Understanding Second Language Teacher Practice

Understanding Second Language Teacher Practice Using Microanalysis and Self-Reflection: A Collaborative Case Study Author(s): Anne Lazaraton and Noriko Ishihara Source: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 529-542 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3588624 Accessed: 09/01/2010 11:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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Blackwell Publishing and National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Modern Language Journal. http://www.jstor.org Understanding Second Language Teacher Practice Using Microanalysis and Self-Reflection: A Collaborative Case Study ANNE LAZARATON ESL/ILES 214 Nolte Center University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455 Email: lazaratn@umn.edu NORIKO ISHIHARA 214 Nolte Center University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455 Email: ishi0029@umn.edu Research on second/foreign language teacher impressions, reflections, and beliefs continues to illuminate various facets of language teacher knowledge and practice, but it has only recently begun to question the relationship between these teacher characteristics and actual classroom discourse. This collaborative case study undertaken by a discourse analyst and an English as a second language teacher concurrently analyzed data from one segment of transcribed gram- mar classroom interaction and the teacher's focused self-reflections in order to examine the insights both participants independently brought to bear on the understanding of the non- verbal behavior in the segment under scrutiny. Through these analyses and the collaborative dialogue that ensued, both the discourse analyst and the teacher came to reevaluate their research methodologies and to conclude that the microanalysis of classroom discourse and the teacher self-reflections complemented each other by providing insights that neither method generated in isolation. IN RECENT YEARS, THE FIELD OF APPLIED linguistics has witnessed the emergence and ex- pansion of second/foreign language (L2) teacher education as a vibrant subfield, one that is, in some ways, almost independent from other sub- fields such as language assessment and language acquisition, due to its unique theme of educat- ing and informing pre- and in-service language teachers. The vast majority of empirical work on L2 teacher practice has focused on teacher be- liefs, impressions, and reflections about decision- making process, practical knowledge, and the like-data sources that are the standard in lan- guage teacher education research (e.g., Freeman &Johnson, 1998b;Johnson, 1999). The methods of self-reflection and narrative inquiry in the study of language teaching have been shown to be use- The Modern Language Journal, 89, iv, (2005) 0026-7902//05/529-542 $1.50/0 ?2005 The Modern Language Journal ful and viable tools for teacher professional de- velopment (Cheng, 2003; Johnson & Golombek, 2002). However, such research, focusing on language teacher knowledge and beliefs, has, until recently, neglected to consider an additional, potentially crucial factor-the actual discourse produced in these teachers' classes. Close examination of class- room discourse recorded precisely as it happens not only allows detailed analyses of classroom practices, but can also validate or provide coun- terevidence to the self-reflection provided by the teacher. It would be a mistake in this kind of close examination of classroom discourse to consider only the insights of the discourse analyst and not the insights of the participants in that discourse- in particular the classroom teacher. The teacher's interpretation of the discourse might also support or disconfirm the researcher's analysis of this talk. In other words, it is an empirical question whether or not, or to what extent, there is a match between (a) what teachers say they know and believe, and __ __ _ 530 what they actually do, and (b) the researcher's and the teacher's understanding of the classroom discourse, as revealed by fine-grained analyses of it. This article reports on a collaborative case study by a discourse analyst and a practicing English as a second language (ESL) teacher and represents an initial attempt to answer three related questions on this topic: 1. What insights can a discourse analyst bring to bear on the understanding of a teacher's non- verbal behavior as displayed in the classroom dis- course, and what additional insights can he or she gain through collaborative dialogue with the teacher that were not otherwise obvious by work- ing independently? 2. What insights can an ESL classroom teacher bring to bear on the understanding of his or her own nonverbal behavior as displayed in the class- room discourse, and what additional insights can he or she gain through collaborative dialogue with a discourse analyst that were not otherwise obvi- ous by working independently? 3. How can the analyst and the ESL teacher come to reevaluate their respective methodolo- gies as a result of collaborative dialogue? BACKGROUND In recent years, applied linguists have focused their attention on L2 teacher education and prac- tice; classroom discourse has been a locus of interest for quite some time. On the one hand, there is a growing body of research published on the topic of language teacher education in the form of books (e.g., Freeman & Richards, 1996; Johnson, 2000; Richards & Nunan, 1990) and research articles (e.g., the special issue on language teacher education in the 1998 TESOL Quarterly [Freeman &Johnson, 1998a], and many more elsewhere). Studies in language teacher education are now regularly presented at confer- ences such as the annual convention of Teach- ers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL; under the rubric of the teacher ed- ucation interest section). The biannual confer- ence specifically on this topic, the International Conference on Language Teacher Education (ICLTE), is now well-established with increasing participation by teacher educators from around the globe. Themes that are prevalent in this scholarship include: the conceptualization of the teachers' knowledge base and its relationship to student learning (e.g., Freeman & Johnson, 1998b; Johnson & Freeman, 2001; Johnston & Goettsch, 2000); teacher practice or beliefs, or The Modern LanguageJournal 89 (2005) both (e.g., Breen, Hird, Milton, Oliver, & Thwaite, 2001; Burns, 1992; Crookes, 1997;Johnson, 1992); the role of theory in language teacher education (e.g.,Johnson, 1996; Schlessman, 1997); curricula and instructional techniques in language teacher education programs (e.g., Freeman & Cornwell, 1993; Ishihara, 2003; Kamhi-Stein, 2000; Stoynoff, 1999); and reflective teaching and action research (e.g.,Johnson & Golombek, 2002;Johnston, 2001; Richards & Lockhart, 1996; Stanley, 1998, 1999). From a teacher's standpoint, systematic self- reflection (i.e., critical self-inquiry about one's own teaching practice) requires the teacher to make a serious and sustained commitment to scrutinizing teaching principles and practices; this self-critique process is known to be rigorous and sometimes painstaking (Johnston, 2001; Stanley, 1998). Action research, which most often relies on teachers' self-reflection on their own teaching be- liefs and practice, if conducted systematically and extensively, promotes the construction of teach- ers' knowledge of their own practice, including experiential knowledge, disciplinary knowledge, and sociocultural knowledge of the teaching con- text. Although first-person narratives have gener- ally been marginalized as valid data in the social and human sciences (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000), in the body of research on language teaching, self-reports have been extensively and reliably em- ployed as legitimate data sources (e.g., Freeman & Richards, 1996; Johnson, 2000; Johnson & Golombek, 2002; Woods, 1996). Furthermore, the process of action research through reflective practice or self-inquiry enables the construction of teacher-generated knowledge (Cheng, 2003), thus empowering teachers as the creators and not just the holders of such knowledge (Beattie, 1995; Johnson, 1996). On the other hand, applied linguistics re- searchers have long been preoccupied by the na- ture of talk produced in L2 classrooms, especially classes where students are learning ESL. For the most part, this research has examined classroom discourse in order to determine its impact on lan- guage acquisition by the learner, but has not ex- plored the relationship between talk in classrooms and teacher knowledge or beliefs. Chaudron (1988), for example, summarized literally hun- dreds of studies (most of which were both experimental and quantitative in nature) that ana- lyzed: the amount and type of teacher talk; learner verbal behavior with respect to age, culture, and language task; teacher-student interaction in the L2 classroom as shown through questioning be- havior and corrective feedback; and the influ- ence of these factors on learning outcomes. More Anne Lazaraton and Noriko Ishihara recently,Johnson's (1995) book analyzed the ways in which teacher communication patterns influ- ence and in some ways restrict student partic- ipation opportunities, and by extension, their acquisition of a L2. Several later studies have em- ployed interpretive techniques in analyzing ac- tual recorded and transcribed talk to understand, for example, the means by which ESL teachers answered student requests for definitions of un- known vocabulary (Markee, 1995), the ways in which the discourse patterns present in an adult ESL conversation class were influenced by partic- ular instructional goals of the teacher (Ulichny, 1996), and the ways in which teacher practices in the classroom led to "community stratification," where "deficient" students were barred from ben- eficial classroom activities (Toohey, 1998). Yet, a notable limitation of almost all of this L2 classroom-based research, in its nearly exclusive focus on the learner, is its failure to consider the insights and perspectives of the teachers in question. It is heartening to see that a few studies (in- cluding several unpublished doctoral disserta- tions) have begun to question the assumed (or overlooked) link between beliefs about teach- ing and how teaching is actually practiced. Martinez (2000) investigated the relationship between the educational beliefs and the class- room literacy practices of a first-grade bilingual teacher. Her conceptions of her students, her students' learning, as well as her perceptions about literacy instruction and the extra-classroom demands on her, were shown to guide her lit- eracy practices. Tucker (2001) also compared teacher beliefs about language learning theories and teaching methods with classroom practice in data collected from middle school English class- rooms in China. Tucker found that there was no relationship between stated beliefs and actual practice. Mastrini-McAteer (1997) looked at the beliefs and practices of 18 third-grade reading teachers and concluded that just over one quarter of the teachers taught in congruence with their stated beliefs about reading instruction; prior experi- ence seemed to influence beliefs about reading instruction the most, while actual classroom prac- tices were most affected by the materials used in the classes. In addition, classes in which the teachers taught reading according to their be- liefs showed significantly greater gains in stu- dent achievement. Classroom literacy practices were also analyzed by Wharton-McDonald, Press- ley, and Hampston (1998), who conducted in- terviews with and observations of three groups (n = 9) of first grade teachers. Data from the observations indicated that the three outstand- ing teachers' classes were rich in authentic read- ing and writing practice; these activities were balanced with explicit instruction in literacy skills. Comments from the teachers were taken as evi- dence of teacher beliefs about the importance of scaffolding, of having high expectations of stu- dents, and of having an awareness of purpose about class activities. Finally, rather than looking broadly at class- room practice via observations, Oskoz and Liskin- Gasparro (2001) published a case study on the beliefs about and the discourse of corrective feed- back in a university-level Spanish class. Three hours of classroom instruction were audiotaped and coded for various features of feedback re- ported in previous literature. The teacher, a native speaker of Spanish, was also interviewed to elicit information about her beliefs on this classroom practice. She professed a belief that students were inhibited by frequent correction, but the data indicated that she provided extensive corrective feedback, not just in form-focused activities, but in activities with a communicative focus, where she claimed to use recasts most frequently. Still, what is missing in this small body of work is an explicit connection between classroom dis- course, on the one hand, and the teacher's voice, on the other. It is the thesis of the present ar- ticle that both language teacher educators and discourse analysts need to consider both forms of information-that is, the insights gleaned from teacher-directed, self-reflective action re- search and the results generated from researcher- directed microanalyses of classroom discourse. This collaborative process would allow us to de- termine, first, if there is a congruence between analyses of discourse and analyses of beliefs and impressions, and if there is not, to suggest a line of research that would stimulate further teacher reflection and reinforce the discourse analysts' empirical claims. That is, such research has the potential to inform us about, on the one hand, what sorts of unique information each type of analysis provides, and on the other, how each anal- ysis may complement the other. This article rep- resents an initial attempt to consider the insights provided by these two approaches to understand- ing L2 teacher practice by reporting the results of a collaborative case study project undertaken by an applied linguistics researcher using discourse analysis and an ESL classroom teacher using re- flective practice. After a synopsis of our data col- lection procedures, we present the results of our collaborative research. 531 532 METHOD The data for this study were collected over a 20- month period in 2001-2002. Table 1 represents a schematic of this process. Participants Initially, the researcher (R) was awarded a grant to analyze the discourse that is present in In- tensive English Program (IEP) ESL classrooms at a large, Midwestern university. In February 2001, she approached two teachers (T and an- other teacher, who is not discussed in this article) who agreed to take part in the study, which in- volved videotaping three 50-minute classes each during a 15-week semester. T's classes were video- taped by university language center personnel during February, March, and April of 2001 in a university classroom equipped with two mounted corner cameras, several external microphones suspended from the ceiling, and one Sound Grab- ber table microphone at the front of the room. The camera setup allowed the researcher to view T's whole body movements and her gaze, but did not capture in any systematic way the behavior or the talk of the students. T, a female master's degree candidate in ESL in her late 20s from Japan, had 5 years of EFL teaching experience in a private language school in Japan and 1 year of U.S. ESL experience as a teaching assistant in the IEP at the time of the tap- ing. Three of her Level 4 (of 7) university intensive English grammar classes were taped. The teach- ing points for those days were: (a) relative clauses and gerunds, (b) past progressive verb tense, and (c) mass/count nouns and quantifiers. The Modern LanguageJournal 89 (2005) A total of 23 students were participants in one or more of the three videotaped classes. There was a nearly even mix of males and females, from their late teens to their early 30s. Nearly half of the students were from Korea and about one quarter were from Saudi Arabia; 10 other countries were represented in this group of learners. Procedures R carefully viewed each of T's three tapes af- ter recording in order to come up with some initial questions that might be pursued in fu- ture discourse analyses. One aspect of T's behav- ior that immediately struck R as notable was the frequency and the variety of nonverbal behavior- including gestures, gaze, and body positioning- that T employed in her intermediate-level grammar classroom, especially behavior that ac- companied a number of unplanned explanations of vocabulary that arose during her three focus- on-form lessons. R decided that gesture use would be one area that she would look into further. T and R discussed the possibility of doing some collabo- rative research on T's teaching, but this research was not undertaken until the fall of 2002. Coincidentally, at about the same time, T, be- ing in the second year of her master's program in teaching ESL, was engaged in some serious self- reflection about her classroom teaching. Attempt- ing to evaluate her own teaching on the one hand (Where do I stand as an ESL teacher after sev- eral years of teaching EFL and ESL, and what are the issues of my teaching?), she was challenged to grapple with more fundamental questions (What prevents me from teaching as I believe? What are my teaching principles?) in the fast-paced life of TABLE 1 Data Collection Procedures Researcher Teacher Videotaping of teaching: February-April, 2001 Initial inquiry: February-March, 2001 Initial impressions about teaching: February-April, 2001 Transcription of verbal channel by a research assistant: July, 2001 R1 Addition of nonverbal behavior to transcript and T1-T2 Initial reactions and reflections: July, 2001; microanalysis: July, 2002 July, 2002 R2-R4 Written reactions to T3-T6 Written reactions and teacher's writings: October 22, Meetings to watch videotapes and reflections: October 5, 2002-November 18, 2002 -> collaborate on ideas: August 21, ' 2002-November 18, 2002 2002-October 24, 2002 Note. R = Researcher; T = Teacher; R-R4 = Researcher's analytic notes, comments; T1-T6 = Teacher's data source for acti