Rethinking my practice

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I like to think of myself as a reflective practitioner; a teacher who thinks about his practice and uses the thinking to improve what happens in the classroom, and therefore the outcomes of his students. This week has really kicked the reflection into overdrive like never before.

A professional development program coupled with a self-initiated investigation of the (now more than 20 year old) Australian Language Levels (ALL) Guidelines have made me examine my practice from the root to the tip.

I’m taking part in a 1 year long professional development course called LOTEHAT 3. The acronym “LOTEHAT” takes my least favourite acronym (Languages Other Than English) and adds an element of narcissism (Highly Accomplished Teachers) to arrive at a suitably silly-sounding term. The program itself, however, is far from silly or encouraging of self-aggrandisement. Indeed, the process of looking at my practice from a higher altitude has been very humbling and worthwhile. And it’s only just beginning.

It’s run by the MLTAV and has two major components. The first is a thorough reflection on the “Professional Standards for Accomplished Teaching of Languages and Cultures“, devised by the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers’ Associations in 2005. The second component is a piece of action research designed to investigate and improve one area of classroom practice.

The Standards themselves provide a description of best practice for language teachers and their programs, coupled with questions for teacher reflection to achieve these aims. There are also language-specific notations for seven languages. Luckily, Chinese is one of them, and the annotations are both comprehensive and appropriate.

Over two days, we began to look at some of the Standards and to discuss and think about what their implications were for our practice. Although I did identify some areas that I feel quite confident in, the real value is in finding where I really need to improve.

I decided to double down on the big picture thinking about my practice by reading “Pocket ALL: A User’s Guide to the Teaching of Languages and ESL” by David Vale, Angela Scarino and Penny McKay as well. Although over 20 years old, the ALL Guidelines are still extremely relevant to language teaching practice today. Comprehensive and integrated, the guidelines provide models for thinking about curriculum, resources, teaching and learning. The only factor seriously affected by the date of publication is the neglect of ICT, but that can be quite readily integrated with the models.

I can’t wait to see what comes out of this big picture thinking, identifying and plugging gaps. I feel daunted but excited about the possibilities.

It’s gonna take a while to put this jigsaw together!