Abstract:
The teaching of English as a foreign language normally requires of the teacher a working understanding of the students' first language/s in order to successfully scaffold the learning process, and to adequately communicate intentions, directions, the correctness or otherwise of the students' English and the like. Moreover, all teaching is, to some extent, cross-cultural, even if the main delineator is age difference between teacher and student. When teacher and students do not share a common first language, however, effective communication assumes considerable added complexities, particularly if teacher and students know relatively little of each other¹s first language.
This paper will investigate teacher formation in the context of pre-service teachers who do not speak their students’ first language, teaching English as a foreign language. The paper will examine the contribution of an International Professional Experience (IPE) to toe formation and identity of 12 participating pre-service teachers. Specifically, it will undertake before-and-after surveys, to investigate changes in the participants’ perceptions of themselves as teacher-communicators, and how the IPE might have contributed to any developments. Some of the teachers are Anglo-Australian in descent, and may rarely if ever have experienced foreignness such as that to which they will be exposed in Thailand. Others have a language other than English as their first language. These students may already feel comfortable, or otherwise, operating in a second culture. While the two sub-groups are too small, and too disparate in experience, to afford generalisations, the perspectives of the student teachers should provide valuable insights into pre-service teachers’ self-perceptions as teachers and communicators.
Information from the surveys will be coded and cross-checked, both corporately, and individually (via identifying codes that students will ascribe to themselves, but that will not allow the researchers to identify them). The data thus generated will inform the operations of International Professional Experience programs, including our own. The data are also likely to have implications for teacher formation programs more broadly, in terms of how pre-service teachers develop their ideas and their professional selves as communicators and users and models of English.
This paper will investigate teacher formation in the context of pre-service teachers who do not speak their students’ first language, teaching English as a foreign language. The paper will examine the contribution of an International Professional Experience (IPE) to toe formation and identity of 12 participating pre-service teachers. Specifically, it will undertake before-and-after surveys, to investigate changes in the participants’ perceptions of themselves as teacher-communicators, and how the IPE might have contributed to any developments. Some of the teachers are Anglo-Australian in descent, and may rarely if ever have experienced foreignness such as that to which they will be exposed in Thailand. Others have a language other than English as their first language. These students may already feel comfortable, or otherwise, operating in a second culture. While the two sub-groups are too small, and too disparate in experience, to afford generalisations, the perspectives of the student teachers should provide valuable insights into pre-service teachers’ self-perceptions as teachers and communicators.
Information from the surveys will be coded and cross-checked, both corporately, and individually (via identifying codes that students will ascribe to themselves, but that will not allow the researchers to identify them). The data thus generated will inform the operations of International Professional Experience programs, including our own. The data are also likely to have implications for teacher formation programs more broadly, in terms of how pre-service teachers develop their ideas and their professional selves as communicators and users and models of English.