Abstract
The paper aims to introduce results of a study of the effects of participation in video clubs on EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers’ selective attention. It is a part of a larger project concerned with EFL teachers’ professional vision. The paper introduces the theoretical background of study on teachers’ professional vision and selective attention and the rationale of video clubs used specifically for EFL teachers. 11 EFL teachers participated in this year-long study and attended video club meetings that aimed to foster their professional vision for conscious development of pupils’ communicative competence. They were interviewed at the beginning and at the end of the programme; video sequences of their own teaching and of other teacher’s teaching were used as prompts. The transcribed data were analysed using a theory-driven system of categories describing the areas of teachers’ selective attention (i.e. aims, context, content, pupil/s, teacher, process). The results suggest that after participating in video clubs the teachers paid more attention to aims and content, and less to the teacher. The results for the category of pupil(s) differed for the own/other video sequence. As the development of communicative competence represents the ultimate goal of EFL teaching, it is encouraging that after the intervention the teachers’ comments were more aim and content oriented.
Highlights
The analysis showed change in the occurrence of categories in teachers’ comments on the observed video sequences before and after the video clubs: while the number of codes related to the categories of aims and content increased, there was a decrease of attention to the teacher and to the procedural aspects of tuition
We wanted to find out whether any groups of teachers in terms of how their professional vision, resp. selective attention, changed as a result of participation in the video clubs may be identified. This might indicate the procedural validity of video clubs; we find it especially important as the 67 teachers are to a great extent the designers of the video clubs, their decisions and needs may strongly shape the content of discussion on the video sequences in their groups
The presented study is a part of larger research focussing on English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ professional vision and its development
Summary
Two components are usually mentioned (Sherin, 2007, p. 384; Seidel et al, 2010, p. 297) − selective attention and knowledge-based reasoning. Knowledge-based reasoning represents the processes of making sense of situations and thinking about them, and presupposes certain knowledge (Seidel et al, 2010) or understanding (Sherin, 2007) These two components of professional vision are interrelated and cyclical. In the intervention part of our study we adopt the “prescriptive” stance guiding the participants to notice specific features of the situations and reason about them This approach is common in many pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes focusing on the development of professional vision and, what we consider important, meets the ethical requirements posed on teacher research. The chapter will introduce the structure of our intervention as well as its particular aim
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