A methodology decalogue in pre-service teachers:
active, collaborative and social interaction
Rebeca Soler Costa, Juan Ramón Soler Santaliestra, Javier Sarsa Garrido, University of Zaragoza (Spain)
Abstract:
The European policies since, at least 2004, have implemented new prescriptions at the Higher Education Area, later developed by each University. Consequently, the different degrees offered in Spain as well as in other European countries have been adapted to the new socio education needs, mainly derived from society’s evolution and the Bologna process. They most affect the traditional type of education and training provided to students. The teacher has to introduce new methodological principles to promote an active and participatory role within the framework of a social, open, collaborative and interactive learning. The type of training must be functional and lifelong to help students incorporate to the working world.
This paper shows some hints to help in the students’ achievements through the implementation of ten methodological principles especially in the Teacher Training degree but also applicable to other degrees. By integrating them in the development of our teaching-learning processes we have observed they motivate students, prompting their interactions and enhancing their learning. Moreover, they contribute to self-reflection and maturation towards the development of their future professional job precisely in Elementary Schools. In this sense, we show a self-made decalogue to implement active and participatory methodologies. Obviously this affects the didactic paradigms we assume and the organization of the classroom but undoubtedly they help pre-service teachers to get engaged in this new education context.
Keywords: methodology, pre-service teachers, teaching-learning process, classroom organization.
Introduction
The recent development of the open access platforms, such as “Moodle”, allows students to use different educational resources that, when used appropriately, help in their learning. These technologies prompt interaction between students and thus they constitute a rich tool to develop their training.
Consequently, during this academic year, the teachers of the Department of Educational Sciences of the Faculty of Education, University of Zaragoza (Spain) have developed a research to analyse how methodology is introduced in the new syllabus design after the Bologna implementation. This has allowed us to observe new trends to be integrated in our teaching-learning processes.
Especially in the Module “The school as an educative space” we have introduced a methodology decalogue self-created. We can state that the benefits obtained after the use of these methodological principles has highly contributed to the students’ achievements. They are not new but they have been introduced thinking in how to promote a meaningful learning in our students. Thus, though it takes more time to prepare the material and organize students and the classroom to develop the activity in the practical session, it is worth considering how the learn.
In order to do that, we have previously considered our teaching conditions, the high amount of students per lecture or seminar, etc. Besides, when applying them with the use of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) they offer an active, collaborative and social learning. That is unquestioned.
There is a constant need to change the way we train our students. Face to traditional methods, the new teaching scenario requires new methodological principles to offer students an active role in our teaching sessions and to motivate them to participate in the lessons. If they way we approach the teaching is based on an individual, unidirectional mode it is pointless to affirm we are getting engaged into the curricular requirements and Bologna prescriptions. Indeed, what still needs to be changed is the methodology from which we start building up the learning process in our students.
When we say we have introduced an innovation process in our Module we are referring to the implementation of ten methodological principles that highly favour students’ interactions. These communication processes are enhanced both in the part of the teacher and with other students, as well as they foster an active, collaborative and social learning.
Besides, if we consider the new virtual learning environments present everywhere and especially in Education, these principles definitely contribute to the students’ learning, which is our main goal to achieve. It is a need to introduce them in our Modules as they are recommended by European policies and by the University acts. But in any case, they highly help in the development of the teaching-learning processes.
1. What to know when dealing with methodology
In any teaching context it is indispensable to assume students’ diversity and therefore put into practice different methodological principles. Never two students learn at the same path, nor do they have the same interest towards the subject or module. Consequently it is up to the teacher’s ability they way to motivate them. However, the teacher has to be conscious of his/her students’ needs, interests and diversity. When we teach in the University level to grasp this is much more complex as we usually have up to 65-70 students per classroom.
In this context, the development of our teaching gets more and more difficult as we have to meet many different goals. On the one hand, the different acts of University prescribe what to teach and to assess it. On the other hand, the teaching guidelines also reinforce those aspects. The types of contents we teach are difficult and need time and different resources to be explained. Thus, we have to start saying that the development of methodology needs to be based upon the teacher’s paradigms and models. Depending on what paradigm we address our teaching; we are more flexible to apply some methodology principles or other ones.
Anyway, what seems imperative is to assume a global approach to develop our teaching-learning processes. Therefore, the starting point is to take over an active and participatory methodology focused on the student. This seems easy to do but it is not, especially in the field of knowledge of Pedagogy.
In fact, we do not have to restrict ourselves to the use of a specific method; we can combine different ones, as far as the paradigms and teaching models we assume allow us. The modules we have in the Teacher Training degree in the Faculty of Education in the University of Zaragoza (Spain) are concerned with “The school as an educative space”, “The education in the knowledge society”, “Special Education”, etc.
If we were teachers of foreign languages though in the University level, for instance, we would have to teach English following specific methodologies, such as the ones we are going to expose now. In any case, the remaining question will always be the “why” we undertake a specific method or methods and the decisions they imply when applied to our teaching.
The most remarkable methods to teach English as foreign language would be the Direct Method, the Audiolingual Method, the Situational Language Teaching Method, the Total Physical Response, the Task-Based Teaching Method and the Communicative Language Teaching or Communicative Approach.
In this case, we will need to know the basis of each method. Concerning the Direct Method we have to reproduce in class the natural conditions for language acquisition (Coleman, 1929). So methodology will be based on the way students learn their mother tongue. Consequently, the lesson will develop around constructed pictures depicting life in the country where English is spoken, what enables the teacher to avoid the use of translation.
However, the direct and spontaneous use of English allows students to induce rules of grammar, what means that language is learnt actively. This benefits us in many ways. Oral skills are built in a carefully graded progression organised around question-and-answer exchanges between teacher and student.
On the other hand, vocabulary is taught through demonstration, objects and pictures. This helps students to retain what they learn by association. In this case, we will use known words to teach new vocabulary, using pictures to ease language comprehension. It is suitable to develop accurate pronunciation and listening comprehension.
Referring to the Audiolingual Method we can say that we will teach English through the explicit teaching of receptive skills (listening and reading). Therefore, we will approach those skills before the productive ones (speaking and writing). In this sense, students learn languages through stimulus-response-reinforcement techniques (Rivers, 1981).
The goal of our teaching will have to be based upon the development of phonological units, grammatical units, grammatical operations and lexical elements. We will insist on listening comprehension and accurate pronunciation through the recognition of speech symbols as graphic signs.
Everything will be related to the development of oral fluency. So they will learn through imitation and repetition of dialogues and drills. This method necessarily needs to be complemented with other teaching methods and applied at the right moment, being neither repetitive nor boring.
With regards to the Situational Language Teaching Method we will develop our teaching sessions focusing on new language points introduced situationally (Pittman, 1960). By situation we mean the use of concrete objects, pictures and realia. Like the Direct Method, the Situational Language Teaching Method adopts an inductive approach to the teaching of grammar.
Language then will be learnt through memorization and formation of habits. Consequently, the role as teachers will be to act as a model when introducing students to structures and drills.
The learner’s role is simply to listen and repeat what the teacher says and to respond to questions and commands. We will involve students in what they have to learn and when they have to do it. That is why we will carefully use it at right circumstances when teaching English.
Moreover, it seems quite suitable to develop other aspects. Particularly, we will use a structural syllabus with a word list which will provide students with material upon which to base the language practice. The role of the instructional materials is up to the textbook and visual aids.
For this purpose, we will use audiovisual material. Therefore, our lessons will be structured around four parts: pronunciation, including revision to prepare for new work if necessary, presentation of new structure: “There’s a NOUN + of + (noun) in the box”, oral practice, with drills and the reading of material on the new structure.
By contrast, the Total Physical Response could seem not suitable but indeed it is. It is necessary to be taught if we were in the case of teaching English as a foreign language because we have to train pre-service teachers in methodologies to teach English to children.
This method is built around the coordination of speech and action (Asher, 1970). It attempts to help students grasp the general meaning of texts within a situation with the help of gestures and miming. It usually uses the imperative mood, like, for example, “Open the door” or “Wash your hands”. Thus, students obey orders in English. The main goal is to master the spoken language with no inhibitions. The teacher’s role is active and students are actors, so communication and interaction is fostered.
The Task-based Language Teaching is a method based on the use of tasks as the core unit of planning and instruction in language. Willis (1960) proposed some useful key points: activities that involve real communication, activities in which language is used for carrying our meaningful tasks promote learning and language meaningful to the learner supporting then the learning process.
In this sense, we will apply it by means of giving out tasks as a useful vehicle of communication. Students will carry out different tasks to develop a progressive communicative competence such as finding a solution to a puzzle, reading a map and giving directions, making a simulated phone call, writing a letter, reading a set of instructions…
And, last but not least, the Communicative Language Teaching Method or Communicative Approach aims to make communicative competence the goal of language teaching. It contributes to develop procedures for the teaching of the four linguistic skills. There is no single authority in it (Chomsky, 1969; Halliday and Firth, 1985; Hymes, 1996, Canale and Swain, 1980).
We will not consider errors as significant mistakes to the progress made in the learning process. Subsequently, the range of activities to be done will turn basically around information sharing, negotiation and interaction. For instance, we will show students incomplete slides about a singer story and they have to complete them by asking information. Also they work in pairs employing available language resources in authentic problem-solving tasks.
Particularly, we consider that materials promote communicative language use. Thus, we will bring to the classroom signs, magazines and maps from real life around which communicative activities can be built. Furthermore, we will be concerned with the advantages derived from language-based realia for what we will provide students with real materials to stimulate their learning process. When dealing with writing, we will use authentic texts previously adapted to their proficiency level.
As one can deduce the teaching of English seems quite easy to be developed at least from the point of view of methodology. However, this is not our case. In our Faculty of Education the Modules we have already mentioned are completely different, nothing to do with the teaching of English, which, indeed, is not easy either.
2. Previous considerations on the teaching-learning processes: paradigms
Focusing our attention in the implementation of new methodology in pre-service teachers we first need to analyse the way the teaching paradigms and models to follow. Depending on this selection, we will approach our Module “The school as an educative space” with certain methodological principles, some of them developed through the use of the virtual learning environments (VLE).
Subsequently, the didactic process includes the binomial teaching–learning; the didaxis develops the teaching but always as a task directed to propitiate learning, and all this, in an educational way (Contreras, 1990: 19; Álvarez, 2001: 36). General Didactics is the scientific discipline which studies these teaching-learning processes, with the essential support of the “Psychology of Education” that belongs to the “Psychology of Learning” (Luckesi, 1987: 29-30).
Moreover, both of them belong to the Educational Sciences or more widespread known as Pedagogy. Just for that, only to explain how we conceive the didactic process, we will firstly address it from the perspective of teaching and later on from the learning point of view. Though both are assumed in the teaching-learning processes in the Module “The school as an educative space”, research developed thanks to the concession of the Innovation Project PESUZ_11_5_689 of the University of Zaragoza.