From effective lecturing behaviour to hidden cognitions: a preliminary model explaining the Language-Teaching Methodology Interface

ABSTRACT

This contribution reports on the findings of a project whose aim was to explore the construct of the language-teaching methodology interface (LTMI) in lecturing through English. Evidence of its existence will be provided and implications for teacher training will be considered. On the assumption that the LTMI can be characterised by the co-existence of a practical and a cognitive dimension, in previous contributions we focused on such elements. First, following Björkman ([2011] “Pragmatic Strategies in English as an Academic Lingua Franca: Ways of Achieving Communicative Effectiveness?.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (4): 950–964), we carried out an intensive analysis of a number of observed lectures with the aim of exploring the interplay between the use of pragmatic strategies and non-standardness at the morphosyntax level in EMI lectures in an Italian context. Afterwards, through qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews, we sought to uncover those conditions lying underneath observable behaviour. In the present contribution, first, the extensive analysis of observed lectures is described. Second, steps taken within the framework of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Ragin [2000] Fuzzy-set Social Science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, [2008] Redesigning Social Inquiry. Fuzzy Sets and Beyond. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press) to analyse all findings obtained are illustrated. Empirical findings seem to support the claim according to which the two dimensions of language and teaching methodology do have blurred boundaries: the results obtained may therefore be interpreted as a first confirmation of the existence of the multifaceted construct of the LTMI.

KEYWORDS:

• English Medium Instruction
• content-teaching and language integration
• lecture observations
• lecturer cognitions
• fuzzy-set QCA

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to express her heartfelt gratitude to the seven lecturers who participated in the research, whose contribution has been invaluable, and to the anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments helped improve the quality of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 English Medium Instruction is defined as follows: ‘the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions where the first language (L1) of the majority of the population is not English’ (Macaro 2018, 19).

2 Following Borg, teacher cognition is defined as ‘the unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching – what teachers know, believe, and think’ (Borg 2003, 81, emphasis added).

3 All analytic operations described next (i.e. calibration, composition of macro-conditions, analysis of necessary conditions and truth table analysis) have been performed using the fsQCA 3.0 software for Mac (Ragin and Davey 2016).

4 Due to space limitations, the observation grid is not displayed here; it is available online: https://tinyurl.com/2p9yzrfe (last access: December 10th, 2021).

5 Due to space limitations, calibration tables of all causal conditions are not displayed here; they are available online: https://tinyurl.com/ycxrwemh (last access: December 20th, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

The author acknowledges funding by the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies of Ca’ Foscari University Venice (Assegno di ricerca dal titolo ‘Lingua e metodologia didattica nell’insegnamento accademico in lingua inglese: due lati della stessa interfaccia’; SSD: L-LIN/02), which made this post-doc research possible.

Notes on contributors

Ada Bier

Ada Bier is a Subject expert ("Cultrice della materia") in Educational Linguistics at the Dept. of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. In this University, she obtained both her MA (2013) and PhD (2017) and worked as a post-doc research fellow (2017-2019). The present article was prepared during the years of post-doc research fellowship at Ca’ Foscari. She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) with a project entitled FURLEUS (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101022752). Her main research interests include psychological aspects related to teaching and learning through foreign/second/minority languages in multilingual settings, plurilingualism and multilingual education, pragmatic competence and language awareness in academic teaching in EMI settings.