Category Archives: Teacher education

edgeblog 12

Posted on 16, February 2011 by | 3 Comments

I remember causing a certain amount of audible eye-rolling among colleagues a few years back with my use of the verb, ‘to membership.’  I didn’t make it up, and I must have acquired it while reading something sociolinguistic, but I am embarrassed to say that I no longer know where. As you can probably guess, it means to assign someone to a certain group (with the added implication that you will use your own schemata regarding that group in order to interpret what it is that that person says.)  I mention it because yesterday I found myself being membershipped in the most unusual way.

 I was at a cross-disciplinary presentation on the theme of how academics need to make more effort to ensure that their work has more social ‘impact’ (a key term in the way that those set above us would like to judge and assess us this time around, but more of that another time). A representative of a lobbying organisation was arguing that academics should (guess what?) make more use of lobbying organisations. Not only that, he was saying, but they should make much more effort to use Web2.0 affordances, social networking sites, blogs and twitter.

 During discussion afterwards, someone said that this was quite simply to misunderstand the nature of our endeavours. ‘Look around this room,’ he said, ‘How many people here “blog?” (And there was something about the way he said that last word that brought to mind activities that I’m sure we would all want to insist were best left behind with adolescence.) Well, there were about forty people in the room, ranging from PhD students to professors, from all across the university’s varied faculties and schools. Without thinking too much about it, I raised my hand. As I felt the silence closing in, the same voice from behind me, said, “Well, there’s always one, isn’t there!”  And he didn’t say it in a nice way. Afterwards, two people came up to ask me about my blog, and so I found myself membershipped as the man who knows about blogging. As H.G. Wells almost wrote, in the world of the digitally deprived, the one-fingered typist is king. 

But really what it made me think was how easy it is to fixate on how far one has to go, while constantly devaluing how far one has come. I may be too old to get out of that pattern, but I pass the warning on to those flexible enough to respond to it. Be pleased with your achievements. No need to show off, but don’t do yourself down.

 As coincidence would have it, I was at another (and thematically related) cross-disciplinary presentation this lunchtime, this time by a corridor-colleague, Drew Whitworth. He has led a team drawn from the School of Education and the University Library in the production of what they call resources for postgraduates and researchers in media and information literacy. You can find them at: http://madigitaltechnologies.wordpress.com/infoliteracy/

 This is not a repeat of training materials in the specifics of literature searches or the like. It takes a broader view of what is involved by viewing information processing according to a ‘Six-Frame’ model:

  • The content frame
  • The competency frame
  • The learning-to-learn frame
  • The personal  relevance frame
  • The social impact frame

 Feedback so far indicates that the resources take about 7-10 hours to work through, and there are tasks to help a person go into the frames in depth and pull things together. If it sounds interesting, take a look and let us know how you get on. Drew is certainly keen for feedback on the resources and I would also like to know what you make of them. 

Oh, much as I’d love to visit with you some more, my lovelies, there are ethics forms to screen and other such joyful tasks before I can get on to the real fun of preparing tomorrow’s classes.

 Best,

 Julian

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edgeblog 11

Posted on 24, January 2011 by | 1 Comment

There seems to be a certain serendipitous synchronicity about the numbering of this edgeblog. Yes, yes, of course you can see it: first month of the first year of the decade, that is also eleven. No, please, don’t start thinking ahead, I’m sure it will become problematic.

The government here is talking about reintroducing a foreign language requirement into what it is pleased to refer to as ‘the English baccalaureate,’ which could turn out to be a good thing, although that doesn’t really excuse silly headlines about how few of our current young people would have qualified for it, when they weren’t actually taking the exams, or studying the subjects, that they would have needed to if the qualification had existed.

And on the subject of silly headlines, I was interested to read about the Squirrel Institute episode in Russia recently. Interesting, I mean, that such things still happen at what one might think of as quite a high level of both academic and political operation, but also that, notwithstanding the rise of other power blocks, English remains the dominant language not only now, but also as far as future planning goes for the Russian bureaucracy.

In case you found yourself intrigued (!) by all that banter about my poster and Wikipedia entry, then allow me to direct you to my official home page, where the poster now resides and whither Wikipedia readers will also be directed, thanks to Achilleas’s technical expertise and goodwill. I feel somehow a little closer to Andy Warhol.

We are now gearing up for another teaching term, while continuing to craft our responses to last semester’s assignments in terms that will both justify the grades that we give and also help the recipients of those grades get better grades next time. We hope.

Morewards, brothers and sisters. Morewards!

Best,

Julian

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edgeblog 10

Posted on 29, December 2010 by | 10 Comments

Oh dear. I was thinking that I was a little late for a December blog, but then, it is still December and now I see that I missed November altogether. Must try harder. However, don’t allow yourselves to be upset by all this nagging about posters. As I repeatedly find myself telling people, it’s not a question of how much time you have, we all have the same amount of time. It’s a question of what you prioritise, and I haven’t found a way to prioritise putting up a poster that is really only a self-promotional statement about some of my books. But why get so coy about it now? you might ask. What’s the point of creating the blooming thing if you don’t want people to see it?   Eeeeeeeeeeeee, well, I guess I thought of it (along with the other posters) as an awareness-raising statement for the corridor here at work, something to point out that although most people in the School of Education have no real idea of what we do — the usual TESOL poor-relation phenomenon — that fact should not be understood as meaning that we are inactive or ineffective. This poster, however, is more individual and retrospective than the others and I couldn’t see where it would well fit in a blog. However, Richard has since suggested that I could put it on my individual home page, which boasts annual updates, so that is now my plan. When I prioritise the time for it . . . Before the January blog. Now, then, that makes it a goal.

And there is a poster-link to December/January, in the sense that the last book featured on the poster is indeed my last book: The Reflexive Teacher Educator in TESOL: Roots and Wings. Have I told you about that before? Probably. Anyway, it was officially published on 16 December 2010. I got in touch with the publisher when I heard about this date. I mean, you don’t want to  have a book that’s already a year old before it reaches the shops, do you? I was reassured that the publication date in the book would be 2011. I didn’t know about that, did you? Just in case I haven’t told you, by the way, Roots is a reference to Narcissus, and Wings to Icarus, two of my flawed heroes whose reputations I try to redeem in the book. If any of you is thinking of attending the TESOL Convention (17-19 March 2011), I’m going to be doing a session on the book there at the bracing hour of 8.30am on the Friday. Of course, 8.30 in New Orleans in March probably feels a bit different to 8.30 in Manchester in December. I like to think, anyway . . . .  warm evenings, pale mornings, a bottle of blues . . . .

You know, since I let go of the final page-proofs, I’ve been going through the usual post-writing experience of remembering things that I had meant to say and finding notes I had forgotten I’d made, conclusions I failed to draw, etc.. Most of all, I have been thinking about how obvious it is that we (TESOL people) have blazed the globalisation trail in so many ways, good and bad, sunshine and shadow, and are still struggling with its contradictions. At our most short-sighted, we set out with our modernist vision of progress via language learning and thereby support elite groups in countries around the world. At our best, perhaps, we recognise that our common humanity must entail some basic, general facts about how language is effectively learned, and our cultural diversity must entail some basic, situated facts about how language is effectively taught, but we are hard put to discern the features of either or the connections between both these manifestations of the global and the local as the tides of profit-and-loss sweep us along. 

What have we learned in 2010? Well, certainly that if we once thought that we had countries and countries had banks, it has been spelled out very clearly for us that we belong to the banks, and countries are one way in which they collect from us. If we thought that among our rulers are vain fools who assume their right to mislead us while misrepresenting us, then we have started to learn how vengeful they may become when their foolishness and misrepresentations are uncovered. Oh dear, I seem to have wandered off the TESOL track here. Or perhaps I simply over-generalise.

 One thing I am sure I have not learned is that our newly enhanced virtual learning environment is going to introduce a scheme of assessment of student assignments whereby we click on pre-formulated comments that will then automatically copy over into our feedback.  That’s something that I don’t believe. Who would?

Twenty-eleven up. May it be good for you. Let us make it so. Lots to do. Back to prioritising, then . . .

 Best,

 Julian

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edgeblog 09

Posted on 19, October 2010 by | 11 Comments

I don’t know if you followed at all the election of the new leader of the Labour Party in Britain. One unusual feature of it was that two of the candidates were brothers. All through the campaign they both asserted forcefully that they would be happy to serve under the other brother if he were to win. Well, one of them did win, and the other one refused to serve. When asked why this was the case, following the many occasions on which he had maintained the opposite, the losing brother said, ‘That’s the difference between theory and practice.’

I wrote it down on the spot. You have to love it. It reminded me of how the ‘theory and practice’ discourse serves us so well in so many ways. In politics, it means that you can say what you think will get you elected without having to feel obliged to live up to it whether you win or lose. In education, it can so often mean the status that accrues to speculative abstractions or grand theories from elsewhere, as distinct from lowly understandings won from experience.

In fact, crossover thoughts from the news have been bumping into my professional thinking in a couple of ways recently. If all works out, I’ll attach a recent article from the Guardian on credibility in qualitative research. Well, the author doesn’t say that that’s what it’s about, but I think you’ll get the picture.

Meanwhile, we are into the new semester now and all getting to know each other a little better. Ah, and the gang here is about to produce a poster to represent us on the corridor. If I remember correctly an earlier posting from Mariam, Patron Saint of Poster-makers, it should be possible to attach that, too. Next time, perhaps.

            May all your October be golden. Ours is doing quite well, so far.

Best,

Julian

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NATESOL and Cambridge ESOL event

Posted on 8, October 2010 by | Leave a comment

A series of teacher development events have been organised by Cambridge ESOL and the one in Manchester is on 16th November that may be of interest. See below and attached.

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Edgeblog #08

Posted on 15, September 2010 by | 11 Comments

edgeblog 08

Well, it’s a long, long time from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September. Hmmmm. It’s that kind of a morning. 7.15, clouds low and grey, rain medium. And yet, and yet, if make myself think of the Sarah Vaughan version of the song, with Clifford Brown on trumpet, then everything has its positives, so I’ll pull myself together here.

            Actually just back from the British Association for Applied Linguistics annual conference, this year in Aberdeen, a city I hadn’t been to before and very much liked. The university campus in Old Aberdeen is delightful and, if you find yourself in town on a Friday or Saturday night, you might do worse than making your way to the Globe, where they have live music and a friendly crowd.

            Back at the conference, the theme of ‘Applied Linguistics: Global and Local’ attracted a lot of very interesting papers, including quite a few with an explicitly ideological content. I was involved in a colloquium, ‘British ELT in existential crisis?’ convened by Robert Philipson (Copenhagen), with contributions also from Richard Smith (Warwick, UK), Bessie Dendrinos (Athens, Greece), Adrian Holliday (Canterbury, UK), Ahmed Kabel, Ifrane, Morocco, and Shelley Taylor (Western Ontario, Canada). If my precarious IT skills permit, I’ll attach a copy of my twelve minutes’ worth to this posting. I discovered that Ahmed, who I hadn’t met before, has an engagingly combative style that led him to begin statements with expressions such as, ‘What you are doing here is confusing  . . .’ and I found myself responding with, ‘What you have failed to understand is . . .’ and so on. You don’t get that sort of thing too often in public and, as I spend a certain amount of time exercising non-judgemental ‘accepting’ discourse skills in my professional exchanges, it was good to give my argumentative muscles a bit of a workout. And we had a good hug at the end.

            Here on the corridor, we are readying ourselves for the beginning of the new academic year. The year no longer begins with an Induction Week for new students. Oh no. We now have Welcome Week. As you can see, things continue to improve in all sorts of ways.

 

Best,

 

Julian

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Posted on 31, August 2010 by | 8 Comments

edgeblog 07

I begin this edgeblog in hopes that Richard’s lesson on how to attach a document will have stayed with me, though it is certainly as hazy in my memory as it seemed complicated at the time. In order to keep our shared ideas in play. I’d like to post the text of the talk I gave at the ABLA Convention in Cali, Columbia, at the end of July. It was an excellent event altogether. Other plenary speakers were Kathi Bailey, Jeremy Harmer, Kumaravadivelu and Bob Oprandy. The theme was ‘Teachers as Learners’, which was very much in my area of interest, and participants from all across Latin America provided a very high standard of presentations and of involvement in the sessions that I saw. As well as the plenary, I had the opportunity to do a Cooperative Development workshop with Bob Oprandy that included us working as Speaker and Understander. It’s a bit risky to do that in front of an audience, but working with Bob is always a rich and rewarding experience, and so it proved again. The quality of engagement by participants and the level of questioning and comment was very satisfying. Cooperative Development lives.

Back on the topic of that text I’m posting, by the way, let me clarify what it represents. It’s not something that I read aloud at the audience — I hate that practice and I think it is, actually, dying out. When I am doing a straight talk to a large group, however, I do these days write a text in order to help me be sure that I have a coherent message and to help me judge the timing. I read the piece several times before the talk itself, including reading it aloud. So, when I get up to speak, I have the shape of the thing pretty clear in my head. What this also means is that I feel confident about improvising where appropriate and still finding back to a coherent line. On this occasion, for example, I was closing the conference and I could refer back to points that had been made by previous speakers and try to tie those separate statements together into themes.

Let me highlight just one such. When people ask me how to start developing their teaching, a regular suggestion of mine  is that they make a recording of one of their classes and listen to/watch it. You may find yourself witnessing a perfect event, but most of us see something in there that would be worth working on. This suggestion was written into my text. In her talk, Kathi Bailey reported on research into the kinds of developmental activities that teachers liked more or less. Right down there at the bottom of the list, least favoured of all, was, yes, you guessed it, making a recording of your class.

Hmmmm. Highly effective and least favoured. Now, why is that? My intuition is that it is because it is the most directly challenging option. We can talk about what we do and we can keep our diaries and we can read the journals and always there is some wiggle-room in which to find a little comfort, but that recorded data of what happened in our class just stares back at us and cannot be denied. This then also links up with that threat of ‘being observed’ that makes most people feel uncomfortable. I think that’s interesting.

Well, that’s enough for now. Next week, I’m off to the BAAL Annual Meeting in Aberdeen. I’m taking part in a colloquium organized by Robert Phillipson on the topic: British ELT in a state of existential crisis. I’ll report back next time.

 Best,

Julian

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edgeblog 06

Posted on 24, August 2010 by | 4 Comments

Goodness me, four months gone by since I edgeblogged. I really must try to get better at this, once I have worked out what ‘better’ means. For a start, I suppose, I could make sure to get back here a lot more frequently. But there you go already, as though ‘frequency’ meant ‘better’! Anyway, my main reason for being here today is simply that I know I left a promise unkept from last time, when I said I’d post my TESOL 2010 talk and handout.

What happened in the meantime is that on 15 July Richard Fay started a discussion called ‘Ponderings on Reflexivity’ over on the sister blog, ‘The Doctoral Community at LTE’. As my TESOL talk was on that same topic, it seemed to make sense to post it there. At least, it seemed to make sense until I found out that I couldn’t work out how to. At that point, I threw myself on the mercy of community member, Magdalena, who in turn engaged the support of Achilleas, and the TESOL talk was duly posted along with Magdalena’s message of 26 July. (Thank you again!)

SO, if you’re still interested, do please navigate yourself over there and take a look. You will also find a discussion of reflexivity (and other matters) that could keep a person occupied for much of the coming winter.  (Smile.) I’ll be back soon. I WILL be back soon.

 Best,

Julian

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MA TESOL pathways from September 2010

Posted on 24, June 2010 by | Leave a comment

From September 2010, we are introducing three ‘named pathways’ to the MA TESOL degree so that graduates from it can exit with one of the following certificates:

  • MA TESOL
  • MA TESOL (Intercultural Education)
  • MA TESOL (Teacher Education)
  • MA TESOL (Educational Technology)

These options are for the MA TESOL programme only at the moment - the MA EdTech & TESOL programme continues as before.

For all three of these pathways, MA TESOL participants will take:

  1. the two core course units (i.e. Beyond approaches, methods, techniques + Language learning and technology);
  2. the pathway flagship course unit (i.e. respectively, Language education as intercultural practice, The education of language teachers, or one of the other educational technology course units);
  3. the Developing researcher competence course unit with a study focused in the ICE pathway area; and
  4. the Dissertation with a study focused in the ICE pathway area.

They complete the remainder of the programme (i.e. 3 x 15-credit course units) with electives of their own choice from the menus available (e.g. MA TESOL menu, MA EdTech & TESOL menu, MA AppLing menu, ISS, etc).

This development targets important dimensions of TESOL practitioner development as well as foregrounding the LTE areas of expertise/specialism in: educational technology & TESOL; (language) teacher education; and intercultural education.

Any/all reactions/feedback, most welcome.

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edgeblog 05

Posted on 26, April 2010 by | 1 Comment

edgeblog 5

 The TESOL convention was good. Talk went fine. I was in good form, tho I say so myself. Started off with a hugely positive response to  my opening line of, ‘You know what? I  didn’t prepare a Powerpoint presentation for this session.’ Crowd goes apeshit. I’ll post  a text of the talk. Not that I “read” papers, but if I’m giving a talk I usually produce a written version to help me keep my ducks in a row, then talk to a handout, so that I have my prompts and listeners have a set of notes they can add to if they wish.

Low point of the trip overall was the DJ not calling me  to perform ‘El Paso‘ at the karaoke bar on the Friday night, especially following Bob Oprandy’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel‘. Thing is, the place was taken over by a 21st birthday party and a number of young women dressed more as if for a Louisiana bordello in June than a New England night in March took to performing rap numbers that seemed to feature repeated rhetorical questions along the lines of, “Dja wanna liddl bidda dis n a liddl bidda dat?” accompanied by ample and unmistakable manifestation of what it was that “dis” and “dat” were meant to index in this context. After a while, I was forced regretfully to acknowledge the appropriateness of the DJ’s decision.

Saturday morning,  trotted off back to  the airport to pick up pre-booked Dodge Neon.

“Oh, Dr Edge,” breathed Roxanne. “I can see your booking in the computer, but I’m afraid it’s frozen. It will take us five or ten minutes to deal with that, but, for your inconvenience, we will be able to offer you an upgrade.”

“That’s fine, Roxanne,” quoth Dr Edge authoritatively, “We’ll take the gold Mustang convertible  out there.”

“Well, we could offer you that for an extra $12 a day, but otherwise we could  offer you an upgrade to a Ford Fusion.”

“We’ll take the Fusion.”

“That’s fine, Dr Edge. Martin, can you make sure that the Fusion is ready for Dr Edge?”

“We ain’t got no Fusion, Roxanne.”

“There’s one here in the computer.”

“You may have one in the computer, Roxanne, but I ain’t got one out on the lot.”

“Dr Edge?”

“Roxanne?”

“I’m happy to be able to tell you that we can offer you the gold Mustang convertible at no extra cost.”

 We were also very glad. Especially as the temperature proceeded to shoot up to almost eighty as we toured off to visit friends who have built a house in the New Hampshire woods near to Newfound Lake and then further to friends who have built right on the waterfront of Lake Cupsuptik.

Manchester is OK.

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