2018 Annual Conference of China English Language Education Association (CELEA2018)

245 / 2018-07-03 14:29:24

Mediating EFL Teacher Learning: A Case Study of the BOT Program

lanaguage teacher cognition; teacher learning; sociocultural theory; the BOT program

Plenary track > 中国特色英语教师发展研究

Teacher cognition, which probes into how teachers learn to teach and how they carry out their work, has helped to capture the complexities of who teachers are, what they know and believe, how they learn to teach, and how they carry out their work in diverse contexts throughout their careers (Johnson, 2009, p.9-10). Among the many research interests in teacher cognition, research on teacher learning began to emerge in the 1980s, and it has remained the central topic in the study of teacher cognition since the 1990s. Influenced by the sociocultural theory, which was proposed by Russian psychologist Vygotsky (1978), teacher learning is conceptualized as normative and lifelong, emerging out of and through experiences in social contexts (Freeman & Johnson, 1998). In this sense, sociocultural theory shifts the focus of EFL teacher education in the way that it emphasizes teachers as learners of EFL teaching and highlights the socially situated nature of teacher leaning and exemplified the cognitive and social processes that teachers go through as learn to teach. Thus, understanding EFL teacher learning is vital for improving teacher education programs and supporting the professional development of EFL teachers. The current study adopts a qualitative approach to explore mediated teacher learning in one of the best teacher education programs in China – the BOT program. Interviews and reflective dairies were employed as the ways of data collection. Altogether 18 teachers were invited to be the participants of the current study and three of them agreed to do regular interviews with the author. All the qualitative data was coded and analyzed by NVivo 11 pro. Based on the data analyses, the major findings of the study are summarized as follows: (1) in the BOT program, the participant teachers have reconstructed their knowledge base. Thus, teacher learning has happened; (2) with the mediation of four mediators, namely lectures, research project, mentors as significant others and research lessons, five categories of teacher knowledge have developed significantly in the program. Three categories of teacher knowledge have slightly increased in the program. Curriculum knowledge and knowledge of educational context haven't increased explicitly in the BOT program; (3) four categories of teacher knowledge are supplemented into the classical framework of teacher knowledge (Shulman, 1987) to form the knowledge base of Chinese EFL outstanding teachers, namely knowledge of research, knowledge of civil education, knowledge of application of technology in education, and knowledge of EFL teacher development; (4) mediated teacher learning process is summarized in the current study. The theoretical and methodological contributions of this study are: (1) the curriculum design of the BOT program has ensured that teacher learning has happened both academically and practically in such a sociocultural context. To some extent, it solved the problem of the detachment of theory and practice in language teacher training programs. Thus, the BOT program can be used for reference for the design and development of future teacher education programs. (2) the knowledge base of the Chinese EFL outstanding teachers is expanded by the current study; (3) lectures on curriculum knowledge and knowledge of educational context should be emphasized more in the curriculum of the future teacher training programs; (4) collaborative learning should be promoted among the teachers in future teacher education programs.