Wallace, 1998 :: Action Research
It's hard for me to believe that reflection doesn't come easily to all teachers. I feel like that's the one thing I'm doing right in my class - reflecting on what works and doesn't work, modifying the course as I go ... I can think of many things I need to work on as a teacher, and I'm trying to become better. I know part of that is because I'm learning, and this is my first job. But I also think it is part of my personality to be introspective about the teaching process, and to be aware of what's going on. It's learning how to apply that reflection that I'm finding the most difficult.
Wallace groups action research as part of reflection, and acknowledges that one doesn't have to do action research to be a reflective teacher. In the next breath, however, he implies that one must take part in action research to be an effective reflective teacher. I am surprised to find myself agreeing with him to some extent. Giving "other kinds of research" a passing glance, he acknowledges the worth of reading journal articles, and going to conferences, as part of professional development, but the odds of finding exactly what I need for my class at exactly the right time are slim to none. If I have a specific problem in the classroom, it isn't an efficient use of my time to research journals and books to find data that I will then have to process and synthesis before applying it to my situation. Nor would it be efficient to attend conferences in the hopes that one of the presenters will just happen to touch on what I need for my class. I see conferences and journals as a way to make connections and keep up with what's going on in the field, and these are valuable. But they are not going to immediately apply to my own classroom, and they could never tell me as much about my class as my students.
I liked that Wallace gave some consideration to peer consultation as part of reflective teaching. One of the most helpful resources I have for my class right now is the conversations I have with Connie and Aaron while carpooling, when we discuss our individual teaching situations. I think "informal discussion," as Wallace calls it, could have been treated with more seriousness, as it is possible to find effective solutions during that process. The reflective cycle through action research seems a lonely process, and I'm sure that informal discussion should be part of it.
As for making reflective decisions based on beliefs and principles, that sounds a lot like intuition to me. I keep hearing and reading that language is not intuitive, and that seems to trickle down into "don't rely on intuition when teaching language" as well ... but I cannot abandon my intuition so freely. Intuition is an integral part of reflection. I reflect not only on my mental impressions, but my emotional ones as well. How can I reflect without feelings, and what are feelings but intuitive and emotional impressions? If I were dealing with cold, impersonal data, I could leave intuition aside, but I am dealing with real people, with real needs.
I suppose the inquiry-based approach needs to look cold and methodical so we can make pretty little charts to demonstrate it, but I don't think it's as simple as it looks in this article. I also think it is way more time-consuming than articles ever care to mention. It's a great idea, and I don't dispute that. Realistically, it is an unfortunate fact that most ESL teachers are adjunct, and just don't have time to plan, much less do action research (certainly not if action research has to be documented). Given such time constraints, how do we make sure teachers know that action research is all it's cracked up to be?
Graves, chpt 7
Fujiwara's chapter on her teaching in Japan was a refreshing change from what I've seen as somewhat contrived journal-type entries I've read in this book. She was consistently reflective and self-aware, making modifications as she went. Her approach to teaching is intuitive, so she seemed to have trouble coming up with rationale for her decisions. I found this very interesting, since that is a particular struggle of mine. As I read this chapter, I focused mainly on how she dealt with that particular challenge. She tried to design a very deliberate framework centered around authentic materials, all coming back to the main goal of her course, which was to promote learner responsibility.
The curriculum Fujiwara planned was flexible enough to accommodate change, but solid enough to provide cohesive structure throughout the year. To more detail-oriented teachers, her approach may seem too vague, and I can see how the vagueness could have taken over. However, I think the student-centered project assignment led to the "variety of materials" that Fujiwara was striving to incorporate, and vagueness was likely avoided due to the students' strong personal motivation to learn.
Fujiwara was very concerned about the class being an elective, so she couldn't "make" students complete assignments. It's quite possible that this was the very thing that made the class work - students didn't feel pressured to perform for the grade, so their focus was on learning for themselves instead of getting the answers for the test. If she had not been so worried about students dropping the class, she could possibly have harnessed her students' self-motivation even more. As it was, she did very well introducing the students to learner responsibility.
Fujiwara's strength as a teacher is her intuitive approach and, in her words, "to stress discovery," and her weakness, as she sees it, is that she doesn't give enough "support for the discovery process." As such, she seeks to conform her teaching to some kind of structure, which is good. Her awareness of that weakness might have caused her to overcompensate and try to bring in structure with the text, "How to Listen". She chose it to make up for her own perceived deficiency, and perhaps felt overwhelmed by it herself. She abandoned that text later on, because the students weren't doing the work - probably a direct result from her own lack of investment in the text. Her other attempts at structure seemed to be successful, because the structure emerged from her own intuitive process. I find it very interesting that her external attempt at structure failed when she lacked confidence in her ability to provide learning support. Another reason "How to Listen" failed is that it didn't fit with the rest of the class. The other texts were chosen to get students involved, to engage their interest and provide authentic context.
I've come away from this reading with an idea of how to structure my own curricula from the top down. Like Fujiwara, I am an intuitive teacher who sees the big picture first. Building a framework first doesn't work for such teachers. To me, it looks like her class is very structured, but that's because I haven't figured out how to do that for myself as yet. From Fujiwara's experience, I see that I need to shoot for way more structure than I'm comfortable with, because the content itself will most likely take over, anyway. Another key is to make sure the framework I choose fits my own intuitive vision for the course without restricting it too much (some restriction is necessary, or my class and I will be out of control).
Graves, chpt 5
My first reaction to this case study was that Blyth didn't consider her students' individual needs when planning the course, so how could she know what to do? But logically, she did what she had to do, and was very thorough in her planning. With a one-month course, there would be no time after the clock starts to do needs analysis and plan accordingly. She drew on her experience and the information she'd been given, and did research to find out what they would need to know, and went from there. She planned to be flexible, which is good, especially since she would need to tailor it to her students as she went. It's great that she had so much time for pre-planning, and syllabus development. It occurs to me that if time had been pressing, she could have asked for the program syllabus in advance and modified it.
She writes about the planning process as if it was a very smooth and logical one, and gives us those incomprehensible mindmaps - She's not being clever and non-linear: she's trying to recreate her actual notes to "show the process". It seems too contrived. If you take away the funky little silhouettes around the sections, it's just a slightly disorganized outline, with extra sprinkles. When I say "incomprehensible", I mean to the average reader. She even acknowledges in her log that people might not be able to read it. Thus, she writes out the process linearly as well. Both versions of her "mindmap" are too smooth, for me. Of course, this is the final draft, edited for time and content, ready to be served like pap to our eager little grad-student-birdie-mouths.
I would like to see some MISTAKES. She even says at the end, after the course is totally finished, that she wouldn't change anything. Who, in their right mind, expects us to believe that her thorough planning was so perfectly wonderful and forsightful that she made no errors in judgement? Then she admits that she didn't get to cover the communicative aspects of the course ... and breezily says well that's okay that didn't fit in with my course goals anyway, and they won't need it. Funny, I thought language was all about communication. Who knew? Oh yeah ... Blyth. She knew everything in advance, even. I must say, I think her perfection is a bit too, well, blithe.
