Yongcan Liu

The development patterns of modern foreign language student teachers’ conceptions of self and their explanations about change: three cases

The present study explores the development patterns of three modern foreign language student teachers’ conceptions of self (conceptions of their classroom performance, conceptions of their relationship with pupils, conceptions of their self‐image in pupils’ eyes and conceptions of teacher identity) during a nine‐month programme leading to a Postgraduate Certificate in Education. A case study research strategy is used to understand the complexities of the process of change, with four methods (semi‐structured interview, log, open‐ended questionnaire and end‐of‐course self‐reflection report) used to collect empirical data longitudinally. The three participants’ conceptions of self in the four areas mentioned above show varying degrees of change over the year and differing change patterns. Change in conception of their classroom performance and in teacher identity is common for all three student teachers and shows consistent positive change over the course. The student teachers’ conception of self in relationships with pupils varied from person to person. Equally, where self‐image in pupils’ eyes is concerned, change patterns differed with one student teacher reporting no change by the end. Academic, institutional and curricular factors (e.g. school environment and atmosphere, course content and structure, and school placement) and cognitive, affective and social factors (e.g. relationship with mentor, the role of reflection, relationship with wider staff beyond the mentor, the support from family and friends) are identified by the participants as the main reasons that contribute to their change and professional growth.

The Emotional Geographies of Language Teaching.

The paper reports on an in-depth narrative case study of an immigrant background English as a Second Language teacher’s emotional experience in a teacher professional community in England. The data are derived from the teacher’s ‘emotion diaries’ and six interviews during the three-month period when she taught on a pre-sessional English programme at an English university. The data were analysed with Andy Hargreaves’s emotional geography framework which focuses on the physical, moral, sociocultural, professional and political aspects of schooling. Through five stories that recount her experience in different emotional geographies, the paper demonstrates that the teacher had understandings and misunderstandings of different aspects of schooling, which gave rise to various emotions, both positive and negative. In order to survive, she also needed to adopt a wide range of strategies to manage her emotions. The study has implications for both teachers and administrators by stressing the need to engage in emotional understanding of each other’s work.

The knowledge base of teaching in linguistically diverse contexts: 10 grounded principles of multilingual classroom pedagogy for EAL

ABSTRACT This paper aims to define the knowledge base of teaching in linguistically diverse secondary schools in England. Based on extensive interviews with the teachers across two schools, the paper identifies a range of good practices centred on flexibility and differentiation. These include diversifying teaching resources by using bilingual materials and dialogic tasks, as well as making adjustments to teaching by simplifying input and including cultural references. These practices are characterised by ‘a situated child-centred approach’ which is underpinned by 10 core principles of multilingual classroom pedagogy for English as an additional language. Implications for education policy and practice are also discussed.

Multilingualism as legitimate shared repertoires in school communities of practice: students' and teachers' discursive constructions of languages in two schools in England

Abstract This paper reports on the findings of a 12-month project within a broader research programme that looks at a group of East European students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) in England. The data are derived from interviews with the students and teachers in two schools. The findings show that EAL students had a keen interest in English. This attitude contrasted with their reluctance to use and talk about their home language, as a result of language loss and fear of being bullied. Teachers’ attitudes towards languages were also mixed, ranging from support for ‘free use of languages’, to ‘restricted use of home language’, and to ‘use of English only’. The paper further argues that multilingualism can be theorised as legitimate shared repertoires of school communities of practice. Practical implications are drawn which suggest that students’ and teachers’ voices should be acted upon and translated into school language policies.

Situated teacher learning as externalising and mobilising teachers’ tacit knowledge through talk in a language teacher professional community

Abstract This paper reports on a study that looks at the micro-processes of teacher learning in a language teacher professional community in China. Following the tradition of ethnomethodology, teacher learning in this paper is conceptualised as interactional accomplishment of negotiation of practice through talk. Based on a purposively selected discourse sample, this paper illustrates the trajectory of how the differences in the understandings of creativity among a small group of language teacher educators (or ‘teachers’ thereafter) were taken up, talked through and finally resolved (or not). The research demonstrates that teachers’ tacit knowledge was distributed among individual members of the professional community where different pedagogical understandings existed. The micro-analysis also shows that teachers’ talk created a dialogic space for the participants to externalise and mobilise their tacit knowledge for negotiation. Implications are drawn which point to the importance of creating opportunities for teacher collaboration and teacher talk as part of professional development.

The form and functions of newcomer EAL students’ speech in English: patterns of progression and communication in semi-structured interview dialogue

ABSTRACT Analysis of progression in spoken English by newcomer migrant-background learners has traditionally oscillated between formal assessment of oral proficiency and ethnographic description of naturally occurring peer discourse. This paper reports on data gathered from a longitudinal study of newly arrived students with English as an additional language (EAL) in secondary schools in England. The corpus examined consists of semi-structured interviews with 22 students of different L1 backgrounds, each interviewed twice within a 12-month interval. Findings reveal marked improvement in comprehension with greatly reduced reliance on interpreters and clarification requests; limited range in use of verb tense, with heavy reliance on the present tense; areas of improvement in communicative function of speech mainly limited to conjecture, likes and dislikes, and expressions of feeling. Progression in the use of reported speech was limited for the group as a whole but where it was used it shed light on the individuals language development and into their views on their social experiences in their new environment. We argue that there is an urgent need for EAL practitioners and researchers to measure language development along similar lines in order to ground future policy-making in evidential knowledge of patterns of development in oral expression in English.

The Unfamiliar and the Indeterminate: Language, Identity and Social Integration in the School Experience of Newly-Arrived Migrant Children in England.

Research into the language socialisation of migrant-background children in new educational contexts has pointed to a complex relationship between language, identity, and social integration. This ar...

Participative multilingual identity construction in the languages classroom: a multi-theoretical conceptualisation

ABSTRACT Multilingual identity is an area ripe for further exploration within the existing extensive body of identity research. In this paper we make a case for a conceptual framework that defines multilingual identity formation in terms of learners’ active involvement, and proposes the classroom as the hitherto underused site for participative identity (re)negotiation. After reviewing three key theoretical perspectives on identity (the psychosocial, sociocultural and poststructural) for points of intersection and difference, we propose a new framework for a multi-theoretical approach to the conceptualisation and investigation of multilingual identity. This places it at the nexus of (a) individual psychological development, (b), the relational and social, and (c) the historical and contextual. Arguing that a participative perspective can take the field forward, we present a theorised model for classroom practice that provides a structure within which individual learners of a foreign language might explore, with reference to a range of sociolinguistic knowledge, the extent of their current linguistic repertoire. In addition, they are asked to explicitly consider their identity and identifications and offered the agency to (re)negotiate these in terms of multilingual identity, the development of which may be important for investment in language learning.

Dynamic L3 selves: a longitudinal study of five university L3 learners’ motivational trajectories in China

The motivation to learn a third language (L3) has received increasing attention in research, especially with regard to how it evolves dynamically during the learning process. Underpinned by the L2 ...

Danwei as a Community of Practice and Induction Teachers as Legitimate Peripheral Participants

Danwei, literally ‘work unit’ in English, is a term used during Mao’s era to refer to all forms of social groupings in China. Although use of the term becomes more flexible in the post-Mao era, people still commonly use it to refer to people’s workplaces, particularly those in academic institutions, the governmental and civil service sectors and State-owned enterprises, be it a department, a school, an institution or an organisation. Danwei, in this sense, is a microcosm of society, composed of various social practices and social relations. In the present research the Danwei community is a department responsible for teaching college English to non-English majors in a university in China, and was established in the light of English Language Teaching (ELT) reform and institution restructuring in higher education. McLaughlin’s (1993) notion of a ‘workplace community’ might be the best description of the nature and function of an organisation like the Danwei community in this research: ‘it [a workplace community] is viewed not only as a physical setting and a formal organization, but also as a social and psychological setting in which teachers construct a sense of practice, of professional efficacy and professional community’ (Flores, 2004, p. 299). The Danwei community has its own social structure, history and values, bureaucracy and routines, system of evaluation, control and reward, methods of information circulation, rules for interpersonal interaction, membership, learning processes, and so forth (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), which all reflect the legacy of interaction and negotiation of meaning through social practices. Thus the movement from a newcomer to a full member of the community of practice is a process of engaging in practices of the community and increasing self-identification as a fully participating member. This on-going research intends to explore how the learning experiences of induction college English teachers in a Danwei community in China influence their knowledge construction process. Wenger’s ‘social learning theory’ (community of practice) and Lave and Wenger’s notion of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ constitute the core of the theoretical framework that orients the author’s understanding of the tensions and conflictions in induction teachers’ socialisation into the Danwei community of practice within the context of radical change. At the epistemological level, the research is broadly of an interpretivist nature, and informed by social constructivist and critical perspectives. Correspondingly, at the methodological level, ethnography is used as the major research strategy which also draws on ethnomethodological and critical elements. Three induction teachers with less than two years of teaching experience are theoretically and purposively sampled based on Huberman’s (1993) thematic model of teachers’ professional life cycle. During the twelve-month ethnographic fieldwork three dimensions of the learning process are scrutinised, i.e. the personal dimension (how induction teachers learn through reflection), the interpersonal Sort ntices