Zuwati Hasim

Languages in the Malaysian education system: monolingual strands in multilingual settings, edited by Asmah Haji Omar

offers factual detail without depth of understanding. It would have been better to focus on fewer cases and explain their significance in much more depth, with more analysis of key concepts and practices, and better relation to the Japanese educational context of the time. Problems of contextualisation are also evident in other chapters, such as those on assessment. To begin with, there is no preliminary explanation of fundamental assessment structures in the Japanese educational system. As a result, when the author refers to “relative assessment”, or to children being given a grade of 5 or 1, the uninformed reader may have trouble understanding what exactly this means. The authors also refer to the introduction of “objective-referenced assessment” in Japanese schools in 2001, and generally give the impression that this has replaced relative assessment. Yet there is no mention of the fact that entrance to high school at 15 is via competitive assessment (generally a combination of examination and school grades), nor any discussion of how this affects assessment practices at junior high school. This is a crucial issue given that the high school entrance system forces junior high schools to make relative assessments of children’s academic attainment. The book is strongest when it examines a particular case study in some depth, as in Chapter 9 on “Portfolio Assessment in the Period for Integrated Study”. However, lack of contextualisation causes problems here too. The authors present the period for integrated study in a very positive way. The uninformed reader would have no idea from their text that integrated study was part of a package of reforms that was highly controversial in Japan, or that many junior high school teachers were, at best, deeply unenthusiastic about it. Moreover, the case study presented comes from a university-attached school; the reader is not informed that it is therefore a “laboratory” school and by no means typical. A similar problem arises in Chapter 10, which introduces a case study at a junior high school about which no contextual information is provided. Finally, the book is written in imperfect English which does not always make sense, especially for those unfamiliar with the subject. To give one small but important example: on page 42, the term “new liberalism” is used where clearly “neoliberalism” is meant. Japan has a very rich record of pedagogical thought and practice. Unfortunately, this is not the book to help readers in the English-speaking world better understand the significance of this rich legacy.

Trainee Teachers’ Teaching Metaphors and Their Pedagogical Association

There has been increasing interest in exploring what language teachers believe about teaching (Borg 2006). Often these beliefs are expressed in terms of metaphors (Richards 1998; Woodward 1991). Richards (1996) asserts that teachers’ personal principles would reflect their teaching approach in which these principles guide the teachers’ instructional decisions. Teaching principles are commonly built upon teachers’ beliefs, educational input, training, and experience, which reflect the teachers’ roles and influence the instructional decisions and pedagogical practice. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in research about teaching and its association with teachers’ beliefs or vice versa. Nevertheless, there has been little recent research connecting the choice of metaphors and the teachers’ beliefs in relation to classroom practice. Hence, this chapter presents the findings of a study on teachers’ teaching metaphors and their pedagogical representations. The central focus of this chapter is on the teachers’ peripheral beliefs about teaching and the extent to which educational trends of teaching English language in the ESL classroom are established through such beliefs.

Content Analysis of the Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the Curriculum of Yemeni EFL Teacher Education Programme

This study aims to analyse the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in the current curriculum of the English teacher education programme (ETEP) at a Faculty of Education in a Yemeni University. PCK and teaching competencies take shape within the initial preparation of ETEP in which student teachers spenda long time receiving knowledge and understanding the teaching context before they practically experience teaching at schools. During their BA study, students are required to study 49 courses which can be categorised into four main components: skills, linguistics, literature and professional. This study analyses the content of the curriculum courses so as tovisualise the way student teachers translate what they have learned into pedagogical practices during their teaching practices. In this study, the curriculum content of ETEP is qualitatively analysed using the inductive approach. Categories emerged from the analysis demonstrate various aspects of student teachers’ PCK. The analysis reveals that the pedagogical skills courses are not enough to enhance and strengthen the student teachers’ PCK needed to be reflected in their teaching practices. The findings show that the curriculum lacks courses necessary to provide student teachers with basic knowledge and pedagogical principles which are of vital significance to demonstrate their understanding before they are practically engaged in the teaching experience.