Category: Topics

iTDi Research Issue – Cherry

From India through Myanmar to the World: A journey ONLINE!Cherry 150 x 150

Research or re-search can be daunting as well as exciting for the researcher who takes it up. Every researcher begins with an assumption that what that person does has never been done before; however, as one mines through the existing literature this feeling bursts like a bubble and gives way to an effort to fit in one’s own research to a big stream of research that has already happened. This is very important because one needs to know what has happened so far and how what one is planning to take up connects with the existing research and by extension the existing body of knowledge.

The research I’m doing now is to look at and understand how social media (SM) is contributing (or not contributing) to the continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers. I chose this topic because of my two-year stint in Myanmar (Burma) at a time when the country was either cut-off or had limited access to the outside world. The personal and professional alienation I felt was alleviated to a great extent through my participation in social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The #ELTChat on Wednesdays was a breather and the many tweets that appear under that feed over the week kept me connected with the wider ELT world out there.
Back in India after the contract got over I realised how much I had gained personally as well as professionally through my participation in online learning/sharing communities like iTDi and thought to study the phenomenon in greater detail so that in places where CPD opportunities are limited or beyond reach how a teacher with access to the internet can tweak it to develop professionally. Furthermore, though India has a reputation in the world for its IT capabilities many teachers are conspicuously absent or prefer to ‘lurk’ online – another phenomenon that made me think of the possible reasons behind it and also to devise ways that could make them active online.

I too began with an assumption that social media being a recent phenomenon might have a little or no research in the area. But to my surprise I stumbled upon research that was taken up in many parts of the world over the use of the internet and its many applications for teaching and learning and of course social media were too there. The research questions that guide me at present are:

• What are the online continuing professional development (OCPD) opportunities available for ESL teachers?
• How do teachers who are aware of such opportunities make use of these opportunities?
• How do such teachers perceive the effectiveness of the OCPD opportunities with reference to their practice?
• What are the short term/long term effects of OCPD?

As part of the coursework that spreads into two semesters, I had read one on CPD. I now know how divergent our understanding of it can be as well as how complex its evaluation is. Despite being not able to find a common ground, it was uplifting to read about its presence and growing import in almost all parts of the world and teachers exercising the agency (either vested upon them or reclaimed) to find opportunities to develop professionally.
In the second semester I am doing courses on two aspects of online learning. One deals with the theories and framework (but this course is yet to gather full steam) and the other with platforms and environments. From email lists through web bulletin boards the world has come a long way in adapting media that were initially not meant for professional development. Examples of this can be either using hashtags to chat on Twitter or making the personal and the professional boundaries very thin on a social networking site like Facebook.

The story so far should not give an impression that the research is devoid of any challenges because it is not. One challenge I can anticipate in my study is to develop tools that could help me to collect data that are mostly generated online. Since the sites are all third party owned I might not have access to the user behaviour data which if gained might provide insight to how things work online. Instead I need to resort to other means of garnering data. Another could be to keep my own motivation levels high or at least in motion.

The journey so far has been demanding; but rewarding. Through the research that I had taken up I believe I will be able to contribute something that will help us to better understand a phenomenon where teachers pull down their walls and build networks around the globe and tell the world that their staffrooms exist virtually where teacher friends work 24*7 and help is always a click away!

iTDi Research Issue – Divya

Researching, reflecting and resonatingDivya Brochier

I almost feel like I should write a poem instead of a blog post. Poetry power-packs words in a very unique way doesn’t it? It forces us to step back from how ideas are represented in our minds and our daily discourse and creates an internal dialogue, an entirely exquisite one, whose ripples stay with us for some time.

For me, this internal dialogue is shaped by who I am, the imprints that my life experiences have left upon me within the lenses and modes through which I am able to understand things. I love the way in which the source of good poetry is somewhere between a heightened awareness of the cadences a language holds and a brute intuition of the most powerful kind. You can perhaps see what I’m getting at…

Research is not, for me, a nebulous source of authority that gauges the soundness of an idea. Nor is it an abstract crunching and spewing of statistics that disjoint theory from practice. It is not a process of referencing at an n+1 level with the goal of writing with clout or supra-validity.  Research shouldn’t be something that we shy away from for fear of non-admittance to the ivory tower of ranks and publications. Research simply should not, cannot and does not belong to academics alone.

So, in the true spirit of iTDi, I give you some of the voices of our community which, extracted from the transcripts and read in succession like this, resonate so many of the issues around research in the ELT industry today, so much better than I can:

There is an increasing teacher-as-researcher movement linked with the idea of reflection on classroom practice, and as the field professionalises this will become more important…. where they want to develop deeper understanding through their own explorations, and to develop their personal theories of what works well in their local contexts.

Anne Burns, Professor in Language Education, Aston University, United Kingdom and Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney, Australia.

There’s a big gap between research and practice…and I often see myself, because I do a lot of conferences and teacher training, as helping to close these gaps between the academics on one side, who have their conferences and have their journals and their 5000-word articles, and some of the real specialists in-company who have never even heard of sociolinguistics or pragmatics and who are doing a great job and how both sides can learn from each other….

Evan Frendo, Freelance Trainer, Teacher Trainer and Author, Germany 

The best kind of research is the kind that teachers do every day…

Research is often done by people who are not in full-time teaching, and so teachers quite naturally reply with, ‘yeah, but come to my reality and then see if you can put stuff into practice with all the teenagers and a full timetable…etc etc’. The best research is not ‘handed down’, or indeed handed up. It should be some kind (to continue the metaphor) of handshake. 

Being challenged, irritated, angered by what some people say about what we do is/should be the start (always) of an enquiry about whether what we do, what we’ve always done still feels good. That kind of constant inquiry keeps teachers young and interested 

Jeremy Harmer, ELT consultant, Author, Speaker, United Kingdom

…there’s a full scoring system depending on whether you’re single-authored or co-authored, so there’s a real hierarchy and a demand for publishing… I don’t know how much gets to the front line teachers, the idea that I can do things and make my practice better, I don’t know if that’s on people’s minds…. 

Steven Herder, Assistant Professor, International Studies, Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and Program Director, iTDi, Japan

We do read a lot, carry out research and then in our classrooms we do something different and very often the theory actually has no practical value-we cannot just ‘use’ the theory – we have to modify it to our own life and experience

Anna Musielak-Kubecka, Freelance Teacher and Teacher Trainer, Poland

It takes time and effort to apply the outcome of research in every day practice and very often there seems to be a long distance between these two. Front line teaching frequently differs from research conditions 

Dimitris Primalis, Teacher, Materials Designer, President of TESOL Greece

For me, there were some questions that remain unanswered, I read a lot of books and articles for understanding the topics in depth…I felt the need to look at them from a different perspective, the useful things I learnt were from my experience, but… 

Beyza Yilmaz, Teacher Trainer at Pilgrims, UK and EFL instructor at Özyeğin University, Turkey 

The best thing about it was the empowerment, to read, to research, to go back again and read…

…empowerment is extremely important for professional development, but many teachers don’t have the time to do due to busy schedules and lesson preparation…

Last semester, a teacher who holds a PhD, took part in our teacher selection program. He said that there was a big difference between what happened at university and what happened in private language institutions…. a huge gap between theory and practice.

Eduardo Santos, Director of Studies at Cultura Inglésa, Brazil

I suppose the first time I actually did research in connection with language teaching was because I was angry about somethings…in relation to the sort of teaching I was doing… 

It involved reading about things and thinking about things, not just collecting data I do think that a very good reason to do research is to try to change things

Richard Smith, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick and Co-ordinator of the IATEFL Research SIG, United Kingdom

Thank you Anne, Evan, Jeremy, Steven, Ania, Dimitris, Beyza, Eduardo and Richard for working with me to shape this.

The Special Needs Issue – Naomi

Keeping the Lines of Communication Open  – ELT and the Special Needs LearnerNaomi Epstein

Looking at the title of this post, a reader may be tempted to wonder who is presumptuous enough to lump all the widely different kinds of “special needs learners” into one post. Surely there is a world of difference between the one learner in your class who can’t hear well, the one who can’t see well, the one who is dyslectic and the learner who can’t sit still for more than a few minutes.

Well, I am.

Because there is one thing that all these learners have in common. They need to have an open line of communication to you, the teacher, outside of the lesson. While adult learners may be able to tell the teacher, in front of the whole class, something like: “You spoke with your back to the class and I couldn’t hear you, please repeat that”, most children avoid drawing attention to themselves like they avoid the plague. Children, particularly those between the ages of 9-15 are much more concerned with what they believe their peers think of them than with ensuring they are getting the accommodations the need. They will nod emphatically to indicate that they have understood even when they haven’t, just to avoid any special attention from the teacher.

NAOMI image1

Therefore, the teacher and the learner need to find a way to communicate regularly in a manner which will not embarrass the child. The options are many, ranging from face-to-face (the student stops by during the teacher’s weekly yard duty) to weekly phone calls, emails or video chats. Not only will these short exchanges allow the teacher to ensure that the child understood technical information (such as which material must be reviewed for the exam) but will give the child and the teacher an opportunity to work out “secret signals”.

Consider these two examples:

When a teacher switches back and forth frequently between English and the mother tongue, a child with a hearing loss may have a difficult time following. It takes such a learner more time to register that there has been a switch and then an adjustment of lip-reading skills focused on needs to be made. Some teachers and learners agree on a tiny hand signal the teacher makes when switching languages.  No one but the student notices it.

Sometimes a teacher may not notice that her black marker (for the whiteboard) is beginning to fade away. Or perhaps the teacher may not pay attention that she/he has written on the board with letters that are smaller than the size needed.  The student with a visual impairment may pretend to suddenly have a cough, which alerts the teacher to the fact that the board must be examined.

In many cases, the children themselves are the best source of knowledge as to how to help them function in class. But they won’t say a word in class. The teacher needs the opportunity to listen to the student, outside of the classroom.

The Special Needs Issue – Vladka

Be A Guide: Find The Wayvladka-cokoladka

There is no such thing as students with special needs or learning disorders. It is the society we live in that has created a special place for those who haven’t learned how to conform their uniqueness. We all were once special needs learners!

Before I share my story with you, let me share one really thoughtful and bold statement I heard recently from one psychologist. She said that it is the conformity, sterility and rigidity of society that doesn’t allow us to have time and patience to deal with special talents and the courage to see that this just reflects who we are as adults.

Teachers or parents, you can either address a special need as a disorder and use it as an excuse for your decisions or actions, or you can embrace it as an opportunity to look inside the pure nature of unspoiled learning that does not follow the norms yet!

As a teacher, a good one, you choose responsibility and the place where the sun shines on others. It is not about rewards, comfort or recognition. It is about being a guide — and the guide is never the main hero in a story.

Please never, never ever blame children for not making your life easier.

My story is about a little Italian boy I met during a summer school who stole my heart in the most sincere way possible. He came into my elementary class and all we shared at the very beginning were a very few, basic phrases in English. Very soon I found out about his dyslexia. I knew I wouldn’t be spending more than a couple of weeks with him, but I couldn’t give up on him.

The natural instinct to learn is very alive in kids and if they are not made to feel they are part of the class, they can act in ways we perceive as disruptive.

I am not trained to teach such kids so I had to rely on some basic elements of intuitive learning:

Be attentive

Be flexible

Be mindful (here and now)

I had to observe him, the things he did, the way he did them, and what he didn’t do, while paying attention to his smiles and the look in his eyes. I could go on with all the details but the thing is we eventually found out the way to teach each other, connect the whole class and break any form, order or disorder.

I noticed he was really talkative and for that reason he naturally used his mother tongue. He paid attention when I used pictures and when I was talking in small chunks of the target language. His eyes got that famous spark when I showed interest in his language.

Don’t put your comfort above the desire to learn!

As a result, we created our own little game. My homework was to remember the words in Italian he taught me and his work was to remember the same words in English. Every time we met we tested each other. I said an Italian word and he responded with the English translation. He said an English word and I had to remember the Italian equivalent. The whole class worked that way and we could build on that.

It may not be a very sophisticated technique or effective for everyone, but the point is that as a teacher you need to step back and bring out the best in your students by letting them work the way they prefer to work. I just spent some time to learn who he really is, not only who he appeared to be, and none of us gave up on each other.