English Language Teacher Education Program Research Articles

Pedagogical tact in the English language teacher education programme

AbstractThis study fills a major gap in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher education by examining the integration of pedagogical tact (PT) in an EFL teacher education programme in Turkey. Through an in‐depth examination of the programme and semi‐structured interviews, this study investigated to what extent PT, including empathising with and motivating learners, effective classroom management, differentiated instruction and support for meaningful decision‐making, is integrated. The qualitative content analysis of the programme demonstrated that many courses in the EFL teacher education programme are consistent with aspects of PT. However, there were a few areas where the programme could be further enhanced to better include all aspects of PT. This includes offering courses on effective communication and decision‐making. The interviews conducted with 21 pre‐service EFL teachers also revealed that most of them acknowledged that the programme is based on their potential teaching needs and challenges. However, they offered suggestions to improve the programme such as adding more technology courses and practice‐based implementations. Throughout the study, recommendations are provided regarding how EFL teacher education programmes could be developed and implemented with more emphasis on PT. Hence, the study's findings have important implications for teacher education programme developers in Turkey and international contexts.

Corpus Literacy Training for In-Service English Language Teachers

Corpus analysis offers a more accurate understanding of a language than intuition but is not widely used in foreign language instruction. This study uses a hermeneutic-phenomenology approach and content analysis to examine the impact of a corpus literacy course on the perceptions and performance indicators of 29 English language teachers. The results suggest that corpus literacy instruction is crucial for language teachers to incorporate corpus into their classroom practices effectively. Even a brief, intensive corpus literacy course can positively alter teachers’ perceptions and abilities, increase their awareness of corpus usage in language teaching, and equip them with the skills needed, highlighting the importance of incorporating corpus literacy into the design of English language teacher education programs.

The influence of emotional intelligence awareness on the teaching experiences of university teacher trainees: a quantitative and qualitative analysis

Educating prospective teachers is a complex and interdisciplinary effort, encompassing educational policies, core subject knowledge, and honing essential skills, attitudes, and behaviours necessary for effective classroom teaching. This study focuses on the initial stage of teacher development, exploring how pre-service university students perceive and understand emotional intelligence (EI) and its components, especially as they embark on internships in primary and secondary schools. The emotional dynamics in English language teaching classrooms, involving various emotions among students, teachers, parents, and colleagues are examined. The study underscores the importance of emotional expertise for both students and teachers in facilitating a productive teaching and learning process. A review of relevant literature reveals that while there is extensive research on emotions in teacher training, the emphasis has been primarily on general education, with limited focus on second-language teacher education. EI is seen as a critical factor in teachers' classroom management, pedagogical skills, and overall success within the profession. Additionally, studies on EI within English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher education are relatively scarce but indicate a significant impact on teaching outcomes. This research employs a mixed-methods approach to investigate pre-service teachers' perceptions of EI. Quantitative data was collected through a survey questionnaire measuring participants' agreement with statements related to EI. Qualitative data was obtained through in-depth interviews with selected pre-service teachers. The study involved 32 pre-service university students enrolled in English language teacher education programs about to begin internships at primary and secondary schools in Poland.

Asenkron Yansıtma ve Tartışmanın Öğretmen Adaylarının COVID-19 Pandemisi Hakkındaki Argümanları Değerlendirmesine Etkisi

Pre-service teachers (PSTs) play a key role in creating future citizens who critically evaluate information. Therefore, this study investigated PSTs’ ability to evaluate two controversial topics about COVID-19 before and after asynchronous reflection and discussion on the trustworthiness of evidence and credibility of sources of evidence. Eighteen sophomores who studied in the English Language Teacher Education Program in the Faculty of Education at a private university in Turkey participated in the study. Their pre- and post-assignments, in which they discussed arguments about COVID-19, were analyzed. The results of the study reveal the positive impact of asynchronous reflection and discussion to facilitate PSTs’ critical evaluation. The results suggest further implications in teacher education programs and teacher education research for promoting argumentation skills.

Knowledge Base for Classroom Preparedness: Analyzing Initial English Language Teacher Education in Kyrgyzstan

This study examines the extent to which the Initial English Language Teacher Education (IELTE) program curriculum facilitates the development of the necessary knowledge base to ensure prospective English language teachers’ classroom preparedness. Data were collected through curricular analysis of four IELTE programs and semi-structured interviews with four program directors and 10 early career English teachers to evaluate IELTE program effectiveness to prepare teachers, at least, entry-level teaching. Findings indicate that contextual factors such as rigid national policy documents, teacher educators’ limited competencies and their role in curriculum development and implementation, the status of the IELTE programs within the universities, lack of collaboration between IELTE programs and schools contributed to the inefficiency of IELTE programs to ensure prospective English teachers’ classrooms preparedness. Thus, English teachers were not prepared to carry out their jobs effectively because the knowledge base that prospective teachers acquire and develop through the IELTE program did not correspond to what they need in their classrooms for effective teaching.

English Language Teacher Education Programs at Turkish Universities: A Statistical Overview

Considering the significant role of English Language Teacher Education (ELTE) programs on future English teachers’ teaching skills and eventually on the English proficiency of future generations, the present study investigated some statistics concerning the academics and students of these programs. All the statistics were gathered from YÖK Atlas, a website initiated by Council of Higher Education (CoHE) in Turkey. The data were analyzed to find out the differences between public and private universities’ ELTE programs, and to find out correlations among various elements of the ELTE programs regardless of the type of universities. The findings revealed the superiority of the ELTE programs at public universities over the ones at private universities on various aspects. However, students’ decreasing number of ELTE program preferences in recent years at both public and private universities were among the major findings of the present study. Moreover, some positive correlations among the variables were reported. The findings were discussed in the light of the related literature.

Different Cases of Leadership and Teaching in Higher Education

Higher education has a global structure including the influence of international trends. Such international composition naturally enrich diversity in universities. No doubt, generating diversified leadership team can help to establish scholarly environment in universities. Within this environment, scholarship of teaching and learning could be one of hot topic to empower international programmes. To this end, English language programmes expectedly gain importance to train students for global business sectors.
 
 In this issue of HEGP studies on different topics are covered. The first article, titled “English Language Teacher Education Programs at Turkish Universities: A Statistical Overview” by Asmalı analyzed the key characteristics of English Language Teacher Education programs in Türkiye. Asmalı stated that the decrease in the demand for English Language Teacher Education programs is a major challenge of these programs. Asmalı indicated that English Language Teacher Education in Türkiye needs careful planning in terms of academic employment and student quotas. The second article, titled “Striving for Diversity of Leadership: Governance in UK Higher Education Institutions” by Shafi, Clarke, Norman, and Andrews investigated the scholarship on developing the diversity of UK university boards and developed a practical toolkit to ensure board diversity in higher education. The study documented the barriers to achieving diversity in the UK higher education institutions boards. The third article of the journal, titled “Linking Sustainability and Spirituality: The University with a Soul” by Razak and Moten elaborated on key values that higher education needs to convey to link sustainability and spirituality. The fourth article of this issue, titled “Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education” by Ertem and Aypay documented the results of a bibliometric analysis on research of teaching and learning in higher education. The study documented the influential outlets, topical foci, and key references in research on teaching and learning in higher education.

Constructivism on an award‐bearing in‐service English language teacher education programme in Oman

AbstractWhile constructivism is generally valued in second language teacher education (SLTE) as it is thought to lead to deeper learning opportunities than an approach based on transmission, there are relatively few analyses of award‐bearing in‐service SLTE courses examining where they lie on the transmissive–constructivist continuum. Such an analysis is conducted here, of a BA TESOL Programme for in‐service English language teachers in Oman. Under consideration is the extent to which criteria for constructivism, such as learner‐centred instruction, context‐appropriate materials, authentic assessment opportunities, opportunities for reflection, action research, and collaborative learning were features of the course. Findings highlight that the programme was more constructivist than transmissive, and became increasingly constructivist over time. Guiding principles that may be of interest to SLTE programme designers elsewhere seeking to embed constructivism in their courses are presented.

In English Medium Instruction you can walk and chew gum.

In English Medium Instruction (EMI), one of the biggest challenges is reportedly the teachers' own lack of English language proficiency. Helping teachers to improve their proficiency while learning about pedagogy is critical to achieving reasonable success in EMI. This article is contextualized in an English language teacher education program conducted in Tunisia. Specifically, I zoom in on a training task that had trainees reading an academic textbook and posting takeaways on an asynchronous platform over a four-week period. The corpus, comprising 50 journal entries produced by five teacher trainees, was analyzed, first using automated tools for natural language processing and then through human coding, for a combination of quantitative and qualitative perspectives, and with a view to deriving a comprehensive understanding of learning as manifested on multiple levels - psychological, cognitive, and linguistic. Results show impressive learning gains both in content and language. I conclude by discussing the findings and implications for EMI.

(Re)thinking English Language Teacher Education: Towards Contextualized and Coordinated Efforts for Enhancing Teacher Competencies

This paper explores issues around the implementation of English language teacher education programs in Nepal. It also presents the challenges facing teacher education and stakeholder opinions on future transformation of English language teacher education. The data were obtained through in-depth interviews with four teacher educators, four school heads, one assistant dean and 2 education officials. The analysis of the data adopted a grounded theory that enabled the author to build on themes emerging from the interview data, and the authors’ insider experience as an English language teacher educator further facilitated the contextual interpretation of the available data. The findings showed an existence of misalignment of the teacher education programs and contemporary market demands, thereby creating gaps between the graduates’ attributes and expectations of the schools. It further identified lack of coordination between school curriculum regulating agencies, teacher education institutions and the schools, that eventually led to the production of teaching human resources that lacked adequate competencies. This implies that English language teacher education programs needed reforms through competency-based framework. Findings further indicated a need for contextualization of current and prospective teachers’ professional development initiatives.

The Evaluation of the English Language Teacher Education Program in Turkey

<p style="text-align:justify">This study aims to evaluate the English language teacher training program which was put into practice in 2006, according to the views of lecturers and English teachers. This study aims to contribute to the studies on foreign language teaching by presenting an evaluation of teacher education, which is an important dimension of English as a foreign language teaching. The qualitative method was used in the study, which was designed in a descriptive survey model. The population of the research consists of 35 lecturers working at the English Language Teaching Department of different Education Faculties in the 2016-2017 academic year and 11 English teachers working in public schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education and who have not completed 5 years in the profession. NVIVO-11 program was used in the analysis of the data. The results of the study were compared with the 2018 English teacher education program renewed by the Council of Higher Education. English teachers and lecturers think that the content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and general culture courses in the teacher training program are insufficient. According to English teachers and lecturers the content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and general culture courses in the English language teacher education program are insufficient. Furthermore, English teachers stated that they could not apply what they learned during their training to real-life conditions. Therefore, they propose that the English language teacher training program should be revised considering the current conditions.</p>

Developing Language Assessment Literacy of EFL Pre-service Teachers through Classroom Assessment Course

The study reports on how Classroom Assessment Course changed the perspectives of EFL pre-service teachers related with language assessment and contributed to their language assessment literacy development. The participants included 48 junior students in an English language teacher education program of a state university in Turkey. All the participants enrolled in a course named Classroom Assessment and the data were collected through reflection reports and a focus group interview within the scope of this course that was conducted in a 14-week period. The coding phase of the data analysis was carried out through in-vivo coding and the codes were combined under more general themes to be presented. The findings revealed that the participants’ perspectives in language assessment significantly changed at the end of Classroom Assessment Course. While their initial thoughts included some negative connotations regarding assessment itself, its purpose and the role of teachers in language assessment, they turned to be just the opposite towards the end of the semester. Moreover, the participants also expressed that they started to feel themselves more competent in language assessment as prospective teachers and got more enthusiastic to study on this topic in the future. Demonstrating the contribution of Classroom Assessment Course to language assessment literacy development of pre-service teachers, the study offers some policy and research suggestions to improve assessment literacy of EFL teachers in similar contexts.

A Review of English Language Teacher Training Programmes in Bangladesh

This paper reviewed the contents and objectives of three English language teacher education programmes offered by government and non-governmental organizations to in-service secondary school teachers in Bangladesh. Semistructured interviews were used to collect additional data from the programme coordinators who were trainers as well. The aim of the study was to find out whether the training programmes created opportunities for teachers to engage in critical reflection on their own beliefs in order to develop a critical approach towards their teaching. Hence, this study drew on the extensive literature on teacher beliefs and critical reflection to advocate the need for designing teacher development programmes which focus on these two aspects. The study sought to establish the advantages of helping teachers to articulate their beliefs so that they can themselves identify whether their beliefs are in sync with language education today. This can be possible only if teachers reflect on their core beliefs about teaching that propel them to teach in a particular way. The study found that the training programmes which were reviewed all focused on classroom practices. None of the programmes focused on helping teachers to articulate or identify their beliefs so that their awareness of their own beliefs could help them appreciate the need for implementing what they were being trained to do in the classroom. It was argued that if teacher development programmes created opportunities for teachers to collectively and critically reflect on their pre-existing beliefs, it could help them use their newly acquired skills more effectively and convincingly. Keywords: critical reflection, teacher beliefs, teacher educators, teacher training modules.

Co‐constructing a critical ELT curriculum: A case study in an Indonesian‐based English language teacher education program

The current case study investigated how teacher‐learners (TLs) in an Indonesia‐based undergraduate English language teacher education program learned to apply critical pedagogy (CP) when co‐constructing a critical English language teaching (ELT) curriculum with English language learners (ELLs). CP insights into ELT and second language teacher education are synthesized as a theoretical framework to shed light on how the TLs co‐constructed the critical curriculum. This qualitative research study triangulated data collected from (1) audio‐recorded dialogues between three TLs and their teacher educator (TE) in multiweek classes, (2) video‐recorded teaching sessions when TLs taught ELLs from Papua, and (3) curricular documents and the TLs' reflections submitted on a learning management system. The findings suggest that TLs could raise their critical awareness of (un)fairness or inequalities experienced by ELLs while co‐constructing components of a critical ELT curriculum (i.e., needs analysis, learning objectives, syllabus design, materials development, and lesson planning). TLs' critical consciousness emerged when practicing dialogues with ELLs. Ultimately, reflexivity allowed TLs and their TE to envision improvements of the critical ELT curriculum.

EFL Preservice Teachers’ Technology Integration in Managing and Teaching Speaking Skills During Emergency Remote Teaching

This study aimed at investigating the EFL preservice teachers’ technology integration in managing and teaching speaking skills online during emergency remote teaching in Indonesia. This study employed a single case study approach by implementing an explanatory sequential mixed method design. The findings showed that even though the preservice teachers used various technology tools, they frequently implemented WhatsApp, YouTube, and Google Forms for classroom management and teaching speaking purposes. This study offers some implications to advance English language teacher education programs to prepare the future EFL preservice teachers in the post-pandemic era.

Conceptualizing Graduates Attributes (GAs) in English Language Teacher Education Programs in Oman During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study seeks to contribute to the incipient pool of research on graduate attributes (GAs) by reporting on a study of the GAs of Omani English language teacher (ELT) education programs and the role being played in this area by the Oman Authority for Academic Accreditation and Quality Assurance of Education (OAAAQA), formerly known as Oman Academic Accreditation Authority (OAAA). The study was qualitative and examined stakeholders’ perspectives and aspirations concerning the graduate attributes used in English language teacher education programs in Oman during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The data for the study was generated by (1) reviewing the pertinent literature, including OAAA’s documents and reports, and (2) interviewing online seven experts and practitioners from ELT programs in Oman. The findings reveal that the participants have diverse views of the GAs. Additionally, higher education institutions (or HEIs) encountered several common challenges with the mapping, actualizing, teaching, and assessing of GAs. Moreover, the existing GAs still need to be reviewed to fit the dynamic requirements of the labor market. The findings of the study have the potential to guide and support English teacher education providers in Oman in developing, reviewing, aligning, and mapping their GAs more effectively and impactfully.

Preservice EFL teachers’ online learning anxiety

With a prompt rise in the development of technology and with the advent of the internet in the 1990s, walls of classrooms have been demolished by the innovations of the current century. These developments also breathe new life into foreign language education and change the concept of the classroom while casting challenging roles for both learners and instructors, which ends up a new type of education on the stage of online education platforms. This brand-new way of foreign language learning has brought about extra anxiety in learners. In order to find out the reasons for foreign language anxiety, which affects learners’ process of foreign language learning in the online world, a total number of 75 undergraduate foreign language learners (n=75) who are taking online oral communication courses in the English Language Teacher Education Program (the Spring of the academic year 2019-2020) at Ondokuz Mayıs University in Turkey are involved in this research voluntarily. This study aims to investigate what kind of effects online learning has on foreign language learners’ anxiety in the process of online foreign language education, what the challenges are for online foreign language learners, how learners perceive online foreign language education, and what the learners' perceived reasons are for anxiety in an online foreign language learning environment through semi-structured interview forms. Certain significant factors which affect learners’ foreign language learning anxiety in an online world context have been determined. Some certain suggestions are made to alleviate the foreign language anxiety levels of the learners in online foreign language learning contexts.

Narratives about Being and Becoming English Language Teachers in an ELT Education Program

This article presents an analysis of the narratives written by four pre-service English language teachers (PELTs) during the last semester of their undergraduate program. The study aims to understand the constructions related to being and becoming PELTs and the possible contributions that the English language teacher (ELT) education program provided to shape those identities. The narratives were reconstructed from two narrative frames written by the PELTs and their responses to a narrative interview. The results reveal how participants (re)signify their profession from their experiences in the program, the teaching practicum, and other settings. PELTs construct and consolidate their professional identity initially from a technical perspective. However, their experiences and the guidance of some teacher educators transformed their view of education into a more critical and informed perspective. In conclusion, professional identity could potentially be formed and changed based on the experiences provided throughout the PELTs’ education. Considering this, initial English teacher education programs should establish strategies that contribute to this end from the beginning of undergraduate studies.

Influence of Self-Assessment on the English Language Learning Process

Assessment is considered to be a reliable and valid means through which the effects of both teaching and learning can be measured. The lack of research studies in relation to self-assessment in the English Language Teacher Education Program (henceforth ELT Education Program) targeted in this study evidence that no policy determines how learners can self-assess their learning process. For that reason, we conducted this qualitative-descriptive case study that relies on principles of postmodern perspectives and constructivist theories that advocate the construction of learners' knowledge. The main objective was to determine how self-assessment influences the language learning process of a group of students from the ELT Education Program. To respond to this inquiry, we collected data through student reflective journals, focus group discussion commentaries, and an interview to analyze participants' reflections upon their English learning process. The results showed a positive response from students towards reflection. According to their comments, self-assessment evaluates more profound aspects of the self, such as autonomy, self-recognition, critical thinking, persistence, and self-efficacy. They also highlighted the role of reflective journals and focus group discussions as facilitators to self-evaluate deeply and promote collective reflection.

Student teachers’ knowledge production processes within socially just educational principles and practices in Brazil

ABSTRACT This article analyses how themes and problematisations concerning social justice presented in a pre-service English language teacher education programme in São Paulo, Brazil, resonate in student teachers’ knowledge production processes. To do so, the case study is presented in two parts. The first one examines the theoretical foundations and the organisation of two specific courses on language teaching methodology, courses whose epistemological approach aligns with decoloniality and narrative documentation of learning experiences. In the second part, essays produced by student teachers enrolled in these courses are analysed thematically to discuss evidence of how the course resonates on student teachers’ knowledge of more culturally sensitive and socially relevant educational principles and practices. This double-folded analysis reveals the transversality of social justice principles and practices in student teachers’ process of becoming English language teachers and language educators with a sense of belonging to all-embracing commitments of the profession.