Understanding the Complex Processes in Developing Student Teachers’ Knowledge About Grammar

Abstract

Grammar <A> ABSTRACTThis article takes the view that grammar is driven by user choices and therefore complex and dynamic. This has implications for the teaching of grammar in language teacher education and how teachers' cognitions about grammar, and hence their own grammar teaching, might change. The participants in this small, interpretative study, students on an MA programme in the UK, were being taught grammar from a functional perspective, but with mainly traditional classifications and metalanguage. They were required to negotiate solutions to grammar tasks designed to provoke 'cognitive conflict' (Tocalli-Beller 2003) when the authentic language use of the texts did not conform to the students' prior knowledge. This was assumed to stimulate a high quality of engagement with language (EWL; Svalberg 2009), thus facilitating the construction of new or enhanced knowledge about grammar.Analysis of the participants' learner diaries, interviews and workshop interaction reveal that cognitive conflict is an essential factor in the emergence of new understandings of complex grammar features and of grammar as meaning in context. The study contributes to the literature on inquiry based approaches to language learner education by the insights it provides into knowledge creation in such environments.

Language Teacher Cognition in Applied Linguistics Research: Revisiting the Territory, Redrawing the Boundaries, Reclaiming the Relevance

“…Svalberg () examines the mediation of student teacher learning through collaborative tasks that pushed them to engage with a functional view of language. Her focus on the student teachers’ engagement with language during these tasks allows insights into the depth of their sense making and thus possibilities for meaningful internalization, even though the connection with these course participants’ future students’ learning remains a theoretical speculation.…”

“…Feryok and Oranje () consider the challenges experienced by their teacher participant in teaching in largely monolingual classrooms which she wished to address through an intercultural language teaching focus. Svalberg's () study considers how language teachers develop their awareness of the highly complex and dynamic nature of learning to mean in L2 (cf. Byrnes, ; Gebhard et al., ).…”

“…In line with the participation metaphor of researching language teacher cognition, the empirical studies in this special issue have drawn from a range of discursive approaches, such as microgenetic analysis, narratives, conversation analysis, and grounded theory ethnography. Some offer snapshots of sense making in action (Feryok & Oranje [2015], K. E. Johnson [2015], , and Svalberg [2015]), while others provide a detailed examination of teachers' sense making of their participation in past events to highlight patterns relevant to current and future practices (Coffey [2015], Golombek [2015], and Moodie & Feryok [2015]).…”

“…Johnson's study not only makes mediated internalization visible through the data from different practices of teacher education, but crucially, also offers evidence of how student teachers' enactment of specific language teaching practices creates opportunities for their students' language learning during their teaching practicum. Svalberg (2015) examines the mediation of student teacher learning through collaborative tasks that pushed them to engage with a functional view of language. Her focus on the student teachers' engagement with language during these tasks allows insights into the depth of their sense making and thus possibilities for meaningful internalization, even though the connection with these course participants' future students' learning remains a theoretical speculation.…”

Between theory and practice

“…He assumes that such a lack of form-focused teaching may be a result of teachers' underestimating "the pupils' abilities to take in this type of knowledge". He adds that it could also be because the teachers themselves are not sure of how to teach these aspects of the language without making them too abstract or mechanical (see Svalberg, 2015). He adds a notable reflection o n the experiences involved in studying his most recent language, Italian.…”