Breaking the Assumptions of Teaching

Friday, October 23, 2015

Section I: [Faculty Talk] Exploring the Gap between Novices and Experts Readers and Writers

Dr. Joan K. Middendorf
Adjunct Professor, Higher Education & Student Affairs department and Lead Instructional Consultant, Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning
Indiana University Bloomington

Decoding the Disciplines (Middendorf & Pace, 2004) is a theory about the gap between experts and novices. By paying attention to the places students struggle to learn, we can begin to map the “epistemology”—ways of operating in a field. Once we figure out what the expert does, we can use the other steps in decoding to show the students how to do it. Students operating within a decoded class are not only more likely to learn to get past specific bottlenecks, but also gain an understanding of the underlying epistemology of the discipline. In this session I will show some of the bottlenecks in reading and writing and some of the ways experts perform.

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Section II: Exploring the Impact of an Intensive Summer Institute on LCTL Teachers' Beliefs about Teaching Foreign Languages

Retno Hendryanti
Ph.D. Candidate, Literacy Culture & Language Education
Indiana University Bloomington

This study is situated in the intersection between studies on foreign language (L2) teacher beliefs and impact studies of L2 teacher development programs. It focuses on assessing the impact of an intensive teacher training program on less commonly taught language (LCTL) teachers' pedagogical belief and practices in communicative language teaching. Data includes participants' training-related work, interviews, and follow-up classroom observations. Reconstructive analysis is conducted by using Borg's (2006) model of language teacher cognition research. Findings will shed light on the impacts of a professional development program contributing to LCTL teachers' professional growth and provide practical implications for L2 teacher educators.

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Section III: Live History, Critical Events and Professional Identity Formation of Five Indonesian English Professors: A Narrative Inquiry

Mateus Yumarnamto
Ph.D. Candidate, Literacy Culture & Language Education
Indiana University Bloomington

This study explores the life histories, the critical events, and the professional identity formations of five English teachers from Indonesia. The five participants were studying in the U.S. as graduate students when the research was conducted. The major questions in this study are: What are the major critical events that have influenced the participants' professional identity formation? How could the critical events affect the participants' professional identity formation? From the interview data, the narratives were co-constructed and critical events were identified. The findings suggest that critical events could influence major the dialogic process of professional identity formation.

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29th SLED Symposium Team

• Dr. Martha Nyikos (SLED Faculty Advisor)
• Yoo Young Ahn (Organizing Committee Chair)
• Xin Chen
• Neil Klein
• Qi Li
• G Yeon Park
• Hyo Na Park
• Yeoeun Park
• Hajar AL Sultan
• Sandra Slaughter

(left to right) Hajar, Yeoeun, Neil, Dr. Nyikos, Yoo Young, G Yeon, Hyona, Xin, Qi