liberal education and at the UAS
Oral English course in liberal education
The two oral English courses in liberal education also created an authentic field of teaching for the promotion of professional development. I chose and wrote material, implemented the course and found answers to the problems. These tasks, the independence, complete responsibility for the studies and the freedom supported professional development. A type of educational institute for adults other than the UAS expanded the teacher’s horizon of language education. Researching and developmental activity were closely intertwined in the planning and implementation of the study unit. The decision on the conception of man in this research demanded comparison between such conceptions and the understanding of the grounds for the decision. In line with the chosen main research philosophy of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, the researcher was obliged to analyse her overall teacher beliefs, assumptions and her history for the research in general, to recognise her prejudices and become aware of them and their influence on her thinking. The recognition of human understanding as historically effected (TM 300–302) makes it possible for the researcher to remain open to tradition and realise that it is really saying something (TM 361). This gives the researcher the means to accept what the text says as truth even when it contradicts him/her (TM 361), which applies both to researching and the teacher’s professional development. Language, conversation, dialogue and listening central in Gadamer’s philosophy were central also in teacher development. Because Gadamer’s focus was not on language education, his work was intriguing, even if also demanding just as Wenger’s ideas on learning in general in communities of practice and his stand that participation is an expression of human social nature and at the core of human learning or knowing (Wenger 1998, 3). These two approaches brought new viewpoints adding to what the more common theories and approaches gave.
In the first years of this research new and recent literature on FLE pragmatics was available. CEF had been published in English in 2001. It was especially important for teacher development, here to be studied for a concrete purpose that made the study of CEF even more meaningful and rewarding. For a wider view, it was necessary to study theories of learning. Suggestopedic, cooperative and sociocultural theory and practices were important for the assignments, especially the tasks. Inventing new tasks was one fascinating part of the teacher’s professional development also serving the classes at the UAS. A Holiday in Cornwall, which resembled traditional suggestopedic material, was by far the most extensive study material I had ever written and thus one specific extension of
teacher development. The theories and other knowing sought and discovered for the course created and contributed to a course, where reflection, awareness, encouragement, autonomy and their growth could take place, which supported motivation and where experiences of failure, discoveries and successes could be dealt with, overcome and discussed in class and in the interviews. In fact, the construction of the course had served teacher development better than the results from the interview themes, because I was already somewhat familiar with what the results would be. In contrast, the analysis and the results of the inductive data demanded a close study of the literature on the significance of the study climate and peers, learning as participation, on reflection, autonomy, student awareness and motivation, on students’ fears and associated feelings and on how encouragement in the studies can take place. The inductive data were authentic and valuable research data for interpretation because the students spoke about them on their own initiative showing that they were important parts of their course experience.
At the beginning of the two courses in liberal education, I regretted that the plans for the language course sessions were too unfinished. Later I realised that this made the implementation of the course more open to ongoing direction according to the needs and expectations of the course groups and their participants (see also Jaatinen, R. 2003, 94), as my understanding grew concerning them, even if big changes did not take place. Especially in liberal education, a teacher does not know much of what the students and above all what the groups will be like and how these shape the studies. Everyone in class influences the course studies and what takes place on the course (also Tarone 2006, 163). With completed plans, I would have missed this reality and the benefits of negotiation with the students and with myself concerning the course. We must have a prejudgment, but we need to look forward to learn more (see TM 270–271).
The interviews in liberal education gave unique opportunities to discuss learning and teaching with students who were interested in studying, motivated to explore their learning and willing to share their experiences. The conversational interviews taught the teacher-researcher about adults as people and students, about their learning, their ways of knowing, their lived experience, their needs and expectations. Results from them presented aspects of the foreign language teacher’s work and told about what I did not expect, not at least to this extent. The students’ evaluation of the teacher’s work in the conversational interviews increased the knowledge of me as a teacher. The teacher learned both from the criticism and the successfulness of practices. When studied more closely later, they gave incentives for future development. The interviews often developed into mentoring discussions where we functioned as mentors for each other. A secure environment is necessary for a working alliance and shared reflection because people can challenge each other’s views. These people did not have to think about the consequences of what they said because the course had concluded. What they said could not have any influence on them later. The deductively and inductively drawn interview data provided the teacher with two quite different views of the same course and studies there. There were two truths. The course diary data recorded
the teacher’s notes on the course events, students’ and teacher’s reflections, and students’
comments contributing to the teacher’s professional development. After the interviews I wrote in the diary: “The criticism and assessment presented by the students in the interviews on what worked and what did not, did not give a feeling of hurt, loss or failure.”
The course project had become our shared effort to discover better alternatives. The long time gap between the course and the data analysis influenced the same way. The value of some research aims decreased but new ones emerged:
With regard to the gain, learning about how to teach oral communication in particular appears less significant. Instead, I learned about students with this aim, about the development of oral communication in class and in relation to their lived experience and communication there. I learned about the necessity of dialogue, about adults as independent students and about the interplay between researching and teacher’s work, about the relationships in adults’ study communities and the relation of the learning and the life of people involved in it. They all link with the social. (Teacher-researcher’s diary, April 2006)
The students’ awareness, reflections and their understandings in the conversations, often of a dialogic nature, were a resource and enhanced new ideas. Interviews as conversations have a transformative power (see Gadamer 2001, 60) and they transformed the interviewer’s conceptions. For example, I understood the central role of affect in the study unit and the variation of its significance from person to person. Affect, except for its positive manifestations, did not appear in class. I learned to consider the learning situation as shared participation, this especially thanks to Wenger, where everyone sees the situation differently and has his/her own aims, hopes and ways of being there. Reading and analysing the student interview data in 2005–2007 during the follow-up research activated the memory of those experiences and were, beside the diary writing, an essential part of the follow-up research on the third research problem. The ample amount of student data on mental resources that was revealed later reminded of the human holism influencing studies.
The students in liberal education, most of them in full-time working life, taught much about English needs there. They had aims for the development of their English and ideas how to strengthen their identity as speakers of English. The full time students at the UAS usually had a short working life experience or perhaps worked part-time or sporadically and had their main investment in professional studies at the UAS. If I conducted the course among adults another time, I would distribute authority even more evenly than the first time. As the following section shows, they had resources to take charge of their studies on the course. Self-determination in English studies was stronger and more influential among adults in liberal education. They decided on their future studies on their own.
A goal-oriented encounter with a foreign language and learning is experiential, curious, exploratory and reflective (Kaikkonen 2004, 170), something which the course in liberal education revealed and which ought to be supported at the UAS.
The English course containing researching and developmental activity was a good start for the research on the teacher’s professional development at the UAS. The start from the conception of man, and of learning served teacher development like the exploration of theories of learning, CEF and of adults as students. I wrote course material, invented new tasks with regard to the assumed level and the aims, and then learned about how they functioned in the interviews. The text materials that differed in their nature, level and aims revealed for me and the students much of their learning. These people had many ways of how to take charge of their own learning, which could serve as one ingredient in the teacher’s developing professional understanding.
The assumption of Wenger’s concept of participation was transferred to the UAS and turned out to open views on the interpretation of the student data and served the exploration of teacher development there. Gadamer’s research philosophy, among other things his beliefs concerning prejudices and their influence, historically effected human understanding and the circle of understanding and on the other side, my history, conceptions, teacher beliefs, prejudices and assumptions opened up views of having to change my conceptions for better ones. This analysis revealed the significance of reflection, awareness, autonomy, encouragement and motivation and made it necessary to study literature on these. All of the above aspects, just like the notes on language, conversation, dialogue and listening often occurring in Gadamer’s texts affected teacher development at the UAS. All of these gains helped to add greater depth to the researching at the UAS.
Follow-up research at the UAS
Two institutions as the location of teaching and researching expanded the teacher’s views of teaching. The course on oral communication was good for professional growth. A course conversational by nature adds participation and empowerment. Conversations on language, on learning and on difficulties emerged spontaneously, as did also conversations on the course itself and its suitability. This also happened in the interviews. In addition to what the course, its creation and implementation and the interviews in liberal education gave, the course challenged my preunderstandings and put them more at stake than the work at the UAS before the empirical research (see Gadamer 1976, 38). Through experiences and hermeneutical reflection it is possible to see differently and, see beyond what one considers well-grounded knowledge. (Gadamer 1976, 38; TM 296.) Otherwise, teacher development had remained in the background as a side issue, despite the literature studied and the teacher’s diary written on the course events and reflections on them. There had been dialogue between the social and the personal that professional development demanded (Eteläpelto
& Vähäsantanen 2008, 29; see also 43–45), but such development had mostly taken place in the contexts of the course and was not closely related to what the personal and social denoted in the work in the UAS. Therefore, it was meaningful that the research continued, first as diary writing at the UAS from January 2005. The continued spontaneous diary writing showed that the first part of the research containing the empirical research and the ensuing follow-up research could form an entity for the teacher’s professional development.
Transformative professionalism demands teacher collaboration, which promotes the students learning (Kohonen 2009a, 134). At the UAS, I had colleagues who were researchers and interested in pedagogical, philosophical and ethical questions. We shared understandings, explored our meanings, negotiated, and learned from each other especially when our professional expertise existed in different fields. The teacher-researcher’s diary written by hand in 2005 contained reflective notes on concrete events and experiences on the courses, with individual students, student groups and colleagues, on new forms of work and on the first interview data that I was reading. The latter part of the diary, compiled as computer files and written in 2006–2007, mainly described the thoughts and experiences of the researching researchee at the UAS. There were thoughts related to professional development, reflections between theory and the ongoing practice, notions of meaning concerning different languages and my own English, learning in general and learning with and from the students. The transcription of the first interviews and the intervening second interviews with the students in liberal education in December 2005 formed an essential part of the teacher’s professional development, just as the reading of the first interview data.
The two-and-a-half years’ follow-up research at the UAS became an organic part of the research despite the change of research site and the lack of plans and organised research activities. The follow-up research signified another cycle of experimentation and reflection (see Kolb 1984) that strengthened the benefit and the ecology of the research and increased the meaningfulness of the research by expanding the benefit to the teacher’s permanent work at the UAS. At the time, the work there denoted a broad field of organisational and practical changes because of the continuous development taking place in foreign language education.The growing distance to the experiences and thoughts saved in the course diaries also helped me to recognise and investigate my habitual ways of thinking, acting and reasoning.
Kohonen (2012, 82) writes with reference to teacher students that the aim of reflective studies is a deeper understanding of one’s work and the activation of the necessary processes of change. Learning from one’s experiences is not an automatic process but demands time for the understanding and assessment of the new knowledge, its conceptualisation and application (Kolb 1984, 39–43). The long temporal span from the empirical research to the end of the follow-up research gave time for all of these.