Theory and Practice in EFL Teacher Education: Bridging the Gap

Introduction

Julia Hüttner, Barbara

Mehlmauer-Larcher, Susanne Reichl

and Barbara Schiftner

Language teaching is a profession that has been under considerable public pressure of identifying itself as such. The widely held belief that good teachers are ‘naturals’, requiring no specific training or education, is detrimental to creating an image of language teachers as ‘true’ professionals, on a par with, say, lawyers or doctors. Pressure also comes from stakeholders closely involved in education, who criticise that teacher education does not prepare teachers adequately for their future practice, and even within teacher education, frequent complaints are made about the lack of impact that it has on teacher learning and teacher behaviour. This situation has led David Nunan (2001) to address the question of what constitutes a profession in the first place and apply this to language teaching. He identifies four main characteristics of a profession, namely ‘advanced education and training’, ‘standards of practice and certification’, ‘a disciplinary base’ and ‘advocacy’ (Nunan, 2001: 4 5), and notes that in all of these areas, language teaching faces a number of challenges. On a practical level, these are due to very diverse situations in private language teaching institutions and state-run schools and to a general lack of legislation to prevent untrained teachers from working; on a more conceptual level, these challenges are often caused by problems to ‘define, refine and articulate [the] disciplinary basis [of language teaching]’ (Nunan, 2001: 5). In addition, we would argue that teacher education programmes need to provide the conditions for future language teachers to develop knowledge from such a disciplinary basis, as well as autonomy and responsibility, three dimensions identified as key elements of professionalism in teacher education by Furlong et al. (2000: 4).

In line with the considerable progress made in the understanding of effective learning and teaching and the learning of teachers in general education (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005: vii), language teacher education (LTE) has rapidly developed in finding its position as ‘advanced education’ and its ‘disciplinary base’, following intensive work on theories of LTE towards the end of the last century (Crandall, 2000: 34). Of paramount importance in a theory of LTE has been the realisation that developing relevant teacher knowledge from subject matter knowledge is neither a simple nor a straightforward process. Indeed, with Shulman’s (1987) introduction of the concept of ‘pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)’ as the focal point of teacher knowledge, research interest has moved towards the means and the contexts of transforming subject matter knowledge into such PCK. This also means that teachers are no longer considered to be merely applying theory to practice, but rather as professionals constructing theory and theorising their practice. Underlying such a view of teachers as active mediators of knowledge and as constructors of new knowledge is a social-constructivist perspective of teacher learning (Johnson, 2009: 98). This learning takes place at various points in a teacher’s development and requires collaboration, on the part of teacher educators and mentors, but also of peers or students. By definition, teacher learning is situated and contextual, and part of the development of teacher expertise lies in making use of the diverse contexts and situations for learning. All this is conceived of as a possible response to continued demands for improving LTE in order to address the complaints of practitioners and stakeholders who perceive novice language teachers as ill-prepared for their professional practice by existing programmes.

From a social-constructivist viewpoint, questions of how such collaborations should be devised for these diverse contexts in order to foster the development of teacher knowledge are of prime importance. Operating both on a theoretical and a practical level, the role of teacher educators is conceived in this paradigm as that of mediators between both theory and practice of language teaching and the sometimes diverse worlds of academia and school. Sharing this view, we consider the role of teacher educators as primary facilitators and initiators of teacher learning, with a strong focus on coaching and supervision when assisting student teachers in their developmental process of becoming professional language teachers.

The way in which such situated teacher learning fosters the development of professionalism has been the focus of LTE research over the last decades and also underpins the contributions in this volume. Dominant among these is the increased interest in the knowledge base of teachers, both general and experiential, and the ways in which this is built up, addressing both the development of PCK and the disciplinary base from which knowledge can be transformed. This correlates with the rising concern for fostering the professional development of teachers by means of guided and focused reflection of their own learning process and their actions in the classroom, and thus their construction of knowledge and expertise. The important role of critical reflection, which recurs in the contributions to this volume, also touches on issues such as teacher beliefs, teacher cognition and teacher identities. In addition, topics from language learning and teaching that contribute fundamentally to teachers’ knowledge base, cognition and expertise are important issues in teacher education as well. To name both long-established and fairly recent developments in language teaching, we mention grammar teaching, the role of literature in the classroom, assessment and testing or multilingualism. All these can be seen to contribute to the body of theory developing in language teacher education. On the ‘practice’ side, we are looking at the actual collaborative partners: at teacher educators and student teachers in university-based preservice teacher education, at in-service teachers who manage projects and thereby disseminate the insights gained from theory and practice and at a whole range of teachers, novice and expert, with a focus on the multi-factorial development of their identities as teachers.

Using theory and practice as a binary opposition for the conceptualisation of this book may create the impression that these are clear-cut notions. As our contributions show, matters are much more complex than this. Practice, especially, has been interpreted and conceived of as a whole range of states or activities, including the actual teaching of language lessons in the classroom, critical reflection as part of pre- and in-service education, project work on a local or national level or the provision of effective practice opportunities in pre-service teacher education. Relevant theoretical knowledge informs these practices in a variety of ways, developing teacher cognition and raising the potential for reflective practice. Such a diverse perception of practice and theory is clearly contingent on the roles that individuals perform in a given teacher education context. What these conceptualisations do, very much in line with the outlook of this volume, is an advancement of theory formation through a contextualised rethinking of the relationship of theory and practice.

The key concern of this book is the more precise nature of this relationship, which, for demonstrative purposes, we conceived of as a gap to be bridged. The obvious assumption would be that such a divide can be overcome if the diverse research results feed into the daily work of language teaching, but our contributions point towards a more complex relationship: the bridge from theory to practice is not unidirectional, it is a two-way road, and, much in the same way that research results find their way into classrooms, the insights gained in practice do impact on the theory formation in LTE. It is not just academics who produce results for teachers or student teachers who then, in turn, translate them into practice; it is also teachers who produce theory while reflecting upon the circumstances and rationales of their practice. Some of the contributions in our volume reflect this dynamic relationship between theory and practice by giving voice to practicing and pre-service language teachers who are evidently in the process of theory building.

This is compatible with a more recent view, namely that the knowledge construction of (student) teachers can have two different starting points. A more established approach views the process of knowledge construction as starting in theory classes. This leads to the application of theoretical concepts in specific classroom settings and, in this way, student teachers develop their situated teacher knowledge. Another way of looking at this is from a situated social perspective; here, the starting point of teacher knowledge construction is a specific classroom setting with teachers or student teachers as members of a ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Within this concept of teacher knowledge construction the focus is on peer-supported and collaborative teacher learning, leading to joint reflections with the aim of relating gained teaching experiences to the relevant theoretical concepts (Korthagen, 2010: 104). These two options of teacher knowledge construction with their different starting points represent two alternative ways of teacher learning as well as two possible solutions to overcome the divide between theory and practice, and are both represented in our collection.

This volume consists of 12 chapters by experts in the thriving field of English language teacher education from a variety of geographical and institutional contexts. It is our conviction that theory and practice can only ever cohere in a particular context and that teacher learning is situated, and the contributors have therefore taken great care to alert their readers to the specificities of the respective contexts while, at the same time, addressing issues that apply to different places and types of institutions. The focus is clearly on English as a foreign language (EFL) rather than any other foreign language. This reflects the geopolitical landscape in language teaching, but we hope that many of the issues raised in connection with teaching EFL can be viewed as examples of possible teacher learning or teacher development, transferable or inspirational for other contexts and situations as well. Our last chapter confronts this issue head-on and questions the monolingual mainstream of language teaching, challenging the hegemonic position of English by suggesting a plurilingual approach to learning languages.

The first part of our volume, ‘Conceptualising the Issue of Theory and Practice’, brings together the work of three scholars working in the field of teacher education in diverse international contexts. Their contributions suggest a variety of ways of establishing the link between theory and practice for teachers and student teachers. Henry G. Widdowson, in his programmatic essay ‘Closing the Gap, Changing the Subject’, argues for a clear rationale of English as a subject that would indicate the aspects of language that such a subject should focus on, as well as the relevant classroom activities. By establishing such a rationale, Widdowson suggests, teachers close the gap between theory and practice by consciously activating their theoretical knowledge to conceptualise their everyday teaching practice. Amy B.M. Tsui bases her deliberations on ‘The Dialectics of Theory and Practice in Teacher Knowledge Development’ on recent expertise and knowledge studies and argues for a dialectical relationship between explicit and tacit knowledge, and, ultimately, between theory and practice. Joachim Appel’s essay focuses on what he calls ‘Moments of Practice: Teachers’ Knowledge and Interaction in the Language Classroom’ as a unit for analysis of EFL teaching practice. These moments throw light on the students’ task performance, on the teacher’s development and on the values and beliefs underlying such a moment. Appel argues that such an analysis will help bridge the gaps between beliefs and values held by theoreticians and scholars of language education and those held by practitioners.

The second part, ‘Developing Teachers’ Knowledge Base’, is devoted to the question of how EFL teachers’ knowledge base can be expanded between the poles of theory and practice. It addresses the disciplinary base that informs teacher knowledge and offers suggestions for transformative processes between different kinds of knowledge. Armin Berger’s contribution ‘Creating Language Assessment Literacy: A Model for Teacher Education’ argues that language testing, a budding research area for some years now, has not yet made an impact on much classroom practice, despite an increasing interest in standardisation in many European countries. Berger discusses three areas that seem crucial for an implementation of research results from language testing: an awareness of teachers, heads of departments and other stakeholders of the relevance of professional testing, a development of teachers’ expertise in language testing and finally the structural and legislative basis necessary for such an implementation. In her article on ‘Grammar Teaching: Theory, Practice and English Teacher Education’, Penny Ur proposes an integrated model of grammar teaching that is based on a variety of teaching approaches, ranging from a focus on form to communicative tasks, and argues convincingly for such a practical integration on the basis of a discussion of the theoretical rationale behind each of these approaches. David Newby in his article on ‘Cognitive + Communicative Grammar in Teacher Education’ discusses the significance of cognitive grammar for language learning, and his contribution suggests a rationale for a pedagogical grammar as well as ways of introducing student teachers to Cognitive + Communicative Grammar so as to facilitate their teaching practice. Susanne Reichl in her contribution ‘Towards a Stronger Intervention: The Role of Literature in Teacher Education’ argues for a new approach of literature teaching within university-based education programmes for future EFL teachers. This approach leads away from a mere accumulation of knowledge about periods and text types to a stronger focus on processes of meaning-making in connection with literary texts. It is these processes that should help student teachers to make the necessary connections between literary content knowledge and the PCK required for their teaching practice.

The third part of the volume, ‘Assisting Language Teachers’ Knowledge Construction’, comprises contributions dealing with the challenge of supporting pre-service and in-service teachers in their process of constructing experiential knowledge as well as professional competences. The authors of this section focus on approaches and instruments that are meant to support both novice and experienced teachers through collaboration with others (such as peers, teacher educators or mentors) to reflect critically on their own understanding and beliefs of a language teacher’s expertise as well as their learning process as (student) teachers and (future) professionals. Sandra Hutterli and Michael C. Prusse, in their contribution on ‘Supporting the Transfer of Innovation into Foreign Language Classrooms: Applied Projects in In-service Teacher Education’, propose a way of implementing change in educational contexts, despite the resistance that is often found against it. Their three-step model has been successfully put into practice at Zurich University of Teacher Education, and combines theoretical input, biographical learning and project work. From an in-service training course, participants go back to their communities of practice to implement innovations as part of a team. In their article on ‘Developing Student Teachers’ ‘Pedagogical Content Knowledge’ in English for Specific Purposes: The ‘Vienna ESP Approach’’, Julia Hüttner and Ute Smit discuss an innovative LTE module preparing student teachers for the teaching of written ESP genres. The aim of this module is to help novice teachers develop PCK in the area of ESP teaching by focusing on material development. Three student projects, which provide examples of genre-specific ESP teaching materials, demonstrate the successful implementation of this approach to teacher education in the field of ESP. Barbara Mehlmauer-Larcher, in her article on ‘The EPOSTL (European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages): A Tool to Promote Reflection and Learning in Pre-service Teacher Education’, reports on a new tool for self-assessment and reflection developed for the Council of Europe with the aim of helping student teachers to reflect critically on their methodological skills and knowledge. The article also comprises the description of a possible implementation of the EPOSTL as well as a report on first results of a qualitative study on student teachers’ attitudes towards this new type of portfolio.

In the fourth part of the book, ‘Addressing Established Paradigms’, we offer two articles that address and challenge established paradigms in teacher education. Irena Vodopija-Krstanovic, in her essay on ‘NESTs Versus Non-NESTs: Rethinking English Language Teacher Identities’, investigates the idealised notion of the native speaker as an EFL teacher and analyses, through ethnographic data, how such a conceptualisation impinges on the teaching practice in a Croatian context. Eva Vetter addresses the issue of stepping outside the widespread English-only framework by considering the potential of drawing on the multilingual resources of learners and teachers in her contribution ‘Multilingualism Pedagogy: Building Bridges between Languages’.

At a time when, in many institutions, teacher education is faced with pressing demands from a whole range of stakeholders, we feel the need to develop the debate further and contribute our share in the formation of theory (and practice!). The putting together of this collection has certainly challenged us all to review our own conceptualisations of language teacher education and has given us countless opportunities to both learn from others and rethink our own theory-practice interface. With this volume, we hope to be able to continue the bridge building and promote the professionalisation of language teacher education by contributing an impetus for more theory development and more reflective practice.

References

Crandall, J.A. (2000) Language teacher education. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 20, 34 55.

Darling-Hammond, L. and Bransford, J. (eds) (2005) Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Furlong, J., Barton, L., Miles, S., Whiting, C. and Whitty, G. (2000) Teacher Education in Transition: Re-forming Professionalism? Buckingham: Open University Press.

Johnson, K.E. (2009) Second Language Teacher Education: A Sociocultural Perspective. New York: Routledge.

Korthagen, F.A.J. (2010) Situated learning theory and the pedagogy of teacher education: Towards an integrative view of teacher behaviour and teacher learning. Teaching and Teacher Education 26, 98 106.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, D. (2001) Is language teaching a profession? TESOL in Context 11 (1), 4 8.

Shulman, L.S. (1987) Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review 57, 1 21.

Part 1

Conceptualising the Issue of

Theory and Practice

1 Closing the Gap, Changing the Subject

Henry G. Widdowson

Teachers teach subjects. English is a subject, like history or physics. So how is this subject to be defined? What aspects of the language should be focused on, and what kind of classroom activity is most appropriate for the activation of learning? Over the years, different answers to these questions have been proposed and promoted, and the subject thereby redefined. The rationale behind these different proposals for changing the subject is not always clear, and when clear it is not always convincing. There is therefore a need for teachers to resist being too readily persuaded by these proposals, and instead to submit them to critical appraisal so as to establish their validity in principle and their relevance in practice. In this way, they would not so much be bridging the gap between theory and practice as closing it by taking their own theoretical perspective on the subject they teach.

Theory and practice are often perceived as quite different, indeed opposing kinds of activity: this as opposed to that, them and us, East and West and as Rudyard Kipling has it: ‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet’. As far as the difference between linguistic theory and language teaching is concerned, however, there are people who feel that some meeting of the twain can be managed by building bridges. But bridges do not, of course, diminish gaps. They are a way of crossing from one side to another. The gap is still there and the difference remains on this side linguistic theory and on that side the practice of language teaching.

I would want to suggest another way of perceiving the twain, not as distinct domains in need of connection in this way, but rather as inseparably fused together not so much two different sides of a river as two sides of the same coin. As I have argued before (Widdowson, 1990, 2003), all pedagogic practice presupposes theory of one kind or another. Whatever activity English language teachers introduce in their classrooms is based on ideas and assumptions about language and learning. They may be second- or thirdhand ideas and assumptions, established by custom, received wisdom, taken on trust, dogma disguised as common sense, so their theoretical nature may not be at all apparent. Language teaching practice then is bound to be informed by theory of one kind or another, and in this respect it can be understood as a kind of implied linguistics. If this intrinsic relationship is not recognised, then inevitably the gap between theory and practice will always remain to be bridged. If it is recognised and made explicit, however, the two are integrated and the gap closes.

Of course, some teachers may not want to know about any theory that might be implied by their practice, complacently content with what they do in the classroom, without feeling the need to enquire into the reason why. Why make practice problematic? If there is an underlying dogma or two, never mind, leave them undisturbed. Let sleeping dogmas lie. Some teachers may think in this way, but not, I assume, those who will be reading this chapter.

One obvious advantage in closing the gap and making explicit the theoretical implications of practice is that teachers are less prey to persuasion, less ready to accept approaches to teaching on somebody else’s authority, whether this be supposedly based on linguistic expertise or pedagogic experience. If teachers can raise critical questions about theoretical assumptions that underlie the approaches that are proposed, they are in a position to establish their relevance to their own local circumstances and adapt rather than just adopt them. It is a common complaint in the English teaching field that fashions come and go, as if teachers had no choice but to conform. But they can resist too, of course. Fashions come and go, alas, and the pendulum swings to and fro. But where do the fashions come from and why should they be followed? Why does the pendulum swing? These are questions that teachers need to ask, and they are essentially theoretical questions.

In 1886, the German scholar Wilhelm Viëtor published a celebrated pamphlet, Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren! (Viëtor, 1886[D1]). This is generally rendered in English as Language teaching must start afresh! (see Howatt, 2004) and as such it has been used in our field often enough since then as a rallying cry for change. Fresh starts, or better perhaps fresh fits and starts, have been much in evidence: the way we teach now is old-fashioned, is the cry; we must change the subject, start afresh. But ‘to start afresh’ is not an entirely satisfactory translation of umkehren. A more literal translation of umkehren would be ‘to turn back’, ‘to retrace one’s steps’. This suggests going back in the direction you came from, but looking out for where you went astray. This kind of critical pathfinding is rather different from the idea of just giving up and starting afresh by returning to square one. But changes in English language teaching over the past half century are better characterised as fresh starts rather than a retracing of steps. Ideas and proposals have generally been heralded as entirely new departures, new approaches, new directions, new ways, without going back to see how they might link up with paths that have already been taken. No development of critical enquiry, but just a change of subject.

What I want to do in this chapter is to carry out an umkehren exercise and do a little critical pathfinding, a little theorising about various changes in the subject that have been proposed over the years. It will be convenient to have a framework of reference to give some overall coherence to the exercise. The one thing about the subject English on which we can all agree is that, however we go about teaching it, its ultimate objective is to develop in learners a proficiency or competence that enables them to put the language to communicative use. If we can agree that this is the objective, it would seem to make sense to use a model of communicative competence as our frame of reference for investigating different ways that have been proposed for achieving it.

The best-known model is, of course, that of Dell Hymes and it is the one that is always cited as giving warrant to communicative language teaching (see, for example, Brumfit & Johnson, 1979). So it would seem particularly appropriate for our purposes. In a frequently (if not always accurately) cited paper, Hymes (1972) proposed that communicative competence involved the ability to make four kinds of judgement about something some bit of the English language in our case.

(1) Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible.

(2) Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available.

(3) Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to the context in which it is used and evaluated.

(4) Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails (Hymes, 1972: 281).

We can take these then as the essential elements of communicative competence and we can take them as bearings as we retrace our steps.

By formally possible, Hymes means what is well formed according to the encoding rules of a language. So, one part of communicative competence is knowing the degree to which a sentence is grammatical or not. And it was this factor, of course, that was the focus of attention in the so-called structuralist approach. Now because this approach has so often been dismissed, uncritically, as obviously misconceived, it is important to consider the rationale on which this approach was based. In the first place, there was the recognition that what was essential about English as a foreign language was that it was indeed foreign.

A language is a way of conceptualising different aspects of reality, and different languages encode reality in different ways: English encodes reality in a different way from Spanish, German, Turkish, Chinese and so on. In other words, what is formally possible in one language is not in another: the sound systems are different, the words are different and the grammars are different. That is what makes a different language difficult to learn, and the greater the difference between ways of encoding, the greater the difficulty.

Now if this is so, then it would seem to make good sense to focus on this difficulty in teaching the language, to focus on the formally possible, the encoded features of English, the words and grammatical structures that make it different as a conceptualisation of reality and so difficult for learners who are accustomed to another kind of encoding.

So the structuralist approach, in focusing on the formally possible, can be seen as taking account of the crucial conceptual aspect of communicative competence. This is not, however, much acknowledged. On the contrary, the approach has usually been dismissed as conceptually vacuous, an arid exercise that focuses on form rather than meaning. But, as I have often pointed out before (most recently in Widdowson, 2003), even a cursory glance at structuralist procedures would make it clear that the focus is very definitely on meaning:

Book. This is a book.

I match the structure with the situation so that it becomes clear that the word ‘ book’ means this object. This is a book, the book is here, as opposed to that is a book, the book is there. This and here are words that mean ‘close to me’, ‘proximal’. That and there are words that mean ‘away from me’, ‘distal’.

The door is there.

The word the means ‘something we all know about’.

I am walking to the door/She is walking to the door.

The action is matched with the linguistic forms to demonstrate their meaning. This form of the verb means continuous and concurrent action. And so on.

Now notice that this procedure brings two other of Hymes’ factors into play. The situation that the teacher contrives serves as a context appropriate to the demonstration of meaning, and in such a way that it is feasible in that it can be readily processed by the learners. But of course the meaning that is thus demonstrated is semantic meaning, meaning encoded in the language form, informed meaning, and for this demonstration to be effective, that is to say feasible for learning, the context has to be designed to match up with the form and duplicate its meaning. If the context does not correspond exactly with the language, it ceases to be appropriate to the purpose and the demonstration fails. So in this procedure, you start with a bit of language and then invent a context appropriate to it.

But of course, this goes against the natural communicative process of language use. We do not in the ordinary way have bits of language in our head and then cast about for contexts in which they might be appropriately used. On the contrary, it is contexts that regulate the language we use and not the other way round. And the language does not duplicate the context but extends or complements it. We do not normally go around stating the obvious. We use language to say things that are not apparent from the context (for further discussion of this, see Widdowson, 1990).