THE FOUNDATION MODULE - UNIT
1
Julian Edge
Aims
By the end of this introductory unit, you will have clarified for yourself your
understanding of your current position with regard to your motivation, your
allocation of time and space for study, the availability of resources for study,
and your possibilities for networking with other participants on this course.
You will have considered your view of yourself in the role of teacher, professional,
researcher, theorist, and academic, and you will be ready to begin a structured
attempt to keep a professional diary as an aid to study and as way of anchoring
outcomes in an explicit record of experience. (This diary-keeping experience
is the recommended basis for the FND evaluation which will be a required portfolio
entry.)
So, what we are looking for here is a shaking-down and a coming-together. If
you have thought through most of the points I raise in this unit, then please
bear with me - you know what first lessons are like. These are the issues that
seem important to me, and I want us to have some common ground as far as they
are concerned.
Enabling objectives
Working through the tasks should put you in a position to be able to:
o formulate a perception of self-in-context.
o formulate personal aims and motivations.
o draw up an individual study timetable.
o draw up an individual plan of resource availability.
o draw up an individual network of peer contacts.
o begin a professional diary.
o reflect on and evaluate the unit.
Beginnings
What are your feelings as you walk along a corridor to meet a group of students
for the first time?
Do you feel a sense of nervousness? (What if things go wrong?) Or is it rather
a feeling of anticipation? (This should be interesting!) Or is it neither of
these? Are your feelings underpinned by the confidence arising from your previous
experience and success? Or do you feel a little weary because you know that
you have to go in there and do all those same old things again? Do you feel
a little fed up because you are going to be required to prove yourself all over
again? Or is it rather the case that all such considerations are blanked out
by a sense of blind panic as you prepare to present yourself once more for the
scrutiny of another set of strangers?
Do you recognise any of these emotions? All of them? None of them? Or would
your response be more along the lines of, 'Well, it depends,' ? Is it possible
for you to generalise, or is it different every time? Or do you find the question
more or less meaningless?
Task 1
Take a few minutes to think about the question at the beginning of the previous
section and jot down a few notes of response.
It is worth it. Trust me. You might be thinking that these tasks-in-the-text are such a bore, and anyway, you haven't got a pencil with you, but why not go along with this one? What have you got to lose? This is a new start and you might learn something by opening up to a technique, even if you never liked it before. And if you really haven't got anything to write with, we have already identified an excellent learning opportunity: Always, always, have something to write with. Writing is now one of the things that you do, it's a commitment, and you never know when a good idea, or a connection between two ideas, will pass through your head.
A beginning
And so we have made a beginning. It took me an hour and a half to write that
first section in its first draft form. Or you could say that it took me twenty-seven
years, which is how long I've been involved in TESOL; or forty-eight years,
which is how long I'd been alive at the time of first writing this unit in January
1997.
What I now want to do is to look back at the unit so far and use it to introduce
several points of interest to me and, I hope, to you.
Let's start by looking at my two subheads: Beginnings and A beginning. I've
made a deliberate shift from a generalisation to a specific. We started off
talking about beginnings in general, and now we are talking about this one.
What is the relationship between these two sections?
Sometimes, the relationship between specific and general is that of exemplification.
I might say that a common mistake among Arabic-speaking learners of English
when coming to grips with relative clauses is that they insert a pronoun object
which English (unlike Arabic) does not feature. For example,
This is the painting I was telling you about it.* (* = non-standard English)
But exemplification of the general is not the only role of the specific. What
is actually important to me in this discourse of ours is this specific beginning
that we are making together. The generalisations were used rhetorically as an
introduction. Let me say now something that I shall say often and at greater
length in Unit 4. On this course, we are very interested in specifics. When
you feel that a generalisation is in order, we shall certainly expect specific
examples to back it up. But in addition to this, we are very interested in the
investigation of specific instances themselves. I expand on this comment in
the next point.
We would all expect that different people might give different answers to my
opening question about one's feelings when approaching a first class, a first
communication. The point of asking the question could not be to find out what
the correct answer is - there is no correct answer as such. So, what was the
point?
Task 2
Bear with me here, and see if you can let this style of reading-and-letting-me-teach
work for you.
Please jot down your ideas on my possible motivation for starting this unit,
this module, this higher academic degree, in the way that I did.
Well, first and foremost, I needed a way to begin. I, personally, find beginnings
difficult, and one methodological ground-rule that has helped me along for some
years is: If something is proving problematical, make it the topic of the lesson.
I have more to say about this in Unit 3 (MET).
Secondly, a main cause of difficulty in beginnings is that we have no established
common ground on which to build our discourse, by which term I mean both our
on-going exchange of meanings, and the world of meanings which we shall build
through this exchange. By raising as a topic an experience which I believe we
will all have shared and responded to one way or another, I hope to create a
first stepping stone of common ground on which we can meet. More on this in
Unit 2 (TDA).
Thirdly, I raised this topic in the form of a question, because I wanted to
involve us as directly as possible in an interaction. To the extent that a writer
can, I wanted to engage you, the reader, quite explicitly in the creation of
this discourse together with me. A question demands an answer, even if it doesn't
always receive one - and even the absence of an answer is a response of some
kind. More on the study of meaning in interaction in Unit 5 (IIC).
Fourthly, I wanted to draw a parallel between that shared experience of beginning
a new class and our situation now, in order to emphasise that what you are reading
is my teaching. The medium is different, but the purpose is the same. I have
just walked along that corridor. I have just had my mix of those emotions. It
is now my responsibility to give you the sense that a learning experience is
being organised for you in such a way that it helps you go where you want to
go (including when you change your mind), gives you support when you need it,
space when you need it, and the quantity and quality of feedback which will
help you decide what it is that you need at any particular time. (Not for the
first time in my writing, I am struck on re-reading by the pervasive influence
of Earl Stevick. Compare here Stevick (1980: 33). More importantly, read that
chapter, anyway.)
This text can only be a part of that process, but it is meant to be an important
part. And like any teacher, I can hope to improve only if I get feedback from
course participants. It is my good fortune that you, as my course participants,
are also fellow professionals on whom I can rely to give me that feedback, but
that does not take away from my responsibility actively to seek it if I wish
to continue to develop as a teacher.
Fifthly, because the question sets out to elicit individual responses, it helps
me emphasise early our desire on the Aston team to work with real diversity.
In this, we take our place in the overall TESOL enterprise, for all of us in
TESOL find this diversity in the contexts in which we work, in the people we
work with, in the language that we describe, in the ways we learn of describing
language, in the accounts and explanations of language acquisition we discover,
in the ways our students learn English, in the ways we teach it, and in ourselves.
Finally, because the introduction seeks to exemplify the need to gather data
from participants in a situation (in this case, yourselves) as a basis for activity
and exploration. We shall return repeatedly to issues of data and collection,
most especially from Unit 4 (Action Research) on.
At this point, it could be interesting for you to compare the notes that you
wrote in the boxes above both with my response and with the notes written by
colleagues. That latter comparison may be easy for you to do, or it may require
some considerable effort. We believe that the ability to network, to communicate,
to keep in touch with your peer group, to get to know each other, to appreciate
and respect diversity, to establish collegiality is, however, of arterial importance
to your further study and professional growth. This is not to say that one cannot
do the work for the MSc more or less by oneself, it is a deliberate move on
our part to share with you some of the values which underpin our approach at
Aston to this programme. I shall have more to say in this area in the next section.
Some fundamentals
Motivation
You have just spent some time thinking about my motivation in starting this
unit in the way that I have. I also want you to spend some time thinking about
your own motivation in deciding to take part in this programme. You may well
have done this already in some detail, or you may have moved generally into
the idea of a master's because it seemed to be the next thing to do. Whatever
the case is, I am encouraging you to make an explicit record of your motivation
as you understand it right now.
Having an idea of what motivates you gives you a way of checking whether or
not you are getting what you want from the way you spend your life. And as time
passes, your motivation might change; that can be a very interesting process,
but you can't really track it unless you have a record of how you felt before
- a record that was made at that time.
This doesn't have to be a daunting, formal process, but there are some terms
you can use to help you think through the area, terms that you might well be
familiar with from talking, thinking or reading about language learner motivation.
For instance, is there extrinsic motivation operating here? Do you see opportunities
in your local or broader career context which motivate you to get a higher degree?
Do you feel an intrinsic motivation to be involved in the kind of work that
you foresee doing during this course, because the field itself is so interesting?
Are you motivated by an instrumental view of a master's degree as a tool with
which you can do things and get things? Is there a specific short-term or long-term
purpose that you have in mind? Do you feel an integrative motivation, in the
sense that you want to belong to a community of people who have developed an
attitude to their work which you find attractive? Do you expect to find some
kind of personal or professional fulfilment through the work? Is there professional
or social pressure on you to have a master's degree?
I am not suggesting that you need to write answers to any of these questions.
I offer them as ways of starting to think about your motivation.
Task 3
What I do want you to do is to take a few minutes and to make some notes regarding
your motivation as you begin this degree programme.
Make the notes now and we'll come back to them later (in Task 5).
Time
You are bound to have given a great deal of thought to issues of time before
starting the MSc. One of the most frequently asked questions regarding the course
is how much time it takes. As you were probably told then, there are at least
three reasons why this question is so difficult to answer:
o It depends on how much you already know, what you have already done, what
you have already read, what you have already written.
o It depends on how far you want to go. There is, metaphorically speaking, a
floor to the MSc house, but no necessary ceiling. That is to say, it is our
responsibility at Aston to ensure that certain minimum standards are met. This
can sometimes be the downside of the job. It is also our responsibility to see
that participants can develop to their own potential. This is exultantly the
upside of the job. It is not our place to make ethical judgements as to whether
participants should do more or less than they do, it is simply clearly the case
that it will take the same person less time to meet minimum standards than to
reach their full potential. More on this under Purposes, below.
o The work tends to infiltrate your life. This is true in a positive sense,
in that much of the work involves an investigation of what you are doing professionally
anyway. It can also be true in a negative sense, and partners and family can
suffer. More on this under People, below.
Despite the thinking you have done about time, I urge you now to ask yourself
whether it might not be useful to formalise that thinking. A big danger is that
one starts off wanting to do something and with a commitment to "fit it in somehow."
But most of us are expert at finding excuses for why we can't do something exactly
now. Then, as the pressures build up, one runs into friction with family and
friends and still has to settle for doing less than one had wanted to on the
work front. One gets the passing grades, so that's "all right," but the deeper
kind of satisfaction and motivation starts to evaporate like, (in that wonderfully
evocative expression from a Coppola movie with Natasha Kinski), like spit on
a griddle.
How much of a pattern is there to your week already? Can you see spare time
in that pattern? Can you organise your activities in order to create some spare
time?
Alternatively, can you see something that you are going to give up doing? Do
you want to make a conscious decision to give up for a couple of years some
of the television you watch, or the daily paper, or a regular social activity?
Another angle is to look for time that is lying fallow at the moment. If you
have a daily bus journey, can you seriously count it as potential reading time
to help you keep up with journal articles, for example? If you have free lessons
in a timetable, can you spend more of them in the staff work area and fewer
in the social room?
Have you made every effort to talk to your employers about what you are trying
to do and make them see how this is going to feed into their teaching operation?
Might they cut you a little slack in your contact hours, or agree to arrange
them more conveniently? Your Course Tutor will be very happy to send back-up
letters to support this kind of bid.
Similarly, at home, is it clear to everyone how important this work is to you,
and what it involves in terms of commitment? Is it clear to you how people at
home feel about that? Have you agreed some blocks of time in which you will
be able to concentrate, on your writing, for example?
Some people get by well on frequent little bursts of work, others need substantial
blocks of time in order to get going. You probably know yourself that well -
you have to plan to maximise your own strengths.
Task 4
Draw a week's timetable.
The task is to go through your week (a regular week or any one week - all seven
days) and find, say, ten to twelve hours which you can dedicate to the MSc..
As with any plan, the crucial part is then to monitor to what extent you can
keep to it, or modify it as you go along, in order to keep to that time commitment.
Just as with a lesson plan, the purpose is not to straightjacket what you do,
but to give you a way of learning about how well you can organise yourself and
your life when you want to.
So, how does it look?
Finally, on this topic, we are very keen to know how long you do spend on studying for this degree. If you succeed in keeping a note of time spent, even in rough terms, please do let me know how long you spend on this foundation module. Making individual allowances for the various points I made above, it is my aim to provide input and stimulation for about one hundred and fifty hours of work, not including the preparation of your portfolio of work for assessment. Is that realistic?
Space
A lot of people have to get their MSc work out when they want to study and put
everything away again when they have to stop. But if you can create some dedicated
space, be it ne'er so small, it may well be a much bigger help to the work than
it might look to an outsider. The fact of being in a place created for concentration
on particular goals itself seems to help that concentration.
As a working teacher, you probably have some professional space both at work
and at home, and that may be enough for these purposes. But if there is an extra
desk in the staffroom, or some shelf or cupboard space which you could ask for
while it is not otherwise needed, this might also be of great help. Physically,
these arrangements mean that you can leave books and papers in place while you
are engaged elsewhere. Psychologically, it might help you maintain a clear sense
of the importance of what you have in hand. Socially, so long as collegial relationships
are otherwise healthy, it can help colleagues come to terms with the extra work
you have taken on. It may even motivate someone to take an interest which might
itself lead to further professional development.
In general, the same points regarding desk, shelf and cupboard space apply at
home, too. I feel the danger of my seeming to want to tell people how to arrange
their domestic lives, here, and I had better stop soon! But for many of us,
our early university study was done under very different social circumstances
than our master's degree and it is my job, at least, to encourage you to think
about the need for arrangements before the lack of them becomes a problem. One
thing is almost certain - during the course of the MSc programme, you will collect
so much material of one kind or another that it will outgrow whatever space
you allowed for it in the first place. The more space you can clear (or start
to negotiate for) now, the better!
Resources
You will, of course, individually receive our core teaching materials direct
from us. They represent our explicit work as teachers, in which we want to introduce
you to our areas of special interest and involve you in an enthusiasm for them.
We cannot, however, provide all the resources and references which make each
area the rich source of experience and learning which it can be. To have been
accepted on the course, you must have assured us that some sources of relevant
books and journals are available to you. Once again, I urge you to formalise
that information. Make lists of accessible institutions that have relevant resources,
and of which important resources you know that they have. I don't mean that
you should start to duplicate library catalogues! I mean that if you discover
that one library subscribes to, say, Educational Action Research, make a clear
record of that fact so that you don't have to go searching for it again in the
future. Talk to librarians and see if it is possible to have some books kept
on reserve, or if you can make arrangements for postal borrowing. Do they offer
inter-library loan, on a local, regional or national basis? Is there a photocopying
service? Do they welcome suggestions for books to purchase or journal subscriptions?
As many of you will know from your own teaching, providing lists of references
and reading lists is a double-edged sword. If one gives short lists, one decreases
the likelihood that participants will be able to find the items listed. If one
provides long lists in order to increase availability, one risks inducing panic
at the length of the list and demands for more specificity. The teaching materials
will indicate how essential a source is. As a working rule of thumb, and with
the exception of books such as Bloor & Bloor (1995), or Edge (1992), where one
is required to do work from the book, there is no such thing as an absolutely
essential reading. So much has been and is being written in our field that there
is always another useful source to turn to.
References which one cannot access are like all unattainable objects of desire
- they seem so absolutely necessary in their absence. But the central point
to remember is that the most important references are the ones that you have
got and can get - use them well!
One final point here, to be continued below: the more you can collaborate with
colleagues to share resources, the more likely you are to be able to access
a wider range of them, and the more those resources are likely to be enriched
by the opinions about them which you exchange.
People
As I have already mentioned (and to no one's surprise, I am sure), people, and
communication with people, are at the heart of this programme.
First of all, your family and friends need to know what it is that you are trying
to do if they are to help you, at least with their understanding of your occasional
absences. The other side of that bargain is that it is up to you to recognise
when enough is enough and to put the work aside. In most of the areas of study
with which you engage, there is no obvious end to any piece of work. Classroom
problems are not solved in any final or general manner; language use will not
be comprehensively described and explained in any way which is beyond dispute
from another perspective. You may more often find yourself having to put a stop
to your assignments than feeling that you have actually finished them in a way
that you find fully satisfactory. Don't think of that as a problem of yours
- it is par for the course, it is a sign of the seriousness with which most
participants try to make their study a meaningful part of their professional
lives. But the point I am trying to make here is that we have to reach out to
those who love us and enlist their support, while being sure that we do not
exploit them.
Keeping in touch with the peer group in terms of Aston participants is a must
for most people. These are the people who truly understand the impossible demands
that are being made on you, who share the agony and the ecstasy and the occasional
feeling that it just isn't worth it. Everyone goes through bad periods individually,
but we do not all have them at the same time - that is where the group comes
in. Everyone also goes through periods of enlightenment and inspiration - that
is when one can spare a little energy to help others in the group.
Keep clear records of the names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail
addresses of other participants with whom you come into contact, or who you
might contact. We will help you with data regarding people in your geographical
area and people who are engaged on the same modules as you are. It remains everyone's
right, of course, not to have their contact information shared around, and we
will always respect that right. In terms of our own purposes, however, the furtherance
of local and international collegiality ranks high, and we shall be encouraging
it. As you develop your own records, keep track of colleagues and the module
pathway they follow. Even if you take different paths for a while, you may coincide
again later, and you may be able to offer advice and support in the meantime.
And if this is good advice, don't just nod it through. How are you going to
keep those clear records of names and addresses? On computer? On file? In a
dedicated address book? Act on these ideas now. Start putting systems in place
early - you will be really pleased later on.
Some of your roles
In the previous section, I have written, and encouraged you to think, about
various features of you in your context. In this section, I want to turn our
attention to other aspects of yourself as a participant in the MSc programme.
In my subhead, I used the expression some of your roles, and in the previous
sentence, I wrote, aspects of yourself. I sense a shift there and I am hard-put
to pin down the distinction. I suppose I want to emphasise in passing that I
find it dangerous to separate the person from the teacher. Who we are (and how
we are) will express itself in any and all of what we might wish to call the
roles that we take on.
What I want to do here is to invite you to respond to the ideas behind some
of these roles/aspects and to compare your thoughts with mine. We could start
with a term which I used in the first sentence of this section: participant.
What does it mean to you to be referred to as a participant? Would it
make any difference to you if you were referred to as a student, or as
a course member, or a CM - all of which terms are used on similar
courses at different British institutions? It makes a difference to us on the
staff here, and we spent some time talking about it. That's to say, we all agree
that it does matter what names we give to things, because the names we give
take on a role in our understanding of the nature of what is being referred
to. We can see the evidence of this all around us: this is why putting people
out of work came to be referred to as making people redundant and is now presented
to us as rationalisation.
In our own specific case, the outcome we finally agreed to is based on the following
thinking:
o We found course member too much of a mouthful, and we already have
enough acronyms to live with without taking on CM.
o Student remains the most neutral term, and one which the university
administration will doubtless continue to employ in its communications with
you and about you.
o Despite this, student as a term has to stretch a long way in order
to cover yourselves, the undergraduate body here at Aston, and the language
learners that you teach. Furthermore, and most importantly, the whole nature
of our programme is committed to the principle that we are not fundamentally
engaged in sending you information for you to study; we are engaged in helping
you investigate your own working contexts, and only to the extent that you participate
in such a guided investigation can either you, or we, or this whole programme
succeed. Participant is also a bit of a mouthful, but every time we say
or write it, it functions as a reminder, an awareness-raiser, perhaps, of what
it is that we are all meant to be about.
Task 5
I have listed below some other terms that I find it useful to think about at
this stage.
Before you read on to discover what I have to say about them, please do take
the time to jot down your own responses to the words.
What do they mean to you?
Are they roles of yours/aspects of you?
Do they relate in any way to the motivations you listed above in Task 3, or
to yourself in terms of your private or professional aspirations?
What do you think of when you hear these words?
How do you react?
Teacher
Professional
Researcher
Theorist
Academic
As you will know from my previous comments, the reason for the tasks is not
that I believe I can make you write anything. They are there because I passionately
believe that if you take the time and trouble to make some notes now, you will
learn more, and you will think more, and you will learn more about what you
think than if you just simply pass by with a shake of the head and an ironic
smile. What you will also do is create some facts, some baseline data, a written
record of now which you will be able to use later.
Let's put it this way, if you have a conversation about these terms with a fellow
participant in a couple of weeks, what you say will be based on your thinking
at that time. If your thinking has not changed from this time to that, that
is fine (in a slightly disappointing sort of a way). But can you be sure, even
in your own mind? How could you hope to demonstrate the fact? If you can point
to the notes that you made at the time and say, "Look, this is what I wrote
at that point, and I still maintain the same positions now," then you have really
made your point, supported by data. If, on the other hand, you find that your
thinking has changed, you are in a position to characterise those changes by
a comparison between what you said then and what you think now.
In either case, by using the data in these ways, you have turned them into evidence
for an argument or for the development of a position. Without the data, you
have no evidence to show other people, or to be sure about yourself.
Here are my responses to the words listed above. You will notice that I don't
come to final conclusions, nor am I writing in order to convince you of anything.
My purpose here is to share with you some ideas of mine for you to consider
along with your own. I also indicate readings which I consider relevant to these
issues. If the ideas interest you and you can obtain the references, then follow
them up. Remember, too, that you must learn to use well the literature which
is available to you, and avoid becoming depressed about what is not.
Teacher
With regard to the term, teacher, one frequent and worthwhile response is to
subdivide it into component roles. From previous reading and study, you may
be familiar, for example, with Harmer's (1991: 235-255) characterisation of
the teacher as controller, assessor, organiser, prompter, participant, resource,
tutor and investigator. Harmer (ibid: 254) also invites us to think of other
roles which the teacher takes on. We probably can. In some cases, we may discover
that we have defined something which Harmer missed. Or, we may discover that
our 'new' role actually overlaps with one or two of Harmer's. We may wish to
argue that our categorisation is better, or we may concede that Harmer's is,
in fact, more useful because it is more explanatory and concise than our own.
Whatever the outcome, please note the way in which we have been using the literature
of our field to help us clarify and further our own thinking. That is what the
literature is for. It gives us shared reference points and a developing bank
of ideas to work with. One demand that we will make of you during the Aston
programme is that you show familiarity with the current debates in our field
- in other words, that you refer to papers in recent journals as well as to
well-established texts.
The most important points about the term teacher for me, at this point in my
working life, are the following:
o Teaching cannot be defined except in conjunction
with learning. At least, I often say that, but then it does not always seem
quite so straightforward. Here are two of the points I muse on:
o A teacher is someone whose work is dedicated to helping others learn. By definition,
teaching = helping learn. On the one hand, it is astonishing to have to spell
this out, but so much has been written about distinctions between lecturing,
teaching and facilitating (e.g. Underwood 1993) and between teacher-centred,
learner-centred and learning-centred teaching (e.g. Nunan 1995) that it clearly
is necessary to make this statement again and again. And at the same time, I
have to admit to a wry smile when I think that there is some kind of a truth
behind the staffroom complaint, 'I've taught them that point I don't know how
many times and they still haven't got it!'
o A teacher is not simply a bundle of classroom functions. Teachers are whole
people-who-teach. They have 'outside' lives and, in some cases, forty-year careers
in teaching. Their lives, and those of their families, are in (sometimes great)
part formed by the fact that they are a teacher. For this reason, while it is
true to say, 'One can learn without a teacher, but one cannot teach without
learners', this piece of cleverness conceals the truth that one is a teacher,
a person-who-teaches, also at those times when one is not in direct contact
with learners.
o The term teacher does not define a category
of worker which excludes the roles we shall discuss next. It describes rather
a context of choice in which the following roles also become possible.
Professional
In a simple but important sense, we are professionals in the sense that we do
what we do for money.
Indeed, a great deal of TESOL is carried out for very straightforward commercial
reasons and in ways which do not fit comfortably with visions of the practice
of, say, medicine and the law, perhaps the two examples of 'the professions'
which spring first to mind. Notoriously, TESOL is a form of employment into
which some people move without any form of training or qualification and, furthermore,
there is no professional body which oversees our work in TESOL and sets its
own standards. With regard to these last points, there is often a useful distinction
to be made between people who teach English in the context of their own formal
education system, and those who travel the world as a part of the international
TESOL community (Holliday 1994, pp.11-13). The former will usually be subject
to formal demands on their qualifications in a way that the latter need not.
It is difficult, therefore, to refer to TESOL in general as a profession. On
the other hand, we do know what we mean when we talk about a desire to be professional,
and the term is widely used - carrying positive overtones - in the sense of:
serious, responsible, reliable, and ethical. Here, it does draw on collocation
with lawyer and doctor, and I use the word in this sense below when I refer
to 'fellow professionals' in the section on Voice and relationships. We expect
such people to be informed about what is going on in their field, to have opinions
which they can substantiate by reference both to experience and to an acknowledged
literature, to be able to make plans, implement them and learn from the results,
and to be engaged in bringing on the next generation of practitioners.
Tempting as it is to end on such a resounding note, we might pause to think
of the generally low level of respect in which lawyers are held in many countries.
One acknowledges that they make a lot of money, but that only brings us back
to the first characteristic of professional that we looked at. What we have
here, perhaps, is the idea of the professional as a person with restricted,
specific expertise for which large sums of money can be charged. This is not
the experience of many TESOL professionals.
It may be that a small number of ESP teachers in the area of business consultancy
in rich countries manage to establish themselves in such positions. At a national
level, government agencies involved in language planning and the implementation
of large-scale projects might also deal in such terms. In part, the fees which
people are paid in these circumstances are perhaps as much for the responsibility
which they take on, and for an ability to make and implement decisions in the
absence of certainty, as for any actual expertise as such. Welker (1992) is
very interesting on the subject of the extent to which teachers are, or should
wish to be, experts in this sense of the holders of separate and privileged
knowledge.
Finally, in this section, we might think about what it might mean for TESOL
if professionalisation were to take place in the fuller sense I have alluded
to above, with professional bodies, rules of conduct, and clearly demarcated
levels of qualification. We could hope to isolate the irresponsible TESOL operations
which employ unqualified teachers and take money from unsuspecting customers
with little obvious outcome in terms of language learning. We could hope to
offer a more structured career possibility to people entering TESOL with serious
purpose. On the other hand, we would have to be careful that we were not, under
the cover of professionalisation, simply laying the dead hand of bureaucracy
on what is a lively and exciting way to earn a living. We would have to be careful
that we were not creating a closed club to which only the usual candidates on
the correct track were allowed entry. For anyone interested in this topic of
the professionalisation of teaching and its socio-political significance, Popkewitz
(1994) would be a good place to start.
Researcher
This is one of the words that we wish to claim for our own use. I say 'claim',
because I feel that it has been lost to us. Research has come to be associated
with large-scale projects - perhaps in the hard sciences within an isolated
world of laboratories, or in industry, to mean preparatory work carried out
before production. In our sense, however, research is not isolated from everyday
living, or thought of as prior to, or separate from, teaching. Being a teacher-researcher
means being the kind of teacher who is engaged in exploring his or her teaching
context.
If you want to progress beyond an "it works" relationship to teaching, you need
to learn how to go about investigating the context you work in. What would be
a worthwhile question to explore in your context? What would count as evidence?
How could you collect it? How would you make sense of it? So what? - What difference
does it make? How can you tell? Which books and articles are relevant to what
you are exploring? How can the reports of other teachers in different contexts
relate to yours? How does your contribution fit in? This is what we mean by
research.
There are strategies and skills to be learned and there will certainly be extra
demands on your time. These are in the nature of your studying for a higher
degree and attaining a new level of professional ability. What we are aiming
for as an outcome, however, is that you will be in a position to evaluate a
research-based approach to teaching from a position in which you see research
as a part of your province, to the extent to which you wish to claim it.
You will need to function as a researcher in order to gain your MSc. In the
longer term, you may also wish to make research an element of your teaching,
and teaching a context for your research.
Initially, you may be concerned that your research is trivial - you will almost
certainly be wrong. The researching of actual teaching contexts and experience
is exactly what is missing in our field, not only for the purpose of improving
professional practice, but also for the building of pedagogic theory. See the
next sub-section.
Theorist
Theory and theoretical are terms which cause problems in British culture, at
least. Take an everyday use:
'Theoretically, these showers should arrive tomorrow evening,
but practically, they might already turn up in the afternoon.'
Suzanne Charlton, BBC TV weather forecast, 19 May 1996.
So, should one take one's umbrella according to the theory, or according to
the practical possibility? Is the difference just one of likelihood? It really
is difficult to see what type of theory is being invoked here. The point is,
I think, that theory is seen as something divorced from what actually happens.
Things which are 'all very well in theory,' are, by implication, unlikely to
work out in everyday experience, when the 'theory' is 'applied'.
This is not at all a vision of theory or theorising to which we subscribe. Teaching
is not a science in the sense that one learns abstract theories which one then
applies in practice. There certainly are some general principles of which one
needs to be aware, but learning to teach is very much about learning to understand
and respond to the various ways in which learners interact with their contexts,
with each other, with their teachers, and with the diverse bodies of knowledge
and ability which they want to acquire.
The type of theorist which we want to encourage is the person who struggles
to articulate statements which make sense of that person's own experience. Theory,
in this sense, is the understanding which arises from practice, and the theorist
is the person who gives voice to it. Theory is evaluated according to its usefulness
in helping a person account for what is happening, and in planning future action.
That is why we are interested in the specifics of a local situation, and why
our participants need to be researchers in order to formulate local theory.
At the same time, in order to appreciate the significance of what one comes
to understand, one needs to know what others have said in other situations.
And in order to formulate and communicate one's understanding, one needs to
be in control of appropriate ways of speaking and writing. For both these reasons,
one needs to be able to function at some level in the relevant discourse community.
Academic
This is another word that is frequently marked for negativity in its everyday
uses:
'Some Sinn Fein candidates will certainly be elected, but
that will be quite academic as they won't be allowed to attend the talks.'
James Naughtie, The Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 21 May 1996
'Blackburn raised their game from a canter after Wise put Chelsea ahead after
35 minutes. At once, Sherwood headed in the splendidly direct Wilcox's centre
from the left and before the hour was up McKinlay, with a cleverly taken header,
and Fenton with a volley had effectively settled it. Spencer's late reply proved
academic.'
Frank Keating, The Guardian, 6 May 1996
Academic, in these examples, seems to mean something like, of no
real significance.
But academic is also a word on which we want to lay a claim. One of the purposes
which we hope you will embrace as long-term TESOL professionals working on a
higher degree, is the ability to take part in the kind of well-informed and
precise statements and exchanges of opinion which can add to the body of knowledge
available for TESOL. We are committed to high academic standards in these senses
of information and precision, and academic itself is a word that we want to
appropriate and make positive in these ways.
Perhaps one of our motivations for wanting to use this word with regard to our
work together is that we want to disassociate it from a necessary connection
with work that is done in an academy. The kind of research and theory-building
that I have sketched above can't be done in an academy, it can only be done
in a working context. In order to gain for this type of work the respect which
we think it deserves, we have to insist on high academic standards and the ability
to function in an academic discourse community.
It may be the case that you are involved in this programme because you aspire
to be a researcher, a theorist, and an academic in the field. If so, we can
simply get on with it. But my main motivation in writing this section arises
from the fact that these words are frequently seen as embarrassing in British
teaching culture. You may not want to think of yourself as a researcher, a theorist,
or an academic. What we ask for the time being is that you stay open to the
potentially positive meanings which these terms can carry, and open to the suggestion
that these are aspects of yourself which will grow if you are to develop to
the full as a teacher and a professional.
Making a net work
You need people to talk to as you study for your MSc. Ideally, you will communicate
with fellow participants engaged on the same module as yourself, fellow participants
engaged on different modules, Aston MSc graduates, participants and graduates
of other master's programmes, fellow teachers who have no experience of such
programmes, non-teachers who have experience of further study, and people who
just care about you. All these strands of a network need putting in place and
they all require effort to keep in place.
If you have carried out the tasks I have suggested in this unit so far, you
have information and thoughts on various topics to share. It is now up to you
to start sharing.
Establishing a record
I have made the point a couple of times that we need to collect data and establish
a record of that data as we go along. This gives us something tangible to go
back to later on, when our perspectives might have changed. Let's dig just a
little deeper at this point into what I'm saying here.
First of all, that word tangible which I decided to use in the previous paragraph.
I could have used the word objective, but that is a word to be careful with.
If you have made some notes on your response to the word academic, then those
notes are there as an object to which you can return. There is no difficulty
with this usage. The notes you made are, of course, notes of your own subjective
opinions, that is the point of them. They are not objective in the sense of
what one might think of as the objective facts of the hard sciences. We shall
return to this issue in depth in Unit 4, but let us put this marker down here.
We rarely deal, in this master's programme, only with simple objective facts
in their own right. Let us imagine for a moment a classroom in which the teacher
says to the students, "Put the chairs in rows." Given the presence of some kind
of recording, the saying of these words can be established pretty unproblematically
as objective fact. But why do we choose to make a point of noting this action?
Did the teacher regard it as significant? Did the students? How do we interpret
it? Do we make a note in the margin that Teacher X is a traditionalist who likes
to have students sitting in straight lines, or that X is a sensitive teacher
who thinks it worthwhile to move the classroom furniture around for specific
activities? Altrichter et al (1993:72f) have a useful activity based around
the idea of a 'ladder of inference,' which aims to help us keep a handle on
the status of the data that we collect. Please look it up.
Or, on another tack, if we were to ask a teacher and a student what happened
in a particular class, there would be differences between their responses, not
because one was right and the other wrong, but because they simply perceived
the experience of the lesson differently. The teacher might report on a group
task designed to increase learner independence; the students might report that
the teacher was tired and left them to get on with things by themselves. Seeking
out inter-subjective understandings of learning and teaching is very much what
we are about. And just as perceptions differ between people, so do they also
differ in the same person across time. That is why we need tangible records.
And why you need to keep a diary.
The diary
For a fuller explanation of what is at stake, as well as sound practical advice,
you should read the first two chapters of Altrichter et al. (1993). A recorded
discussion of diary-keeping in the context of TESOL-oriented research is also
provided, and you can follow this up by checking the index entries under diary
and diary-study in Bailey & Nunan (1996). Further references to diary studies
in TESOL for those who wish to take a deeper interest in this area are: Bailey
1990, Brock et al. 1992, Campbell 1996, Jarvis 1992, Numrich 1996, Peck 1996,
Richards 1992. Note that terms such as diary, journal and log are used in overlapping
ways by different writers. What we have in mind in our case is a document private
to each person, not to be read, and certainly not assessed, by anyone else.
The simple proposition being made here, then, is not that you study diary-keeping,
but that you keep a diary - a diary of your time on the Foundation Module.
A basic approach would be as follows:
o Dedicate a large-format book, or A4 file, or computer folder to the purpose.
o Leave a large left-hand margin on each page.
o Dedicate the last part of each study session and/or (section of a) unit to
the diary. Make an entry of your thoughts and feelings, both specific to that
session or unit, and also cumulatively as you move through the module. Be explicit.
Wherever possible, explore your justifications for what you say. This may well
be difficult at the beginning. Remember that no one else will read what you
have to say - just do it.
o Periodically, perhaps on a weekly basis, read through what you have written
and make any notes that occur to you in the margin, perhaps in a different colour,
pen or script. (You may notice patterns occurring in the notes you have written;
you may feel differently (for better or worse!) about some earlier activity;
you may find that an earlier intuition is turning into a firm conviction.)
It is not easy for most of us to keep up the discipline of maintaining a regular
diary, but I am convinced that it is worth the effort, for four very important
reasons:
1 Simply taking the time to reflect on what you have been doing in a study session
is helpful in terms of being aware of what you are doing, of evaluating the
work, and of integrating the work into your ongoing professional life.
2 Making yourself articulate the outcome of your reflection, no matter how informally,
actually helps you to understand and develop the thoughts with which you are
working.
3 You create a bank of data which will help you interpret and deal with the
intellectual and emotional processes you are going through.
4 You have the basis of an evaluation of the Foundation Module, which you will
be required to provide in your FND Portfolio. You can paraphrase, or quote selectively
from your diary if and as you find it appropriate.
Finally, in this section, I am obliged by a sense of principle to point out
to you that no one is going to check whether or not you have kept a diary: it
is not a condition of the programme. I hope that you have been persuaded that
it is worth making every effort to come to terms with this very powerful aid
to aware study.
As back-up reading in this area, we provide Bailey (1990) and Burke (1995).
Bailey's chapter is usefully about diary studies, and may help you appreciate
the breadth, as well as depth, of their use. Burke's paper exemplifies the ongoing
use of a teacher's log in her development of her teaching, as well as providing
an example of how data drawn from such a log can give substance to a description,
and provide evidence for an argument, when writing about one's teaching.
The portfolio
Rather like diary-keeping, assessment by portfolio has generated a literature
of its own and I include here further references for those who wish to pursue
the idea (Barton & Collins 1993, Carroll et al. 1996, Johnson 1996, Wade & Yarbrough
1996, Winsor and Ellefson 1995).
As with diary-keeping, you are not called upon to study portfolios, simply to
provide one. We are working with the basic concept of a portfolio of work, perhaps
as a painter, or a photographer, or an architect might understand it. The portfolio
gives you the chance to provide samples of what you can do across a range of
possibilities. The tasks we set for the portfolio are specifically marked as
such. They are meant to be well-defined and professionally relevant. We rely
on you to tell us if they are not. The tasks are also meant to allow leeway
both for diverse situations and individual creativity, so you should not feel
that there is a model answer out there waiting for your approximation to it.
Unlike diary-keeping, the compilation of the portfolio is compulsory.
You do not submit the portfolio until you have completed it. I do strongly urge
you, however, to carry out each portfolio task as you come to it, unit by unit.
When you come to the end of the module, look back over the tasks and review
your work. I then advise you to choose your response to one of the tasks and
send it in for formative evaluation. We will give you feedback on the individual
task and a clear indication as to whether you appear to be hitting the right
standard. At a time of your choosing, you then send in the whole portfolio.
Following the next submission dateline, we will give you overall summative feedback
on the portfolio and, in almost all cases, I trust, you will proceed to your
next chosen modules on the programme.
It is up to you to evaluate this module in terms of the aims spelled out for
it, both in overall terms (in the Study Companion) and unit by unit here. It
is up to us to evaluate your portfolio in terms of the general FND aim, 'to
enable participants to demonstrate their ability to proceed immediately with
their master's level studies,' and in terms of the specific abilities demanded
by the tasks.
Voice and relationships
We are coming to the end of this introductory unit and I want to make some retrospective
comments now on the way in which I have been addressing you. In terms of academic
content, this issue could well be handled under TDA or IIC, but it is relevant
across the whole module, and the whole degree, so it seems appropriate to raise
it here.
I am writing to you in what I think of as my written-teaching voice. This is
neither completely formal writing, such as you will find in our academic journals
and books, nor is it the completely informal writing of, for example, the newsletters
we send you. I hope that this voice proves appropriate for my purpose in writing
these materials, which is to engage you in potentially complex and intriguing
issues in a way that is, in itself, not off-puttingly remote, or simplistic,
or idiosyncratic. Just as different teachers teach in different ways, you will
find that my colleagues and I write in different ways in order to be the best
teachers that we think we can be. As you progress through the modules, these
questions of voice and teaching style are some of the areas in which we look
forward to your feedback.
Remember, too, that the voice and style of written teaching is not likely to
be appropriate for the writing of assignments. In other words, my writing here
is not a model for your writing on the programme. Indeed, one of the outcomes
that we desire for you is that you discover and develop your own style of public,
written expression. As you read the articles in ELT Journal, Applied Linguistics,
TESOL Quarterly and other professional journals, you will see that a wide variety
of accents is acceptable in our field.
We at Aston see our relationship with you as one of fellow-professionals in
TESOL, in which you have access to specific knowledge, and we have prior familiarity
with a general field of knowledge. We aim to help you expand your knowledge
and your abilities through study and action, as well as develop your capacity
to articulate your outcomes to various audiences.
As well as developing one's own voice, a writer in a professional field also
pulls in other voices from the literature, and I would like to finish this section
by introducing a quotation from Stevick (1982: 201), which, while initially
addressed to readers first entering TESOL, also provides very wise and powerful
advice for anyone entering a new phase of challenge and disturbance in the status
quo of their professional lives:
'Teaching language is only one kind of teaching, and teaching and learning are only two limited aspects of being human. I therefore hope, first of all, that you will take time to sit down and read again whatever philosophical or religious writings you have found most nourishing to you.'
I now want to use this statement as a vehicle for some related comments on
the use of other peoples voices, i.e. quotations.
o authority
I have used a quotation here because I want to draw on the authority of the
writer in the presentation of my own position. I find Stevick's advice to be
highly relevant to, and in line with, my own comments about the teacher-as-person.
(I could achieve the same end by quoting someone in order to disagree with them.
One is still drawing on their authority - there is no point in taking the trouble
to disagree with an idiot.)
o expression
Also, in order to justify the use of a quotation, I have to feel that the person
quoted has expressed a particular point particularly well, with such conciseness
and elegance that a paraphrase plus acknowledgement would not do them justice.
This is to a great extent an aesthetic judgement and one to keep in mind when
reading and using quotations.
o coherence
I find it very satisfying to see how Stevick, in giving this advice, stays completely
true to the principles he outlines for language teaching, and for teaching in
general, with regard to the relationship between control and initiative (Stevick
1980: 16-33). His advice here is clear and unambiguous in terms of recommended
action, thus exercising the teacher's legitimate control in terms of taking
responsibility for organising what might usefully be done. In the secure environment
thus structured by the teacher/adviser, we have the absolute freedom to exercise
our own initiative in the choice of the texts which we do find nourishing in
our own lives. By offering this quotation, I also hope to offer access for some
readers to this broader vision.
o conventions
In formal terms, please note that I used the surname of the author, followed
in brackets by the year of publication of the text I am citing and the page
number on which the actual quotation can be found. At the end of this unit,
you can look up the name in an alphabetical list and get the full reference.
All this is standard practice, and we ask you to follow it. The conventions
regarding exactly how this information is given do vary. We do not mind which
set of conventions you decide to use, but we do demand that you adopt one and
that you are consistent in its use.
o respect
The conventions I have just referred to might seem to be an example of just
the sort of nit-picking triviality which leads to words such as academic having
the negative associations that they do. But the conventions are there to protect
principles of behaviour very important to a community which lives by the exchange
of ideas through words. The fundamental principle is one of respect. If I use
an idea which I have consciously taken from someone else, I pay respect to that
person by acknowledging them accurately. And similarly, with regard to the reader,
if I refer to another work which I think is relevant to my topic, it may be
that my reader will want to pursue that reference. Out of respect to my reader,
I must make sure that the reference I give is precise and fully detailed. I
did not observe this convention when referring to the film by Coppola in the
section on Time, above. Did you feel uncomfortable about that? I did.
All in all, then, always acknowledge the sources of the ideas that you use - this is one of the demands of the educational culture that you are now working in - and use quotations sparingly when there is good cause. What we want to hear is your voice appropriately contextualised in our shared community of discourse.
Reflection
Please read through this section now, and then come back to it when you have
finished with the unit. You might usefully refer to it again when you complete
the FND and write your evaluation.
Go back to the opening page of this unit and re-read the statement there of
Aims and Objectives.
Look back through the tasks in the unit.
How did you feel about them?
What do you think now?
Do you feel that the unit has kept its promises?
Is something missing?
Do you feel that you have participated in ways that enable you to make the most
of the materials offered?
Your responses to these questions might form potential diary entries.
You might like to make some interim notes here before doing the recommended
back-up reading, doing some broader reading of your own, networking with some
colleagues, and writing up your diary.
How long do reckon you have spent on this unit altogether?
Welcome.
We have begun.
References
Altrichter, H., Posch, P. and Somekh, B. 1993. Teachers Investigate
Their Work. London: Routledge.
Bailey, K. 1990. The use of diary studies in teacher education programmes.
In Richards, J. and Nunan, D. (Eds.) 1990. Second Language Teacher Education.
Cambridge: CUP. Pp. 215-226.
Bailey, K. and Nunan, D. (Eds.) 1996. Voices from the Language Classroom.
Cambridge: CUP.
Barton, J. and Collins, A. 1993. Portfolios in teacher education.
Journal of Teacher Education. 44/2: 200-210.
Bloor, M. and Bloor, T. 1995. The Functional Analysis of English.
London: Edward Arnold.
Brock, M., Yu, B. and Wong, M. 1992. Journaling together: Collaborative
diary-keeping and teacher development. In Flowerdew, J., Brock, M. and Hsia,
S. (Eds.) 1992. Perspectives on Second Language Teacher Education. Hong Kong:
City Polytechnic. Pp. 295-307.
Burke, H. 1995 Discovering and taking action on the 'adult/child persona'
conflict within low-level students. In Edge, J. (Ed.) Teacher Development
in Action. Aston University: Language Studies Unit. Pp. 20-36.
Campbell, C. 1996. Socialising with the teachers and prior language
learning experience: a diary study. In Bailey and Nunan. Pp. 201-223
Carroll, J., Potthof, D. and Huber, T. 1996. Learning from three
years of portfolio use in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education
47/2:253-262
Edge, J. 1992. Cooperative Development: Professional Self-Development
through Cooperation with Colleagues. Harlow: Longman.
Harmer, J. 1991. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 2nd.
ed. Harlow: Longman.
Holliday, A. 1994. Appropriate Methodology and Social Context.
Cambridge: CUP.
Jarvis, J. 1992. Using diaries for teacher reflection on in-service
courses, TESOL Journal 46/2: 133-143.
Johnson, K. 1996. Portfolio assessment in second language teacher
education. TESOL Journal 6/2: 11-14.
Numrich, C. 1996. On becoming a language teacher: Insights from diary
studies. TESOL Quarterly 30/1: 131-151.
Nunan, D. 1995. Closing the gap between learning and instruction.
TESOL Quarterly 29/1: 133-158.
Peck, S. 1996. Language learning diaries as mirrors of students'
cultural sensitivity. In Bailey and Nunan. Pp. 236-247.
Popkewitz, T. 1994. Professionalisation in teaching and teacher education:
Some notes on its history, ideology and potential. Teaching and Teacher
Education 10/1: 1-14.
Richards, K. 1992. Pepys into a TEFL course. TESOL Journal 46/2:
144-152.
Stevick, E.W. 1980. Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways. Rowley,
Mass.: Newbury House.
Stevick, E.W. 1982. Teaching and Learning Languages. Cambridge:
CUP.
Underwood, A. 1993. Lecturing, teaching and facilitating. Teacher
Development 24/1-2.
Wade, R. and Yarbrough, D. 1996. Portfolios: A tool for reflective
thinking in teacher education? Teaching and Teacher Education 12/1: 63-79
Welker, R. 1992. The Teacher as Expert. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Winsor, P. and Ellefson, B. 1995. Professional portfolios in teacher
education. The Teacher Educator 31/1: 68-91.
Back-up reading
Bailey, K. 1990. The use of diary studies in teacher education programmes.
In Richards, J. and Nunan, D. (Eds.) 1990. Second Language Teacher Education.
Cambridge: CUP. Pp. 215-226.
Burke, H. 1995 Discovering and taking action on the 'adult/child
persona' conflict within low-level students. In Edge, J. (Ed.) Teacher Development
in Action. Aston University: Language Studies Unit. Pp. 20-36.