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Language
Teacher Preparation in Developing Countries
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Structuring
Pre-Service Teacher Training Programmes
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More than any other variable--instructional
materials, supplies, administration, class size, and on and on--the quality of teaching
has the greatest effect upon the quality of education. Yet, in countries with rapidly
growing populations, there is an increasing tendency to put untrained "teachers"
into classrooms in a laudable, but utterly misguided effort to meet increased demand or to
expand access to schooling. Donors, such as USAID, the British ODA, the World Bank, the
African and Asian development banks, etc., encourage and fund projects, but their impact
is too often evaluated by the counting of classrooms and heads, rather than by appraising
curricula, instructional materials, teacher efficiency, assessment practices, and
improvements in learning outcomes. It must be recognised that any rapid expansion of
educational provision is usually at the expense of the quality of teacher preparation, and
in consequence, the quality of learning.
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Appointments of untrained instructors are being
made in basic education as well as at the secondary level, where it is happening right
across the curriculum. The effects can be devastating, not just on the character of
education (which immediately effects the whole of society) but also on the education
budget. Attempts to make up for PRESET (pre-service education and training) deficiencies
once unskilled people are in service are expensive and largely ineffective. This is
because the instructors have to be released for training on full pay rather than the much
lower rates paid to full-time teacher trainees. Also, once they are in schools,training
has to be carried out sometimes on a costly one-to-one basis in classrooms, rather than
the more effective, intensive mode that is available in colleges of education conducted
for large homogeneous groups of trainees.
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Even where there is some form of teacher
preparation, there may well be little relationship between the programme's nature and the
real needs of future teachers (and learners). In some cases, programmes were inherited
from colonial masters and have remained largely unchallenged ever since. In other cases,
the courses are ad hoc, apparently derived from the interests of the faculty rather than
from any systematic design. Few trainers, worldwide, have ever received any serious
preparation for their roles as methodologists and teacher educators. There is also a sad
tendency for some trainers to act as "academics" or "lecturers." They
appear not to realise that trainees teach the way that they themselves are taught.
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My own view is that initial training programmes
should be obligatory and should have a strong bias towards the practical. In this way,
trainees will immediately perceive the value of most curriculum components in terms of
worthwhile classroom performance objectives. Ideally, experienced classroom teachers and
in-service advisers should teach parts of the course. Where they are not involved in
curriculum design and course conduct, inspectors and advisers must know the content and
nature of the course, so they can build upon it later with an in-service curriculum that
will eventually lead to teacher independence in matters of professional development.
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The ideal teacher profile
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Initial teacher education programmes should be
based upon an ideal teacher profile, if they are to be functional. Each country's profile
will be different, depending on its level of development and local constraints, but
targets in knowledge and behavior should be defined before training schemes are drawn up
and this is done fairly easily by a means of a needs analysis. In essence, the analysis
will be concerned with four distinct areas (other analyses will deal with learner needs in
terms of curriculum, materials, examinations, and so on):
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I. General level of education:
Teachers should be well educated people, whatever their specialty. Those constructing the
profile should designate the minimum all-round level required for acceptance for initial
training. A stipulated status (usually marked by a diploma or degree) should be attained
in a school, college, or university before entry to an institute of education.
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II. Subject competence:
This relates to the level of English needed if the language is
to be taught effectively. Again, this competence should be attained
before trainees enter the teacher education institution so that
training can focus on the teaching of English and related issues
without being sidetracked by language weaknesses.
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III. Professional competence: This
concerns the ideal teachers' ability to plan and execute lessons, to use a textbook
selectively, and to produce valid supplementary materials and tests. It concerns their
awareness of current approaches, educational theory, cognitive psychology, class
management skills, etc. These competencies should be the main ingredients of initial
training and of any in-service work that follows.
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IV. Attitudes: These are the
teachers' beliefs about education, their relationships with students, parents and
colleagues, their sense of humor, their level of vocation, their work ethic, their general
motivation and willingness to be involved in extracurricular activities, their
personality, and ability to engender enthusiasm, etc. These factors are more easily
"caught" than taught, and teacher educators are role models in these respects.
Even so, formal attention needs to be paid to these variables during training, as they
have such powerful effects on the classroom climate and learning.
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Having defined the ideal teacher profile, it is
the place of the college of education to organise a programme that will deliver a supply
of new teachers that meets the target.
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Preservice curriculum components
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The preset curriculum should, I suggest, embrace
the major areas below. Each of these might be viewed and defined as a separate syllabus
(in the British sense of the word) within the curriculum. This model is based closely on
the curriculum which is currently being piloted by the Modern Languages Department at the
Ecole Normale Sup,ieure d'Abidjan. While no single model will suit every context, it is
content details that should vary, not curriculum outlines. I believe that any training
institution which neglects any one of these important areas should seek to justify the
exclusion. For each syllabus area, there are examples of what might be included, but these
are only samples.
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Area one: Pedagogic techniques.
Examples of "techniques" are elicitation and nomination strategies, conducting
efficient and meaningful drills, presenting lexical items and grammar points, introducing
and practicing communicative structures, using body language, etc. Later, trainees learn
to mix techniques, in reviewing previously taught material, setting and checking homework,
exploiting texts, conducting role plays, etc.
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Area two: Materials development.
In this category trainees might learn how to adapt instructional materials, devise games
and work sheets, create manipulatives and other aids, and develop passage-related reading
or listening tasks together with supplementary exercises and activities (from controlled
to communicative). They should also learn to produce original learning and teaching
materials and to design tests related to materials, pedagogy, desired outcome, etc.
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Area three: Management skills.
Good class management is vital with large classes. Trainees must practise establishing and
monitoring pair and group work, giving classroom commands, keeping records and student
profiles, using peer marking, involving the whole class, timing a lesson, maintaining
attention and discipline, encouraging and managing debate, using eye contact, and so on.
In view of the importance of teacher personality in language teaching (far greater than in
any other subject), the syllabus for this area should include a unit devoted to the
nurturing of favorable attitudes and the development of charisma.
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Area four: Professional
knowledge. Clearly, new entrants to schools should be
familiar with routine school administration. They must know the
objectives of EFL and the nature of examinations and the instructional
materials they will use. They should know something of curriculum
design and optional methodologies. They need to know the shape
of a range of balanced lesson types, and the principles of examination
design and student evaluation. Teachers need to recognise systematic
errors and obtain feedback from them. They need to know correction
strategies, and about teacher observation and appraisal techniques.
They also need to know about aspects of target civilisations if
they are to perform as educators rather than mere teachers of
the language.
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Area five: Applied theory.
Theoretical components are best taken parallel to or after the practical elements above.
In this way theory is linked to the rest of the training curriculum and to philosophies of
education. A school-based research approach is better than a purely academic one. Trainees
can easily go into schools and identify different teaching styles and methods; they can
watch learners and identify different cognitive modes and learning strategies; they can
check language development, and the level of monitoring at different lesson stages. The
aim of a theoretical course is to enable the trainees to reflect on classroom practice and
evaluate pedagogic options.
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Area six: Lift. Language
improvement for teachers, has no direct relationship to pedagogy and teacher training.
Unfortunately, some training colleges spend most of their time on language work and
evaluate trainees by means of examinations that appraise linguistic competence instead of
the all-important pedagogic skills. Ideally, trainees should have an adequate degree of
fluency before entering a college of education and this can be assured simply by raising
the level of qualification at entry. In any case, language improvement results from
teaching the other five curriculum elements in English. Where trainers feel obliged to
strengthen trainees' language skills, though, it is essential that the approaches
exemplify good pedagogy. In this way, trainees will assimilate teaching techniques and
become aware of learner strategies. Trainees in a lift programme should read widely
in English, be thrust into contact with current affairs, global issues, social concerns,
local business, economic issues, the target cultures and so on. In this way, teacher
preparation and language teaching is not divorced from the real world.
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Native-speaker TEFL/TESOL trainees have quite
different needs that must be addressed. Such trainees are often singularly unaware of
English grammar. As well as becoming acquainted with pedagogic grammar, they should be
made aware of contrasts with their students' mother tongue(s). The short, sharp shock of
having to learn a language distant from their own, just for a few weeks, can also have a
salutary effect.
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Assembling the teacher education curriculum
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When components in the major areas above have
been decided, they must be sequenced within syllabuses, so that the most vital elements
are covered first, important areas come next and the least essential come last. To sort
the constituent parts in this way to construct five or six coherent syllabuses (which
together comprise the PRESET curriculum) is not particularly difficult, but relationship
and interdependency must be considered. Is this technique (strategy, piece of knowledge,
etc.) essential for novice teachers? If so, it should be part of a unit at an early level;
if not, it can be covered later.
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Once agreed upon and sequenced, the coherent
curriculum must be covered effectively; and the ways in which it is covered are as
important as the content itself if the outcome is to produce good teachers.
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A common element in any teacher
preparation curriculum should be variety in its presentation,
just as there should be a variety of approaches in schools. Training
approaches might include:
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- The frontal mode . Often called the teacher-centered mode (teaching should
never be teacher dominated), this mode is appropriate for panel work, demonstrations,
brainstorming sessions, certain types of discussion, Socratic dialogue, task-based viewing
of video lessons, introduction of new materials, etc. Often, trainees can prepare and
deliver the presentations and demonstrations instead of the trainer.
- The experiential mode . This is an approach in which trainees sample
teacher and learner roles in peer teaching and micro-teaching situations. Clearly, it
relates to the frontal mode, above, but there is usually a focus on process rather than
content. In this way, trainees can try out different management techniques and styles,
experience test-taking, language learning, working in pairs and groups, etc.
- The workshop mode . This suits materials production, lesson planning,
textbook analysis, the design of tests, the development of visual aids, etc.
- The pair/group work mode . This is most likely to involve most of the
trainees for most of the time. This mode is used mainly for clearly specified tasks,
usually leading to some form of sharing or pooling the results or opinions in a frontal
mode.
- The individualised mode . This allows trainees to
take responsibility for their own learning, with occasional
meetings with trainers. This mode is best for readings and
private study and for one-to-one trainee evaluation and counseling.
Individualisation is also used in designing and carrying out
classroom research, working on independent projects, conducting
specialised fields of study, and so on. Done properly, individualised
learning will steer trainees towards autonomy and wean them
from over-dependence on advisers.
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Teacher records and training
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It is not the purpose of this paper to address
issues of curriculum design for continuing teacher development, but when trainees become
teachers they should be required to continue their professional education. This can now
become more reflective as well as instrumental. A lot can be done autonomously (observing
colleagues, reading, etc.) but a great deal should be done through participation in graded
in-service schemes designed to build upon their initial training. To work with groups of
teachers on day-release (or weekends or during holiday time), is far more efficient than
trying to work with teachers one at a time in classrooms, especially where the groups are
reasonably homogeneous in terms of pre-service training and experience in schools. Crucial
units in such a scheme should be compulsory, forming a national common-core curriculum.
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Elements of this curriculum can be treated in a
unit-credit way, so that teachers build up a series of credits. With waystage
certificates, one for every six unit-credits, teachers can work towards attainable
short-term targets instead of viewing their professional development as an indistinct and
ill-defined whole. Their certificates, on which are marked the unit-credits obtained, act
as a record of training and provide a profile on the basis of which advisors can observe
lessons, evaluate teachers (and training), analyse further needs, and counsel teachers.
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Classroom intervention is far
too costly for developing countries because of its one-to-one
demand on advisers. What is more, classroom intervention only
works well when used with teachers who are already trained, and
are sensitive to pedagogic options and related theories. Yet many
advisers find themselves forced into an in-class training mode
because of a lack of provision for structured pre-service training
of the kind described above. Classroom supervision and counseling.
cannot serve as a band-aid for insufficient initial training.
It makes sense in both educational and economic terms to require
all new teachers to be the products of a well-designed PRESET
programme. Even a comparatively short programme will make the
world of difference to what happens in schools.
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David
Cross has worked in teacher and trainer development programmes. He has over 200
publications including Large Classes in Action (Prentice Hall/Regents). |
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