Keywords

Part III shows how CA findings could be used in teacher education. The papers included in this section reflect the two current lines of research that are at the intersection of teacher education and CA: (1) studies that focus on post-observation feedback sessions and interactions between mentors and mentees as well as trainers and trainees (e.g. Harris 2013; Kim and Silver 2016, this volume; Waring 2017), and (2) studies that look into the dynamics of classroom interaction and include critical self-reflective practices (e.g., Walsh 2011) for implementing CA-informed frameworks for teacher education (e.g. Sert 2015, 2019, this volume). Such studies typically combine CA findings with self-reflection and peer-feedback practices to document teacher-learning over time and cross-sectionally (Sert 2019). An important outcome of this second line of research consists of teacher education frameworks that are based on classroom interaction studies; these frameworks include SETT (Walsh 2006, 2011), IMDAT (Sert 2015, 2019), and SWEAR (Waring this volume).

In his chapter, Sert (this volume) presents a framework for transforming CA findings into future L2 teaching practices. Sert argues that findings of CA studies of classroom interaction can be integrated into teacher education programs in the form of audio-visual materials. In doing so, through analysis of classroom data from Luxembourg and Turkey and with a focus on a trajectory of language alternation, he first explicates a comparative agenda (Markee 2017) for identifying interactional phenomena and developing video materials to be integrated into a CA-inspired teacher education program. He then goes on to describe how CA findings can be integrated into a technology-enhanced language teacher education framework, building on Walsh’s (2011, 2012, 2013) concept of Classroom Interactional Competence (CIC) and his earlier teacher education framework IMDAT (Sert 2015).

In the following chapter, Waring (this volume) draws on the concept of heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981) to show, among other things, how a particular aspect of teacher talk can achieve more than one goal (for example, controlling while opening space for participation). With an emphasis on student participation and engagement, Waring presents a teacher education framework, SWEAR, which promises to help teachers to develop heteroglossia to manage various classroom paradoxes. For example, teachers who attempt to attend to individual voices within the larger classroom interactional context may well end up having to deal with competing demands which may ultimately result in the current pedagogical focus being derailed, cause student participation to be undermined, discourage volunteering, or deny individuals important opportunities to learn. Waring’s framework consists of five stages that include (1) (S)ituating a problem, (2) (W)orking with a classroom recording, (3) (E)xpanding discussions, (4) (A)rticulating strategies, and (5) (R)ecording and repeating. Waring argues that the framework is best used as a method to enhance teachers’ awareness of the challenges and possible solutions in classroom talk.

In the last chapter of this section, Kim and Silver (this volume) examine how mentors interacting with practicing primary school teachers of English in Singapore enacted two different, potentially contradictory roles as feedback-providers versus facilitators of reflection during post-observation conversations that were designed to contribute to the teachers’ ongoing professional development. The authors begin by showing that, when teachers initiate reflection episodes, such episodes run off more smoothly than when mentors initiate such talk. They then go on to show that when mentors act as feedback-providers, opportunities for teachers to engage in meaningful reflection on their own teaching practices are inhibited. Conversely, when mentors adopt the role of facilitators of reflection, teachers are able to engage in reflection that is much more conducive to their own observable professional development. Such roles are obviously not the product of individual decision-making or cognition, but are interactively achieved by all participants on a moment-by-moment basis. It is therefore in the observable micro details of video-recorded post observation conversations that researchers, teacher educators/trainers and teachers may find answers to the question of how to make such conversations a more reflection-based rather than a feedback-oriented exercise.