Every year, the special interest groups within IATEFL are invited to curate a day of talks related to their area of special interest. At mawsig’s showcase on 4 april in liverpool this year, our choices included four talks that formed part of a forum on research informing materials writing .Cognitive learning model this week’s posts on our website all come from that forum and in today’s post, luis carabantes looks at how and why pre-service teachers should learn to design their own language teaching materials .Cognitive learning model

The following article summarises part of my doctoral research, which I presented at the 2019 IATEFL conference in liverpool. I argued that much of the pedagogical rationale underlying the design of materials by pre-service teachers (PST) is underpinned by disparaging beliefs about the learners’ capabilities and dispositions, which result in a dumbing-down of practice in ELT.Cognitive learning model I also argued that elements from both university and school contexts tend to reinforce this pedagogical practice that the psts expose their learners to.Cognitive learning model

Following international trends, chile has embarked on a programme of standardisation of english language teacher education (díaz-maggioli, 2017).Cognitive learning model despite these standards being only a suggestion from the national authorities, the current processes of accreditation of higher education – and consequently teacher education – have pushed chilean universities into complying with these guidelines in order to secure financial support from the chilean state (espinoza & gonzález, 2013).Cognitive learning model whether or not standardisation of teacher education is a positive change in teacher education (an issue that is beyond the scope of this paper), I take the view that ‘standard eight’, which tackles the design, selection, and adaptation of materials by teachers, is a positive move because it makes teachers’ work more visible.Cognitive learning model in my experience as a language teacher and teacher educator, this area has been traditionally neglected, despite being reportedly beneficial in teacher education (e.G.Cognitive learning model garton & graves, 2014). This said, my analysis of 25 pedagogía en inglés programmes in chile reveals that only three of them have an explicitly stated module tackling the above-mentioned standard, which would appear to leave materials design, selection and adaptation to take care of themselves.Cognitive learning model

With this situation as a backdrop, I designed an ethnographically oriented case study to answer the question of how pre-service teachers learn to design their own language teaching materials.Cognitive learning model acknowledging commonly accepted theories of teacher education that recognise the pivotal role of the sociocultural elements in a teacher’s learning of teaching, I used an offshoot of sociocultural theory known as activity theory (AT) to help me map the sociocultural factors influencing the development of conceptual tools mediating the psts’ design of materials.Cognitive learning model to this end, I used grossman, smagorinski and valencia (1999:14) who define conceptual tools as ‘principles, frameworks, and ideas about teaching, learning, and english/language arts acquisition’ employed by teachers as heuristics guiding their pedagogical decision-making.Cognitive learning model

I gathered the data with psts in their final year of a five-year english teacher education programme who were doing their work placements across different schools in a city in the south of chile.Cognitive learning model the methods employed were interviews and stimulated recalls with psts, interviews with teacher educators and schoolteachers, pieces of material designed by the psts, and official documents provided by the university.Cognitive learning model I analysed the data using thematic analysis and nvivo, organising it according to categories of AT, focusing on how the members of the community, rules, goals, and division of labour of both university and school influenced the development of conceptual tools.Cognitive learning model

The analysis of the materials designed by the psts, together with data collected via the interviews and stimulated recalls suggests the pervasiveness of disparaging beliefs about the learners when making decisions about materials design in two broad domains: the learners’ capacities and their dispositions for language learning.Cognitive learning model the quotes below illustrate the reasons underpinning this behaviour. In the first sample, we can see francisco’s justification for using celebrity-related topics in his material, arguing that a different type of thematic content would be beyond the learners’ capabilities.Cognitive learning model from a dispositional viewpoint, in the second extract, emilia’s rationale for the inclusion of a written language explanation in her worksheet lies in her belief that the learners find writing boring.Cognitive learning model

These rationales are then used to carry out three forms of dumbing down in the materials. Firstly, there is a tendency to simplify the complexity of the tasks the learners are asked to engage with.Cognitive learning model for example, a reduction of the choices in multiple choice items or questions with language identical to that used in the inputs tend to be used to avoid distressing the learners cognitively.Cognitive learning model secondly, the psts tend to reduce considerably the amount of language production elicited in their materials. They do this by including tasks that require little use of speaking or writing on the basis that the learners will not be able to speak or write.Cognitive learning model finally, the overall number of tasks in their materials tends to be reduced, in the interest of not overloading the learners.

These forms of dumbing down are strongly reinforced in the school context.Cognitive learning model the psts appear to be enculturated into disparaging practices by the schoolteachers’ discourses and models of ELT. For example, the quote below by a schoolteacher mentoring psts reflects disparaging beliefs about the learners’ disposition to learn, which result in the realisation of infantile materials.Cognitive learning model

Regarding the university setting, the pedagogía en inglés programme seems aware of the psts’ tendency to underplay the learners’ capacities. This notwithstanding, the lesson plan model required from the psts by the university appears to aggravate the lack of production mentioned earlier.Cognitive learning model during their work placement, the psts are expected to frame their lessons using a pre–while–post structure for reading and listening, which the psts perceive as having practical limitations.Cognitive learning model as can be seen below, fernanda lacked the time to complete the implementation of the model. Consequently, she reduced the elicitation of language to a few sentences, which meant that the learners no longer had the opportunity to express themselves in english.Cognitive learning model

The situations described above have a number of implications. Firstly, the dumbing down of ELT materials appears to be closely related to the lack of recognition of materials design as an important activity in teacher education and teachers in general.Cognitive learning model in light of this, I would argue that a greater focus on materials design can potentially prevent the instantiation of beliefs that undermine the learners’ cognitive and affective development.Cognitive learning model secondly, the factors that contribute to the construction of such disparaging beliefs need to be first identified, and then addressed in the contexts where pre-service teachers learn to teach.Cognitive learning model again, a greater focus on the materials designed by pre-service teachers by teacher educators can indeed help them raise the bar of the intellectual challenges they give their learners.Cognitive learning model finally, from a methodological point of view, the use of research designs acknowledging the complexities of teacher education outside the ELT bubble can provide greater insights into the educational issues underlying materials development processes.Cognitive learning model