democratic breakout in elt
paulwalsh

This post was inspired by a thread on elt jam called ‘Barriers to entry‘.

As others have commented, the ELT landscape at present seems to characterised by insecurity, precarity and doubt.

And that’s just the publishers…

 

There’s also lots of subterranean noise and chatter. Perhaps we are at the start of what political theorist Ricardo Blaug (1999: 136) calls a ‘democratic breakout’, where “speech becomes animated, and debate heard.”

If there’s an industry that could do with a dose of democracy, it’s ELT. And if there’s an industry that could do with a dose of change, it’s ELT.

So I’d like to keep the conversation going about ‘barriers to entry’ in ELT. And I want to do this by asking one simple question:

 

what one thing would you change about our initial teaching qualifications (CELTA or Cert TESOL)?

There are many ways to answer the question!

1) Comment here

2) Post on Twitter under the hashtag #FutureofELT

3) Post on Google+ with the hashtag #FutureofELT

4) Comment on FB

Let’s get the conversation going.

How would you change things!

 

Let’s hear it!

 

 

References

Blaug, Ricardo. 1999. Democracy, Real and Ideal: Discourse Ethics and Radical Politics. SUNY Press.

 

Images

Breakout by Theen Moy, from flickr. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

 

8 thoughts on “ELT Conversation (1): Barriers to entry”

  1. It’s an incredibly mundane answer, but out of all the things I’d like to change about initial teaching qualifications by the far the biggest is getting back to a point where a well–respected qualification with observed and graded teaching practice is seen as the standard way into the industry rather than some kind of advanced training for those who have decided to spend their whole lives in TEFL.

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  2. I agree with Alex that there needs to be some kind of baseline standard for initial teaching qualifications in EFL. However, I do also wonder whether just a little bit of input on Business English as part of CELTA (or its equivalent) wouldn’t be a good idea. Nothing too heavy, mind, but a brief learner-centred overview would be helpful for those who wish to teach adults.

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  3. Hi Alex and Philip,

    Alex, do you basically mean that all teachers should have a qualification in order to teach? I’m not sure how you would be able to control schools that ignore this (or teachers). Everyone seems to have been gaming the system for quite a while now e.g. ‘Come for our 4 week course and we GUARANTEE you a job’.

    Do you also think that the current initial teacher qualifications are ‘well-respected’? If everyone has an initial qualification then doesn’t that diminish the value?

    Philip, I agree with you about Business English – there was no input on BE on my CELTA, and I’ve been teaching BE every year since then with demand growing.

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  4. I think you could legitimately ask would-be teachers to pass an English grammar test, too. This might prompt native speakers to brush up on theirs before applying to become teachers. It could be made a prerequisite for being accepted on CELTA.

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  5. You could do this Philip – and I would have failed the test! What I’d like to see is some real change – I don’t think tinkering with things around the edges is going to really improve things.

    If you have the money, you will (in all probability) pass the initial Cert.

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  6. I would like to see the fundamental basis of feedback changed from one of description to one of showing and demonstration.

    Let me exemplify what I mean. You deliver a Teaching Practice lesson and your observer tells you afterwards what it wasn’t so good at and what you need to do more of. That could be easily interpreted in a variety of ways. Why don’t the trainers just demonstrate out what they mean? Or even better, what if they stood at the sidelines and stopped you as you made mistakes and walked you through it, during the teacher practice. They could even do demonstration lessons so trainees watch and get from it what they need first before being thrown in the deep end.

    Hope that helps 🙂 I’ve been posting on the hashtag #futureELT – love the topic!

    Reply

    1. Hi Anthony,

      Thanks for commenting. I think it would be helpful if teaching practice, as part of a wider teacher development strategy, focussed more on ‘micro-skills’.

      I mean why not have a session where teachers practise, for example, ‘drilling a adverbial phrase’, ‘opening a lesson’ or ‘giving a plenary’ – and if teachers get it wrong, stop and get them to repeat it. This can be with demo learners, or in preparation for TP. It could be even be done with your peer teaching group. Actually, why don’t Diploma OR CELTA courses encourage the formation of peer groups, and just give them some guidelines and let them get on with it. We formed groups on our Dip., but we had so much else to do as well, it would have been nice to have some models for peer-group learning perhaps. It really helped with the TP.

      You’re also right, we are taught to model and demonstrate to learners what we expect them to do; but sometimes we are not given a real idea of the level and standards we are meant to achieve.

      I have to say the CELTA and Dip. that I did were excellent, my gripe is with the Dip. syllabus. We are often told that our lessons should be ‘learner-centred’ but our teaching qualifications are not very learner-centered in my opinion.

      paul

      Reply

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