Developing prospective teachers’ diagnostic skills through collaborative video analysis: focus on L2 reading

ABSTRACT

This paper contains a collaborative video-based approach to foster prospective teachers’ diagnostic skills with respect to pupils’ L2 reading processes. Together with a peer, the prospective teachers watched, systematically selected, analysed and commented on clips from a comprehensive video corpus on L2 reading strategies. In order to assist the prospective teachers in this demanding process, a Standardised Clip Protocol (SCP) was developed and tutorial support was provided. The SCPs were subjected to various empirical procedures. Quantitatively, the frequency of all learning challenges mentioned by the prospective teachers was counted. Qualitatively, the nature of the diverse reading challenges identified by the prospective teachers was investigated. In that respect, a focus was put on the prospective teachers’ diagnostic findings regarding pupils’ lexical and conceptual awareness. The results indicate that the skills to notice and diagnose L2 learners’ lexical and conceptual reading challenges form an essential part of Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) and should be integrated into teacher education programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• diagnostic skills
• L2 reading
• collaborative video analysis
• lexical awareness
• conceptual awareness

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgements go to the University of Kassel, Germany, for funding this project in the ‘Teaching Innovation Framework’ as well as to all participating prospective teachers and tutors who highly engaged in this project and last but not least to Markus Pusch who was of great help in the final formatting process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ADEQUA is an acronym for ‘Adequacy of learning strategy use and teacher support actions’, with the first part, ADEQUA I, focusing on learners’ strategy use and the second part, ADEQUA II, on teachers’ support actions. The ADEQUA project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in two subsequent grants (FI 684/13–1 and FI 684/13–2).

2. Here, a ‘word’ is obviously understood as an uninterrupted string of letters, which of course is only one way of defining a ‘word’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ‘Teaching Innovation Award’ of the University of Kassel, Germany, 2011.

Notes on contributors

Claudia Finkbeiner

Dr Claudia Finkbeiner is a professor of Applied Linguistics, Foreign Language Research and Intercultural Communication at the University of Kassel, Germany. She has been the chair of the Association for Language Awareness since 2006. Dr Finkbeiner has worked as a visiting professor at the Western Sydney University, Australia, in Wellington, New Zealand, in Syracuse, New York, USA, at Stanford University and Berkeley University as well as at the University of Oregon, USA, and at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her fields of interest include language awareness and cultural awareness, L2 research, L2 reading and literacy development, reading strategies and interest, CLIL, holistic and cooperative learning as well as blended learning.

Jennifer Schluer

Dr Jennifer Schluer is a researcher and lecturer in the field of Applied Linguistics, Foreign Language Research and Intercultural Communication at the English Department of the University of Kassel, Germany. She teaches courses on L2 reading and writing, intercultural communication, vocabulary development and the mental lexicon. Her main research interests include language awareness and cultural awareness, multilingualism, and English as a Lingua Franca in academic contexts.