Previous learning and teaching experiences and the role of the textbook

In the previous section, it was argued that Miss Ada’s teaching practices can be viewed as a routinized activity. In this section, I discuss together two internal factors, i.e. teacher’s previous learning and teaching experiences and the role of the textbook, that are likely to have affected Miss Ada’s conceptual understanding of successful L2 teaching behaviours.

As seen in section 5.3.3.1, Miss Ada’s teaching practices consist of a predominant routine that reflects the teacher’s conceptual understanding of successful L2 teaching. The habitual thoughts, which predominate in Miss Ada’s mind, are likely to have influenced the form of interaction the teacher employed in her classes too. More precisely, as seen in Excerpt 5.5, Miss Ada thinks that the teacher should discuss briefly with the students about the reading/listening topic, students should complete the reading/listening comprehension activity on their own, unless there are difficult vocabulary items in the text, grammar rules should be given by the teacher or the textbook, controlled practice exercises are best done as a whole-class, and then speaking activities during which students should talk in their pairs (It is not clear from the Excerpt 5.5. above the pattern interaction for the freer speaking activities. Nevertheless, on many other occasions, the teacher

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expressed her strong belief that pair and group work should be used as much as possible in the class

to maximise students’ speaking time [Source: IR]).

Miss Ada’s selection of classroom interaction patterns seem to be identical with her habitual thoughts regarding the form of classroom interactions expressed in the above Excerpt. More precisely, in the classes observed, the teacher led two whole-class brief discussions about the topic students were about to encounter, used twice pair-work interactions to check students’ reading comprehension activity, and led a grammar-based class discussion. On another occasion, the teacher asked students to read the grammar explanations given in the textbook. Additionally, in Miss Ada’s classes, students routinely completed the reading/listening activities and controlled practice exercises on their own, checked their answers as a whole class, and completed freer speaking activities in their pairs.

Therefore, data gathered through various methods seem to be consistent and indicate that Miss Ada’s habitual way of acting in the classroom is influenced to a great degree by her own learning experiences as an L2 learner. During the post observation interviews, Miss Ada claimed that she first saw 88% of the teaching behaviours she demonstrated in her classes (i.e. pair-group work, role playing, discussions, problem-solving, jigsaws, and reading and listening for meaning) when she was a student in Miss Elca’s classes. On many other occasions, during the informal discussions, Miss Ada provided conforming evidence concerning the influence of her previous learning experiences on her delivery practices by linking her current teaching practices to her L2 learning experiences. As emphasised in section 2.2.2, people commonly approach the individual decision-making process heuristically by drawing on their own experiences. They scan their memory for similar events or situations, and retrieve memory fragments without any use of formal reasoning. This might be the case of Miss Ada as well. The teacher has practised and reinforced the same classroom procedures, first seen in Miss Elca’s classes, for many years, to the point these teaching practices have become frequently occurring teaching patterns. Kahneman and Tversky (2000) argue that decision makers tend to make their decisions on the information that is readily available rather than examining the alternatives. Consequently, frequently occurring events, rooted on Miss Ada’s learning experiences, are likely to have turned into a cognitive bias.

This finding is in line with previous research – reviewed in section 2.3.1.2 – suggesting that the ideas L2 teachers form during their formative years are likely to become an important information source on which teachers draw.

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The use of communicative materials might have also played a dominant role in shaping Miss Ada’s thinking and classroom practices. As seen in section 5.3.2, Miss Ada has used several communication-based textbooks in her classes. Despite differences among the textbooks, as argued in section 2.9, the majority of commercial course books are largely stuck in the Presentation-Practice- Production way of working. That means that many Western-published textbooks impose the same teaching patterns in those who use them: present the language to the learners first, practise the new language in controlled written/spoken drills, and give learners the possibility to internalise the language just seen by using it in context-based, freer speaking activities. By continually being asked to follow the same teaching patterns in their classes, teachers are likely to build a teaching routine centred around the procedures suggested by the teaching materials. This seems to be the case of Miss Ada. As seen above, clear teaching patterns were easily identified in both Miss Ada’s thinking, and her instructional practices.

Concluding, in Miss Ada’s case, the textbook, which reinforces practices that are already embedded through her experience as a learner, might have played a role in the teaching approach the teacher demonstrated in the classes observed. Miss Ada never mentioned the textbook as a potential source of influence. However, as seen in section 2.3.1.1, the tacit component, i.e. the influence of textbooks to build teaching and thinking routines through repetition, while playing a key role in the process of decision making, is often not noticed and remains unarticulated.