The Language Teacher
04 - 2003
A Chapter in Your Life
Alexandra Lake
This month, Alexandra Lake and Annette Karseras report on the JALT CALL SIG, their annual conference in June, and other exciting plans. The coeditors of this column invite you to submit an 800-word report about your chapter or SIG in Japanese, English, or a combination of both.
JALT CALL SIG's 10th Year Celebration
The year 2003 is special for the JALT CALL SIG as it is celebrating its 10th anniversary. In this update of SIG activities, you will find important information about the JALTCALL 2003: CALL for All, publications, collaborative inquiry workshops, and a proposed knowledge base.
JALTCALL 2003: Call for All
JALTCALL 2003 will be held at Kinjo Gakuin University, Nagoya, June 7-8, with the theme CALL for All. CALL SIG cofounder, David Kluge, has returned to chair this special 10th year celebration. This year's conference will broaden its focus to include business/conversation schools, pre- and elementary schools, and the teaching of languages other than English. This broadening will extend to other sections: sessions will include debates, video presentations, and "talk show" discussions in the university's TV studio; presentations on similar topics will be scheduled in nearby rooms; and finally, a tropical atmosphere will be created with participants encouraged to don Hawaiian clothes in what promises to be a new, innovative conference experience! Attendees can enjoy these innovations while continuing to benefit from ongoing quality presentations, friendly staff, and great networking, aspects carried over from seven previous JALTCALL conferences. Information about our upcoming conference is available online at jaltcall.org/conferences/call2003/.
Publications
Publishing is ongoing for JALTCALL Publications Chair Paul Lewis. In addition to the 2002 Hiroshima conference proceedings, a booklet outlining SIG-developed conference planning strategies is being produced. The Hiroshima proceedings will be launched at JALTCALL 2003, where the SIG's 2002 major publishing project, The Changing Face of Call: A Japanese Perspective (a volume of papers published in the Netherlands by Swets and Zeitlinger), can be purchased at the SIG discount price of ¥2,000. Other previous titles can be procured online at jaltcall.org.
For more information on CALL SIG activities, contact Publicity Chair Alexandra Lake at anlake@moon.aichi-u.ac.jp. The following information about collaborative inquiry workshops and the proposed JALT CALL SIG knowledge base has been submitted by Annette Karseras.
Collaborative Inquiry Workshops
The pace of change: We hear the phrase everywhere. Even the theme of this year's JALT National Conference--Keeping Current in Language Education--belies perhaps the challenge of keeping up. In some European universities, a response to the academic pressures of change has been to initiate collaborative inquiry forums, offering a space for practitioners and researchers to collaborate and explore issues.
Such forums break the mould of traditional Mode 1 knowledge production, where research issues are set and solved in a single disciplinary context and results presented to a passive audience in information-delivery style. Mode 2 knowledge production is about engaging with issues and dilemmas in the here and now, working at the cutting edge of practice, where problems are solved around localised contexts. By involving participants actively through dialogue, collaborative inquiry enables the creation of a pool of transdisciplinary awareness to better serve the complex and often combined pressures from organisational bureaucracy and needs of employers, research publications, new curricula, student-centred issues, and technology-led ones.
For researchers, collaborative inquiry can generate research questions that are more relevant for actual and emerging contexts of CALL and ELT in Japan. It also focuses or redirects existing questions and pushes one's thinking, working assumptions, and research methods further.
For practitioners, collaborative inquiry offers an opportunity for networking, dialogue, and the chance to get alternative, informed perspectives on current working dilemmas. Workshops provide a space to share current and emerging issues and insights into using CALL to support ELT in Japan.
If you are interested in participating in a collaborative inquiry workshop after the conference, contact CALL SIG Co-Program Chairs Annette Karseras (Tokyo/Niigata area) annette@juno.ocn.ne.jp or Scott Armstrong (Hiroshima area) scott@scottarmstrong.com.
Knowledge Base
The JALT CALL SIG plans to create a knowledge base to map the field of interests, knowledge, resources, and expertise of existing CALL members. This would enable conference, liaison, and presentation chairs to approach a more pertinent group of potential presenters and related associations. It would also allow us to provide speakers with more information about the potential audience, and help build a fuller profile of our membership.
We value abstract or summary form information on:
- Teaching and research interests (CALL, language-related, and any other professional interests or passions)
- Technical expertise (hardware, software, network, etc.) Anything from "I recently learned word processing but want to learn about state of the art multimedia" to "I build servers and write my own CALL programs," or anything between, is welcomed.
- Publications, conference papers, research projects
- Professional affiliations
- Any other additional information
Please email Annette Karseras, CALL SIG Co-Program Chair, annette@juno.ocn.ne.jp.
Reported by Alexandra Lake
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