Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Filling vessels or kindling fires – what is teaching, and how does it impact on learning?
Richard Rossner
© Eaquals 2015 1
How do people learn?
Think of a child learning to walk, to ride a bicycle, to write her name, to count up to 20…
• By observation & copying others
• Through trial and error
• By being helped
• By being told what to do
• By working it out for themselves
• Through dialogue
• ….
© Eaquals 2015
© Eaquals 2015 3
© Eaquals 2015 4
Bloom’s
‘verb wheel’
Language, reflection, recoding and learning
• “…much of growth starts out by our turning around and recoding in new forms…what we have been doing and seeing, then going on to new modes of organisation with the new products that have been formed by these recodings” (Bruner 1966)
• ‘To understand is to invent’ (Piaget 1971)
• “Talk and writing provide means by which children are able to reflect upon the bases upon which they are interpreting reality, and thereby change them” (Barnes 1976)
© Eaquals 2015
The zone of proximal development
“…is the distance between the actual
developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving, and the level of
potential development as determined through
problem solving under adult guidance or in
collaboration with more capable peers.”
“Instruction is only useful when it moves ahead of
development.”(Vygotsky, 1978)
© Eaquals 2015
learning talk (Alexander 2008)
• Narrate
• Explain
• Instruct
• Ask different kinds of questions
• Receive, act and build upon answers
• Analyse and solve problems
• Speculate & imagine
• Explore & evaluate ideas
• Discuss
• Argue, reason & justify
• Negotiate
CONTINGENT ABILITIES/
DISPOSITIONS
Being willing and able to:
• Listen
• Be receptive to alternative
viewpoints
• Think about what you hear
• Give others time to think
© Eaquals 2015 7
Example of talk in groups• Fritzie: (reads) ‘Our sun is just one of millions of stars in
the galaxy called the Milky Way.’ Is it true, false or unsure?’
• Vicky: I'm not sure actually, I haven't ...
• Gloria: It's called the, yes, it's true
• Vicky: Yeah, I th.. not sure but I think it may be a yes
• Fritzie: why?
• Vicky: Well, because, well, in the night, yeah, there's loads and loads and loads of stars in the sky. But if you actually look at them really, really properly, it's actually ehm...
• Fritzie: a planet?
• Vicky: … yeah, biggest star's actually the planet, and like the one that kind of twinkle, I think's the, the planet and the one that eh…
(Mercer 2008)
© Eaquals 2015 8
Three kinds of talk (Mercer 2008)
• Disputational talk
• Lots of disagreement
• Competitive not collaborative
• Cumulative talk
• Lots of acceptance & agreement
• Repetition and elaboration of what others have said
• Exploratory talk
• Active listening, questioning, sharing of information, challenging, respect for opinions, seeking agreement
© Eaquals 2015
The responsibility of teachers
• “Teachers have a professional responsibility
for helping their students to build new
understandings upon the foundations of their
previous learning, and language is the main
tool available to the teaching profession for
doing this
• …. teachers can also help students to learn
how language can be used as a tool for
making joint, coherent sense of experience”
(Mercer 2000)
10
“
© Eaquals 2015
How do teachers use communication to support learning?
• Recapitulation, repetition, reformulation, exhortation
• Questioning, elicitation, framing, presenting, refocusing, providing feedback…
Classroom management language:
• Greeting, Instructing, getting attention, reprimanding…
© Eaquals 2015
Teaching talk
Alexander 2008:
‘Teaching talk’
• Drilling, repetition
• Recitation
• Instruction, exposition
• Discussion
• Dialogue
Mercer 2000:
‘Teacher’s talk’
• Recapitulation
• Elicitation
• Repetition
• Reformulation
• Exhortation
© Eaquals 2015
Mediation – spoken activitiesCOGNITIVE MEDIATION
Constructing meaning1. Collaborating to construct meaning
2. Generating conceptual talk
Conveying received
meaning
3. Relaying specific information
4. Explaining data (in graphs, diagrams etc.)
5. Processing text
6. Interpreting
7. Spoken translation of written text (sight translation)
RELATIONAL MEDIATION
Facilitating relationships
8. Facilitating collaborative interaction
9. Managing interaction in plenary and in groups
10. Resolving delicate situations and disputes
© Eaquals 2015 (Council of Europe CEFR project 2014-2017)
Teaching is communicating
• Engendering a feeling of competence• showing that students contributions are valued
• Giving clear guidance – setting the scene
• Helping with terminology
• Ensuring common ground - providing topics, tasks and materials to focus on without restricting or guiding too much
• Focusing, i.e. directing students’ attention to the right degree (but also allowing them to develop their own focus)
• Setting the right pace – not over-demanding, not too loose. The right amount of space/time to learn for themselves
• Making things public – ensuring wider involvement beyond the small group
(Barnes 1976)
© Eaquals 2015
Principles of dialogic teaching
• Collective: teachers and learners address learning tasks together
• Reciprocal: teachers and learners listen to each other, share ideas, consider alternative viewpoints
• Supportive: learners express their ideas freely, help each other towards common understanding
• Cumulative: teachers and learners build on their own and each other’s ideas
• Purposeful: teachers plan and steer classroom talks with specific educational goals in mind
(Alexander 2008)
© Eaquals 2015 15
© Eaquals 2015 16Johnson B. 2015, based on Wenger-Trayner
But…what about educational culture?
• Primacy of the ‘western’ model
• Lack of awareness of cultural
differences in educational practices
• Effects on learning and teaching
• Does one size fit all?
© Eaquals 2015
Some possible implications for teacher education
• Teachers in general:
• Greater awareness of the various roles that language and
communication play in teaching/mediation
• More training in the actual use of communication in different
ways for different purposes in the classroom
• Greater focus on educational culture and traditions
• Training in self-awareness and classroom-based research
• Additionally for language teachers?
• Letting go..
• Clearer understanding of whether/how/when their work
should go beyond the foreign language
• More training in how to balance the language and content
focus of their teaching for optimal learning
© Eaquals 2015
In the wider world…
“Quality in teaching and learning is a global
imperative. It demands a global community of
discourse. I hope that UNESCO and its
advisers will approach global education post-
2015 with a commitment to make much more
inclusive use of the abundant evidence on
pedagogy that is now available in order to
exert maximum impact on quality where it
matters: in the classroom”. (Alexander 2015 in response to the 2014 Global Monitoring Report)
© Eaquals 2015 19
Conclusions?• Need for much more research into classroom teaching and learning
processes – especially language
• Need for descriptors of this for many contexts:o At different phases of teacher development
o For different sectors – pre-primary & primary, secondary, higher education etc.
o For different content areas?
• Special descriptors for teachers working in a language of instruction different from students’ L1?o CLIL
o Migrant education
o Preparation for higher education in a FL
And what about language teaching? What does it have in common with other kinds of teaching, and in what ways is it different?
© Eaquals 2015
