David Moroney & Dr. Ann Devitt School of Education,

Trinity College Dublinmoroned@tcd.ie / ann.devitt@tcd.ie

5th Biennial Threshold Concepts Conference, Durham University, July 9-11th, 2014

Knowledge, Belief and Practice in Language Teacher Education:

Integration and Implementation of Threshold Concepts over a teaching

career

“Akin to a portal opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something … represents a transformed understanding or interpreting or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress.”

(Meyer and Land, 2003)

Irreversible Troublesome Bounded Discursive Integrative Transformative ‘non-negotiable’ (Timmermans,

2014)

Features of TCsFeatures of TCs

• Transformative learning (Mezirow)

• Adaptive Change (Heifetz, Grashow, Linksy)

• Communities of Practice (Wenger, Lave)

• Language Teacher Cognition (Borg)“What teachers think, know and believe”

(Borg, 2006, p.1)

• 17 in-service language teachers (+5 years exp) in SCoTENS project in Ireland, 2013

• Semi-structured interviews • Main TCs - real Language use & fostering

learner autonomy (Devitt & McKendry, AERA Conference, 2014)

What is the knowledge/practice that ITE students experience as having a transformative effect on their practice?

Do these correspond to those identified by in-service teachers (Devitt and McKendry, 2014)?

• Three pre-service teachers• Programme of Initial Teacher

Education with concurrent school placement & university study

• Interview emails/journals (Nov – Apr) + face-to-face interviews (April)

• Thematic analysis of transcribed data

• ITE program in Modern Languages in TCD

• To identify their key challenge(s) and key learning point(s) from the course so far.

• How did they overcome these challenges?

• Semi structured conducted in April• What were the biggest challenges in

your teaching this year? • How did you overcome those

challenges?• Do you think you have become a

better teacher?• What other challenges did you face?

– repeat

T1, 37 years old, 3 kids, 6 months baby sign language

T2, 29 years old, family teaching background, 1 year teaching English in a French university

T3, 24 years old, 6 months as a French oral resource teacher in secondary school

• Change in Personal Belief - Teacher Identity / impostership / greater autonomy

• Notion of self – moving towards the Ss • Learner-centered teaching – on all of my Ss / learning styles – engagement

• PCK – classroom management / routines / operational

• Adaptive Experts – Transition Year / non co-operating co-workers / differentiation

• Professional dialogue with supervisor ‘gatekeepers’ (Daloz, 2012)

• Collaborative Reflections • Collaboration with co-workers / peers /

mgt. • Procedural Content Knowledge – routines /

Rites of passage • Getting to know the students (empathy)

Troublesome•‘I spent the entire first week in constant shock’•‘Learnt to deal with it quickly because if you don’t you are left like a lamb to slaughter’•‘…would be interesting for me…could still be boring for the students’•‘so much effort….very disappointing and disheartening’

In the Liminal State: •‘my inspector said…’•‘you might have a chat with them [students] when they are packing up to leave’•‘getting down to the level of the students’•‘it was really good for me [reflections] to go into a bit more detail’ •‘maybe it’s because I am older’

Bounded / Irreversible•‘I kinda turned the corner with it [teaching] just in the last couple of months. I feel really confident now and looking back to the very first class that I had, I kinda felt like I was winging it, just going in there pretending I was a teacher and now actually I feel like I am a teacher’

Troublesome•‘Chattiness. It was giving back a lot of cheek’•‘it’s very much trial and error’ •‘tended to accommodate the lowest common denominator in the class’

In the Liminal State:•‘my inspector told me twice that I have to challenge them more’•‘[out of a lecture]…would really want to put into place things we discussed in class’•I told the deputy principal and he assigned a seating plan and placed the class in the same classroom for all three classes

Bounded / Irreversible •‘gone back down again [inspection]…but I’m really aware of it which is good so all the time in the back of my mind’•‘One of the things I am most proud of this year is my ability to communicate with the students and forge relationships that encourage learning and discussion’

• Theory and Practice divide ‘The rest was useless’ /

‘frustrating to sit through a lecture’

• Uncertainty ‘next year might be different’ / ‘I

don’t think I will be like that going ahead’

Certain patterns in becoming a teacher (Anspal, et al., 2012)

TCs - great developmental potential (Timmermans, 2014)

Successful training of ‘adaptive experts’ (Hammerness, et al.,2007)

Communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991)

Fosters good relationship building (Teaching Council, 2011)

Teacher as Lifelong Learner (Teaching Council, 2011)

Anspal, T., et al., (2012). Finding myself as a teacher: Exploring the shaping of teacher identities through student teachers’ narrative. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 18(2), 197-216.Borg, S. (2006) Teacher cognition and language education: research and practice. London: Continuum.Brookfields, S. (1995) Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. Jossey Bass. Daloz, L.A. (1999) Mentor: guiding the journey of adult learners. Jossey Bass.Devitt, A. & McKendry, E. (2014) Threshold Concepts in Language Teacher Knowledge: Practice versus Policy, Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadephia, 3-7April 2014.Hammerness, K., et al., (2007) How Teachers Learn and Develop. In Darling-Hammond (Ed), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What teachers should learn and be able to do (358-389).Heifetz, R.A., et al., (2009) The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing your Organization and the World: Harvard Business Press. Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In L. Resnick, J. Levine, and S. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (63-82). Washington, DC: APA.Meyer, J.H.F., & Land, R., (2003) Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practicing within the disciplines. In C. Rust (Ed), Improving student learning: Improving student learning theory and practice – Ten years on (412-424). Oxford. .

Mezirow, J. (1997) Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 74, 5–12. Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1-22.Teaching Council (2011) Initial Teacher Education: Criteria and Guidelines for Program ProvidersTimmermans, J.A. (2014) Identifying threshold concepts in the careers of educational developers, International Journal of Academic Development. Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: CUP.