Didactic discussions during ESL/EFL English teacher training courses

ABSTRACT

During teacher training courses, pre-service teachers acquire not only aspects regarding specific content they must teach, in this case English as a Second and Foreign Language, they also analyse different pedagogical approaches and reflect on their practical implementations. At present, student-centred approaches are being implemented in educational systems and they demand complex perspectives focused on interaction and reflective practices. One way of promoting these approaches is by incorporating didactic discussions based on the meta-analysis of recorded lessons that are presented as case studies. By watching and examining specially chosen video-recorded lessons, prospective teachers reflect upon and discuss different teaching and learning approaches, classroom management strategies, ways of interacting, and classroom arrangements. A mixed research approach, based on interviews and a classroom survey, was carried out during two consecutive years in an English teacher training programme in Uruguay to evaluate the effectiveness of didactic discussions based on the observation of video-recorded lessons. All of the pre-service teachers stated that the discussions and debates the video-recorded lessons triggered, helped them understand and acquire important pedagogical notions that helped them teach in more confident and effective ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Didactic discussions
• reflective practice
• teacher training
• ESL
• EFL

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patricia Carabelli

Patricia Carabelli is a graduate in Education Sciences who holds a Master in Human Sciences (Contemporary Philosophy) from the Universidad de la República (Uruguay), a Master in English Language Teaching from Southampton University (United Kingdom), and who is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Linguistics at the Universidad de la República. She has been teaching English for over twenty years, is a Teacher Trainer, an English Assistant at the Universidad de la República, and the Director of the Language Centre of the Universidad Católica del Uruguay.