Teacher EducationProfessor: Dr. TajeddinPrepared by: Mozhgan Soleimani Aghchay

Language Teacher Education by Distance

John S. KnoxDavid R. Hall

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SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS• LTED has experienced strong growth since the beginning of the 1990s.• In early writing on distance education, the terms extension services and extension studies were used as near-synonyms of distance learning• the term correspondence courses gained currency and was the most common term used until the last quarter of the twentieth century• In 1983, Sewart et al. characterized distance education

Characteristics of Distance LearningMood (1995: 19)• The physical separation of teacher and learner• The influence or control of an organized educational institution• The involvement of “media”• Two-way communication in some formdistance learning is where there is no or rela tively minimal requirement for students to physically attend the institution where they are studying.

OVERVIEW• The literature on LTED began in earnest in the early-mid 1990s• There is to date no comprehensive review of the research into LTED, and therefore •No clear overview of what is known, •No clear statement of where we are, and •No clear agenda for LTED research

CURRENT APPROACHES AND PRACTICES

TechnologyFor LTED, information and communication technologies (ICTs) mean that the knowledge of the discourse community can be distributed more cheaply and efficiently.

ICTs also afford new forms of communication, through media such as online discussions, synchronous chat, and Web-based teaching materials

Online DiscussionsAdvantages:• Allowing space for everyone’s voice, the opportunity for

teachers and learners to construct an online identity, which may not be possible for them to adopt in face-to-face contexts• Exposure for both learners and teachers to “more voices”

than they get to hear in a face-to-face environment• The provision of a forum for collaborative learning and

reflection, and peer feedback• Making it possible to keep a record of discussions and of

learning• Flexibility for learners and teachers to log on in their own

time, and read and write at their own pace

Advantages:• Time for teachers to compose a considered response• The ease with which links to online resources can be

inserted into discussion postings• Patterns of interaction that vary from the classic IRF

sequence common in classrooms• The opportunity to explore new ideas as they are

generated, unrestricted by the time-and-space constraints of the classroom• The potential for formation of a learning community

among learners sepa rated by spatial and cultural distance, and situated in varying professional environments

Online Discussions (cont.)

Inadequacies:• There has been almost no discourse analysis of such discussions in LTED• There has also been relatively little written on assessment of online discussions• There are three questions here• Should they be assessed as part of the formal grading of a

program? • If discussions are to be assessed, then what exactly should we

assess (e.g., Control of subject matter, quality of argumentation, facilitation of learning among the group, amount of reading, task response, enthusiasm of participation, number of contributions)?

• How should they be assessed?

Online Discussions (cont.)

Learner and Teacher ChallengesIdentified problems:• A feeling of isolation, lack of immediate peer support, high dropout rates, problems in communication, and onerous time demands for teachers and learners • Many learners in the field of language teacher education come to the profession later in their working lives• Learners in LTED programs can therefore suffer a higher ‘casualty rate’ due to age of teachers [that is, distance learners] who face a fairly predictable set of challenges at this age including parental deaths, child-rearing

PracticumMcGrath (1995) and Haworth and Parker (1995) argue that face-to-face contact is required in order for trainee teachers to develop classroom skills (as opposed to theoretical knowledge).

Several more recent papers in the literature, however, (Coyle 2005; Kamhi-Stein 2000; Salleh 2002; Simpson 2006) are very positive about the benefits of CMC when students are scattered at different practicum sites

Learning in SituThere are clear advantages to language teachers in in-

service programs being able to continue to work in the field and use their immediate professional context in their discussions and assignments. Similar advantages exist for pre-service teachers

Students can investigate their questions (and those of their peers) and their developing knowledge immediately in their own classrooms, wherever they may be, and bring these to bear on their reading, discussion, and assessed work. At the same time, they are able to learn about their peers’ teaching contexts and gain insight into issues related to teaching students of different ages; in different social (e.g., urban v. rural), educational (e.g., primary v. secondary v. tertiary) and linguistic (e.g., SL v. FL) environments.

Autonomy and IndependenceThere are strong connections with collaborative and constructivist views of knowledge and education.

The internet is not about doing traditional teaching with new technology, but about helping students “enter into a new realm of collaborative inquiry and construction of knowledge, viewing their expanding repertoire of identities and communication strategies as resources in the process (kern, ware, and warschauer’s 2004: 254)

ISSUES AND DIRECTIONSMaterials:Preparation of distance materials demands a greater clarity of thought and a greater explicitness at an early stage than in face-to-face teaching, including decisions about what to include or exclude, the order of presentation, the variety of activities, and the processes of assessment (formal and otherwise).

As language teaching itself moves increasingly online, there will be a need for systematic research into how distance materials can best exploit technological affordances in preparing pre-service language teachers for both face-to-face and CMC environments, and in assisting in-service language teachers to explore and reflect on such environments

Administration and ResearchAdministration, though fundamental to LTED, has received relatively little attention

Factors such as • The amount of teacher administration, • The demands on program administrators in LTED, and • The strictures and inflexibility of existing higher-level administrative practices

need investigation

The Status of Distance EducationStatus of distance programs is still problematic, and some countries are more suspicious of language-teaching qualifications obtained by distance than others.

investigations are needed into whether it would be possible or desirable to establish international quality assurance mechanisms and perhaps a standardized set of criteria for evaluating program quality.

The Need for an Expanded Research Base

• There is also a need for comprehensive, triangulated curriculum evaluations, and thorough and rigorous analyses of materials and communication in LTED using theoretically grounded discourse analysis (including multimodal analysis). • There is also a need to bring small-scale private providers into the research picture, and to investigate the learning experiences and classroom practices of teachers who have gone through (or are going through) LTED programs.