Abstract
This paper presents a narrative inquiry approach to understanding the early professional development (PD) of student teachers of English at a state university in Turkey. With the twofold functioning of narrative as a tool for both research and PD, we probe into how student teachers’ early PD trajectories are shaped through observational narrative knowledging. Data consisted of group discussions, semi-structured interviews, metaphor elicitations, and informal conversations that accompanied the main data collection tool, i.e., narrative frames collected during the practicum. The triangulated data were subjected to a multi-tiered collaborative content analysis. The findings showed that narrative-embedded observations helped student teachers organize and attach meaning to their early field experiences, and thus build on their self-awareness, critical thinking, and reflectivity for future classroom practices. We also reported how the participants reflected retrospectively, in the course of, and the posteriori of writing the classroom observational narratives. Through narrative knowledging, we offer a more nuanced approach to aiding student teachers’ early PD.
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Appendix: Sample early PD trajectories
Appendix: Sample early PD trajectories
Beril | I am a student teacher of English. The best thing about my teacher training(the first 3 years) was that… | I was taught teaching a language is a long process, needs motivation and self-actualization…(Week 1) | Today, the link I discovered between what I learnt in the faculty and my real classroom observations was that… we were taught how to make boring grammar topics interesting with games. And this week, I have witnessed that in a real classroom… (Week 8) | Today, the link I discovered between what I learnt in the faculty and my real classroom observations was that… I understood how important classroom management is. Your efforts might prove useless if you cannot make yourself listened to… (Week 14) |
Fuat | When I first started to observe real classrooms… | I found that I was rather nervous… (Week 1) | Today’s observation at school… reminded me of “general arousal” we learnt in our Learning Psychology course. The school is very cold and it is affecting everything in a negative way. It tells the importance of optimum conditions for effective learning-teaching process. (Week 5) | Today’s observation at school… provided useful things. The students were eager because there were visuals and technology. I recalled the usefulness of material use. But I wanted to be in her [the mentor] shoes today because there were some activities which I would really love to do as a teacher. Maybe because this is the case here, I don’t know. I thought about making real materials students could touch, and creating a realistic environment. Overall, I cannot say she did badly, because the activities motivated the students and reinforced their knowledge. (Week 13) |
Can | The students… | were not uniform. The first class was effective reaching the course objectives but the other one was uninterested and difficult to keep quiet… (Week 1) | This week, the students… liked the activities very much. They were enthusiastic about giving answers. Another activity was matching. They matched up the sentences-pictures. “Gonca is attractive with long blonde hair.” The teacher wrote the answers of photocopy questions on the board. That is important because all the students can follow the lesson. (Week 7) | This week, the students… showed their weakness in speaking. This also depended on the teacher. For example, she wrote the weather conditions on the board such as “Today, İstanbul is rainy but İzmir is sunny.” Instead, she could have asked the class: “What is the weather like today?”, “how do you feel about that?” etc. So, she could make them speak. (Week 12) |
Ayça | The mentor teacher… | seems to like her profession, making the lessons fun and loved by the students… (Week 1) | This week, the mentor teacher… was more active. She generally spoke English as it needs to be. She used demonstration while teaching the verbs. In the next lesson, she scored the exam papers. They had pictures in different colors which was good. I appreciated her telling the students their scores in private. (Week 7) | This week, the mentor teacher… was full of energy. She used lots of activities. But she could have made more preparation before the lesson. For example, while teaching extreme sports, she said you need a parachute for bungee jumping… (Week 13) |
Handan | In my own classroom in the future, I have the power to… | make my students stay quiet… (Week 2) | understand the needs of my students and care for them, because I can see that this teacher doesn’t. Because she spends no time speaking to students outside the lesson, she doesn’t even take time to present an effective lesson. Students say that they don’t feel comfortable with Ela hoca [the mentor], that they like Mehmet hoca [the mentor] better because he makes them play games and sing songs (class 5-A). They’re usually scared of her because she yells all the time and you can never know what she will be mad at. I’m usually scared because she yells too much, what would a 10-year-old do? (Week 7) | decide what and how to do exactly in certain classroom situations because now I have a lot of classroom experience and I feel knowledgeable. In the future, I can teach my own students without feeling like a stranger… (Week 14) |
Melda | Making changes to my teaching practice is something… | I’m not sure I can do successfully. Mostly because I’m not sure what kind of change would be better and if I could actually apply them. I think it will take time to try not to get caught up in the anxiety and stage fright, and when I’m totally free of those, then I will be able to change the way I teach however I want. (Week 1) | that I will work my hardest for. The topic for 8th graders was TEEN LIFE. During the lesson with the 8th graders, there was no warm-up; instead she dived headfirst in the activity that students had no idea what they were doing. It was a matching activity where the students have to match the questions with the answers. (Week 8) | that I’ve learned that is necessary. During the lesson with the 6th graders, the teacher kept yelling “how can you not understand?!?!?” because students couldn’t remember the words she had given at the beginning of the lesson. The problem with her is that, she has given the word lightning and said gök gürültülü [meaning thunder in Turkish]. It would be right if she at least said thunder and lightning but she kept saying lightning means gök gürültüsü. She gets on my nerves so badly when she teaches the children wrong things. (Week 14) |
Melike | In the future, I am going to try to… | engage students more actively. I would like to give more enjoyable and attractive lessons... (Week 3) | use role play, drama, modeling techniques to make them more engaged. Learners can understand better by doing and experiencing… (Week 5) | change the lessons to social activities rather than formal lessons. This could relax them. The teacher spent most of her time telling the students to sit down, behave or stay quiet. Children are so energetic. We cannot expect them to stay immobile. We should direct their energy to enjoyable activities. Puzzles, storytelling, matching games, charades will work. (Week 12) |
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Kartal, G., Demir, Y. Observational narrative knowledging in early professional development of student teachers of English. Instr Sci 49, 109–135 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-020-09532-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-020-09532-3