Department of German

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'Awareness' as Assessment Tool in Teacher Professional Development


Presentation by

Katherine A. Sprang
on May 18, 2002 at the

Language Symposium 2002: Northwestern University

Measuring up:
Assessing Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning

For the past two years, I have been working with three graduate student colleagues on a research project examining teacher development in the German Department at Georgetown University. Funded by the Spencer Foundation, this project has focused on documenting and understanding teachers' developing knowledge bases and teaching skills within the framework of a task-based, content-oriented curriculum for teaching German at the university level.

The project's data sources are as follows:

• baseline interview with leading faculty members in the department (5)
• questions intended to determine the extent to which faculty members were familiar with formal and informal means of graduate teachers development during their time in the GUGD, the extent to which these faculty members were personally involved in graduate student professionalization, etc.
• two interviews with current practitioner informants at varying levels in their tenure with the department (4)
• a 'beginning' graduate student enrolled in the Fundamentals course
• an 'intermediate' graduate student who has some experience teaching in the GUGD context
• an 'advanced' graduate student who has taught for several semesters at various levels
• the GUGD curriculum coordinator
• six journal entries from current practitioner informantscopies of each current practitioner informant's teaching philosophy statements
  

In order to make sense of the informants' comments about their developing expertise, I have to give a brief overview of the GUGD curriculum. Designed to be "task-based, content-oriented", the curriculum is made up of five levels of undergraduate instruction. Courses at each level focus on specific content areas while emphasizing appropriate language use for learners at that level. Each level has specific linguistic goals, and the courses at each level incorporate those goals into the content orientation through the performance of writing and speaking tasks. These tasks are carefully designed to require students to perform at increasing levels of fluency, accuracy, and complexity. All of the members of the department, from the graduate students to the most senior faculty member, have played an active role in the development and refinement of the curriculum, and each member of the department is deeply committed to the highest standards of language teaching. As graduate teachers are socialized into the community of professional practice in the German Department, they are taught by lesson and by example the importance of understanding what happens in the language classroom; and over time and with practice, their knowledge of what to do in response to the classroom dynamic is broadened and deepened. I will focus in my talk today on some facets of that experience. If you are interested in understanding the GUGD curriculum in more detail, I invite you to visit the Department's website.

Teacher professionalization means that an individual changes something about his or her teaching. It's important to recognize, though, that the requirement to change doesn't always mean that the teacher's performance in the classroom has to improve. There are two kinds of changes that occur as teachers become more expert in their teaching: one involves changing one's teaching behaviors, which is an observable change; and the other involves changing one's beliefs about language learning and teaching and about what is appropriate behavior in the classroom - this type of change is not observable, per se, but it translates into a substantially different kind of teacher, one who not only knows what s/he is doing in the classroom at every moment, but also why that action is the appropriate one to take with this group of students at this time. As one informant put it, "? it's the whole attitude of no one is ever completely developed. There's always room for growth. There's always room for more ideas. I think that's one of the pluses, one of the best parts?"

Reflection on one's teaching, or on what one has observed in another teacher's classroom, is necessary for change to occur. Reflection on action will lead to reflection in action, which is another way to say that the instructor becomes aware of an issue or an opportunity, and can take the steps at that moment to avert catastrophe or provide the right guidance during a "teachable moment". This is how reflection works:

There are four parts to any performance, including teaching: knowledge, skills, attitude and awareness. In a developing teacher, awareness of an issue acts as the trigger or catalyst for change. Awareness may come about in a number of ways: it can happen through being introduced to an idea in a class or workshop, or even a hallway conversation; by noticing something about one's teaching behavior and considering it further through journalling or through reflection. Awareness is like a light switch - it is either on or off. Once a teacher is aware and attentive to an issue, change will occur.

An example is useful at this point. Here are some data from a graduate teacher informant about an issue that is near and dear to all of us. You can see how this individual continues to grapple with this issue over a period of several months.

At start of first semester (first interview):
? My main question about this is I'm not sure, you know, with content based learning, it's unclear to me now at this stage, you know, only having a couple classes, how you incorporate things like grammar, you know, all those formal things that students really need to learn. How do you incorporate them in a curriculum and will they teach me how to do this? ?

After one semester of observing classes and learning about the GUGD curriculum (teaching philosophy statement):
? When content is emphasized over form, deciding how to address language features could be challenging. From my class observations, I learned the value of dealing with such issues gradually; it is not necessary, like I had previously thought, to correct every lexical mistake or explain each grammar rule that comes up in class. If a particular problem seems to be universal, meaning a majority of the students have it, it is probably beneficial to explain the related language feature. Or, I think it could be useful to assign language-focused homework dealing with the question at hand, instead of explaining it in class. Since I learned foreign languages in a context where lexical features were always explained, I can imagine it will be challenging for me to "hold back" explanations and make judgments as to when it is helpful to draw attention to such features and when it is not?.

? Although I am relatively confident that I am prepared to enter the classroom as a teacher, there are still issues which I have yet to resolve. Error-correction is one aspect I need to explore in more depth, simply by gaining more experience teaching. I am aware that correction involves taking into account the task, context, and type of error. I can imagine myself finding it difficult to know when to correct a student and what type of correction method to use. This is similar to my questions about grammar explanations; although I want to emphasize content, issues such as accuracy and fluency do matter to a certain extent in language learning. I will need to explore further to what degree they should be addressed in my classes.

After several semesters of working within the curricular context of the GUGD, graduate student teachers have developed a clear sense of who they are as professional instructors, as can be seen by this response to the following journal question:

? Being a member of the GUGD curriculum, where I have had the opportunity (as well as responsibility) of helping in its maintenance, has changed my view of language teaching in a dramatic way. I see a solid curriculum as an absolute prerequisite for a strong language program. While I may not be that much of a different instructor in terms of my own teaching style, I have learned to reflect, as well as have students reflect, on the goals for respective classes and learners' development. I've also learned to connect those things that I read or have heard about in the field of applied linguistics into my own teaching, and I think our curriculum, precisely because it does incorporate so much theoretical literature out there on language learning, does a great job in supporting this behavior. And, I find that my students are often as interested in learning about their own development as language learners as I am. Furthermore, working within this curriculum has allowed me to see the progression that my students are going through, so that I don't have to worry that certain language and/or content areas aren't unnecessarily repeated, or left out. As an additional note, I am certainly much more aware of the register differences needed at the various levels, and that has strengthened both my teaching and my German language abilities.

(faculty/student mentoring) ?I talked to xxx a lot because he was my SRA, and my professor, so when he was doing some things with materials development I was able to help with that, and we discussed how professors go about finding materials for courses, or where they get ideas for courses. Those type of things.

Informant with some experience:
(first interview)
? you have to be able to work collaboratively with others, especially if you're an unexperienced teacher, you do need advice and you can get this advice. And because the curriculum is structured this way that you have to work with others?.
(second interview)
Well, I talk to xxx [faculty member/mentor] and I talk to other graduate students who teach at the same level. Or sometimes to people who teach at other levels. Yeah, I talk when I have problems, let's put it this way. Maybe even when there's disciplinary problems, or I don't know, problems with students. And then I talk to... for instance, when I don't exactly know how to introduce a certain activity or a certain text , so it's also not only formal but also content oriented, like how to specifically teach a certain text or idea.

Informant with several semesters' experience (second interview):
I have to say, I've had, with almost anybody that I've had contact with in the department I've had conversations about teaching. Another great example is, of course this also was in accordance with observations ? The two of them came in ? and observed my class and then I met with them afterwards, and we just, we've had so many conversations since then about how the class was doing and things they liked. ? It's so wonderful when you're able to talk with other people in the department and find out things that they like or they don't like and suggestions they have. ? and also just reflecting on whether or not certain things work in a course. Like xxx had taught Text and Context, so I would sometimes run off certain ideas by her just to get her feedback, just to see what she thought about certain things we were doing. And the fact that everybody knows something about the curriculum, and that they, maybe not everybody's taught every different level, but they have a sense of, for example, how progression works. You can talk to a lot of people.

? I almost take it for granted that I'm allowed to give input in the courses I have taught. Because in the beginning I had the responsibility of that. And I was surprised and shocked. But now I really want... I mean, I always wanted to help, but now it's so wonderful that you can really actually be knowledgeable about something and actually impact a curriculum, because people want, they all want... all the professors want feedback. They want to know how this is working. We're all in it together, so we all have something at stake, so I don't think... it's not surprising to me anymore that this sort of feedback is welcomed?.

Thus, teachers are caught up in a continual cycle of assessment: consideration of the quality of student learning; reflection on their own effectiveness as teachers; analysis of the usefulness of materials for specific purposes to achieve the goals of the curriculum; and an overarching sense of 'curriculum' as framework for their teaching and learning activity.

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