Page 201 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Impact of a Professional Development Programme

Illustration of a Case

This section illustrates Özge, as one of the case study participants in the study. The choice of this par-
ticipant was decided during the study as this particular case produced a rich source of data. In order to
shed light on the complex and dynamic processes of the trainee teachers’ belief transformation in her
situated classroom context, I asked Özge (pseudonym), like other trainees, to express what her expec-
tations were from the school-based mentors to investigate her pre-established beliefs about language
teaching and learning.
In terms of her belief, before the practicum, Özge believed that

A language teacher should manage the class very effectively using different techniques and materials.
Classroom atmosphere is very important so a teacher should make a good classroom atmosphere. A
teacher should arouse the students’ interests using different materials, activities and real tasks. I think
that during lessons, students should often be given opportunities to work in small groups and with a
partner, which might help students feel more comfortable and relaxed and possibly reduce the anxiety
related to attempting the target language. Young learners need to speak out! Teachers should struggle to
increase the quantity and the quality of English spoken by the students in classrooms. So, it is essential
to create a more interactive and communicative classroom, particularly for young learners of English.
By also doing this, I believe in creating a S-SS ad S-T interaction in the classroom. Students must be
exposed to the target language; therefore, he or she should mostly use L2.

At the end of the ten-week mentoring observation period, her prior expectations from the mentor(s)
whose lessons she observed contradicted her beliefs in many ways, as stated below:

In my observation, I saw that the teacher always used the course book, he didn’t benefit from any other
interesting materials like I expected before. I know that one way to capture students’ attention and keep
them engaged in activities is to supplement the textbook activities with brightly coloured visuals puppets,
or objects. These can also be used for follow-up activities and make the language input comprehen-
sible. Unfortunately students in my class didn’t have a chance to study in small groups or in pairs, as I
expected before. During my observation period, I clearly understood that one of the most challenging
parts of teaching is classroom management. My mentor teacher was not effective in managing the class
and involving students in the learning process. We know young learners are very energetic and they have
limited attention span, it’s not an easy job for teachers. I also have doubts about controlling the class
before starting to teach and I’m very scared of not being able to convey what I would.

She explains the impact of the mentor on her beliefs resulting in a real dilemma as follows:

I think I got three contradicting views in my head. On the one hand, I like to follow my university lecturer’s
advice to use L2 because the students should be exposed to English as early as possible. They should get
used to the sound, the structure, the vocabulary… so that they can learn the language unconsciously.
And from the approaches course that I received at the university, I thought it would be more logical to
use L2 all the time and expect students to respond in English. On the contrary, during the observation,
I witnessed that the teacher didn’t use the target language as the medium of instruction. He was using
a lot of mother tongue.

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