situations of practice 209–11 212 217–21 Snow, C. 61 social environments 82–3 104–5 229 see also context social facts 16–17 35–6 56 57 60 63–4 125–6 158 230 231–3 234 236 238–40 244–52 253 257–9 social practice theory 41 42 77 95–112 227 230–1 235–6 240f socialization

xi 35–6 60–1 139–41 142–3 socio-cultural theory 93–4 sociology 57 59 Stenhouse, L. 144 Stern, H. 65 Strevens, P. 65 Stevick, E. 20 21 28 107 124 150 184n 239 Stoller, F. 191 structural linguistics 120 132 164–5 students, motivation 58–9 subject-languages, definition 32–3

Swan, M. 26 27 28

T teacher education xi–xii 11–17 62 ‘born or made’ debate 41–2 43–8 see also second language teacher education; teacher training teacher talk 22–3 29–33 139–41 155 179 180–2 feedback 88–9 123t–4t 125–6 219–20 teacher thinking 115 147–62 173 decision-making 149–52 154–8 and pedagogical methods 119–45 145t

reflecting 117 130 207–21 teacher training 8 9 185–205 269–71 teacher-learning activities 18 99–101 139–41 219–21 245–7 253–9 261–3 teacher-led research 143–4 teachers identity 33–6 60 170–5 179 251 native-speaker teachers 48–52 121–2 188 recruitment 5–6 43 47–52 122 role diversification and pluralization 194–204

technical cultures 29–33 179 Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) 64–5 194–204 teaching methods Audio-lingual Direct Method 25 119–23 124 125–6 164–5 communicative language teaching (CLT) 24 25–7 128 130–6 148 Community Language Learning 122–4 166 eclectic teaching 127 128–30 166–70 grammar translation method 25 27 macro-strategies 137–8 scaffolding 75 86–90 115 181–2

249 254 269 270 Silent Way 104 107 122–3 124 125–6 166 and teaching knowledge 165–70 team work 90–2 235 267 technical cultures 29–33 35 179 technical rationality 209–13 terminology 8–11t 55–9 125–6 131–3 148–9 167–70 232–3 tertiary contradictions 109–10 111t textbooks 59–60 135

139 180 Thames, M. 176 theories 147–62 261–7 BAK model 147–8 154–8 161–2 behaviorism 120–1 164–5 generative grammar 120 132 165 input hypothesis 166–7 language teacher cognition(s) 158–60 161–2 situated learning theory 41 42 73–6 80–1 86 90 91–2 184n 234–5 243–4 social practice theory 41

42 77 95–112 227 230–1 235–6 240f teacher thinking 147–62 theory-practice relationship xi 53–4 TOTE model 150–2 153 161 Thornbury, S. 90–2 thought collectives 17 18 thought processes see teacher thinking time 101–5 107–8 132 153 156–7 160 232–3 256–7 tools 75 105–12 231–3 243–4 254t 255

256 calculators 105–6 107 Cuisenaire rods 103–4 107–9 110–12 255 256 micro-worlds 86–7 textbooks 59–60 135 139 180 worksheets 105 254t 255 256–7 262t TOTE model 150–2 153 161 ToTing 10 11f transfer (knowledge transmission) 61–2 93 101–5 trans-linguistic language use 77–81

Trim, J. 190–1 Tsui, A. 99

U US Peace Corps 121

V Vygotsky, L. S. 241

W Wallace, M. 189 208 216–17 Walters, S. 168 169f Watkins, P. 90–2 Wedell, M. 10–11 17 Weingart, P. 61 63 Wenger, E. 33 76 80 86

87 95 97 112 234 235 237 238–9 240–1 243 257 Wertsch, J. 96–7 112 241 244 Wheeler, G. 166–7 Widdowson, H. G. 26–7 28 36 Wilkins, D. 26 within-course designs 263 264–6 Wong-Filmore, L. 61 Woods, D. 147 153t 154–8 160–2 Woodward, T. 139 140f

worksheets 105 254t 255 256–7 262t