The role of social context in language teacher education

In the consequences of the modern paradigm shift in education, professional teacher development has grabbed much attention and stirred debates over the last decade in Kazakhstan. In 2004 the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) has developed the State Programme for Education Development 2005-2010 which regards both initial teacher education (ITE) and continuing professional development (CPD) crucial in achieving a quality teacher-and-learning process nationwide [1, p. 1]. We see that gradually the teacher education system as a whole is realising that presenting student teachers with abstract notions of teachers’ academic knowledge through a formal approach, accompanied with short blocks of teaching practice is not enough for effective novice development. Therefore, there has been a great deal of research on developing effective ways of personalising teacher knowledge questioning the efficacy of translation of theory into practice rather than continual interaction between them. This paper argues that an alternative approach to foreign language teacher learning as personcentred rather than as knowledge-centred is possible in the local teacher training practices of Kazakhstani higher education institutions (HEIs).

Teacher education has witnessed many great developments in teacher training practices worldwide over the course of the last 25 years. In the eighties Hopkins introduced the idea of teacher-as-researcher [2], adapting ideas of K. Lewin and his dynamic theory of personality, Kemmis and McTaggart [3] developed a concept of action research for professional teacher development [4]. Following in the footsteps of D. Schon [5], Zeichner and Liston introduced reflective practice as teacher self-development. The latter has been recently given much food for thought and Indeed, in recent years, books and periodicals on reflective practice have burgeoned, and an impressive number of studies have been conducted on the ways teachers learn to reflect on how they work and why. Among international up-to-date literature on reflective teacher development we find works of American author Brookfield [7], British researcher Moon [8], Russian scholar Novikov [9] and Kazakhstani scholar Taubayeva [10] very useful in understanding our teacher training practices. These authors are adamant that creating a culture of reflection will help teachers gain new perspectives on their practices and question assumptions that they did not even realise.

Concerning language teacher education, the concept of reflective practice has yielded much research in teacher training practices on the international level. In Britain Wallace (11, p. 15) suggests ideas on developing a reflective model of teacher training as opposed to applied science model. In the USA, Freeman (12, p. 1) points out that strengthening international language teacher comminutes of IATEFL and TESOL will facilitate our understanding of teacher development, teacher cognition and mental processes of teaching within which reflection plays a great role. In Russia, Lekhtsier (13, p. 2) points out that much has been said about reflection but yet there has been little research done on designing an integrative reflective approach to teacher development. In Kazakhstan, Kurakbayev (14, p. 63) sees developing a reflective methodology to teacher training as the key idea of the modern language teacher education of Kazakhstan.

Discussing the social context of teacher learning in Kazakhstan, we find the following diagram relevant [15, 257]. If we apply this framework to our current professional context, we see that the teacher educator’s deliberate intervention (marked by the heavy arrow in the diagram) is traditionally based on passing traditional ‘expert objective knowledge’ to our trainees through transmission in which he plays a role of teacher-as-knower rather than teacher-as-facilitator. When covering the curriculum content, trainees mostly see their learning goal as errorfree recitation of the studied materials. This is beginning to be all fuelled by up by getting more marks (credits) with introduction of the Credit-based system of higher education.

Figure 1. Relationships in formal classroom instruction [15, p. 257]

We realise that the unchallenged complex of teacher-as-knower and a didactic approach of transmission is closely connected to what Schon [16] refers as ‘technical rationalism’. He goes on to elaborate this, “rigorous professional practitioners solve well-informed instrumental problems by applying theory and technique derived from systematic, preferably scientific knowledge” [16, p. 4]. There appears to be a strong traditional belief that the more trainee teachers studies theoretical courses, the easier they find answers to the professional problems they will come across.

Following such an approach helps initial trainees see that teaching is not ‘unscientific’ or ‘mystical’ (Brookfield 1995: 6). Proponents of this model would argue that teaching has a scientific footing that we can resort to in order to solve practical problems. In terms of learning to teach, this could be useful. As Olson and Osborne contend, “the lack of personal experience of being a teacher limits prior knowledge of teaching to information acquisition” (1991: 340). For instance, during a methodology module, trainees develop a professional language backed up by set reading lists and academic writing. In learning to teach, developing a professional language of methodological concepts and terms is necessary (Turbill 2002: 106). Trainees would ask for such input and the teacher educator would present received knowledge with “(…) a feeling of professional pride in his ability to give usable advice” (Schon 1987:6).

On the other hand, this top-down approach of transmission does not prepare trainees to meet all the problems in the real world. One could argue that it is impossible to analyse each unique situation that the trainee would come across in her future classroom. In fact, we can provide her only with general propositional knowledge within the course. Certainly, the trainee can refer to the received knowledge in some cases, as “there are familiar situations where the practitioner can solve the problem by routine application of facts, rules and procedures” (Schon 1987: 34-35). But each of us has her own teaching experiences and “there are also unfamiliar situations where the problem is not initially clear” (ibid.: 35). As “in real-world practice, problems do not present themselves to the practitioner as givens” (Schon 1983: 40). In the real world, teaching is full of surprises and unexpected things happen more than often. So appropriating abstract knowledge derived from the course to solve future practical problems is not sufficient.

As implied, the ‘technicist’ model of teacher training firstly focuses on a large structure of theoretical courses with a subsequent consideration of teaching practice. Such relationships between theoretical and practical components of the course suggest, “a view of professional knowledge as a hierarchy in which ‘general principles’ occupy the highest level and ‘concrete problem solving’ the lowest” (Schon 1983: 24).

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