Page 207 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Impact of a Professional Development Programme

The activity is named “What is there in the refrigerator?”. She puts up a model refrigerator and hides
items of food and drinks. She asks the students to close their eyes and guess what is hidden by giving
clues. The students try to guess what is hidden. The students are highly motivated and use the target
language effectively (Observation notes)

She commented on the above activity as follows:

I hoped to create S-S and S-T interactions. The students were successful in constructing such interactions,
especially S-S interaction; they were active and motivated (Stimulated recall interview).

Stimulated recall interview concerning this lesson further revealed that her aim was to encourage
students to communicate:

My aim was to teach the students correct pronunciation and recognition of the super ordinates of the
items. I gave importance to fluency instead of accuracy because my first concern is their ability to com-
municate in the target language. In my first activity, I intentionally separated the names of the items and
posted them on the board by letting them see what I was doing because it was the first activity of the topic
and I didn’t want to raise anxiety. I took care of all students and tried to include all of them in the lesson.

Through classroom teaching, Özge’s beliefs about language teaching and learning were further refined
and developed. To begin with, she had concerns about the traditional approach to language teaching and
she was more inclined towards communicative, activity based language teaching. Özge reflected on how
she could turn a lesson into an opportunity for students’ learning. In the next lesson, she introduced not
only a variety of activities, but she also tried to get the students engaged in the activities. This teaching
incident made a strong resonance with her classroom observation as mentioned above, which consoli-
dated her belief that teachers can effectively manage misbehaviour. More importantly, by reflecting on
her teaching and seeking improvement (Farrell, 1999; 2007), she enriched her belief and came to realize
the teacher’ role as a facilitator of the students’ learning in the classroom:

Actually my beliefs changed thanks to my own experiences. I saw that the more I practiced on teaching
in classroom the more I could deal with difficulties easily because practicing provided me the chance of
getting to know students’ behaviours and I could comment on them so I could use different techniques
accordingly. For example; while I was teaching ‘foods and drinks’ I used ‘smiling face stickers’ when
they joined to the activities and beyond any doubt every student was willingly interested in the activities
(Reflective journal).

Johnson (1994) posits that

if the aim of teacher education programmes is to provide trainee teachers with opportunities to experi-
ence real teaching, then teacher educators (in this case the practicum mentors) should make sure that
trainee teachers are granted a reasonable amount of control over what and how they will teach, so that
they can test their emerging conceptions of teaching (p.47).

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