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УДК 378.046.4
EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT AND ITS ROLE IN CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE TEACHERS
L.G. Kuzmina
The article discusses issues of pre-service and in-service teacher education (TE). With reference to some new trends in the Russian educational context it gives insights into the latest changes in the field. It is argued that in order to introduce innovations into the sphere a conscious effort should be taken to connect TE with many and varied components of the local educational environment. It is stated that its resources will open doors for language teachers to obtain new information and experience which will enrich their professional competencies and provide for their continuous professional development (CDP)
Key words: teacher training, teacher education, professional competence, continuous professional development, educational environment
In recent years, professional training of foreign language teachers has become a strategically important area in Language Teaching Methodology in Russia. During these years we witnessed “ups and downs” and “turns left and right”, “moves forward and back” in the field. This is not, however, surprising taking into account how many changes took place in the country in the last decades for they brought about a rise in the number of learners seeking language education. Young people show their interest in a foreign language because they realize its role in getting good education which, in its turn, can guarantee better opportunities for a diversity of careers.
Traditionally, language teacher preparation programs (both pre-service and in-service) were “theory-oriented” with a lot of lectures on what to teach and how to teach. Teaching knowledge was necessarily backed up by a teaching practicum, but still in many cases student-teachers did not acquire proper teaching skills. Later practical training aspects in pre-service teacher training were increased by a prepracticum programme including professional role-plays and simulations, videobased classroom observation activities, microteaching, ‘leaning from doing’ tasks, peer-teaching and reflection, etc. [3]. It could not but resulted in students acquiring a wider repertoire of language teaching techniques. Thus, in the late 1990-ies it seemed that a major shift in teacher training had already taken place, even in spite of the fact that local in-service teacher training institutions were not so quick to introduce innovations.
However, with the realities of the XXI century come into foresight, it became necessary to examine the current models of teacher preparation again and to devise new ones. New phenomena in
Кузьмина Лариса Григорьевна - ВГУ, канд. пед. наук, доцент, e-mail: kuzmina@rgph.vsu.ru
social life and education can be summed up in the following way.
1. The problems the civilization faces nowadays (hunger, need for and supply of energy, terrorism, etc.) are so acute that an overall issue of the society is to educate people to make wise, informed, and intelligent decisions.
2. The twenty-first century is knowledge based. The information flow doubles every 5.5 years. It has become evident that people will never be able to “complete” their education. They will not expect to enter a job and to remain in it without retraining. “Lifelong learning” has become an integral part of one’s life.
3. Life in this century is characterized by rapid changes and impermanence in all its spheres.
4. Societal structures tend to be decentralized. Organizations and institutions experience decentralization of power because problems are more effectively solved in groups of people who collaborate and share expertise and perspectives.
5. People are treated as the nation’s most important asset. Individuals’ need for selfdetermination and input into the decisionmaking processes that affect them are important for the cultivation of experimentation and innovation.
6. Experimentation, risk taking, autonomy, and flexibility must be key elements in the development of schooling. Education must place responsibility for learning on students, giving them freedom to try, innovate, and create [1; 2; 4].
No doubt, these new trends in life and education which are of general character, give insights into the sphere of teacher preparation.
Moreover, quite recently teachers and teacher educators have come across with a number
of difficulties which are specific for Russia. Some of the problems which language teachers face nowadays in their daily work, as well as the ways
to cope with them, are represented in the following table:
CURRENT ISSUES IN TEACHER EDUCATION
Fig. 1
PROBLEMS WHY THEY ARE DIFFICULT TO SOLVE HOW TO OVERCOME
providing professional preparation in a variety of alternatives to meet: • students’ needs (studies abroad, to get an international certificate, etc.); • teachers’ needs: Curriculum Development, Test Design, Young Learners, ESP, etc.) • traditionally not covered in TE; • new requirements of national educational legislation; • limited in time and content university foreign language teaching methodology courses; • no relevant experts in the local teacher training institutions attending optional teacher training courses at university (pre-service) and special events in the local educational community (e.g. ELT textbooks seminars by publishing houses, activities of the National Association of Teachers of English, etc.); recruiting outside specialists (both pre-service and in-service)
rapidly growing number of non-Russian school students due to a continuously rising migration from the Caucasus, CIS and East Asian countries • EFL teachers are predominantly Russian-speaking; • not ready to teach in multicultural and multilingual classes providing special courses “Teaching English in Multicultural Settings” in the Regional Institution for UpGrading Professional Qualifications of Teachers (inservice)
a rise in number of graduates from the Humanities Departments getting jobs as foreign language teachers no initial teacher training TKT/CELTA preparation programmes; “field-based” TE - in schools in cooperation with collegiate teacher development programmes (in-service)
Continuous Language Development local teacher training institutions do not provide for regular language classes; no streaming according to the actual level of learners’ communicative competence (in case language development is offered) CAE/CPE preparatory courses; seminars and conferences abroad, “educational tourism” for teachers, guest speakers (pre-service and in-service)
From the issues discussed above, the following implications can be drawn for teacher preparation and a model of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) can be devised.
The first implication is that a special term has to be used to characterize professional teacher preparation programs of a new type. Under the current circumstances the goal of any professional preparation course is to help teachers as well as student-teachers to develop. They have to develop an extensive repertoire of classroom skills and the judgment to apply these skills as needed. For this both categories of foreign language specialists should be involved in practical experiences - preservice simulations and real-life teaching experiences - and in analysis of these. In this way, according to Larsen-Freeman, teacher preparation moves beyond Teacher Training in the narrow sense to Teacher Education (TE) in its proper
meaning “enabling an individual to function in any situation, rather than training for a specific situation ... preparing people to make choices” [5: 265]. Besides, if their teaching experiences are grounded in educational experiences that include theory and bits of classroom research, it constitutes a logical base for the development of their professional competence which will help them grow and change constantly. This can serve a basis for their coherent lifelong CPD.
Second, a useful CPD program should ensure not only professional, but personal development as well. The core idea here is to devise such a program that will enable language teachers to achieve their performance goals. As Pennington puts it, a distinguishing characteristic of such a model in TE is the centrality of career growth as an ongoing goal [7: 132]. Similarly, Myers suggests that “in terms of career
progression, the individual may wish to acquire the experience which will lead to more responsibility, promotion or a move to a specific type or area of work and to do all or some of this in a planned, systematic and practicable way” [6: 11].
A corner stone of the target program is a bridge of two concepts of teaching: teaching as an art, artistic performance and teaching as a patterned, systematic variation. The former presupposes that TE helps teachers refine their natural abilities and synthesize elements of teaching “craft” into individual teaching styles. The latter implies that teaching patterns can be observed, analyzed and described, and later learned. It is believed, however, that an up-to-date CPD program should unite both approaches. Thus, it should be based on a holistic approach which means that teacher educators assist individuals in developing themselves to the fullest possible extend. This idea has long been underestimated, though.
Third, helping language teachers acquire the target competencies teacher educators have to provide preparation for them in a variety of alternatives. They, as it has been already mentioned, come into the foreground under the new circumstances in the modern educational context in Russia. The problem which arises here is how to implement the ideas under discussion into practice. A traditional point of departure in designing a TE program is “importing the latest word in theory and practice from the outside”. For that we cannot rely only on the educational establishments traditionally engaged in TE: departments of foreign languages at universities
and institutions for up-grading professional qualifications of teachers. We have to “join the forces” of all the other parties concerned: local educational communities as well as national and international professional organizations and associations. Thus, we will create a new phenomenon - foreign languages educational environment - to help solve problems in contemporary TE in Russia. It is an innovative educational structure which aims at providing a wide range of opportunities for foreign language teachers to develop at all the stages of their teaching career. The basic principle which lies underneath is the necessity of integrating different means and forms of TE and to use all possible resources for personal and professional development of language teachers which will ensure job satisfaction and career growth.
Taking part in all the activities the educational and other establishments carry out within the framework of foreign language educational environment, which combine practical and intellectual strands in a practice-based component, makes up “a fundamental part of a coherent language-teacher education curriculum directed at a long-term development of its graduates” [7: 151].
Having discussed the implications for TE drawn from the modern educational context it is possible now to describe a general model of CPD that incorporates the advantages which foreign language educational environment provides for the language teachers. It includes a broadly standard, generic initial training which is followed by practice in a range of possible situations.
Fig.2
THE ROLE OF EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT IN CPD OF LANGUAGE TEACHERS
FOREIGN LANGUA GE ED UCA TIONAL ENVIRONMENT
FL departments at universities
local institutions for up-grading pro fessional
qualifications of teachers
international and national professional organizations
FL teachers’ associations
publishing houses
outside TE courses
guest speakers
classroom research
To sum everything up, it should be pointed out once again that in order to be able to maintain and improve their level of competence in the educational context which changes rapidly and frequently in terms of the demands made on the teachers and to ensure
It is clearly seen in Fig.2 that owing to foreign language educational environment language teachers are involved in the continuing education. Lifelong learning is a characteristic feature of this type of a CPD program. Through it language teachers will be engaged in active and ongoing process of negotiating, sharing and understanding foreign language matters, will be able to stay up-to-date with new ideas, practice and information, and with the changing requirements of local and national legislation. They will also get used to think critically, work creatively, do not hesitate to take risks of the new, to make decisions themselves and bare the responsibility for theses decisions.
Thus, an innovative CPD program backed up by the advantages of the educational environment will break the monotony of teacher training classes and help teachers and student teachers view their roles more actively in order to develop themselves towards self-directed, active, and autonomous professionals.
Воронежский государственный университет
References
1. Гаязов А.С. Образование и образованность гражданина в современном мире. - М.: Наука, 2003. - 258 c.
2. Лиферов А.П. Интеграция мирового образования - реальность третьего тысячелетия: Монография. - М.: Славянская школа, 1997. -225 с.
3. Kuzmina, L. 2009. Pre-Service Teacher Training: New Ideas and Approaches. In: Abstracts for the XV NATE International Conference / ed. by Ass. Prof. G.T. Nezhmetdinova. Kazan: Kazan State Power Engineering University. Pp. 169-170.
4. Lang, D.L. 1993. A Blueprint for a Teacher Development Program. In: Jack C. Richards and David Nunan (eds.), Second Language Teacher Education. CUP. Pp. 245-268.
5. Larsen-Freeman, D. 1983. Training Teachers or Educating a Teacher. In: J.E. Alatis, H.H. Stern, and P. Strevens (eds.), Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University press.
6. Myers, M. 1993. To Boldly Go... In: J. Edge and K. Richards (eds.) Teachers Develop Teachers Research: Papers on classroom research and teacher development. Heinemann. Pp. 10-25.
7. Pennington, M.C. 1990. A Professional Development Focus for the Language Teaching Practicum. In: Jack C. Richards and David Nunan (eds.), Second Language Teacher Education. Pp. 132-151.
ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНАЯ СРЕДА И ЕЕ РОЛЬ В РАЗВИТИИ НЕПРЕРЫВНОГО ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ ПО ПОДГОТОВКЕ УЧИТЕЛЕЙ
ПО ИНОСТРАННОМУ ЯЗЫКУ
Л.Г. Кузмина
В статье описывается образовательная среда и ее роль в развитии непрерывного профессионального образования по подготовке учителей по иностранному языку и аргументируется введение инновационных технологий в образовательном процессе вуза, выделяются основные компетенции образовательной среды вуза
Ключевые слова: подготовка учителей, непрерывное профессиональное образование,
образовательная среда
