Effective ITT / ITE
Partnership development
Papers & recommended reading | Editorial reviews | Task for traineesTeaching learning strategies: what do teachers learn?
LAWES, S., SANTOS, D.
Language Learning Journal, 35, 2, December 2007, pp. 221-237
This article reports on the ‘by-product’ of a collaborative research project, carried out by a team of university researchers and school-based teachers of French, into listening and writing strategies employed by year 12 learners of French. Not only was the original listening and strategy-based inquiry a valuable project in terms of furthering the language learning capacities of the Y12 students, but in assisting the research process, collaborating language teachers have been found to have emerged with their own learning and practice identifiably enhanced. So both language learners and language teachers have made positive and research-informed changes.
The authors start by recalling a body of research that has identified the notion of teacher development, and the two broad labels functional and attitudinal articulated by Evans (2002) are aptly referred to; the article reports on both academic and practical engagement by teachers with the findings. The authors establish that there is nothing new in the idea of classroom-based enquiry, but there is here a unique aspect in the HEI and school-based teacher collaboration. In spite of identifying ‘difficulties’ with regard to the feasibility and implementation of the strategy training for students, it is the collaborative aspect that has motivated teachers to reflect and then change their practice; even though there appears to be some sense of lack of ownership of some of the strategies’ activity base, the same cannot be said of the processes of inquiry “Arguably [the teachers] reflect more formally, intellectually and analytically, because of their involvement in a research project, than they might do otherwise.”
The report arguably constitutes an invitation for HEIs to assist in the development of languages staff by locating research activity in schools, giving serving languages teachers the opportunity to develop their own thinking practice independently of handed-down government strategy. Existing HEI-school ITE partnerships may prove an ideal context for this “relatively unexplored, yet potentially important approach to foreign language teacher development” to be nurtured.
