Global Issues: Teacher Identity and Pedagogical Practices in Language Education
Getting Married, Quitting the Job, and Becoming an English Teacher: Indonesian EFL Teacher Professional Identity in Contestation
Mateus Yumarnamto, Ph.D. Candidate
Literacy, Culture, and Language Education department
In the backdrop of Johnston’s (1997) echoing question “Do EFL Teachers Have Careers?” this current study is intended to explore a life history of an Indonesian EFL teacher. As a narrative inquiry, the main question of this study is related to professional identity formation of the subject, who was studying in the U.S. during this study. Data were collected from interviews, a group discussion, and correspondence with the participant. Two theoretical frameworks, identity in discourse (Soreide, 2006) and critical events in narrative (Webster and Mertova, 2004) were employed as the analytical tools to make sense of the narrative data and to shed light on the professional identity formation of the participant. The analysis reveals the complexity of identity formation in which identities are claimed and reclaimed in a contestation with the professional identities maintained and reinforced by the Indonesian education authority and the society.
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English-Medium Instruction: What Do Korean University Professors Know and Need?
Jaehan Park, Ph.D. Candidate
Literacy, Culture, and Language Education department
Professors in Korean universities are facing the daunting task of teaching subjects in English without appropriate training and support. To understand pedagogical and linguistic issues around English-medium instruction (EMI), the author worked with six university professors to explore their knowledge and needs for policy support and professional development for EMI. The findings indicate that the professors claimed their agency through negotiating university language policy in their classroom. This paper argues that translanguaging as pedagogy for EMI can liberate our understanding of bilingual learning and teaching in this Korean university context.
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Making Instructional Language Comprehensible in a Language Immersive Environment
Ai-Chu Ding, Jui-Hsin Hung, Ph.D. students
Literacy, Culture, and Language Education department
Shuya Xu, Ph.D. student
Instructional Systems Technology
In a language immersive environment, foreign language teachers need to know strategies that help them stay in the target language (TL) while maintaining the effectiveness of their instruction. In this study, we compile a list of 32 immersion strategies as our instrument to understand what strategies Chinese teachers at tertiary level currently apply to stay in TL, and how they perceive the effectiveness and feasibility of the 32 immersion strategies we identified via literature review and first-round data.
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One High School’s Perspective on Moodle
Sandra Slaughter, Ph.D. student
Literacy, Culture, and Language Education department
This study was conducted to learn more on the use of Moodle by students outside the high school classroom. After reviewing the literature on Moodle use in colleges and high schools globally, high school students who were enrolled in classes utilizing Moodle were surveyed. The research questions are: did the students use Moodle outside of the classroom, how often was Moodle accessed outside of class time, if the students had Internet access at home and the access speed, and what do teachers and students perceive as benefits of using Moodle.