Last updated by kprzemek on 2017-03-31. Originally submitted by waleks on 2017-03-23.
The Research in English Applied Linguistics Group invites everyone to a meeting in which dr Jacek Rysiewicz will give a talk:
Teaching skills of primary school EFL teachers through teacher trainees’ eyes - the analysis of lesson observation reports
The meeting will take place on Friday 31 March 2017 at 13:15 in room 601A. Everyone is cordially welcome!
Abstract of the talk:
In my talk I’ll discuss the results of Lesson Observation Tasks (LOT) carried out by teacher trainees within their preliminary teacher training course at university. Around forty trainees (3rd year students at the Faculty of English of A. Mickiewicz University) observed teachers during their regular EFL lessons in twenty five primary schools in Poznań as part of their practicums. The trainees were given ten LOTs altogether covering various areas of teaching: management, error correction, interaction patterns, teacher/learner roles, discipline, and others. The last four LOTs focused on teacher teaching skills in: skills development (reading), staging of a lesson, new language presentation, and new language practice. Trainees could collapse observations from up to three lessons of the same teacher to complete one task. Each task was carefully planned and consisted of three parts:
- a short description of a generally accepted model of an aspect of teaching to be observed with references to EFL coursebooks and training material,
- a written, done in class, report of teachers’ actions in a lesson describing its procedure (minutes),
- a task proper requiring a trainee to either tick an element of a lesson on the provided list, or chose a description/feature from options provided that best characterised a lesson they observed.
The analysis of the results of trainees-reported teachers’ teaching skills are, to put it mildly, dissapointing. It shows that the teaching techniques teachers use are very limited, their mastery of basic teaching skills is rudimentary, and their understanding of the teaching/learning process is vestigial. This conclusion is even further exacerbated by the fact of unequivocal and total reliance of all the observed teachers on the coursebook. Implications of the findings for university teacher training programmes are attempted.
