Exploring inclusive pedagogical practices in Hong Kong primary EFL classrooms

Social diversity is now commonplace in many communities in today’s globalised world. This diversity can be seen in any classroom of learners, and international studies have shown the complex ways in which disabilities, race, ethnicity, gender and social class can determine a child’s opportunity to succeed or fail in the education system. In Hong Kong, like in many educational contexts around the world, teachers are grappling with increasing diversity amongst their students, including teaching students with special educational needs (SEN) and non-Chinese speaking students (NCS) living in Hong Kong. This paper examines how three primary TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teachers are constructing identities as inclusive practitioners as they grapple with enacting the inclusive education policy recently introduced into Hong Kong schools. The data are drawn from a small-scale collaborative reflective inquiry for teacher professional development. Drawing upon a sociocultural and critical framing of identity theory, we trace the three teachers’ identity construction as EFL teachers and inclusive education practitioners. We view the role of discourse, self-positioning and social context as key processes in teacher identity formation. Implications for furthering the development of inclusive education in EFL classrooms are offered.     

Confronting unsuccessful practices: repositioning teacher identities in English education

Teacher education programs attempt to prepare preservice teachers for the various challenges faced in the classroom. One particular challenge new teachers face is how to handle unsuccessful practices. This paper argues that confronting ineffective practices require that teachers respond to complex and dynamic challenges, making change difficult when solutions are not readily available. Presenting data from case-study research, the paper uses an identity framework and positioning theory to explore how two novice teachers navigate moments of unsuccessful practice. Findings suggest that when teachers confronted ineffective practices they repositioned their teacher identities in ways that depended on the ideologies of their school. The paper concludes with implications about the importance of extending typical reflective practices of teacher education with video analysis that challenges students to examine how they enact teacher identities over time within the figured world of their school.     

University teachers’ reflections on the reasons behind their changing feedback practice

This study investigated the changing feedback practices of teachers in an elite university in China. Drawing on teacher cognition theory and recent research developments in effective feedback practices, fourteen teachers were invited to reflect and explain their feedback practices in semi-structured interviews. Which identified three trends: their use of feedback practices appear to change: (1) from addressing specific tasks with detailed comments to addressing a combination of issues within and beyond task level, (2) from providing feedback at the end of a learning cycle to instructing on common problems at the beginning, and (3) they appear to make their feedback more timely and interactive by using social networking software and new course formats. Teachers seem to be willing to experiment with a wide range of feedback. They constantly evaluate the effectiveness of these practices based on two criteria: improving student academic performance and teaching all the content from the curriculum as scheduled. Recommended or experimental feedback practices were unlikely to be sustainably adopted by teachers unless they were confirmed to be effective by the teachers’ own evaluations.     

Story Nights: an apprenticeship into literacy through bilingual story reading

This article documents an extended Mexican family’s social practices surrounding literacy as they engage with bilingual children’s literature in a unique context that draws from both home and school without the pressures of curriculum mandates. The research is situated within the southeastern United States where English-dominant practices permeate the school and community. Sociocultural and third space theories provide a framework for understanding the complexities surrounding language use and literacy development. Findings indicate the new space, Story Nights, provides for the development of connections to Mexican culture and a notion of community-based literacy learning. The author makes recommendations for classroom teachers, teacher education programs, and educational policy to be more inclusive of Latino/Latina English learners.     

Second year teacher candidates reflect on information technology in ontario secondary schools: how it is being used and the challenges it presents

Abstract

This article documents observations of pre-service teachers about how both students and teachers are using information technology in 374 secondary classrooms in Ontario, Canada. Also reported are some of the challenges that have resulted since the advent of this technology in these schools. The findings have direct implications for teacher education. Not only must teacher candidates learn how to use and apply this new technology, but they must be made aware of other issues (such as classroom management issues) stemming from the integration of information technology in the classroom. Teacher education programs must remain current: one way of doing this is to investigate ongoing classroom practices and issues. This article helps to identify both     

Three Korean Heritage Language Teachers’ Identities,Their Identification of Their Students,and Their Instructional Practices

This study examined the instructional focuses and practices of three Korean heritage language (HL) teachers in community-based HL schools related not only to their constructed identities as HL teachers, but also to their students. Constant-comparative analyses of interviews and classroom observations across the three teacher cases showed that each teacher’s identity as an HL teacher was shaped by her earlier immigration experiences and through her relationships within and across a particular historical and social context. Moreover, the three HL teachers’ identities informed how they identified the imagined communities in which their students would eventually participate. The teachers’ different identifications and visions became significant in shaping their instructional focuses and practices related to teaching language and culture in a manner that would enable their students to learn and, therefore, gain access to their communities.     

Getting Real: Exploring the perceived disconnect between education theory and practice in teacher education

This article, inspired in part by the Levine report that criticizes teacher education programs in the United States for being out of touch with practices that work in real classrooms, is a self-study that explores the rift between educational theory, particularly theory that pushes for social constructionist, child-centered approaches to teaching, and teaching practices in majority African-American, inner-city schools. The authors conducted this year-long self-study to answer the question: What could the college's education program do to improve preparation for teaching in inner-city schools? Through their year-long collaboration in a middle-school writing classroom in an inner-city charter school, the authors examined what a prospective teacher learned in his education program that helped and hindered him and then explored how the successful approaches he developed as a new teacher could be incorporated into the college's preservice program.     

Decolonial innovation in teacher development: praxis beyond the colonial zero-point

ABSTRACT

Despite a rich repertoire of inventive and robust practices, and stated commitments to equity, social justice, and diversity, teacher education has continued to struggle to produce educators capable of enacting culturally sustaining pedagogies, and providing historically marginalized youth and communities with meaningful learning opportunities. This paper contends that ontological distance between educators and youth of colour, and the ways Eurocentric epistemologies exist as a colonial ‘zero point’ in teacher education praxis, are a core element of this existential crisis facing teacher educators. Drawing on decolonial theory and epistemologies of the global south, I suggest that teacher education is in need of epistemic innovation; radically revising our approaches to preparing educators by anchoring them in the epistemic and ontological perspectives of the global south, and in so doing, crafting pedagogical imaginaries through which we might disrupt the ways coloniality lives (often invisibly) in, and is reproduced by, our assumptions about best practices, ways of being, and measures of success. Such a decolonial approach to innovation in teacher education holds promise for ensuring our praxis, and the educators we prepare, are positioned to engage with a hyperdiverse world in humanizing ways.     

Theorising on-site teacher education: Philosophical Project Knowledge (PPK) 1

Working within the general framework of Habermas and Shulman, the research reported here probes new directions of teacher education and school–university partnerships. The paper presents preliminary evidence of the theorising of teaching practice by pre-service teachers and university staff as they work together with the praxis inquiry protocol and preliminary data regarding the generation of Philosophical Project Knowledge. The project attempts to open up the question of epistemological equity for lower socio-economic children in particular by describing and theorising practice involving pre-service teachers so that communities of practice are established in all classrooms. The research stance is one of democratic practitioner research so that generalised ideas emerge from professional practice and are embedded in the reality of classroom problems and experience. In adopting a general research methodology of autoethnography, the authors critically reflect on, analyse and change their own practice without being judgemental of others. Reported examples of practice are paraphrased and de-identified with protocols regarding privacy and confidentiality followed. Ongoing discussion of ethical conduct is a central aspect of self-critical professional practice.     

Special education teachers’ experienced burnout and perceived fit with the professional community: A 5-year follow-up study

In many countries, including in Finland, promoting inclusive school practices supporting pupils’ equal rights for learning is the focus of school development. Special education teachers play a central intermediary role in developing inclusive school and classroom practices by providing support both for pupils and peer teachers. This may increase their risk of experiencing exhaustion, cynicism towards the teacher community and/or inadequacy in pupil–teacher relationships. However, the resources of a school's social working environment experienced as a functional teacher–working environment fit may buffer the risk of developing burnout. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the interrelation between, and development of, special education teachers’ experienced burnout symptoms and perceived teacher–working environment fit across time. The longitudinal study included two measurements (in year 2010, n = 760 and in year 2016, n = 485). The results show that special education teachers’ experienced inadequacy in pupil–teacher relationships predicted teacher exhaustion, cynicism towards the teacher community and inadequacy in pupil–teacher relationships 5 years later. Moreover, a perceived good teacher–working environment fit predicted lower cynicism towards the teacher community 5 years later.     

Keeping them in line: choreographing classroom spaces

This paper provides teachers with an opportunity for thinking about the kinds of ‘people’ constructed in their classes, the kinds of ‘dances’ choreographed and the ways space is organised for learning. We argue that this is essential for teachers to think about if they are to enact socially just professional practices. In this study, we explore the ways in which students learn to be particular kinds of people. We understand this as happening through their participation in communities of practice. Becoming a member of a community of practice, of a classroom and of a school is a process of developing a particular identity, modes of behaviour and ways of knowing. It is through these ‘normalising’ practices that power is constituted, boundaries constructed and certain ‘kinds of people’ are recognised, represented and constituted, whilst others are not. All individuals are implicated in these processes and active in the construction of their own as well as others’ identities. This paper locates this discussion using social relations of gender and ethnicity, and considers how diversity and difference are actively constituted and play out in one primary school classroom. How students participate in the spatial practices and the construction of pedagogical spaces, what identities are available to them in these spaces and which they take up, is explored. The metaphor of dance is used to analyse these spaces, a metaphor which helps us to understand the complexity of classroom relationships and the way macro‐social practices are both reflected and reconstituted in classroom practices. We argue that the ways teachers think about how they place students, space students and construct students are crucial for student and teacher learning.     

Mentor teacher professional identity development in a year-long teacher residency

In this article I examined the professional identity development of five mentor teachers in a year-long, clinically rich teacher residency partnered between a university-based teacher education program and schools in a southern state of the United States. Qualitative data were collected through classroom observation and individual semi-structured interviews with a focus on participants’ mentoring activities and the ways they enacted and described their identities. Participants came to new mentoring beliefs and practices as they navigated the residency and developed a multifaceted identity to mediate their learning to become mentors and teacher educators. Implications for mentor teacher professional support, teacher preparation, and future research were discussed.     

Roles,practices and contexts for acting as agents of social justice – student teachers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

Student teachers are oftentimes encouraged to apply theoretical principles of social justice to their professional practice. However, this can be problematic when theoretical knowledge is contested or if it is inconsistent with the practices in their future workplaces. Studies in this area often examine student teachers’ beliefs and understanding of their roles without taking account of how concrete working contexts shape what they see as possible in their practice. This study explored how students in two teacher education programmes based at the University of Edinburgh perceived their roles, practices and contexts for acting as agents of social justice. Mixed methods were used for data generation and triangulation including a questionnaire survey (n = 299) and scenario-based interviews (n = 9) to explore how students think about social justice issues in context. Student teachers generally saw agency for social justice as part of their role. Their understanding of the ways of addressing context-embedded issues of social justice focused on classroom practices while they raised concerns about how their practice depends on others in the system. We discuss the implications of these findings for teacher education.     

Using Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development to propose and test an explanatory model for conceptualising coteaching in pre-service science teacher education

Coteaching offers a model for the school-placement element of pre-service science teacher education, based on its demonstrated positive impacts on lessening classroom anxiety, supporting inquiry-based science teaching, improving students’ attitudes, and addressing diversity effectively in science classrooms. Coteaching between pre-service and in-service teachers is used to lessen the gap between theory and practice, to develop reflective practice and to develop pedagogical content knowledge. Explanatory frameworks have been proposed for coteaching, and we suggest that Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development helps to propose a more nuanced developmental and learning explanatory framework which provides pedagogical structures for implementation and highlights the importance of the social environment for learning. In providing structure and tools for effective implementation of coteaching, our model addresses three core elements of coteaching: coplanning, copractice, and coevaluation. The model was piloted in relation to pre-service teachers’ development in reflective practice and reducing the gap between theory and classroom practice.     

Developing learner-centred education among secondary trainee teachers in Malawi: The dilemma of appropriation and application

This article is mainly concerned with the capability of trainee teachers to implement learner-centred practice at one of the teacher education institutions in Malawi. The notion of learner-centred education has assumed a positive policy position for teaching and learning in both primary and secondary sectors not only in Malawi, but also in the wider world. However, there is no clear evidence on the extent to which trainee teachers or indeed qualified teachers develop and utilise learner-centred education during their classroom pedagogical practices. The appropriation and application of a pedagogical theory involves adopting tools for thinking that are made available by various social agents, structures and systems within cultural learning settings. The findings in the study indicate that appropriation and application of learner-centred education is constrained by various factors. These findings resonate with findings from other countries and indicate that progressive pedagogical notions aligned with social constructivism promoted in teacher education institutions have not resulted in widespread change in classroom practice. Teacher educators and policy makers need to be aware of this and examine relevant ways and possibly adaptations that can be reasonably made to ensure that secondary teaching appropriately benefits from the strength of learner-centred pedagogy.     

‘I was kind of teaching myself’: teachers’ conversations about social justice and teaching for change

This article shares teachers’ conversations within teacher inquiry groups and considers how this reflective approach has potential for transforming teachers’ practices. Conversations took place at the early stages of a longer teacher inquiry project and centred on the critical interrogation of social justice-oriented children’s literature. These conversations served as a forum to help teacher professional learning communities and to reconcile understandings about social justice, action and agency within larger political and cultural forums of teaching. The teacher inquiry sessions shared in this paper explore teachers’ beginning struggles with conceptualizations of social justice, and the teacher’s role in imparting values to students. Teacher participants imparted their experience and practice as they negotiated their own understanding and implementation of social justice education in their schools. The teacher inquiry groups provided a needed supportive space where classroom teachers’ struggles were shared alongside their beliefs and pedagogical approaches so that a social justice agenda could be achieved.     

Walking Our Talk: The Imperative of Teacher Educator Modeling

If teacher educators are to be effective, they must be sure that their own professional house is in order. To that end, effective teacher educators must be absolutely clear about their professional mission. In addition, they must also have the appropriate background and training to be effective in their mission. Further, they must bridge the chasm between theory and practice as they prepare teacher candidates by keeping current in K–12 contemporary classroom practice. Finally, they must model what it means to be an accomplished classroom teacher for their pre-service teachers including the professional option of earning National Board certification. Only when teacher educators meet these four demanding criteria can we feel with reasonable certainty that they are living up to their job.     

Analyzing a service-learning experience using a social justice lens

This mixed methods study explores a service-learning experience embedded in a social foundations course in a teacher education program. The authors differentiate learning outcomes for social justice and charity service-learning, and utilize this framework to examine whether the service-learning experience fosters a social justice perspective. The findings demonstrate that while the experience did foster social justice perspectives for some students, the data also reflect evidence of learning outcomes that align with charity service-learning.