Research Questions

Two research questions are proposed to guide the investigation:

1. What are the TEFL student teachers’ perceptions of their team-teaching experience?

2. What skills and knowledge do the TEFL student teachers learn from their team- teaching experience?

1.5 Definitions of Important Terms

TEFL ― Teaching English as a Foreign Language, refers to teaching English to students whose first language is not English. In this study, the researcher considers the two acronyms ― TEFL and TESOL― to be interchangeable.

TESOL ― stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages in this study, referring to teaching English as an additional language to those who speak other languages as their mother tongue. In this study, TESOL is most often used to describe the profession of teaching English to students of other languages. TESOL, however, is also the name of a graduate program.

Team Teaching ― is defined as “a process in which two or more teachers share the responsibility for planning the class or course, for teaching it, and for any follow-up work associated with the class such as evaluation and assessment. It thus involves a cycle of team planning, team teaching, and team follow-up” (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p.159). In this study, team teaching involves two pairs of TESOL graduate students who take time and share responsibility to plan and conduct GEPT-related lessons for students studying in one national university located in western Taiwan. In the current study, the researcher conceives “team teaching” synonymous with “co-teaching,” and “collaborative teaching”, and they will be used interchangeably in this thesis.

GEPT Courses ― refer to the non-credit English lessons associated with General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) test-preparation skills and offered to college students on the campus without monetary benefit. Since the summer of 2007, the TESOL Institute under the current investigation has been offering GEPT courses for the on-campus students.

The three terms —“GEPT courses”, “GEPT-related courses” and “lessons of GEPT” — will be used interchangeably throughout the thesis

Student Teachers of Team Teaching ― refer to the 1^st-year students who are

engaging in their graduate study in the Institute of TESOL at one national university in Taiwan. There are four student teachers participating in team teaching, two in a team, teaching college students GEPT test preparation skills. None of them have had the experience of team-teaching before. The three terms ― ” student teachers of team teaching”, “co-teachers”, and “team-teachers” ― will be regarded as identical terms and will be used interchangeably throughout the study.

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter lays out the theoretical framework of this study. The review of related literature is divided into two sections. The first section elucidates some issues which pertain to student teachers’ professional development in the field of TESOL, including a discussion of (a) language teacher’s knowledge base, (b) professional collaboration as a vehicle of knowledge construction, and (c) language teacher education and field-based learning. The second section discusses team teaching which begins with (a) a general description of team teaching, followed by (b) positive dimensions of collaborative teaching among student teachers, (c) issues on teacher collaboration and teacher learning, and (d) a review of team teaching studies of preparing teacher candidates.

After identifying the important intellectual traditions that guide the current study, the researcher will end up each section by providing a brief summary and the discussion of the link between the literature and this study.

2.1 TESOL Student Teachers’ Professional Development 2.1.1 Language Teacher’s Knowledge Base

The term “knowledge base” pertains to “the repertoire of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that teachers require to effectively carry out classroom practices” (Fradd &

Lee, 1998, p.761-762). Though the literature does not provide us with one undisputed establishment of language teacher’s knowledge base, efforts to define what language teachers know have been undertaken in the past few years (Velez-Rendon, 2002). Among several perspectives delineating teacher’s knowledge base, one of the oft-cited is

Shulman’s (1987) framework which accounts for the components of teachers’ knowledge.

The essential components identified by Shulman (1987) include (a) content knowledge; (b) general pedagogical knowledge; (c) curriculum knowledge; (d) pedagogical content

knowledge; (e) knowledge of learners; (f) knowledge of educational contexts; and (g) knowledge of education ends, purposes, and values.

Except for Shulman’s definition, the more recent ones include Richards’ (1998) and Freeman and Johnson’s (1998) frameworks. Richards (1998) regards the following six dimensions of expertise as the scope of second language teacher education: (a) theories of teaching; (b) teaching skills; (c) communication skills and language proficiency; (d) subject matter knowledge; (e) pedagogical reasoning skills and decision making; and (f) contextual knowledge. It is worth mentioning that Richards’ model (1998) differs from that of Shulman (1987) in respect to the emphasis on teachers’ personal theories of teaching which serves as “a positive or negative filter to acceptance of subject matter knowledge or general teaching skills” (p.14). Drawing upon the previous studies with foci of teachers’

personal knowledge or experience (Almarza, 1996; Woods, 1996; as cited in Richards, 1998), Richards (1998) therefore maintains that personal theories of teaching may function as the key to the development of a teacher’s overall understanding and approach to

teaching.

In an attempt to embark on a broader conceptualization of teacher’s knowledge base, Freeman and Johnson (1998) propose a tripartite framework by responding to a deceptively simple question, that is, “Who teaches what to whom, where?” (see Figure 1, reproduced from Freeman & Johnson, 1998, p.406). Three primary domains are identified as crucial components which encompass the knowledge-base of language teacher education,

including (a) the nature of teacher-learner: teacher as a learner of teaching; (b) the nature of schools and schooling: the social context within which teacher-learning and teaching take place; and (c) the nature of language teaching: the pedagogical process, the subject matter

and content (also see Liou, 2000).

This tripartite framework highlights the dynamic nature of teachers themselves, defined as learning agents who are “not empty vessels waiting to be filled with theoretical and pedagogical skills; they are individuals who enter teacher education programs with prior experiences, personal values, and beliefs that inform their knowledge about teaching and shape what they do in their classrooms” (Freeman & Johnson, 1998, p.401). Moreover, according to Freeman and Johnson (1998), participation in social practices and contexts is

Note. Domains are in boldface; processes are in italics. From “Reconceptualizing the knowledge-base of language teacher education,” by D. Freeman, and K. E. Johnson, 1998, TESOL Quarterly, 32, pp.397-417.

Figure 1. Framework for the knowledge-base of language teacher education

of crucial importance to help teachers establish effective knowledge-base (p.408). During the process of engaging in multiple social and cultural contexts (i.e., contexts of school and schooling, and pedagogical process), teachers’ experience is therefore enriched, and their attitudes towards teaching may also undergo significant changes.

2.1.2 Professional Collaboration as a Vehicle of Knowledge Construction

Although teacher development can occur through a teacher’s own personal initiative, collaboration with others can both enhance individual learning and encourage greater peer-based learning through mentoring, and sharing skills, experience, and solutions to common problems (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p.12). Richards and Farrell (2005) examine a wide variety of methods available for language teacher development and consider useful activities that involve working with another colleague, including (a) peer coaching; (b) peer observation; (c) critical friendships; (d) action research; (e) critical incidents; and (f) team teaching. Except for the activities noted above which demand one-to-one interaction and collaboration for implementing them, the following four types of activity are carried out at the group-based level: (a) case studies; (b) action research; (c) journal writing; and (d) teacher support groups (p.14). Drawing upon the teacher collaboration tasks noted above, one can easily identify a prevailing education philosophy of constructivism which is currently popular in education including language teacher education. That is, knowledge is actively constructed and not passively received.

Social constructivists, such as Vygotsky (1978), and later Bruffee (1986) and Wertsch (1991), emphasized social interaction as the driving force and prerequisite to individuals’

cognitive development. From the view of social constructivism, learning is described as—according to Russell (1993,)—“a constant interpretation, a constant re-weaving of the

‘web of meaning’ (Vygotsky), a constant ‘reconstruction of experience’ (Dewey) as human beings consciously evolve new social practices to meet human needs, to adapt to and transform their environments” (p.179). Moreover, social constructivists maintain that interaction in the collective is a necessary precondition for engaging in self-regulation.

Self-regulation as a process is achieved when individuals are able to find their authentic voice during problem solving by using the meditational tool of language. Vygotsky (1978)

believed that isolated learning cannot lead to cognitive development. He firmly believed that social interaction is a prerequisite to learning and cognitive development. In other words, knowledge is constructed and leaning always involves more than one person.

Vygotsky (1978) situated learning in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which he posited as being the “distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (p.86).

In this respect, student teachers of foreign language are therefore expected to obtain opportunities to develop their cognition by actively communicating with others who are more proficient and thereby expend each other’s conceptual potential. Thus, within the ZPD (i.e., each individual’s zone of potential learning) more capable students can provide peers with new information and new ways of thinking so that all parties can create new means of understanding. This mutually beneficial social process can also lead more experienced students to discover missing information, gain new insights though

interactions, and develop a qualitatively different way of thinking (Kyikos & Hashimota, 1997).

A closely related concept of professional collaboration is the notion of reflective practice. And it has been argued that, when teachers are encouraged to reflect critically on their teaching, the quality of their work experience is improved dramatically (Gomez &

Tabachnick, 1992). According to Schön (1982), “reflective practitioners” are those who continually develop their professional expertise by interacting with situations of practice to try to solve problems, thereby gaining an increasingly deep understanding of their subject matter, of themselves as teachers, and of the nature of teaching. In a study relating to a team-taught graduate Spanish course (Knezevic & Scholl, 1996), the co-teachers who are also the researchers reflected upon their team teaching experience and considered the

process of collaborative planning beneficial for team teachers to practice reflective dialogue and to think creatively. As Knezevic and Scholl (1996) illustrated, while brainstorming ideas:

…we retrained from judging the ideas. Instead, we help each other express them more fully by asking questions to clarify and expand statements made. “What do you mean by a guessing game? How do you see us introducing the activity? Where do you see the activity leading?” were typical guiding questions. […] Learning to express our ideas to one another and to ask nonjudgmental questions gave us a broad base from which to begin our teaching. (p.84)

Moreover, often in reflection after the class, one of the team teachers would ask, “Why did you do X?” By means of modeling, dialogue, and discussing, teachers worked to

understand each other’s reasoning and motivation (Knezevic & Scholl, 1996, p.88). Their study ends up by advocating the crucial component of language teacher professional development— collaboration — “a catalyst and a mirror for exposing, expressing, and examining ideas” (Knezevic & Scholl, 1996, p.95). In addition, more future research and practice should be undertaken to illuminate the question with regard to how to create such opportunities for teachers to collaborate through which they could learn from each other.

2.1.3 Language Teacher Education and Field-Based Learning

As noted in the previous chapter, literature concerning the general teacher education has provided evidence that teacher education programs have little bearing on what

prospective teachers do in their classrooms, and do not prepare them for the challenge they find in their initial practices. According to a survey regarding how the teaching practicum is conducted in 120 graduate TESOL programs in U.S. (Richards & Crookes, 1988), results indicate that:

Some lead a certification so that graduates may teach in public schools; other programs have a particular specialization such as bilingual education, adult education, or teaching English overseas. Most attempt to achieve their goals through offering a balanced curriculum emphasizing both theory and practice.

However, theory sometimes wins out over practice. (Richards & Crookes, 1988, p.9)

Richards and Hino (1983), in a survey of American TESOL graduates working in Japan, found that the most frequently studied courses in MA TESOL programs were phonology, transformational grammar, structural linguistics, second language acquisition, first language acquisition, and contrastive analysis. By contrast, little attention was apparently given to “education” topics: curriculum development, instructional practice, and evaluation.

Except for one line of earlier studies on curriculum focus, several studies have explored the degree to which second language education coursework influences teacher pedagogical knowledge but the findings vary (Vélez-Rendón, 2002, p.460). Johnson’s (1994) study indicated that a number of preservice teachers considered language teacher preparation program less influential. Another research which is also conducted by Johnson (1996) reported a perceived mismatch between preservice teachers’ vision of teaching and the realities of the classroom. On the other hand, some studies demonstrated the positive effect of teacher education programs on transforming student teachers’ pretraining knowledge (Almarza, 1996), so do others by indicating that language teacher education programs contributed to preservice teachers’ familiarity with the discourse of teaching (Richards et al., 1996) and thus used this newly acquired professional discourse to rename their experience and construct their ways of thinking (Freeman, 1993).

Within the field of second language teacher education, a public debate has continued

over what should stand at the core of knowledge base of second language teacher

education. Johnson (2006) notes that the fundamental arguments lie within two different views of knowledge base of language teacher education, that is, whether the knowledge base should remain grounded in the “core disciplinary knowledge about the nature of language and language acquisition” (Yates & Muchisky, 2003, p. 136; as cited in Johnson, 2006) or focus more primarily on how L2 teachers learn to teach and how they carry out their work (Freeman & Johnson, 1998a). In an article titled “The Social Cultural Turn and Its Challenge for Second Language Teacher”, Johnson (2006) contends that the traditional theory/practice dichotomy seems permeate the debate and is considered irrelevant to the sociocultural theory of human development. Instead of arguing over whether second language teachers should study, for instance, theories of SLA as part of a professional preparation program, Johnson (2006) asserts that “attention may be better focused on creating opportunities for L2 teachers to make sense of those theories in their professional lives and the settings where they work” (p.240).

It is of interest to see that teacher educators have continued to search for an educative balance of theory and practice in the field of teacher education. Tracing back to one hundred years ago that Dewey (1974) set out to define the “proper relationship of theory and practice” (p.314), he argued that the aims of practice should not be to gain immediate mastery. Rather, practice should serve as an instrument for “making real and vital

theoretical instruction” (Dewey, 1974, p.314). As the teacher candidates begin to unravel and identify the theories behind their beliefs and the teaching practices they would like to adopt, they begin to take ownership of these theories and develop their own “teaching stance” (Smith, 2007). In this perspective, in order for teacher candidates to understand how theory and practice are integrated in the processes of teaching and learning to teach,

second language teacher education calls for more opportunities for teacher candidates to experience this integration through teaching practices.

2.1.4 Interim Summary

The first section of literature review aims to gain a clearer understanding of student teachers’ professional development in the field of TESOL, including three important issues which come into play in the complex process of learning to teach. They are language teacher’s knowledge base, professional collaboration as a vehicle of knowledge

construction, and language teacher education and field-based learning. In the review of collaboration as a means of professional growth, constructivist view of teacher education and the notion of reflective practice are also discussed.

Judging from the review above, the researcher is informed that the teaching and learning process experienced by student teachers as they are undertaking student teaching is different from that of in-service or beginning teachers. Although second language

teacher education benefits considerably from findings in general teacher education research, we must start paying attention to how the process of learning to teach unfolds in second language student teachers specifically, and what underlies this process. Also, as previously noted, attention of L2 teacher education may be better focused on creating opportunities for L2 teachers to make sense of those theories in their professional lives and the teaching settings, particularly those which could generate interaction in the collective. In the field of TEFL student teachers education, however, a further study is needed which takes a closer look at collaborative teaching among TEFL student teachers and investigates how this collaborative-teaching process influences student teachers’ perceptions of being a prospective English teacher. This line of research may contribute to establishing a fertile dialogue with language teacher education community; nonetheless, it has been pointed out

that practice and research on collaborative language teaching have been remarkably absent from the literature in the field of TESOL. Given the research gap noted above, the current study aims to tap into team-teaching experience among TEFL student teachers. The focus in the next section will turn to team teaching, including a general description of team teaching, followed by advantages and important issues involved in the collaborative

teaching relationship. Relevant studies related to student teachers’ collaboration of learning to teach will also be reviewed.

2.2 Team Teaching 2.2.1 A General Description of Team Teaching

Various definitions of team teaching have been proposed over the decades to contribute to our emerging understanding of the essence of team teaching. Bess (2000) defines team teaching as a process in which all team members are equally responsible for student instruction, assessment, and equally evolved in the teaching unit to achieve learning objectives while Davis (1995) describes team teaching as “all arrangements that include two or more faculty in some level of collaboration in the planning and delivery of a course” (p. 8). In a book that depicts current approaches to professional development of language teachers, Richards and Farrell (2005) proposes that:

Team teaching (sometimes called pair teaching) is a process in which two or more teachers share the responsibility for teaching a class. The teachers share

responsibility for planning the class or course, for teaching it, and for any follow-up work associated with the class such as evaluation and assessment. (p.159)

In spite of the numerous interpretations existing to shed some light on the essence of team teaching, the label of team teaching has been custom-tailored to suit diverse

instructional purposes, functions, subjects, and educational settings. Team teaching can take a number of different forms according to different organizational patterns

(authority-directed, self-directed, or coordinated teams), and the fields that are involved in team teaching (single-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or school-within-a-school teams;

Buckley, 2000). Of the many ways to categorize team teaching, Eisen (2000) proposes different classifications based on team goals and team relationships respectively. With different relationships of team members, team teaching and learning models vary and can be categorized into the six team types, including (a) committed marriage, (b) extended family, (c) cohabitants, (d) blind date, (e) joint custody, and (f) the village (see Table1 for

the detailed description of each team type).

Table 1

Team Types Based On Member Relationships (reproduced from Eisen, 2000, p.13)

Team Type Description

Committed marriage Team members select each other voluntarily and commit to working closely over time.

Extended family Individual teachers or separate teams exchange ideas and materials periodically, observe each other’s class, or commiserate.

Cohabitants Each team member does own thing with own class; classes

Cohabitants Each team member does own thing with own class; classes