With the aim of adding value to her resume on future teacher recruitment, Teacher B participated in Contest Two wishing to win the contest. As a teacher intern at the time of data collection, Teacher B worked with her classmate from graduate school to share the
responsibility and brainstorm ideas together. With regard to the contest regulations, Contest Two demanded elements of audio, pictures, videos, animation, and text to be integrated into the materials. Figure 4.8 demonstrates the official website of Contest Two.
Figure 4.8 Screenshot from the official website of Contest Two
Teacher’s belief of Teacher B in general, the description of her CALL materials and the components affecting her CALL material design and beliefs are illustrated in the following sections.
Teacher B’s Beliefs in General
Belief 1: Language teaching should include the teaching of culture and historical background of the target language
Believing that learning a language should involve the learning of culture and historical background, Teacher B tended to introduce historical events in her previous part-time teaching experience. Since Teacher B targeted senior high school students as her potential learners, she supposed they should be able to probe into more in-dept subjects from the
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aspects of culture and history. As Teacher B suggested, “I think [teaching] is beyond textbooks, and not limited to textbooks.” (Interview I, July 28th, 2009).
Her belief about involving the teaching of culture and historical background in language teaching could have resulted from her former training and prior teaching experience. From her training in secondary education program and part-time experience in vocational high school, she realized that in addition to imparting fragmented knowledge, it was important to present content-based topics through the use of English. To sum up, her belief was shaped by the training she had received as well as her prior teaching experience.
Belief 2: Language teaching should include guiding students to think critically
Base on her belief in the need to guide students to think critically, Teacher B loved to bring out thought-provoking topics and current events for students to develop their critical thinking skills and the ability to reflect on themselves. For instance, Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech and Michael Jackson’s sudden death would be appropriate topics. As Teacher B explained,
“For high school students, I think [I] can include something reflective since high school textbooks are more diverse [in their topics].” (Interview I, July 28th, 2009). Additionally, when talking about her previous lesson on American Indians, Teacher B said, “I’ll offer different perspectives. For example, I would ask students to think ‘if you were an American Indian at the time, what would you want to express to your people?’” (Interview I, July 28th, 2009).
According to Teacher B, by raising thoughtful questions, more student-teacher interaction could be triggered at the same time. As she suggested, “If teaching is limited to the
introduction of knowledge with little interaction, there is no need for teachers [to be in the classroom].” (Interview I, July 28th, 2009).
It should be noted that her emphasis of critical thinking in this instance was because such training was rare in her previous learning experience. Recalling from her past learning experience, Teacher B perceived it to be a pity that her high school teacher merely passed on
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knowledge without specifying her objective and guiding students to do extensive thinking. In brief, her belief about training students to think critically was shaped by her previous learning experience and this belief could determine the direction of her practice of material design.
Belief 3: Language teaching should be interesting, attention-getting and close to students’
everyday life
Due to her belief that language teaching should be interesting, attention-getting and close to students’ everyday life, in her prior teaching experience, Teacher B frequently utilized YouTube videos as a warm-up activity to get students’ attention. For instance, when
discussing the history of the US Civil War, she once used the trailer of the movie Gone with the Wind to facilitate her teaching. According to Teacher B, teaching without videos seemed to be, in the vernacular, “lame”. In addition to YouTube videos, in her past teaching experience, instead of merely listing key words on PowerPoint slides, Teacher B enjoyed adding on animations, hyperlinks to other pages, pictures and songs to make her slides look attractive and vivid. Lastly, she believed that if language teaching was close to students’ everyday life, students would have higher motivation to learn. For example, she would give examples by referring to students’ favorite idols and interests. As Teacher B claimed, “I would add some videos and something close to [students’] everyday life, just wanting to make more
connections [to students’ experience].” (Interview I, July 28th, 2009).
Teacher B’s Original Plan in CALL Material Design
According to the first interview, with the attempt to adopt culture as a central theme in her materials, Teacher B would like to use relevant videos to stir up student discussions. As the worksheet in the past awarded materials was considered merely a combination of pictures and reproduced texts, she intended to create lesson plans and worksheets that were creative, attractive and in line with her teaching purpose. Additionally, she would like to design
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activities that promoted student-teacher interactions and student discussion. In this regard, it would be more meaningful if students were able to think and relate themselves to the topic discussed. With reference to technology integration, Teacher B planned to incorporate
YouTube videos to facilitate teaching and use eye-catching pictures and animations in creating her PowerPoint slides. After Teacher B’s original plan was addressed, her real practice in CALL material design is illustrated as followed.
Teacher B’s Practice in CALL Material Design
Although Teacher B worked with a partner in the contest, they were in charge of different works individually and turned to each other when there was a need for discussion.
Consequently, the materials her partner designed such as the PowerPoint slides and
worksheets on the movie Just My Luck and the fifth period on the lesson plans were excluded from Teacher B’s practice of material design.
CALL Materials————PowerPoint slides, lesson plans and worksheets
According to the contest regulations, the materials were required to include at least lesson plans and technology-integrated elements. Therefore, the materials Teacher B designed contained PowerPoint slides, lesson plans and worksheets.
PowerPoint slides
The PowerPoint slides were viewed as a major aspect of her materials with three features illustrated as follows. First, in agreement with her belief, Teacher B used vivid pictures and made the presentation of her slides clear and attention-getting. At least one related picture would be placed beside each subject, thus helping students to grasp the concept easily.
Furthermore, instead of writing complete sentences, she used key words to demonstrate the concept in a concise way. Two example slides are presented in Figure 4.9. Second, the
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PowerPoint slides served as the skeleton of the class and a major facilitator in teaching. Since the major teaching procedure including activities, key points and questions were clearly demonstrated on the slides, the teacher user would find this reference handy when teaching.
Third, corresponding to her belief, Teacher B utilized icons and pictures that relate to
students’ everyday life. For example, in referring to the experience of being rejected, she used the picture where “nice guy card” was played as shown in Figure 4.10.
Figure 4.9 Two example PowerPoint slides
Figure 4.10 An example PowerPoint slide
Lesson plans
The lesson plans were inclusive of the teaching instruction for five periods of class, four of which were designed by Teacher B. Since the contest regulation did not restrict the use of language, she used English throughout the lesson plans. For any particular terminology and reference, she would specify Chinese inside the brackets. For each class, the lesson plans
“You are a nice guy”
Note: The “nice guy card” is usually played when a girl tries to reject a guy who is nice and helpful in things such as fixing computer and running errands.
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contained a warm-up activity, teaching procedure and wrap-up with three features presented as follows.
First, the lesson plans were designed based on A rabbit's foot and a piece of wood , a lesson from Samming high school textbook. Consequently, the lessons could function as complementary and extensive materials for high school teachers to incorporate into their class.
Second, the lessons were intimately related to one another. The witchcraft performed in the Disney animation Pocahontas and the horoscope were all centered on the theme of
superstition. Corresponding to Teacher B’s belief, such a theme was close to students’
everyday life. Third, in triggering students to think critically, the lessons involved the
discussion of cultural difference between the East and the West and explained the rationale of some superstitions such as “Never walk under a ladder” as presented in Figure 4.11.
Figure 4.11 Examples of the lesson plans
Activities
Two major types of activities were included in the materials. First, in accord with Teacher B’s belief in training students to think critically, Teacher B designed discussion activities that guided students to make comparisons between cultural differences and think about their own cultural customs when given information about superstitions in the West. For example, on referring to the symbols that represented good luck in the West, she asked students to reflect on customs in Taiwan such as purchasing the lottery tickets in red underwear as demonstrated
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in Figure 4.12.
Figure 4.12 Discussion activities in Teacher B’s lessons
Second, conforming to her belief, the scenarios Teacher B designed for students to figure out their response were close to students’ everyday life. For instance, centered on the theme of superstition, one scenario was regarding having a beloved boyfriend while your superstitious mom took the suggestion from a fortune teller about your unmatchable horoscope. Since the scenarios were dilemmas happening in real life, students were able to relate to those scenarios.
Figure 4.13 presents one of the scenarios.
Figure 4.13 The scenario in Teacher B’s lessons Worksheets
Two worksheets in Teacher B’s materials served as either supplementary materials for PowerPoint slides or homework assignments as illustrated in Figure 4.14. The worksheets were used to guide students to prepare for their class discussion and offer a hard-copy version
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of the material at hand in which they could take notes and write down their response. The content and purpose for the worksheets Teacher B designed are demonstrated in Table 4.2.
Figure 4.14 The worksheets in Teacher B’s lessons
Table 4.2
Detailed description of the worksheets
Worksheet Content Purpose
1. Worksheet 1 Ask students to take notes from
PowerPoint slides and write down their answers in discussion activities
Help students to follow the procedure of the class and organize their answer before discussion
2. Worksheet 2 Provide students with the lyrics of the song Superstitions
Help students to have a
hard-copy version of the lyrics
The Gap between Teacher B’s Beliefs and Practices
Although Teacher B believed that learning should be interesting and attention-getting, she abandoned the use of some interesting videos because they were either too challenging or without subtitles. With the consideration of learners’ language proficiency, videos from Discovery Channel and CNN News were dropped because of their complicated quality.
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Similarly, some entertaining overseas YouTube videos without subtitles were also abandoned.
As Teacher B claimed, “Sometimes I have to give up the resource with better quality just to match students’ proficiency level. Because if you give them something too difficult, it is useless if [students] do not understand.” (Interview III, September 5th, 2009). Because of that, a gap between her belief and practice was formed due to her consideration of learners’
proficiency ability.
Components interplaying within Teacher B’s Activity System Agency, mediated artifacts, objects and outcome
By means of winning the contest (object), Teacher B wished to attain her goal of finding a full-time teaching job and keeping improving herself (outcome). As she later explained,
“Participating in a contest was pretty interesting…I think I can learn something. In fact, when you [I] force yourself to do it, you would face some problems and you learn how to fix it.”
(Interview III, September 5th, 2009).
With reference to her agency, in addition to her beliefs, it was found that her agency was also formed by her part-time teaching experience, positive experience in contest participation and learning experience in graduate school. First, her experience in teaching learners with different language proficiency levels and participating in numerous types of contests brought a positive impact to her relatively high confidence in material design as well as contest participation. Second, Teacher B maintained that her learning experience in graduate school played an influential role in her use of YouTube videos. According to Teacher B, her
classmates were fond of utilizing YouTube videos as a way to begin their in-class presentation, making the class atmosphere relaxing and full of laughter. As she further explained, “At the time our classmates would figure out every means to do our presentation. It was vivid and they used lots of videos. So now we [I] would use videos in teaching and use videos as a way to stimulate students’ motivation.” (Interview I, July 28th, 2009). In brief, her use of videos
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and movies as facilitators in her lessons was shaped by her classmates in graduate school.
Regarding the use of mediated artifacts, in realizing Teacher B’s practice, they consisted of the use of pictures, videos and the instruction of poem, songs and culture. Several
interactive relations were discovered. First, Teacher B’s agency was found to determine her use of mediated artifacts (pictures and YouTube videos). Believing that language learning should be attention-getting and close to students’ lives, Teacher B used vivid pictures on her PowerPoint slides and worksheets to make her presentation conform to her belief. In addition, she was exclusively fond of using YouTube videos as a way to motivate students and capture students’ attention. Therefore, her mediated artifacts (YouTube videos) made her practice (material design) full of the use of videos. Seeing YouTube as a resourceful website where all kinds of videos were available, Teacher B downloaded the song entitled Superstition, a commercial, and even a Taiwanese variety show as facilitators in her material design. As Teacher B suggested, “We are so used to using YouTube videos and they are way too powerful. Because there is animation [video] on YouTube, I think this would be interesting, and it’s overseas stuff [authentic].” (Interview II, August 27th, 2009).
However, it should be noted that after the contest came to an end, the mediated artifacts caused confusion to her subject when Teacher B found out the use of YouTube videos was too prevalent in her materials. Although the videos may achieve the effects of drawing students’
attention and facilitating her teaching, the over reliance on videos somehow limited the scope and diversity of her use of technology. As a consequence, Teacher B changed her concept about using videos and resolved to seek new ways of utilizing her software and other resources at hand.
Contextual components affecting Teacher B’s CALL material design Rules
In Teacher B’s activity system, the rules included the contest regulations and the deadline
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for submitting the work. First, the contest regulations only specified the requirement that audios, pictures, videos, animations, and texts be integrated into the materials. As for the format of the lesson plans and technology integration, specific guidelines and grading criterion were not offered to the contestants. As she claimed, “There was no clear guidance.
When working on the lesson plans, there was no clear format…Then I followed my own way but in fact I had no idea it was right or not.” (Interview V, March 14th, 2009). Being unsure about the direction and types of material preferred by the host institute, Teacher B had no choice but to design materials based on her own concept of what was viable. The confusion and uncertainty might lead to a gap between her materials and the materials favored by judges of the host institute. Consequently, after the result of the contest was released, Teacher B considered it a pity for not realizing what types of material the host institute desired. As she explained, “If it [the host institute] suggested that we had to design webpages, then maybe I would know what to do…Then isn’t it a waste of time? It [the host institute] did not say so in the beginning. It [the host institute] only said it[the material] had to be associated with technology.” (Interview V, March 14th, 2009).
Second, meeting the deadline was another rule she needed to follow when participating in this contest. Being pressed for time, in the end, instead of creating webpages, multimedia or animation, she used PowerPoint and YouTube videos, the types of technology she was most familiar with, as ways to incorporate technology into her lessons. In brief, the rules involving the ambiguous contest regulation and the pressure of meeting the deadline were found to have added uncertainty and restrictions to Teacher B’s material design.
Community
The community affecting Teacher B’s CALL material design consisted of the partner she worked with and the person she asked for help in creating the materials, the judges and competitors in the contest she participated in, her future teacher recruiters, as well as her
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instructor and students from the school she served her internship.
First, working with a partner was beneficial to Teacher B in clarifying confusion, seeking solutions and brainstorming ideas. Since her partner shared part of the responsibilities with Teacher B, her workload was lightened and she could turn to her partner for advice whenever there was a bottleneck. As Teacher B suggested, “That’s the benefit of working with someone.
[We] can come up with some other ideas. Or if I have no idea what to do with this part, I can ask.” (Interview II, August 27th, 2009). On top of that, other people Teacher B asked for help from was also part of the community in helping her collect information. For instance, in inquiring about the wedding customs, Teacher B turned to her mother for further details because of her rich experiences in participating in weddings.
Second, since her material design was situated in the context of a contest, the judges and competitors in the contest she participated in were taken into consideration. As Teacher B believed that achieving diversity and completeness in the lessons would increase her chance to win the contest, diverse elements of movie, animation and horoscope were combined in the lessons as a result. Additionally, in order to impress the judges, she had to work on lots of details in making her materials flawless. As Teacher B claimed, “There are lots of details I would not have fixed in the past, even though I noticed their existence. But that’s not the case now. Since this is a contest, some details have to be handled.” (Interview III, September 5th, 2009).
Third, as winning the award was viewed as an impressive achievement on her resume, Teacher B was motivated to do her utmost to impress her future teacher recruiters.
Consequently, the consideration of her future teacher recruiters was seen as a positive reinforcement for her in completing CALL materials in a contest.
Finally, since she worked as an intern at the time of data collection, her instructor and students from the school she served her internship were also part of the community affecting her material design.
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Division of labor
Division of labor