THE ROLE OF ASSESSMENT AND FILM IN LEARNING TO TEACH IN A TESOL PRACTICUM

This presentation discusses the role of filming and assessment in a semester-long TESOL teacher trainee practicum which makes up part of the TESOL minor in a linguistics undergraduate programme at a New Zealand university.
Delivering a teacher training practicum as part of an undergraduate university programme is problematic if the course is not offered in an education faculty. Students cannot be scheduled into extended off-campus practice teaching slots in local schools, because they have commitments to meet in other subjects. Nevertheless students still have to acquire teaching skills which require observation, practice, repetition, feedback and importantly, time for reflection.
One way of overcoming these problems is to build in self assessment, reciprocal peer evaluation and feedback and to incorporate opportunities for students to observe experienced teachers and to learn from the mistakes and successes in their own practice teaching and the teaching of their peers. Over the semester, students observe ten classes at the university-owned language school. With their observation partners, they report in writing and verbally in whole-class feedback sessions on lessons they have observed. Students are filmed as they teach a group of international learners at a polytechnic. Two cameras ensure that the reactions of the learners are captured along with the instructions and actions of the teacher trainees. The films are uploaded as podcasts to a secure website on the university server, enabling students to view and re-view their own teaching and the teaching of their peers. Students evaluate and comment on their own teaching and post weekly comments on the discussion forum of a web-based learning platform (Blackboard) on the teaching of their peers.
The presentation will demonstrate – using feedback from the students – that the overall structure of the course results in the building of a community of trust and camaraderie amongst this group of pre-service teachers as they engage in the joint construction of collective knowledge and skills which each will transfer to his/her own future practice as a teacher of English to speakers of other languages.