From the Crisis to the Possibility of Language Teaching Toward Workplace Learning:A Narrative Inquiry of a Teacher’s Professional Transition

Hangzhou Vocational&Technical College,Hangzhou,China Email:sogo78@163.com

[Abstract]For making the educational research that speaks both of and to the teacher,a narrative inquiry is conducted with a series of highly personal and highly contextualized stories collected,investigated and recounted.The narrative presentation of the teacher’s life provides a vital and situated insight into the crisis and possibility of the teacher’s professional transformation in which the curriculum background in terms of disciplinary discourse and the social requirements from the work place affect his classroom practice and teaching methods.

[Keywords]narrative inquiry;teachers’life;situated learning;workplace learning

Background

English language courses in vocational technical colleges are under pressure of transformation towards workplace-situated learning under the guidance of“practicality”.English language teachers are now running into crisis where the traditional mode of teaching language as independent and decontextualized subject knowledge is challenged.

As this study sought to promote understanding of the process of teacher change,it intends to explore the following questions in order to reveal a picture of language teachers’professional lives.

What is the crisis an English teacher experienced during the initial phase of the curriculum innovation in a higher vocational college?

What is the core force that made the crisis happened to him?

What possibility could be offered to the transformation of language teaching for vocational purpose and to the development of teachers’professional competence as the reform goes on?

Literature Review

Situated Learning shows the relationship between learning and social situations.Lave and Wenger(1991)in the famous bookSituated Learning:Legitimate Peripheral Participationargue that learning is an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice.

“Legitimate Peripheral Participation”(LPP)is proposed as a description of engagement in social practice that entails learning as an integral constituent.“Legitimate”indicates that participants do not central participate in the fields of participation,but are multiple,varied,more-or-less engaged and inclusive ways of being located.Lave also dubbed the learning process of tailoring“way-in”and“practice”.These two phases reveal the process of moving from peripheral to full participation in an authentic activity or from a learner to a master due to legitimate peripheral participation.

Like Lave and Wenger,Brown,Collins and Duguid(1989)stated in the well-known paperSituated Cognition and the Culture of Learningthat knowledge is embedded in the context and situated,being a part of the activity,context and culture in which it is developed and used.It embeds learning in activity and makes deliberate use of the social and physical context in line with the understanding of learning and cognition,thus enabling learners to acquire,develop and use their knowing in the real work activity.

Research Methods

In this paper,a narrative way of thinking will run through the study of a language teacher’s professional transition in the school curriculum reform,mostly using the semi structure and unstructured interview in which the teacher was encouraged to describe their feelings and puzzles,and answer questions in his own stories about the personal practice knowledge.

The subject is an English teacher named Zander who is confronted with the curriculum innovation.Zander,a 31-year-old young man,has been working as a general English teacher in the school for almost 8 years.

Data Presentation and Discussion

Here is organized around stories of Zander’s professional teaching experiences,where his bewilderment,loss,transition and hope were narrated.

“How could I be good at teaching English integrated with the subject matter?”

Last semester Zander was asked to teach English for Specific Purpose(ESP)called Mold English.It was the first time for him to touch such kind of teaching related to engineering courses.

Being lack of the professional terms and principles,I tried to memorize them and keep speaking as if I really understand them,but the students do not want to listen to.There is no promising future for my teaching career,only making a living of it.(a QQ chatting on 20th.June,2019)

It was obvious that lack of job satisfaction made him brought down.He thought he would be equipped with a powerful knowledge discourse to act as a“qualified”teacher who would transmit the knowledge again to his students who might learn from him with envious looks just as when he taught traditional English.All the language points and vocabularies contained in the textbook regulated his action.The textbook as a mediating instrument was probably an unconscious preconception historically embodied in the teacher’s mind.(Wu,2005,p.142).However，in reality he had to settle for it that falls short of his ideal.Zander felt it hard to get through the lessons and the days since he was not familiar with the book.

In the traditional teaching,phonetics,grammar and vocabulary were a series of knowledge,or“professional knowledge”in language itself.In other words,emphasis on language teaching is attended to the language content of the curriculum(phonology,morphology,syntax,lexicon)(Lange,1994).With its own subject logic and rules,it kept abreast with other disciplines.But things changed when the curriculum innovation came into being.Language was asked to be infiltrated in the specific discipline,and this was undoubtedly a blow to Zander.

“This kind of learning could be a possibility to learn language.”

This semester Zander was given Classes for Practice Training.He experienced the course in and out of classroom,together with his colleagues specialized in the subject course.This practice learning was more than for his workload requirement;it was a way to promote his teaching as well as his life experience.

In cooperation with a company named Hangzhou Morakot Electric Vehicle Manufacture Co.,Ltd,where Zander worked as a constructor,he concluded how he developed his own profession through developing students’skills in the workplace situation rather than abstract text-transmission.He and the part-time teacher Mr.Huang from the enterprise worked out possible procedures for the task-based learning that was composed by 12 projects that are as follows.

1.Training Prelude:Training Mobilization; Tutor’s introduction;2.Field tour--Company Fieldwork Notes:(1)Briefing about the company;(2)Fieldwork observation;(3)Post-tour Thought; 3.Free talk with Manager Huang:Huang’s speech on how to develop new customers;4.Training:Cooperation with Potential Clients;5.Practice writing the letter;6.Send e-mail;7.Check e-mail;8.Group Discussion;9.Training;10.Costumer Tracking;11.Knowledge Contest;and 12.Group Task.(from the working notes on 15th.Sept.2019)

With the motivation of searching new customers,students wrote Email letters and handed in his or her assignment willingly.Then Zander as an organizer initiated a hot discussion on how to construct attractive English letters to the potential customers.They listed several tips to the problem-solving project and revised the letters and sent them out.Zander direct and indirect guidance enriched students’engagement in workplace activities.Although it was a little choice to receive letters from the potential customers,they were still passionate to find out a new customer for the electric company.It was a process of experience from legitimate peripheral participation to the full enculturation.This teaching and learning model is different from that in the traditional classroom:

In the traditional classroom,I always tried my best to help them keep terms in their mind,but in vain.Now it is opposite to that.In order to give customers a good introduction,they are very careful to learn the relevant knowledge,including spare parts,molding terms and other basic knowledge.It is no longer confined to textbook knowledge and rote memorization.(a lunchtime dialogue on 25th.Dec.2019)

Language is embedded in the project and in the case.Students’experiences in workplace learning create the time and opportunity to generate knowledge that integrates traditionally separate components.The conception of congealed language is blended into the living case that is beyond the boundary.Situational teaching emphasizes the significance and formality of learning tasks.In the process of completing tasks,students construct the understanding of learning objects(language structure,vocabulary,expression,etc.)and learn to use language in application(Jin,2015).It is a usage of language and it is disciplinary knowledge experienced in the social legitimate peripheral participation.What Zander thought and believed has shaped the way he understands teaching and the priorities he gives to different dimensions of teaching.During the half year,he and his department have been making a phenomenal progress.He accepted this kind of learning and teaching possibility for“the quality of life”.

From the classroom to the spot,On-site teaching is a process of teaching through the implementation of a real live environment,impel students to learn faster and better as to acquire knowledge and skills.It challenges teachers a lot.Related program designing,enterprise contact,implementation planning,and steps guiding all belong to their daily work which cannot be resolved by holding a book only.

Zander under this kind of experience gradually found his happiness in teaching in work-integrated learning.He believed it would be the possibility for future development both for students and for teachers within the teaching reform enhancement.

Conclusion

When the teachers engaged themselves in living out the new practice,it is not that disciplinary knowledge has no role in the professional development of language teachers,but only that disciplinary knowledge as content is experienced“against the backdrop of teachers’professional lives,with the setting where they work,and within the circumstances of that work”(Freeman & Johnson,2004,p.122).That is,the personal practice knowledge develops in response to specific problems of practice.It is a good way to help teachers like Zander develop their profession and improve their lives through language teaching toward workplace situated learning from his crisis to the possibility.

Owing to this peripheral participation in workplace,teacher experience has been truly enacted by the practice as part of the teachers’exploration of their self-understanding.This teaching mode will not put the teachers like Zander in a dilemma but create tensions that facilitate continuing change and teacher learning.Situated learning is now rapidly popularized due to its concern with the contextual factors and bridging the gap between theory and practice emerged.Workplace situated learning is a possibility to develop the students’sense of workplace identity through the foreign language teaching and improve teachers’lives as a way out of the crisis.It indicates that the possibility discussed also offers a very optimistic perspective on the potential of professional development.It illustrates that,although the process of teacher transition through professional development is complex,it is not haphazard.

Acknowledgements

The project is founded by HZSK in 2018:On the Development Status and Countermeasures of English Teachers in Higher Vocational Colleges(No.2018HZSL-ZC017).