Alan’s use of postmethod pedagogy

4.1.5.1 Classroom puzzles/exploratory projects

Alan has not carried out any exploratory research projects as such in his contexts of practice but says he is worried about ‘teaching quality’ in general because that is currently of great concern in Mozambique as a whole. He has been wondering about how he could research this topic.

4.1.5.2 Use of reflection in the teaching cycle

Alan asks his students for feedback on his lessons in an informal way. At the end of the lesson he might ask the students an open ended question like what they thought about the lesson or it might be a more focused question like whether the instructions were clear or not. As he monitors he seems to encourage questions about methodology. This gives him an opportunity to explain why he did certain things and to negotiate classroom pedagogy with his learners. When he plans a lesson he says he thinks about leaving time for reflection for both the students and the teacher to think about the lesson ‘to react’ or ‘give a feedback on it’. In the same interview he says, as if he owns feedback and it is his right, ‘I need my [I: Yes] feedback’. It is clear from the data that Alan makes time to reflect

because he values it.

Alan’s students’ response to giving written feedback is mixed. In his first interview he mentioned that some of his learners do not understand the reason for giving feedback to the teacher. He says they are more interested in their own results or feedback on their assessment. Alan uses written feedback on his lessons to give

students further writing practice especially those who are strong speakers and think they are good at English. He says students who feel they are good at speaking need to be stretched so he tells them they are good at speaking but need practice in writing. He says that getting students to write written reflections separates out those who are lazy from those who are not. This technique, he says, he saw used at IHLL on the teacher education programme where teachers were asked to hand in their course reflections at the end of every week.

When Alan asked for open-ended written feedback towards the end of 2008 the responses showed how excited students were about microteaching. Students wanted to know why it had not happened earlier in the course. He then

negotiated when they thought micro teaching should start. Alan says there is not much time in his context to write reflections in a notebook so he does it at the end of a term. At the end of October 2008 both he and his students wrote reflections and that caused him to make major changes to his course in 2009. His learners were sad that he had returned so late in the year as they felt they could have learnt more from him and his approach.

4.1.5.3 Alan’s approach to data analysis

In post lesson discussions Alan seemed to control the discourse direction. In the first recording he began talking about his lesson first. He mentioned what he didn’t like about his lesson first. Then he talked about what he did like. When he liked something about his lesson he was extremely enthusiastic, ‘I feel that it was great, it was wonderful to me’. He never invited feedback from Pat. However, Pat participated by asking questions that allowed Alan to unpack his own lesson. For example, Pat asked Alan, in an unthreatening manner, whether he thought he had achieved his aims. In response Alan began questioning himself like a tutor would with a practicing teacher, ‘why didn’t I use the connectors which are in the text?’ He seemed frustrated with himself. Interestingly, in the exploratory setting of this research he used evaluative language to talk about achieving his aims ‘So that it was my failure. I failed a little bit on that’ or ‘I failed because of the

objective’ or ‘but I was not able’ and lastly ‘so I can see that I XXX failed XXX that’. However, he ends his comments on a positive note about how well chosen the topic was and how happy he was with the follow up discussion on the impact of Lucky Dube’s music.

When helping Pat to reflect on his lesson Alan asked, ‘Do you think you have done it perfectly?’ He seemed to assume the role of an evaluator. This was followed by a number of other questions and suggestions which directed the flow of the discourse. He made a question in the form of a suggestion regarding the use of the flashcards. He also asked Pat why he did not directly highlight a pronunciation error. He then looked at how meaning was achieved and whether aspects of the lesson were necessary in this regard. He asked if lesson aims have been achieved. He asked about the use of translation in the lesson as well as issues of classroom management and attention spread. He also asked what Pat would change in the last part of the lesson. He seemed very clear about what he wanted Pat to reflect on or what troubled him about the lesson. Alan asked questions but also gave suggestions about what could have been done. He might have been assuming the role of a subject specialist or an assessor testing and guiding Pat or he could genuinely have wanted to understand what Pat’s thinking was. His questions showed areas of ‘conflict’ between Pat and Alan’s beliefs about learning and teaching.

However, there was no questioning of each others beliefs or any deeper

discussion on building a context sensitive practice. In the lesson evaluation Alan chose to talk about how the video observation showed him how much progress he had made in applying what he had learnt at IHLL. He also used the lesson evaluation space to talk about the exploratory research process we had all gone through. Even the final post lesson discussion between the teachers which took place after the student meetings was used to reflect on the process just

undertaken. The final post lesson discussion and lesson evaluation which should have provided an opportunity to delve deeper into assumptions, ideologies and

consequences was not utilized for this purpose. This might be because of the novelty of the EP experience and the need to reflect on that.

4.1.6 Alan’s response to the experience of participating in the