Autobiography Analysis

DIRECTIONS: Make an analysis of your autobiography by focusing on your inner teaching beliefs, values, conceptualizations, thoughts, and actions. To the effect, you may consider answering any of the following questions:

What personal or schooling experiences can be considered to be the main sources of your pedagogical knowledge?

Do you think there is link between your previous experiences as a language learner and your understanding of teaching? How could you support your answer?

How would you define the knowledge-base you have developed throughout your language teacher education and development?

How do you think your understanding of the nature of language and learning has changed over the years?

What sort of social, cultural, and political forces have shaped your changing conceptions?

Which of those beliefs, values and understandings do you think fundamentally guide your teaching practice?

Could you identify any mismatch between the way you think and the way you act in your teaching?

Do you have any special plans for your future professional growth?


DIRECTIONS: Once you have analyzed your autobiography, visit five of your colleagues´ blogs,  make an interpretation of their autobiographies, and answer the following questions:

What commonalities and differences did you find in the participants´ knowledge-base, beliefs and experiences?

How could you explain the occurrence of those commonalities and differences?


REMARK: These tasks are expected to be done in your personal blog

ELT teacher´s knowledge base

DIRECTIONS:  Based on the reading of the selected papers about “ELT teacher´s knowledge base” (Cross, 2018; Freeman, 2018), post a reflective and critical comment in your personal blog about the ways ELT knowledge-base has been reconceptualized over the last decades, and the implications of these changing views for language teacher education and language teacher development programs in our country.

Guidelines for the autobiography

Write your educational autobiography by enhancing your growing up as language teachers with an account of the most crucial pre-service education and in-service development experiences you have had so far. Since your autobiography is expected to be built around the concept of teacher identity, make sure to reflect on those schooling incidences that have helped to shape your teaching self. To the effect, delve into the what, the how, and the why of your pedagogical beliefs and actions. Here you are some reflection questions you could consider taking into account for your autobiographical essay:

1. What language learning experiences have you had and how successful have they been?
2. From the teaching practices you have been exposed to throughout your language learning process, describe both the effective and ineffective ones.
3. How has your experience as a language learner influenced your decision of becoming a language teacher?
4. Have you had an inspiring English teacher who has positively encouraged you to become a different English teacher?
5. In what ways have your students contributed to your professional growth?

English Language Teacher Education: Facing Challenges, Forging Connections

DIRECTIONS: Watch Kumaravadivelu´s talk on “English Language Teacher Education”, and make and post in your personal blog a mind map of the KARDS model. 

DIRECTIONS: In addition to designing the mind map about the KARDS model, answer the following reflective and critical questions

1.       How would you keep the lamp burning?
2.       What criticism would you make to the KARDS model?

Language teacher education in the age of ambiguity

DIRECTIONS:  Listen to the following podcast made by Magdalena Kubanyiova, and write a response to the rationale and ways she suggests for educating language teachers as meaning makers in the world:

https://soundcloud.com/cler_leeds/professor-maggie-kubanyiova-language-teacher-education

"Sponsored" and "Independent" Professional Development

DIRECTIONS:  In your personal blog, give an account of some experiences of "sponsored" and "independent" professional development you have had as an English teacher. Read what other colleagues posted in response to this task, and make a brief reflection on how different or similiar those professional development experiences have been.

Springboard questions

DIRECTIONS: Based on the literature review, class discussions, and personal experiences you have had with LTE-LTD, make reflective and inspirational questions which can be used as a springboard for choosing the topic to be undertaken in the course final project. Here you are some sample questions:

How does the pedagogical understanding of teachers develop and change over time? 

What personal and professional influences impact teachers’ pedagogical understanding?

What is the role of "context" in SLTE?

What kind(s) of inputs are self-sustaining and generative?

How do teachers build on these inputs to become ongoing learners?

How do we know who an ELT professional is?

How can the description of what it means to be an ELT professional be compared to the reality of Colombian English teachers?

What is the problem with non-professionals?

Why are ELT teachers referred as "cinderella", or the "aromatherapy", of the profession?

How different is teacher professionalism from other professionalism?

How would you defone the role of "context" when defining a professional teacher?

What seems to be wrong with initial teacher training?

How is the space to be created in the teacher’s busy schedule for teacher reflection, sharing, mentoring and learning from one another?

How can English language teachers make a community of practice through the use of social media?

What has the impact of the bilingual policies and programs (Colombia Bilingue) on the professional development of English teachers been?

What constitutes a quality SLTE program in terms of its curriculum, the teaching methods that it gives rise to, and the kinds of teachers that the program produces?

What sort of infuences have shaped your teacher identity?

From the standpoints of "critical theory" and "critical pedagogy," English language teaching is argued not to be a politically or morally neutral activity. What implications do you think this assumption has for LTE and/or LTD?

From a sociocultural perspective, teaching is viewed, not as transfer of knowledge, but as creating conditions for the construction of knowledge and understanding through social participation. How do youu think this philosophy has shaped SLTE?

From professional collaboration to collaborative professionalism

DIRECTIONS:  Watch the Keynote Lecture by Professor Andy Hargreaves "From Professional Collaboration to Collaborative Professionalism," and discuss in your instructor´s blog the following questions:

1) Whereas professional collaboration is a descriptive term referring to how teachers collaborate together, in one way or another, here or there, collaborative professionalism is prescriptive. It is about how to collaborate more deeply, in ways that achieve greater impact. How do you think the transition between professional collaboration to collaborative profesionalism can be promoted in our educational context?

2) Collaborative professionalism is organized in an evidence-informed, but not data-driven, way through rigorous planning, deep and sometimes demanding dialogue, candid but constructive feedback, and continuous collaborative inquiry. To what extent can students profit from their teachers´ practic eof collaborative professionalism?

Welcoming words

Dear Master Candidates: Welcome to this academic blog which is intended as an opportunity to exchange experiences and conceptual insights into the fields of Language Teacher Education and Development. In addition, this site will also serve the purpose of facilitating interaction between the course instructor and participants as to the development of some reflection blogging tasks. These are the general conditions you are expected to meet:

• Please, create a personal blog for this course, and invite your colleagues to become critical readers of the different contributions you post.
• There will be two types of blogging tasks: (1) ones which you will carry out here in the instructor´s blog by using the comments section; (2) others which you will do in your personal blogs. 
• In addition to these tasks, you can also post and share some other useful reading materials concerning the course contents.
• Please, visit this site and your classmates´ blogs, and make critical and constructive comments about the different postings.