It's been PG week for
me as we head into July. On Monday, I studied at the Post Graduate
Hub, on Tuesday and Wednesday I attended a Post Graduate Conference and,
on Friday, I went to the Hop Farm Festival to see Peter Gabriel. In
addition, I have been mostly drinking PG Tips as well.
Post Graduate Pre-Conference Workshops University of Warwick, 26 June
Having been ethused and thoroughly motivated by this year's IATEFL Conference in Glasgow, I wanted to take the opportunity of making a presentation at this year's CAL conference. The 15th Warwick International Postgraduate Conference in Applied Linguistics, to give it the full title, was held on Wednesday 27 June, although there was a full day of pre-conference sesssions/workshops held, on Tuesday 26 June, in the Humanities building.
On Tuesday, the director of Graduate studies and author of 'Qualitative Inquiry in TESOL', Dr Keith Richards, spoke about 'Playing fast and loose with qualitative data'. PDF here. Using examples ideas of 'misrepresentation', 'cherry-picking' (stretching the data) and 'coupling/de-coupling' he rushed through all the possible ways of not properly representing collected data. The notion of 'de-coupling' and 'loose coupling', particularly, is Richards' own theory, it appears, which can be committed by any researcher, however experienced they are:
"De-coupling is where you've got some data, and in presenting the data you de-couple it from some aspect of its source that MIGHT have interpretive bearing on the data".
'De-coupling' is
essentially taking things out of context. Richards used an example from Ken Hyland, who is Chair Professor of Applied Linguistics and
Director of the Centre for Applied English Studies at the University of Hong
Kong, a leader in the field of EAP, and someone whose work Richards
particularly respects. As Richards noted, if an example of de-coupling can slip
through Hyland’s net, it is something we can all fall prey to. In an extract from
some data, Hyland had selected a respondent's sentence which began with the
word 'Yes'. The positive response has been uttered in response to a
question which has already been formulated. So the answer given by the
respondent had effectively been 'de-coupled' from the stimulus, i.e. the
researcher's question. In another example, he used an excellently written
thesis by a former PhD student. The interviewer introduces too much
information and directs the interview too much. In Conversation Analysis,
there is a preference for agreement in talk, even if the respondent is of an
alternative opinion. This is shown in an extract below and described by
Richards afterwards:
N: I thought they couldn’t write – what they think…
R: why did you think that?
N: they all stopped writing … they (are) all afraid that they might get anything wrong … so when I came here they couldn’t show me work …they were crying when I asked to see … but they didn’t let me look … so I wrote the first page and the other page they wrote on their own.
R: …you need to make sure that the others are still … on task.
N: maybe they’re afraid and maybe they’re not sure … I don’t know … maybe they’re not confident enough to ask … maybe they think it’s a silly... task so they didn’t ask ‘cos they didn’t want to do it.
R: you still need to emphasise … you don’t expect all their writing to be perfect … is that the expectation of the school … if they put a pen to paper it must be perfect?
N: mostly right yeah … what are you writing here … why are you writing this way? Why does your handwriting look like this? so they stop doing things.
R: … so you’re working against the culture … almost
N: yes … I’ve told them they won’t get everything right.
Of interest in the above is the sense that practices and identities of all those involved jointly construct and are constructed by the discursive resources available to the participants and this process is sociohistorically situated and contingent.
Following Keith Richards was Warwick Associate Professor, Dr Mukul Saxena. His talk was about 'Linguistic ethnography of policy and practice: L1 in English classroom interaction'. PDF link here. Dorien Van De Mieroop's workshop followed, after lunch. Her talk was entitled 'Exploring the discursive construction of identity in a political context'.
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| Dr Daniel Dauber speaking on 26 June |
I will now go on to describe, very briefly in some cases, some of the other talks and, in doing so, hope that I don't misrepresent, cherry-pick or de-couple!
Dr Daniel Dauber was next. He presented a timely piece on conducting literature reviews. He provided some guidance - or dare I say, some 'PG tips', in going about this in a systematic way. This talk was timely for me and others present in the room, as many of us are at this particular stage of our dissertation. His presentation slides can be found here.
listen to ‘Daniel Dauber - Literature Review’ on Audioboo
Dr Daniel Dauber was next. He presented a timely piece on conducting literature reviews. He provided some guidance - or dare I say, some 'PG tips', in going about this in a systematic way. This talk was timely for me and others present in the room, as many of us are at this particular stage of our dissertation. His presentation slides can be found here.
listen to ‘Daniel Dauber - Literature Review’ on Audioboo
Finishing off the pre-conference workshop was Warwick senior teaching fellow, Sophie Reissner-Roubicek. She began with a deconstruction of The Guardian's open journalism advert, screened for the first time on 29 February 2012,
which imagines how the story of the Three Little Pigs might be covered by the paper in print
and online:
Having previously seen this I was ready to contribute and, having done a module in 'Discourse Analysis' in the first term, am quite interested in critical interpretations of the way things are presented, semiotics, multi-modality et al:
In the second couple of videos, two interviews - one with Sarah Ferguson and one with Princess Diana were shown. The earlier one (above) is described as Fergie interview by hostile reporter. The second clip is from the infamous Martin Bashir interview with Diana, which is by comparison. I speak about the contextual evidence for hostility, which you can hear below:
We also looked at a clip from a TV show on Teachers TV, which aimed to move the teacher from 'good' to 'outstanding'. A reference to Keith Richards' idea of de-coupling came out of this in that a series of rapdi answers were shown, but these had been removed from the question, effectively 'playing fast and loose' with the data, or all the recorded interviews. Although I am fully aware this goes on TV shows, and I used another example of The Apprentice to make this point, I hadn't previously thought of it in terms of de-coupling.
On
Wednesday, after a welcome from centre director, Professor Helen
Spencer-Oatey, we had the pleasure of a guest presentation from the Director, Centre for Language Education Research at Aston (CLERA), Professor Anne Burns. She joked that it was a change to be talking about a different topic
from action research, one that she was invited to speak about at a lot
of conferences. Instead she talked
about teacher cognition.
Having previously seen this I was ready to contribute and, having done a module in 'Discourse Analysis' in the first term, am quite interested in critical interpretations of the way things are presented, semiotics, multi-modality et al:
In the second couple of videos, two interviews - one with Sarah Ferguson and one with Princess Diana were shown. The earlier one (above) is described as Fergie interview by hostile reporter. The second clip is from the infamous Martin Bashir interview with Diana, which is by comparison. I speak about the contextual evidence for hostility, which you can hear below:
We also looked at a clip from a TV show on Teachers TV, which aimed to move the teacher from 'good' to 'outstanding'. A reference to Keith Richards' idea of de-coupling came out of this in that a series of rapdi answers were shown, but these had been removed from the question, effectively 'playing fast and loose' with the data, or all the recorded interviews. Although I am fully aware this goes on TV shows, and I used another example of The Apprentice to make this point, I hadn't previously thought of it in terms of de-coupling.
Post Graduate Conference - University of Warwick, 27 June 2012:
Prof. Burns' plenary talk was entitled 'Investigating teacher cognition: Paradigms and methodological considerations'. This is an area which Burns studied at Macquarie University, Sydney,
for her PhD under the supervision of Prof. David Nunan, who recently
came to Warwick to give a talk on Action Research and to conduct a
follow-up workshop. Nunan originally introduced her to the idea of
researching teacher cognition. The
actual definiton is a 'slippery concept to define'. Burns began with a
quote from Simon Borg, taken from a Cambridge guide that she edited with
Jack Richards.
‘The study of teacher
cognition is concerned with understanding what teachers think, know and
believe. Its primary concern,
therefore, lies with the unobservable dimension in teaching – teachers’ mental
lives’. (Borg, S. in Burns, A., & Richards, (Eds.). (2009). The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Teacher Education. New York: Cambridge University Press.)
This
is an important development for Burns. You cannot just look at what is
happening in classroom. A much richer understanding comes from the
beliefs,
thinking etc of the people operating in those environments. Burns went
on to describe research undertaken at various stages of a teacher's
development - that of pre-service training - the Apprenticeship of
Observation studies, the practicum experience stage and the practice
in-service period.
Rather than describe those in detail, I thank Professor Burns herself for being allowed to include those extracts below:
In
the third extract, Burns mentions research which has tried to uncover
'linkages' between classroom belief and practice. It is complex, it
seems, and research is still ongoing. One study highlighted assessment
requirements and the influence that had on change processes
identified. I can certainly relate to this myself. My own frustrations
at spending hours preparing a lesson only to chuck it in the bin as mid
or end-of-term exams take priority!
Burns’ own study (for her PhD, and published in 1996) looked at what were the
major factors that were influencing what teachers did in classroom. Not all
that surprising, really. Teachers think
about their learners, what they believe about learning and the learning
process. What began to be more obvious,
and it wasn’t just the psychological factors that were important, but the
social context surrounding the classroom – so Burns tried to build a (kind of)
model which talked about what are the social issues that are surrounding the
way in which cognition occurs.
I
have only discussed the beginning of an engaging plenary. I have no
previous knowledge of this research area. It interests me to try to
understand the links between teacher cognition and actual practice. It
is a daily process and often my own ideals when I teach do manifest
themselves into practice. External considerations, such as assessment,
does play a part in disturbing that, but If I am fully aware during an
initial training phase, I can't be that surprised when things change or
when students don't behave as I might expect them too!
After a short break, a second plenary session was given by Dr Dorien Van De Mieroop, of the University of Leuven. Her talk was on 'Negotiating meaning in performance appraisal interviews.' Unfortunately, I could not attend the majority of this session and feel unable to give a good account of it.
During lunch in the Engineering block, there was a poster display, including presentations by Bushra Ahmed Khurram (Warwick), Cong Zhang (Newcastle) and Maria Nikologianni (Warwick). See below:
In the afternoon, presentations were separated roughly by research area, as follows:-
I mostly spent my time in the ELTED room, in which I gave my own presentation shown below. Later I visited the ELLTA room for the final two sessions of the day. Those that I attended were as follows:
Arwa Gandeel - University of Leeds
'Novice English language teacher beliefs and practices
(A story of a 1st year English language teacher)'
This presentation described the beliefs and practices of a novice English language teacher from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. You can hear a short extact from the talk below:
Parvaneh Parvaresh - University of London
'An investigation of the relationship between teacher beliefs
and classroom practice in English language teaching'
and classroom practice in English language teaching'
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| 이한나 presentation on 27 June |
이한나 (Hanna Lee) - Leeds Metropolitan University
'Korean EFL teachers' beliefs about technology-assisted language teaching and practices in the classroom'
Hannah's presentation linked in with my own as it was about teachers' attitudes towards implentation of technology/ICT and she had the same obscure article by Y Lam (2000) which I has found.
Gosia Sky - University of Warwick 'Motivations of EAP practitioners in British Higher Education' |
Hazel McAllister - Leeds Metropolitan University
'International foundation students' perceptions on native and non-native
English language teachers'.
Both Gosia's presentation and Hazel's presentation referred the preference for so-called native speakers over non-native speakers for employment purposes. Hazel's particularly focused on the discrimination found with NESTs (Native English Speaking Teachers) and NNESTs and the perceptions of a group of international foundation students. Quite often schools justify the selection of NESTs as a demand of the students or as a 'badge of honour' for the institution. Hazel wanted to investigate this topic. Pronunciation seems a key issue in wanting to be taught by a NEST. You may certainly gain some authenticity - even if the speaker uses glottle-stops or pronounces 'three' as 'free' etc.. You can hear a short extract from Hazel's talk below:
Mala Palanchimay - University of Warwick
'Eliciting information on the cognitive processes used during academic listening: Questionnaire development method'
'Eliciting information on the cognitive processes used during academic listening: Questionnaire development method'
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| Demonstrating existing schema through a 'Peanuts' cartoon |
Mala's talk centred on her Pearson-sponsored research into IELTS (or similar) listening tests and whether there is a similarity to the thought processes that go through listener's minds during an academic lecture. She explains this in the extract below:
I was one of several candidates asked by Mala to fill in a questionnaire about this whilst listening to a recent talk by Professor David Nunan at Warwick. As a so-called 'Native Speaker', my responses were being compared to other 'non-native' listeners. Mala's investigation begins with examining whether the cognitive processes are caomparable and whether tests are fair in discriminating between those who will and will not be able to understand lectures in an overseas institution, such as Warwick.
In the 2nd extract below, Mala reads out a Peanuts cartoon (shown above) and asks what factors made it easier to understand the humour that it contains and what cognitive processes we went through to arrive there:
Towards the end, Mala asked us to watch two videos of talking heads, except the visual didn't work at first, leaving just a listening activity with no other cues to help other than what was being said and how it was being said. The two videos are embedded below. We were asked what difference it made if we could see the speaker as well. The second was deemed to be more understandable for more people in the room because of their pre-existing schema of 'plagiarism'. I suggested that a song can be written about it, but then I know that I had already done my parody. Try playing both videos simulatenously and see which one you understand more, try closing your eyes:
My presentation:
'Technophilia or Technophobia: Exploring teacher autonomy in learning ICT tools
for the ELT classroom'.
Technophilia or Technophobia: Exploring teacher autonomy in learning ICT tools for the ELT classroom
Hop Farm Festival - Peter Gabriel
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| My pic of the 'Intruder' |
Peter Gabriel with the New Blood Orchestra - In Your Eyes - Live
(with me on backing vocals!) - 29 June
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| 'Red Rain (Remixed)' |
