Professional Development and ICT: English Language Teachers’ Voices

While technology use is becoming increasingly common in education, teachers remain reluctant to use it and hesitant on how best to incorporate it into their teaching and practice. There is a strong demand from institutions for English language teachers to cope with the changing landscape of teaching in the 21st century. This explorative study investigated Hong Kong tertiary teachers’ beliefs on continuing professional development activities to enhance their teaching. The study had a two-phase research design, with an initial questionnaire (N = 58) followed by semistructured interviews (N = 12) to unpack the participants’ hidden voices. The findings illustrated that most teachers are enthusiastic about professional development activities, though there is a misalignment between what universities value and reward and what teachers see as most beneficial for enhancing their teaching practices. The results suggested that professional development activities should focus on sharing good teaching practice (e.g., informal chats, mentoring) within universities rather than on rewarding attending conferences and on-off, nonintegrated workshops.

ICT as a Tool for Professional Development: A Reflection on the Practices of those who teach Mathematics in the Early Years

Professional development, seen from a theoretical perspective, can help us answer questions that work together to understand important aspects of good teaching practice. The first question that we put in this bibliographic text seeks to know how the base of mathematical knowledge of students of the Pedagogy course is constituted and from there to understand how technologies are integrated with the knowledge of future teachers, with regard to the development of mathematical knowledge. New technologies are contributing to the drastic changes that have been taking place for a long time and also to the very ones in the history of mankind. For Chauí (2002, p. 278), “the technical instruments are extensions of human body capacities and are intended to increase the relationship of our body with the world”, this can be a variable by which human development is enhanced and, subsequently, professional development.Keywords: Professional Development; TPACK model; Mathematical Knowledge.

Reimagining Prevent Duty in schools: how teachers can support students in their liberation from racialised narratives of radicalisation

PurposeAn accessible resource on the role of teachers in perpetuating inequality through Prevent Duty, with guidance on how to change teaching practice to empower Muslim students.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses critical race theory (CRT) to interrogate power and Whiteness in the interaction of teachers and students when complying with Prevent Duty and delivering lessons on fundamental British values. This is illustrated through a constructed narrative between three characters in a London school, and offers a Freirean approach to empowering students through Prevent delivery.FindingsA disproportionately White profession is acting in what they perceive to be the best interest of their students, while failing to interrogate their own position of power and not creating opportunities to be guided by Muslim voices. As a consequence Muslim students continue to be oppressed.Practical implicationsTeachers can disrupt Prevent Duty while complying with its legal obligations by interrogating their own position of Whiteness. They can work with students to ensure Muslim voices lead discussion around Prevent and the inequality in society that is being reproduced by Prevent Duty.Social implicationsThere is potential for good teaching practice to overcome the structural racism and continued inequality experienced by diverse Muslim communities.Originality/valueThe paper is an accessible application of CRT to Prevent Duty, a resource for teachers, students and activists. It can help in the recognition of the potential for even well-meaning teachers to act in ways that perpetuate inequalities. It provides a clear set of suggestions for teaching practices that can overcome this.

ERPP provision in the UK

This paper attempts to map the territory of ERPP, both in terms of pedagogical theory and its practical application, in the United Kingdom. The aim of the paper is threefold. First, the paper reviews specific challenges of researchers writing in English as their additional language and working in ‘periphery’ countries. Second, based on the review and working within the framework of critical pragmatic EAP (Harwood & Hadley, 2004), the paper proposes five ingredients of a comprehensive ERPP curriculum, namely (a) publication process, (b) language and rhetorical conventions of ERPP genres, (c) writing for an international audience, (d) collaboration, and (e) sharing research outcomes. Taken together, these develop not only Kwan’s (2010) four competences for research publication, but also three additional competences for ERPP proposed here – collaborative competence, outreach competence and competence in building resilience. Finally, the paper discusses ERPP provision available at the Russell Group universities in the UK and evaluates it against the proposed curriculum, highlighting examples of good teaching practice and areas for further pedagogical development.

the paradox of philosophy for children and how to resolve it

There is a paradox in the idea of philosophy for children (P4C). Good teaching starts from the concrete and particular, and it engages with each student’s individual interests, beliefs, and experiences. Preadolescents (and to some extent everyone) find this approach more natural than a more impersonal one and respond better to it. But doing philosophy involves focusing on the abstract and general and disengaging oneself from one’s personal interests and beliefs. It involves critiquing one’s attitudes, seeing abstract relations, and applying general principles. So, if good teaching focuses on the concrete and personal, and good philosophy on the abstract and impersonal, how can there be good teaching of philosophy to children? I call this the paradox of philosophy for children, and in this paper I explore how teachers should respond to it. Should they sacrifice good teaching practice, adopting a heavily teacher-centred approach in order to correct their students’ natural biases? Should they lower their expectations of what philosophical skills children can acquire? Should they even attempt to teach philosophy to children? The paper will argue that there is a better option, which exploits children’s imaginative abilities. The core idea is that by encouraging children to imaginatively identify with other perspectives, we can use their natural focus on the concrete and particular to lever them into more abstract, critical ways of thinking. In this way, their focus on the concrete and personal can be the very means to get them to think abstractly and critically. The paper will go on to outline a general strategy for implementing this approach, the Scenario-Identification-Reflection (SIR) method, which will be illustrated with examples drawn from the author’s own classroom practice. The paper will also respond to some objections to the proposed strategy and offer some general reflections on the SIR method.

Non-Scientific University Students Training in General Science Using an Active-Learning Merged Pedagogy: Gamification in a Flipped Classroom

Innovative teaching strategies are designing a new and promising landscape in education. They fill up the lessons with creativity and imagination either for the students and teachers. This article addresses an attempt to make easier the approach to science in a non-scientific environment: primary education at university level. Gamification methodologies were combined with flipped classroom in order to free up in-class time and engage the students with the taught courses. A qualitative study was merged with quantitative measures of emotional and motivational parameters. These results were improved with four semi-structured interviews. The results clearly showed a raise in the students' motivational level, an acknowledgment of good teaching practice and an evident enhancement of felt positive emotions toward science teaching and scientific issues.

Teaching Adult English Language Learners: A Practical Introduction

This new edition of Betsy Parrish's Teaching Adult ESL: A Practical Introduction, provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of teaching principles and practices for working with adult English language learners. It is a valuable guide for both novice and experienced teachers. It outlines good teaching practice and draws on classroom examples to offer practical guidance grounded in the latest research on language teaching. Addressing the diverse needs of adult English learners, it provides ideas on how to prepare all learners for the demands and opportunities of the 21st century. The book has been completely revised and updated for the second edition to reflect significant recent developments in the ESL landscape. Chapters are clear and informative. They include tasks and opportunities for teachers to reflect on and apply what they have learned. Each chapter also includes a list of recommended reading and resources to further develop knowledge of the subject.

Buenas Prácticas Docentes Para Profesor De Inglés En El Ámbito Universitario

The following investigation's objective was to establish that virtual platforms are considered as didactic support for good teaching practices in English language teaching. The research is quasi-experimental of the transversal type that makes a bibliographic, statistical and descriptive analysis. It considered two groups control and experimental; which were represented by 94 students who entered the first level of the Language Center of the Escuela Superior Politecnica de Chimborazo. The members of each group were evaluated before and after developing the academic activities, through a set of activities established in an evaluation rubric, which were validated by academic experts in the English area. The experimental group used a virtual platform; while the experimental group applied the traditional processes (without virtual platform). Both groups developed the contents of a micro curricular plan with an evaluation rubric. Through the scientific and hypothetical method, the evaluations obtained in a partial and final manner were compared; determining that, the academic performance of the experimental group improved with respect to the traditional one, concluding that the use of the virtual platforms it is a good teaching practice for the teaching of the English language.