Stories: A Common Currency

This article offers an account of a series of writing workshops involving English teachers in Victoria, Australia, known as the stella2.0 project. It argues that storytelling can potentially provide a valuable counterpoint to the ‘knowledge’ underpinning standards-based reforms. The argument serves to introduce two other essays published in this issue of Changing English: ‘Storytelling and Professional Learning’, in which Brenton Doecke articulates a standpoint about storytelling that helped to shape the workshops, and ‘Professional Learning and the Unfinalizable: English Educators Writing and Telling Stories Together…’, by Graham Parr and Scott Bulfin, in which they inquire into the conceptual foundations of the stella2.0 project and discuss some of the writing generated by teachers in the workshops.     

Language,Experience and Professional Learning (What Walter Benjamin Can Teach Us)

This essay raises questions about how language educators might construct and further develop their epistemology of practice in and through the situations in which they work from day to day. The occasion for this paper is our work as guest editors of a special issue of L-1: Educational Studies in Language and Literature, when we invited L1 teachers to reflect on the role that language plays in their professional learning, whether it be in the form of conversations with peers, reflective writing, or by other means. We begin this essay by locating our reflections within our current policy context, namely the standards-based reforms that have come to dominate educational thinking around the world, offering a brief critique of the values and attitudes embedded within them. We then outline a philosophical framework as an alternative to the world-view reflected by such reforms, focusing specifically on the work of Walter Benjamin. In the final sections, we review our work as guest editors of the special issue of L-1, reflecting on what we have learned from the papers we have assembled for this issue, and locating our learning within the philosophical framework that we have drawn from Benjamin. We argue that it is timely for language educators to articulate the assumptions that inhere within their work, in contradistinction to the common sense embedded in standards. Thus we might begin to reconceptualise the relation between language, experience and professional learning in opposition to the hegemony of standards.     

Storytelling and Professional Learning

This essay explores the role that storytelling might play in the professional learning of English teachers. It begins by reflecting on the ways that stories shape our everyday lives, and then considers how the meaning-making potential of storytelling might enable us to gain insights into our work as educators. This is in contradistinction to the ‘knowledge’ currently privileged by standards-based reforms, most notably the fetish of measurement reflected in standardized testing. The essay concludes that stories are not simply a form of knowing but a vital means of making the world human to us.     

Learning to Teach Creative Writing

Is it possible to teach people to write fiction? A more important and helpful question is: how do we teach creative writing? And who are the teachers? A published writer is not necessarily qualified to teach creative writing. To helpfully share their declarative knowledge with students, a writer must embrace the art and craft of teaching, consider how different students learn and create the optimum setting to enable learning. There is a parallel challenge for the writer with the student, as each is faced with challenges around their previously held assumptions about ways of learning.     

Lost (and Found) in Translation: Learning from German Language Educators

This essay introduces two presentations (or Vorträge) by Ulf Abraham and Thomas Zabka that were originally published in the German journal, Didaktik Deutsch. I reflect on the complexities of translation and intercultural communication, and ask how we might meaningfully compare the policy environment of one country with that of another. In this era of globalisation and standards-based reforms it is easy to suppose that those reforms are the same everywhere. The essays by Abraham and Zabka, however, provide insights into a policy environment where debates about the importance of language and literature are being played out differently vis-à-vis standards-based reforms than is the case in the Anglophone world. I ask what we can learn from these essays, and how the insights they provide might be applied in an Anglophone context.     

Both Sides Now: Examining Transformative Learning and Professional Development of Educators

The purpose of this mixed method research is to understand and support educators' continuing learning and growth better by using a lens of transformative learning to examine their experience and professional development practice and responsibility. Data from 58 participants and the course professor are analyzed to consider the occurrence of transformative learning and the related needs that emerged. This article also presents trends across the learning experiences and recommendations for practice and responsibility. Additionally, there are implications of the research for higher education professors, administrators, and developers reflecting on their concepts and planning of formal professional development.     

Narratives of Learning from Co-editing,Writing and Presenting Stories of Experience in Self-Study

In this self-study, we look at the contribution made towards our professional learning through an aspect of teacher education work that is not commonly featured in the research literature: exploring the implications of our work as co-editors of an international collection about teacher educators’ journeys of professional becoming. Through this self-study, we argue that this type of work is valuable to individuals and institutions in relation to its impact on the professional learning and career development of teacher educators. Adopting a narrative approach, we examined our experiences of co-editing the book and the associated activities such as conference presentations, to understand how this influenced our professional learning and identity as teacher educators. Findings include having a stronger sense of the evolution of our professional selves over time and greater insight and awareness of our strengths and uncertainties. A clearer perspective on our own career development and professional becoming was evident, and many parallels could be drawn between our experiences of professional becoming and those of the chapter authors in the edited book. We conclude that while activities such as book editing do not usually count in institutional metrics as outputs, they are nonetheless a significant opportunity for professional learning and make a contribution to knowledge and to teacher education practice, and should be recognised as such by institutions and colleagues.     

内隐学习在英语写作中的作用

内隐学习理论对大学英语写作教学有重要的启示意义。学生通过内隐学习能在文章结构、内容和语言三个层面的能力上有实质性的飞跃。内隐学习与外显学习相结合才能有效提高学生的英语写作水平。     

职业学院学生英语写作教学剖析

在职业学院的英语教学中，写作教学是难点。本文剖析了学生出现的错误，并探讨了有效的写作教学方法和模式，从而达到有效提高学生写作能力的目的。     

合作学习在英语写作教学活动中的应用

合作学习能够增加学生学习英语互动的机会,培养学生的合作学习能力。如何将合作学习写作教学模式做到有实效,这需要教师灵活使用教学方法并教会学生写作技巧。     

关于高校英语专业写作教学的思考

从学生和教师两方面入手来分析现阶段高校英语专业写作教学中存在的问题及原因,并就如何改进英语写作教学提出三点建议:激发学生用英语写作的兴趣,帮助学生避免汉语式英语,多种教学方法。     

利用校园网络提高学生外语写作能力的可行性分析

大学生外语写作能力在网络技术日渐发达的今天变得越来越重要,而目前国内外对于大学生外语写作教学的探讨大多只限于基于传统纸笔写作的研究。文章从英语教学模式改革的必要性和可行性角度出发,在对非英语专业大学生的电脑外语写作能力和写作偏好进行调查,并在数据分析的基础上,提出了基于校园网的自主学习写作模式。     

写作教学改革的思考与实践

本论述影响写作教学效果的几个原因，提出解决问题的办法并做了大胆尝试。     

论自主学习在高职英语写作中的应用

通过整理国内外英语自主写作研究成果,并结合高职英语写作特点,提出在高职英语写作教学中引入一体化教学模式,实施合作学习方式,增强词块学习意识,采用多元化评价体系和深化课程设置改革的一些措施。     

Telling and Retelling Our Stories on the Professional Knowledge Landscape

Drawing on a 3-year study focusing on the shaping influences of the professional knowledge landscape on the personal practical knowledge of experienced teachers, we first explore how stories are shaped as they are told and responded to in different places and, second, explore whether or not this sharing leads to imagining new possibilities for retelling and reliving stories. By sharing and exploring a story of a disagreement between a parent and a teacher, we focus on what we do when we tell stories in schools and what we do when we tell stories off the school landscape. In making meaning from this story, we show that both in the teacher's living of the story with the parent and in her numerous recountings of the story to others on the school landscape, she did not have opportunities to figure out new ways to relive the story. In our research group, she shared her story again. In this telling, we asked her to focus on who she, the mother, and the principal are in the story, and we inquire into what plotlines each were living. We ask questions about how they were positioned as characters in relation to one another. Re-searching the story in this way enabled us to understand the embodied nature of the teacher's knowing and how this knowledge shaped the events of the story as they were lived out, particularly how the teacher's living of a relational story countered the story of teacher and principal as positioned above parent. By drawing on Nelson's work on 'found' and 'chosen' communities, we imagine ways in which schools could become chosen communities where the story of school might be one of fostering the living out of multiple stories. We imagine the stories emerging from such communities might significantly shape the landscape of schools by opening up new possibilities for living in relation with others.     

Aesthetic Learning,Creative Writing and English Teaching

My article argues that the concept of ‘aesthetic learning’ can be helpful for English teachers on two levels. First, it can be a useful identity for English teachers and students to adopt, based upon my own experiences as a secondary English teacher, creative writer and PhD student. Second, I argue that ‘aesthetic learning’ is an effective and productive way of analysing some of the learning processes that happen in the English teacher’s classroom. In order to arrive at these conclusions, I examine my own creative writing, teaching and learning processes from which I extrapolate the notion that we are all ‘aesthetic learners’ in the sense that we learn to appreciate the qualities of the worlds we inhabit, whether these are actual or virtual. Throughout, my own writing, learning and teaching are used to illustrate my argument. In particular, the article seeks to re-position my own teaching in secondary schools within the context of ‘aesthetic learning’.     

大学专业英语写作教学与学生写作能力的培养

英语写作能力是大学英语专业学生必须具备的专业基础技能之一,英语专业学生对通过《英语写作》课程学习提高英语写作能力的期望较高。要提高学生的写作能力,教师必须对学生写作能力的基本现状有一个清晰的认识,积极探寻制约学生英语写作能力提高的各种因素,从而为今后英语写作教学提供相应的智力支持。     

浅析英语写作教学

首先,指出了学生在写作中存在的常见问题;然后,讨论写作教学方法的改进,在理论上对比了结果教学法和过程教学法,其次,讨论了在实践上如何使用更行之有效的方法;第三,讨论教学过程中教师的功能以及如何提高学生的写作能力;最后,总结了写作技能的重要性。     

合作学习在高职英语写作教学中的应用

合作学习是指学生以小组为单位,通过协同合作,完成任务、达成目标的学习方式。将“合作学习”引入高职英语写作教学中,是促进英语教学改革的重要举措,既有利于激发学生的学习兴趣,使其养成良好的学习习惯,又能够培养积极的情感态度,最终提高学生的英语写作水平,增强职业能力。     

合作学习模式下职业英语写作元认知知识习得的实证研究

合作学习有利于加强学习者之间的交流互助,促进职业英语写作元认知知识习得及提高写作成绩。通过对顺德职业技术学院职业英语写作课堂的实证分析,结果表明,合作学习促进了学生职业英语写作元认知知识的主动建构,提高了建构效率,从而大大提升了学生职业英语写作水平。