Motivated by winning the reward, the wish of creating her own work and adding values to her resume for future teaching career, Teacher A participated independently in Contest One.
As a graduate student at the time of data collection, Teacher A reported to have high confidence in herself to work alone due to her own working style. In terms of contest regulations, Contest One required the creations of webpages and use of resource from a particular website named Digital Archives, a government-supported website serving as an electronic database shown in Fig.4.1. Consequently, CALL materials in this case included the creation of teaching webpages, lesson plans for four periods of class and worksheets.
Figure 4.1 Screenshot of the official website of Digital Archives
In the upcoming sections, teacher’s belief of Teacher A in general, description of her CALL materials, and factors affecting her CALL material design are stated.
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Teacher A’s Beliefs in General
Belief 1: Language learning should be attractive to learners
“Attractions” were significant for Teacher A as she claimed that language learning was a long-term process in which only attractions could sustain learners’ interest and motivation. As she explained, “The attractions I mean here do not refer to something funny or entertaining. If it is content-based, it should let us feel like wanting to read. If it’s a method, it should let us feel like using. These are the attractions I refer to.”(Interview VII, July 13th, 2013). According to the example raised by Teacher A, compared with reciting the dictionary or taking classes in cram school, learners would learn more effectively and naturally by means of watching English TV series because of the attractions these methods entailed. As she emphasized,
Language learning is a long process. If the methods are attractive, it is easier for people to be successful in it. Take me for example. I often listen to English songs, watch movies and TV series. As long as it is something you feel attracted to, you will learn a lot
unconsciously. (Interview VII, July 13th, 2013).
In addition, since language learning could decay without constant exposure, it was difficult for learners to maintain long-term habits and interest in learning if there was not enough attraction in language learning. As she gave another example, “For example, some people might use tedious methods such as reciting dictionary or reading grammar book. They might work hard for at most two to three months. [But after that] they may give up learning and then it [learning] is not enduring.” (Interview VII, July 13th, 2013).
Her belief was formed because her own learning experience was strongly associated with attractions. When learning English in high school, the attractions such as listening to English songs and watching movies motivated her to continue learning even after the exams. By contrast, for unattractive subjects like history, since she was forced to study out of test-taking
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concerns, its lack of attraction made her quit learning as soon as the test came to an end. To sum up, her belief about language learning was shaped due to her own learning experience and therefore such a belief could be crucial in her future practice.
Belief 2: Language learning should be useful and can be applied to daily lives
Maintaining that learning would be meaningful and motivating if it was useful, practical and could be applied to daily lives, Teacher A believed that students would learn better if they knew the purpose of learning. According to Teacher A, if learning was not practical and could not be used in daily lives, students might question “why” they had to spend time learning and their learning motivation would decline accordingly. As she maintained, “Everyone learns for a purpose…That purpose does not have to be utilitarian. That could be a goal…A person has to know it then she would be able to learn.” (Interview VII, July 13th, 2013).
Her belief was shaped due to her previous experience in learning and interacting with foreign friends. First, as a rather rebellious learner in high school, she kept asking herself a lot of “why” questions. For instance, back in her high school, she once questioned her history teacher who did very little teaching but recited the textbook and asked the students to underline the key points. Not knowing the purpose of studying history, she once raised her hand, asking the teacher what learning history was for. Embarrassed as the teacher was, he did not answer the question on the spot but showed his distaste and awkwardness. As she
commented, “I just wanted to know what learning history was for. The teacher could tell me any reason for learning history and then maybe I would be convinced…For me, this was something I cared about.” (Interview VII, July 13th, 2013).
Second, her belief could also be traced back to her experience interacting with foreign friends. In responding to questions regarding Taiwanese festivals from her foreign friends, she encountered great difficulty in explaining the story of Lady in the Moon in English.
Consequently, since Teacher A viewed teaching as a chance to learn, her belief that language
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learning should be practical and useful was shaped accordingly.
Belief 3: Students learn better in student-centered activities
Believing that students learn better in student-centered activities, Teacher A intended to assign students to work on projects and explore knowledge on their own rather than learn from lectures. Teacher A maintained that in student-centered activities, students could learn ways to cooperate and communicate with their classmates. Learning in this way could go beyond merely language learning and help students to develop their communication ability and problem-solving skills.
Her belief about student-centeredness was shaped by her positive learning experience in college. Back in college, student-centered activities such as tasks and group projects were prevalent in the majority of the courses. Meanwhile, her active participation of projects such as drama performance was found to be beneficial not only in language learning but also in helping her building up self confidence and friendship. As she explained, “By means of participating in activities, I found myself learn more dynamically than I did in classroom learning. So that was why I considered project-based learning to be a great method.”
(Interview VII, July 13th, 2013). Since learning could be dynamic and multi-dimensional, her belief about student-centeredness was formed as a consequence.
Teacher A’s Original Plan in CALL Material Design
In terms of the overall design, Teacher A planned to use “festival” as her central theme and taught learners how to use English to introduce Taiwanese festival. After taking a glance at the assigned website which was full of content-based information, she realized that only by using festival as a theme was she able to utilize the resources which were not directly related to English teaching. In addition, after viewing the award-winning worksheet, she was
determined to design worksheets that could be applied to real classroom practice. Concerning
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technology integration, she planned to include pictures, videos, even space for learners to leave a message online on her webpages. According to Teacher A, the webpages were her major CALL materials and a platform for potential learners and teacher users to learn and utilize materials.
Teacher A’s Practice in CALL Material Design
CALL Materials————the webpages, lesson plans, and worksheets
According to the contest regulations, the materials had to include at least webpages with the format of html, lesson plans with the must to incorporate information from the assigned website and worksheets. Therefore, the materials Teacher A designed contained webpages, lesson plans and worksheets.
The webpages
Entitled “Happy Chinese Festival”, her webpages were decorated in red with focus on the introduction of five Chinese festivals, including Chinese New Year, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, the Night of Sevens, and the Mid-Autumn Festival. In addition, four sections on the homepage are introduction of the teaching webpages, extra learning resources, downloads where lesson plans, worksheets, evaluations, complementary materials are available, and references for citing the source of information as illustrated in Fig. 4.2.
Figure 4.2 Screenshot of the homepage of the webpage
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Several features of her webpages are stated as follows. First, in line with her belief about student-centeredness, her webpage provided extra links for students to further explore
knowledge instead of merely showing the information. As Teacher A mentioned, “I would not introduce festivals in detail; in this case, if they (students) want to understand deeper, I would provide that extra link, and let them (students)… click into the link and do extensive learning on their own.” (Interview III, July 30th, 2009). Therefore, based on her concept, students could learn more when they take the active role and explore the knowledge by themselves. Second, centering on the introduction of five Chinese festivals, the webpages included related photos and videos along with extra links for related stories in both English and Chinese. Since one of the grading criterions is to utilize the resource in Digital Archives, the photos as well as the videos were mostly adopted from that website. Third, her webpages were rich in information and stories associated with the festival. In accordance with her belief that language learning should be useful, the materials on introducing festivals in English were very likely to be applied to daily lives. Fourth, the description of her webpage was mainly in Mandarin, which made her webpages seem to be a resourceful database for festivals rather than
English-teaching webpages. For any information on her webpages, taking copyright into her consideration, Teacher A cited the source of the information in the back. Figure 4.3 shows the webpages of Chinese New Year.
Figure 4.3 Screenshot of the webpages
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Lesson plans
Following the contest regulation, Teacher A designed lesson plans involving the teaching instruction for four periods of class. The major language in her lesson plans is Mandarin Chinese because she claimed that the sample of lesson plans provided by the host institute is in Mandarin. For each class, the lesson plan contained before-class preparation, a warm-up activity, teaching procedure and review activity.
Several features were spotted in her lesson plans. First, corresponding to Teacher A’s belief that learning should be attractive, vivid warm-ups and activities were designed. Take her warm-up activity for example. Teacher A used fables and thoughtful stories to draw students’ attention. In one class, before asking students to present their concept for the video, Teacher A used two fables as warm-up, guiding students to appreciate compliments and face constructive criticism as shown in Fig. 4.4. In addition, in her lesson plans, instead of writing just descriptions, Teacher A used photos and teacher’s monologue to illustrate the activity, making her lesson plan easier for teacher users to follow.
Figure 4.4 The warm-up activity in the lesson plan
Second, in accord with her belief that language learning should be useful, Teacher A paid Teacher asked the questions:
．“In the story, how could Mr. Chang get the two-legged roast chicken?”
．“In your daily life, do you often give others compliments?”
Learning from fables
I. Share two fables (extensive material B) and guide students to carry out discussion.
1. The author of The Applause: Ming-yue
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extra attention to the viability of her lesson plans after viewing the award-winning materials.
As she commented,
I can tell that some people do pay efforts in designing lesson plans. Because some come up with the files of lesson plans, the worksheets for the activity… That was hard work.
But whether it could be applied [in class] or not, I think it might not be [workable]. I want to create something more practical. (Interview I, July 10th, 2009).
Third, from the lesson plans observed, it was indicated that Teacher A’s belief about student-centeredness was emphasized as she designed plenty of activities for students to engage in. For example, in one class, provided with stories and origins about the festivals in Chinese, students were asked to read the information at hand in a limited time frame. When the time was up, students would engage in a competition where they raised hands and answered questions to win scores. In the end, the team with highest scores won the competition. Figure. 4.5 demonstrates the activity in the lesson plan.
Competition Game on Festivals IV. Competition Game
Rules:
“Each team please read the information about festivals within 10 minutes to understand the origin and legends of each festival. After 10 minutes, we will have a competition game for you to answer relevant questions.
The winning team could choose the festival you want, the rest of the teams could choose based on their ranks.”
．Give each team information about festivals (Note 4) and ask each team to read and raise hands when they have any questions. Time limit is 10 minutes.
．Start the competition game. The teacher asks the questions and students compete to answer. The teacher records the scores on the board.
Figure 4.5 The activity in the lesson plan
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Activity: Project-based learning
Including “project-based learning” in her lesson plans, Teacher A attempted to guide students to create a video to introduce a festival. Unlike the traditional method of teaching which started with a lecture and ended with homework assignment, Teacher A highlighted the belief about student-centeredness.
Based on the design, with technical instruction and guidance, students were able to utilize Movie Maker and create their own video. As Teacher A further explained, “I would like to utilize media in my lesson plans, but it’s not like I do everything here and students learn nothing.”(Interview IV, August 18th, 2009). After referring to other successful student-made videos on YouTube, she was more determined that the task could be successfully executed by students. Moreover, to ensure equal responsibility, students would be assigned with different roles, including the leader, the video maker, the script writer, the information gatherer, and the presenter. With the aid of worksheets, each student would know what they should do in their roles.
Worksheets
In line with Teacher A’s belief about student-centeredness, the worksheets functioned as step by step preparation for project-based learning, helping students understand their jobs and guiding them to plan their next step. Table 4.1 provides the content and purpose for each worksheet. An example of the worksheet is shown in Fig. 4.6.
Table 4.1
Detailed description of the worksheets
Worksheet Content Purpose
1. Worksheet A Assign students to take different roles and demonstrate the responsibility for each role
Help students to take different responsibilities in the project
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2. Worksheet B Assign students to interview their relatives for the stories in each festival
Help students to build up basic knowledge about each festival
3. Worksheet C Ask students to visit her webpage and write script for their narrator in their video
Guide students to work on their script for the video 4. Worksheet D Ask students to write down the synopsis and
concept for the video as well as the possible difficulty they might encounter
Help students to clarify their plan for making the video
Figure 4.6 An example of the worksheet
The Gap between Teacher A’s Beliefs and Practices
Three major differences between Teacher A’s beliefs and practices were spotted. First, against her belief that learning should be attractive, Teacher A used unattractive photos and videos from the Digital Archives website as to follow the contest regulations, contributing a gap between her belief and practice. Second, the finding revealed that her real practice was more simplified than her original goal as she gave up the use of Camtasia and interactive platform due to a lack of time. Although she contended that her practice could have been more attractive and outstanding, she had to make compromise as to meet the deadline. As she
Worksheet D. Proposal for the video Synopsis
_______________________________
Concept
_______________________________
The procedure of making the video _______________________________
Division of labor
_______________________________
Possible problems and way-outs ________________________________
Team ________
Date ________
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explained, “Originally the webpage would be added to Camtasia or something novel. In the end, it [the webpage] became more descriptive without so many fancy tricks because of time.”
(Interview VI, February 10th, 2010). Third, different from her belief that language learning should be useful and can be applied to daily lives, she realized that adopting resource mainly from Digital Archives and the prevalent use of Mandarin on her webpages somehow made her materials less connected to language learning. As she emphasized, “The must to use resource from Digital Archives suggested that the use of technology was compulsory. They [the host institute] just wanted to promote their resource without paying much attention to learning effectiveness.” (Interview VI, February 10th, 2010).
Components Interplaying within Teacher A’s Activity System Agency, mediated artifacts, object and outcome
In Teacher A’s activity system, her wish to win the contest (object) was strongly
connected to her goal to find a full-time teaching job and seek acknowledgment (outcome). As she later explained, “Seeking acknowledgement was definitely important. Since I was new in this industry, adding more awards or experience would be helpful to my career.” (Interview VIII, July 27th, 2013).
Concerning Teacher A’s agency, her experience in editing textbooks as well as her beliefs were found to shape her agency. Since helping editing textbooks required following a set of standardized procedure, the process was repetitive and lack of attraction. Consequently, she was dissatisfied with the overall experience as she recognized the power of designer was deprived due to the limitation. Seeing the experience as restriction and frustration for not being able to apply her professional knowledge in language teaching, Teacher A was more determined to find a chance to implement her ideas into practice. In this regard, in addition to her beliefs, her previous experience in designing textbook formed her agency.
With reference to mediated artifacts, the mediated artifacts served as tools for Teacher A
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(subject) to accomplish her practice of material design and achieve her goal of winning the contest (object). Teacher A constantly utilized various ways to achieve her object, inclusive of searching resources from the Digital Archives website and surfing the Internet. Since winning the contest was determined by the degree of using resource from Digital Archives, Teacher A constantly utilized Digital Archives as a major source of information. One of the evidence was that the photos and videos on her webpages were mainly adopted from that website. As
Teacher A claimed, “They [the host institute] just want you [me] to use their resource to design lessons. Then there were few wordy descriptions but only pictures and videos in their resource. So I use the photos and videos as warm-ups.” (Interview VI, February 10th, 2010).
Therefore, the prevalent use of information from Digital Archives was facilitative in achieving her object of wining the contest.
In Teacher A’s activity system, a bidirectional interactive relations between the mediated artifacts (the Internet and Digital Archives) and Teacher A (subject) and her beliefs (agency) were captured. First, her subject was found to be guiding her in utilizing the mediated artifact.
Since accomplishing webpages required abundant information, as a frequent Internet user, Teacher A constantly utilized the Internet to find information. For example, while working on her webpage, she simply typed in key words and looked for what she wanted from the results coming up. According to Teacher A, despite working alone, she was contended to have the Internet to help her accomplish materials. As she commented, “It is easy to get information.
Since accomplishing webpages required abundant information, as a frequent Internet user, Teacher A constantly utilized the Internet to find information. For example, while working on her webpage, she simply typed in key words and looked for what she wanted from the results coming up. According to Teacher A, despite working alone, she was contended to have the Internet to help her accomplish materials. As she commented, “It is easy to get information.