Understanding how pre-service English teachers adopt stance toward academic teaching inquiry tasks
Abstract
While teacher education literature views teachers’ stances toward teaching inquiry as important to teachers’ commitment to classroom improvement, little research has analyzed teachers’ use of stance markers. This project builds on
Biber's (2006) framework to study stances taken by three high school English pre-service teachers (PSTs) in oral teaching-inquiry presentations completed during preparation coursework. This study considers: How do English PSTs enrolled in a teacher education program reveal stances through completion of oral presentations of teaching inquiry projects? The study employs methodology combining grammatical analysis with analysis of observational data from an in-depth study of PSTs’ experiences in their preparation. Findings reveal PSTs take varied, nuanced stances toward inquiry presentations, focal students, and project findings. Implications include that (1) studying how teachers formally discuss teaching activities can provide unique perspectives on teachers’ stance and (2) linguists can gain depth of understanding about participants’ stance by combining grammatical and observational analysis.
Reference
Salerno, A. S. & Kibler, A. K. (2014). Understanding how pre-service English teachers adopt stance toward academic teaching inquiry tasks. Linguistics and Education, 28, 92-106.
Journal
Linguistics and Education
Analysis
Is this article part of a larger project or series of studies?
yes
Does this study draw on a large, preexisting data set?
yes
Research Approach
- "longitudinal": across varying classes over time
- Case study
- Qualitiative
Geographic Setting
Institutional Context
Certification Level
Programatic Focus
Research Location Context
Preservice Participants
- Undergraduates (university based program)
Preservice Sample Size
3
Duration of Data Collection
Data Sources
- Audio recordings
- Conversation log
- Evaluation
- fieldnotes
- Interviews
- Questionnaire
- Transcriptions
Data Analysis Tools
- coding (word level of PTs)
- conceptual memos
- Modal search
- NVivo software
Researcher Positionality
- Inside (studying their own practices)
Research Questions
How do English PSTs enrolled in a teacher education program reveal stances through completion of oral presentations of teaching inquiry projects?
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes