Inverted Curriculum for ELT Teacher Development

Page No.: 
36
Writer(s): 
Katsuichiro “Ken” Ohashi, Rikkyo University; Kayoko Yamauchi, Rikkyo University

Reference Data:

Ohashi, K., & Yamauchi, K. (2016). Inverted curriculum for ELT teacher development. In P. Clements, A. Krause, & H. Brown (Eds.), Focus on the learner. Tokyo: JALT.

Reflection has been adopted in teacher development as a powerful resource for language educators to improve their teaching (Bailey, Curtis, & Nunan, 2001; Ellis, 2006). However, conventional reflective approaches are criticized for being too structured and lacking in collaborative elements (Farrell, 2015). This paper introduces and evaluates an alternative teacher-training curriculum for native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) in an EFL context, which we call the “inverted curriculum,” as it reverses the NESTs’ teaching context in two ways: their role from teacher to student and the target language from their L1 to their students’ L1. In the spring of 2014, a workshop using the inverted curriculum was conducted at a private university in Tokyo. Classroom observation notes and a questionnaire about the workshop were used to evaluate the curriculum. An evaluation of the inverted curriculum is presented, as well as some benefits and considerations.

省察は,語学教育者が自らを客観的に観察し,教授法や教育の信念を省みる上で大いに役立つとして教員研修に何年も用いられてきた(Bailey, Curtis, & Nunan, 2001; Ellis, 2006)。しかし,伝統的な省察方法は限定的で共同的な側面に欠けるとの批判もある (Farrell, 2015)。そこで,このプロジェクトは非英語圏(EFL)で英語を母国語とする語学教育者(NEST)を対象とする代替的教員研修カリキュラムを考案し、その効果を確かめた。NEST自身の教育現場の2側面(役割を教師から学習者に、学習言語を教師のL1から学習者のL1に)を反転したことにより、このカリキュラムを「反転カリキュラム(inverted curriculum)」と呼ぶことにした。2014年春に東京の私立大学でこの反転カリキュラムを用いてワークショップを実施した。アンケート結果と授業観察日誌を比較することで,言語反転学習の語学教員研修としての効果を確認し、言語反転カリキュラムの利点と問題点を含む効果について述べた。

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