Journal- Module 4
ESL Teachers Google+ Community
The professional community I have chosen to join is “ESL Teachers Google+”. I chose this community for a few reasons.
What I wanted in my professional community:
User friendly
A forum for discussions
Active participants (I checked to see how many recent posts there were)
Collaborative (sharing resources, discussing teaching practices etc)
My goals for my professional community:
For whatever reason, I have always been shy about sharing and collaborating with others. This program has really helped me become more comfortable with sharing my ideas and working closely with others. However, I am still reluctant to share and collaborate outside of this program.
Over the next two months, I would like to:
Share at least one of my lesson plans or ideas with the group
Share a link to one of my blog posts
Begin a discussion about teaching philosophies, conceptions of curriculum, and/or assessment
These goals may seem simple to some of my peers but, as I mentioned, I am quite shy and I know it will take time for me to become comfortable sharing and collaborating in such a public space. That is why I have given myself two months to achieve these goals.
Analysis of my Professional Community
For my analysis, I reviewed the following:
Video content made for ESL learners
Resources/lesson plans/materials shared by teachers
Blog posts by teachers who participate in the community
The results of my analysis were not very surprising. It seems that we are still in a transition away from traditional philosophies of education to more modern ones. With that being said, I’d anticipated that the participants would hold conflicting philosophies and conceptions of curriculum. I had anticipated this because that is how I feel myself. Although I have very modern educational philosophies and generally design my lessons from a humanistic conception of curriculum, much of my teaching practice is still founded upon traditional philosophies. The traditional views, subject-centred curriculum designs, and “testing” as assessment are still lingering for me and many other teachers. Not to say these are bad or wrong, they simply do not fit with my current beliefs and values.
So, I was not surprised to find that this contradiction, or opposition of beliefs, is present for many other teachers in the ESL field.
Here are some of my observations:
Resources/Materials/Lessons:
The community has many videos made for ESL students. These videos suggest that the curriculum developers hold philosophies rooted in essentialism and realism. Regarding their conceptions of curriculum and curriculum design, it seems they are founded upon academic rationalism and subject-centered designs.
In almost all of the videos, there is a teacher standing in front of a whiteboard. They are transmitting knowledge and information explicitly while also maintaining an authority over the language (Ornstein). Most prefer to use the lecture method even when there is no teacher visible on the screen (Hill). The subject matter is the main focus of the video and the students are passive as they listen to the teacher explain the vocabulary or grammar (Ornstein).
Blog Posts
There are many blog posts from the teachers within the community. All of the blog posts I read (about 5) suggested that the writer held a more modern view of education.
“The near future should allow learners to create their own learning paths, as well as interacting easily across existing boundaries of space and time. Learning will therefore become more personalised, efficient, and absolutely student-led.” (English Teaching and Learning)
This excerpt from a post titled The Future of English Language Teaching and Learning? suggests that the writer may have a philosophy of education rooted in progressivism. It seems they believe that learning should be based on the students’ interests and thus, learning should be active and interesting (Ornstein). For learning to “become more personalized, efficient, and absolutely student-led” (The Future of Teaching and Learning), curriculum design needs to be learner-centered. To be personalized, curriculum development needs to include the learner in the process (Ornstein). To be efficient, curriculum developers need to know how students learn (Ornstein). To be student-led, curricula should not be considered as an end in itself, but a means of inquiry in which all students can learn and grow in their own unique way (Ornstein).
A Note on Assessment:
I found very few resources or links to assessment. Most of what I found related to only tests. On one blog post, the author mentioned that we need to move away from multiple choice questions and include more open-ended questions (Rob). He mentions that testing students by using multiple choice only improves their ability to answer selected-response questions (Rob). It seems to me that he believes that simple understanding and knowledge of isolated acts is not enough. He suggests approaches to assessments that seek a deeper understanding but he only suggests one method: open-ended questions.
It seems that assessment is not a very popular topic of discussion. I would like to open up this discussion and share what I have learned in this course. I would like to share some resources and practical ideas to assess students in new ways. Specifically, I’d like to discuss on-going informal assessments, self-reflection, and creating products or performances. I have a few lessons that have these assessments built into them implicitly so I will make the assessment part of it more explicit before posting.
Works Cited
Sources from Integrated Planning, Instruction, and Assessment:
Hill, A. M. (1994). Perspectives on philosophical shifts in vocational education: From realism to pragmatism and reconstructionism. Journal of Vocational and Technical Education, 10(2), 37-45.
Ornstein, A. C. (1990/1991). Philosophy as a basis for curriculum decisions. The High School Journal, 74, 102-109.
Ornstein, A. C., & Hunkins, F. P. (2013). Curriculum: Foundations, principles, and issues (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Read Chapter 6, pp. 149-173.
Sources from the ESL Teachers Google+ Community:
Rob. “Assessment Test – Creating an Effective Test for Students.” Sprited Teaching, spiritedteaching.com/teaching-strategies/assessment-test/.
“The Future of English Language Teaching and Learning? .” English Teaching and Learning, rfieldenwatkinson.blogspot.ca/2017/10/the-future-of-english-language-teaching.html.
Links to Other Sources from ESL Teachers Google+ Community:
http://www.simplyieva.com/esl-and-mainstream-collaboration-a-practical-how-to/
http://www.simplyieva.com/vocabulary-workbook-for-your-esl-students/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk8j0Hmn7j4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0YQX7gGkQs
