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Dewey, J. (1933). Education and experience. New York: Macmillan.Hawkins, E. (1984). Awareness of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.James, C., & Garrett, P. (Eds.). (1991). Language awareness in the classroom. Harlow,

England: Longman.Knowles, J. G. (1991). Life-history accounts as mirrors: A practical avenue for the

conceptualization of reflection in teacher education. In J. Calderhead & P. Gates(Eds.), Conceptualizing reflection in teacher development (pp. 70–92). London: FalmerPress.

Lowe, T. (1987). An experiment in role reversal: Teachers as language learners. ELTJournal, 41, 89–96.

Rinvolucri, M. (1988). A role switching exercise in teacher training. Modern EnglishTeacher, 15(4), 20–25.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. NewYork: Basic Books.

Wallace, M. J. (1991). Training foreign language teachers: A reflective approach. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Waters, A., Sunderland, J., Bray, T., & Allwright, J. (1990). Getting the best out of“the language learning experience.” ELT Journal, 44, 305–315.

Wright, T., & Bolitho, R. (1993). Language awareness: A missing link in languageteacher education? ELT Journal, 47, 292–304.

Language Teacher EducatorsCollaborative Conversations

FRANCIS BAILEYSchool for International Training

MAGGIE HAWKINSUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison

SUZANNE IRUJOBoston University

DIANE LARSEN-FREEMANSchool for International Training

ELLEN RINTELLSalem State College

JERRI WILLETTUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst

■ As teacher educators, we encourage our preservice and in-serviceteachers to critically reflect on their teaching practices, and we supportthem in doing so. Regular reflection on their classroom experiencesallows teachers to identify areas in their teaching that they feel need

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attention and thus spurs their continuing professional development.Research also shows promising results for reflective teaching (Clift,Houston, & Pugach, 1990; Freeman & Richards, 1996; Richert, 1991;Smyth, 1989; Zeichner & Liston, 1996). We have found that having anopportunity to interact with others facilitates teachers’ reflection. Theinteractions force teachers to negotiate their meaning and, by so doing,to extend and reframe the ways in which they look at their own practice(Bailey, 1996; Hollingsworth, 1992). Thus, teachers are often helped toreflect on their teaching by having collaborative and critical conversa-tions with us or with their peers.

We believe that through the process of negotiating meaning withothers, we can come to critique, extend, and reframe our understand-ings (Hunsaker & Johnston, 1992). But when do teacher educators havethe opportunity and time to reflect on their own teaching? How manyteacher educators engage in collaborative critique and reflection of theirown practices? Although there have been recent moves toward teachereducators reflecting on their personal experiences (Russell & Korthagen,1995), most acquire their professional knowledge through unsupportedprocesses of trial and error and intuition (Kremer-Hayon & Zuzovsky,1995). Reflections occur in private moments as teacher educatorsattempt to interpret students’ evaluations or read their own journals, orin formal and public forums when they present at conferences orcontribute to edited volumes.

THE PRACTICE

In this article we attempt to convey the power and value of acollaborative conversation among a small group of teacher educatorswho meet regularly to discuss practices. The Language Teacher Educa-tors Collaborative (LTEC) began in June 1992, when a group of 16language teacher educators met to discuss their beliefs and practices (seeWillett & Hawkins, 1993, for a description of that meeting). We havecontinued meeting three times a year, with the number of participantsvarying as our other responsibilities have changed. The six authors ofthis paper have participated in almost all the meetings since the LTEC’sinception. We are primarily ESL teacher educators, although some of usalso work with bilingual and foreign language teachers. We work mostlywith master’s students, but several of us also work with undergraduatesand direct doctoral research. We teach in public or private colleges oruniversities, and some of us have administrative roles in addition toteaching. Most of us also supervise student teachers and interns. Amongus, we teach or have taught almost all the courses offered in an MATESLprogram: methodology, linguistics, second language acquisition, literacydevelopment, and many others. We are all active in local and national

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professional organizations, do consulting with school systems and otheragencies, and are involved in research, in many cases classroom based.We have many years of experience in language teacher education amongus, but we all feel a need to continue examining our practices andfinding ways to improve them. The LTEC gives us that opportunity,allowing us to reflect on our practices, analyze cases presented to thegroup, and co-construct ideas and theories about learning and teaching.Many of us share similar assumptions about teaching and learning, butwe are far from being in total agreement on the issues that come up inour conversations.

The discussions at our meetings are based on a text written by one ofthe members and sent to everybody in the group several days before themeeting. The topic for the text may be chosen by the person writing it oragreed upon by the group at a previous meeting. We have discussed suchtopics as our authority as teachers of teachers, paradoxes inherent in anapproach to teacher education that attempts to empower students, theways teaching knowledge can be taught, the definition of effectivepractice in language teaching, issues of privilege and marginalization,and challenges of small-group learning (the topic discussed in theexample presented below). At the meeting, we turn on a tape recorderand begin talking. The author of the text often initiates the discussion byproviding additional background on the text. Our discussions are alwaysanimated, and although we seldom reach any conclusions, they leave uswith a great deal to think about. As a way of extending our conversationsand providing a different perspective, we decided that a valuableaddition to our conversations would be to solicit responses from peoplewho are affected by the issues we discuss. Several tapes have thus beentranscribed and edited, and teachers have written responses.

This article has a dual purpose. One is to identify an issue in teachereducation that is representative of those that have arisen in our group.The second is to share an example of our discussions and what theyproduce. What follows are excerpts from a text that was the stimulus forone of our conversations, plus a short segment of the edited transcript ofthe conversation itself and part of a response written by Tom Nicoletti,the preservice teacher whose comment on a course evaluation was thecatalyst for the text and discussion. The text focuses on two tensionsinherent in an approach to teacher education that goes beyond purelyknowledge transmission. The context of the text is a class, taught by onemember of the LTEC (Jerri), where another (Francis) was doingresearch on group processes.

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Text

Our methods course for L2 teachers is designed around small groupsof students researching topics in L2 learning (problem posing, content-based learning, and so forth) and then teaching their classmates aboutthose topics in a way that embodies the principles of whole languagelearning presented earlier in the term. Tom, a student in the class onesemester, raised a critique of his experience with small-group learning onhis course evaluation:

. . . the old transmission model part of me wishes there had been more nuts-and-bolts material from you . . . perhaps lectures (heavens do I admit this!? Oldmodes die hard!) I realize this contradicts so much of what you tried toconvey . . . .

Tom’s critique centers around his desire for what he has elsewherecalled hard information, that is, knowledge of experts in the field, such asthe instructor and authors of texts. As the excerpt suggests, he wouldhave preferred that the instructor deliver this knowledge in the form oflectures. Clearly, he recognizes that his desire for a more traditionaleducational experience is at odds with the philosophy of the course.

We have identified the following two core tensions that operate insmall-group learning in teacher education.1. Small-group learning positions students in new roles; this can cause

anxiety, fear, and resistance but also forces them to confront a varietyof core issues around the nature of learning and teaching.

2. Small-group learning requires students to use one another as re-sources and communally struggle to make sense of course content,but at the same time the students may feel deprived of the instructor’sexpertise.

Our research into the group processes in this class showed a realpooling of knowledge from group members. They helped each otherfigure out what the readings were about based upon their own subject-matter knowledge and real-life experiences with language teaching andlearning. However, as the quote from Tom shows, some group membersfelt the need for the authoritative voice of an expert who could helpthem make sense of the core ideas in their readings and tasks. Moreover,the teacher also experienced anxiety in not being able to directly ensurethat students dealt with these core ideas. Even though the teacher had anopportunity to respond to the groups’ presentations and papers, anuneasy feeling that the students “won’t get it” without more directinstruction was ever present.

The question we have as teacher educators is not how to resolve thesetensions, because we believe that learning occurs at these particular

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junctures. Paradoxically, it is at these same junctures that group work canalso fail. Our question is how we can manage and exploit these tensionsin order to increase student learning without being subverted by thenegative affect of both students and teacher.

Conversation

Diane: I mentioned earlier that there might be three reasons for Tom’scomment: unclear expectations, group dynamics, and issues aroundauthority. I’d like to move on to the appeal to authority issue, if wecould.

Francis: One of the authority issues that’s kind of interesting is that, in someways, I feel like it’s illusory that you’re giving authority to students.What I saw in my research was a lot of Jerri’s voice coming outthrough other people’s mouths. Ventriloquism was really common.From that point of view, collaborative learning is very interesting:You set up the task, you choose the topics that people research, youguide them to certain kinds of literature, and you set up certainkinds of norms and structures that people operate within. All ofthis creates almost a kind of sleight-of-hand.

Maggie: But I don’t even look at it as giving the students authority. MaybeTom felt like Jerri wasn’t taking authority, but I don’t see it as givingstudents authority that they wouldn’t otherwise have. My underly-ing rationale is that people make meaning by exploring andnegotiating ideas in social interaction, so it’s not that I’m abdicat-ing my authority. It’s that I am giving them the structure withinwhich to explore ideas and make meaning of them for themselvesand with each other. If I just explain these ideas and meanings tothem, I don’t think they get as much out of it. But I’m not foolingmyself into thinking that I don’t care if they get out of it what I wantthem to.

Francis: Let me give you a very specific example of students’ authority. Inthis class, they have the right to reject the textbook. In mostclassrooms, you don’t have this right. You don’t have to read it, youcan kind of fudge it, but basically you have to deal with that textbecause the teacher’s going to hold you accountable. The teacher’sgoing to continue working with that text. Exams and papers shouldsomehow reflect something that came out of that text, and you’resupposed to know that material. But in this group, they didn’t haveto do that. They tried to make sense of it, but they really couldn’t,so they just said, “We’re going to bag it and use other materials.” Itseems to me they did have some authority.

Diane: However, what if we take Tom’s comment at face value? What hesays is, “I need hard information.” We could say he had access to a

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text and other materials, but that clearly was not enough. This isthe kind of thing I wrestle with—students saying, “We want to hearit from you, Diane.” I think Tom’s reaction could have come fromthe fact that Jerri gave them a list of principles in the beginning,and maybe he perceived a clash between those values-based prin-ciples and the cognitive nature of the task they were being asked todo. It’s possible that the students were saying, “We have been givena cognitive task, we need cognitive input.” That’s one plausibleexplanation for why you get that request for authority. But I alsothink it has to do with the purpose of the group activity. Is this anactivity that is likely to be better accomplished in a small group? Ithink we have to ask ourselves if all activities are better accom-plished in a collaborative fashion. If we are seeking to empowerstudents, it might be that we accomplish this by responding to theirrequests for information, not by withholding it. Is there perhaps acontradiction between what the students were being asked to do onthis occasion and the nature of small-group work?

Jerri: You know what’s interesting about that question? You talk aboutwhat’s the cognitive input, the value-based input, and the process. Idon’t see those as separate. Students may come into the courseasking, “What is problem posing?” “What is content-based teach-ing?” “How do you use those methods in the classroom?” Butsuccessful teaching is more than these techniques and definitions.While there are plenty of techniques demonstrated in this course,techniques are not the point. The point is how you think about theproblems and tasks of teaching, what it is you want to get across,how you view learners, how you make the decisions you need tomake. You learn how to use the techniques and tools in the processof using them. So I see the process as being the content of thecourse, and the techniques are just things that you could choose ornot choose, depending on your particular context.

Diane: But what do you think Tom was asking for then? What is Tom’sproblem?

Maggie: Well, it’s much more comfortable to think that there are experts outthere who have the answers, that they can tell you how to teach well,and exactly what to do to be a good teacher, and that you can walkinto a classroom, do exactly what they say, and be a good teacher.

Diane: Part of the problem could be Tom’s fear of his own inadequacy ingetting the information. “I don’t have the answers, I need theanswers, somebody needs to tell me because I can’t find them outon my own.” Perhaps Tom fears his inability to do the assignmentby himself. Perhaps he needs the process to be scaffolded as muchas the content.

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Ellen: At the same time I think there can be a frustration on the part ofstudents, not just because they feel inadequate to find their ownanswers, but simply because they feel that they’re with someonewho is an expert, so they feel that the professor is being arrogant bysaying, “I won’t give you the answer. I know it but I won’t give it toyou, you have to find it out for yourself.” Even if it’s not taken asarrogant, it’s still a frustration. It’s as if an ESL teacher were to say,“You have to translate this but you can’t look in a dictionary. Youhave to figure out every word from context.”

Suzanne: I’m not sure that it’s always a fear of “I can’t figure it out myself.” Ithink it’s a lack of any kind of experience doing that. People havebeen exposed to so much transmission teaching that turning themaround is a major undertaking. I think Tom may be in the processof being turned around here, but he hasn’t made it completely. ButI would hesitate to call it fear of his own inadequacy and his ownlack of knowledge about teaching, or fear that he can’t come to ithimself. I think it’s just a lack of enough experience to show himthat he really can do it.

Maggie: But also, as soon as you say, “I can’t come to it myself,” you’reassuming there’s an it to come to. That gets me back to theassumption that there’s a right way, that there are answers out there.Unfortunately, I don’t see teaching as a cognitive process; teachingis values based. Teaching is not saying, “There are pieces ofinformation I have, and if I tell them to you and you can tell themback to me, you will be a well-educated person.” That’s not how Isee education. And therefore, in a system where you are told, “It’sin this text, it’s in this teacher, and when you memorize and can spitback what they say, you’ve got it,” you’re still looking for it.

Tom Nicoletti’s Response

I must admit that having my words and experience serve as a vehicle of thediscussion causes a certain amount of embarrassment. But if my experiencecan provide a useful example of how some students respond to small-grouplearning, then I’m happy for that.

I still feel quite new to teaching, and in group work there are personalissues of expertise and authority that I still have to confront in myself. But Iam learning that the main issue is about process and context, not theexistence of some body of “decontextualized hard facts.” In another class, aprofessor said something that has stayed with me and which, I think, relates tothe it that Maggie mentions. He was discussing publishing in education, andhe asked us, in a rather rhetorical way, how we regarded new articles andbooks in the field. Did we view them as advances in our knowledge, as thoughthey were bricks being added to the edifice of Education? I was just about tonod in assent to this question when he said, “No, that’s not it.” They are all

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just part of a “conversation” about how we think things work. I find this ameaningful way to express the concept that all our ideas, our knowledge,occur within a context, and we are just conversing about how, at this time, weperceive their nature. It really sounds so elementary—and on a larger scale,it’s something that I’ve intuitively understood and agreed with for a longtime. Perhaps when people are new to a field of endeavor, what they are reallyasking when they look to authorities for the answers and the “knowledge” is,“How do I/we become part of this conversation? What do I/we need in orderto participate?” What I now see as important is not some disconnectedcollection of facts, but the frame of reference for a body of knowledge. AndI think that small-group learning can offer students an effective means forexploring this.

With regard to stress and anxiety, and how to perhaps manage these so thatthey serve to move everyone forward rather than hinder students’ efforts, Iagree with the group that these are going to be inherent in the process. Forme, much of the stress arose from questions to myself, along the lines of, “OK,I don’t have much of any experience with this subject and these issues—howcan I contribute to the group’s success?” and “How is our group going to worktogether on this to produce something that shows everyone we’ve exploredthe material/issues and is useful for our classmates?” To be sure, there weretimes when I’d wished the whole process could be less stressful, but I thinkthat significant changes designed to increase student (and teacher) comfortmay mean losing some of the students’ sense of initiative and learning. Muchof what makes these courses so valuable and rewarding is the degree ofengagement that is required—even if what one is feeling is not alwaysnecessarily pleasant. Reading the transcript and Francis and Jerri’s introduc-tion makes me appreciate the fact that this teaching approach can also createstress for the instructor.

RESPONSIVENESS AND GENERALIZIBILITY

As indicated earlier, the way teacher educators have traditionallyacquired professional knowledge is by trial and error and intuition. Whatwe have briefly described and illustrated here is a collaborative practicethat supports us as teacher educators in moving beyond the limits of ourown experience. For this reason, we consider our way of working in theLTEC a best practice.

For most teacher educators, the typical sites for interaction andprofessional development are the formalized ones of publications andconferences. Our conversations differ from these activities in that theyallow ongoing feedback from a supportive community on ideas beforethey are fully formed and worked out. The act of bringing real dilemmasto colleagues allows us to see problems in a new light. Although we startwith a particular member’s issue, we quickly (and deliberately) remove itfrom specifics. The act of decontextualizing an issue is a powerful one asit enables all the members to gain ownership of the discussion and helps

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limit the constraints of our own ways of viewing the situation. As thediscussion proceeds, we learn that others in the group have faced similarissues, and we begin to gain insight from their ongoing educationalpractices. We do not always agree, and we do not completely share thesame views on teacher education. Nevertheless, many issues have previ-ously been hidden in the confines of teacher educators’ classrooms.What these discussions have done is allow us to bring these issues to thesurface and to wrestle with those that resonate with our own practice,even when the issues originate in someone else’s classroom.

In addition, participation in oral discourse requires constantly adjust-ing one’s meaning for purposes of aiding others’ understanding. Theprocess of adjustment is helpful in clarifying one’s own thinking.Sometimes the ideas we first put forth are ragged and inchoate. They aremore easily reshaped or even abandoned in conversation than theywould be if we had published them. In ways that formal publishedwriting could not, our gatherings have allowed us to create a dynamicforum in which to negotiate meaning, challenge ideas, and stretch ourown thinking.

We believe that any group of teacher educators dedicated to examin-ing and improving their practices can establish a similar collaborative.The format will vary as each group develops procedures that areappropriate for its own members. We would be remiss, however, if we didnot acknowledge certain difficulties with our practice. Institutionalnorms around teacher educator positions are such that participating inan ongoing series of conversations is not rewarded. Publishing andgiving formal talks are valued ahead of our LTEC activities. In thebusyness of professional lives, it is sometimes difficult to make LTECparticipation three times a year a priority.

Partly in order to address this, we are considering publishing options.Other problems then arise, not the least of which is members’ feelingmore inhibited about contributing less-than-fully-formed ideas. We areconcerned that we not lose the spontaneity of our discussions.

What has perhaps prevented this from happening thus far is that, overtime, the LTEC has developed into a very supportive community. It hascreated opportunities for us to witness members bringing difficult andcomplex issues to the group meetings. The trust that has developedamong us is the foundation for the rest of the work. Sharing rides to andfrom meetings has provided us an opportunity to get to know oneanother beyond merely professionally. We talk about our families, worldevents, and other professional issues. Meeting in each other’s homes,which we do for the most part, has allowed us to see group members’domestic side, to which we might normally not have access. In short, ourmembership in the LTEC has helped us create a small community ofteacher educators who are supportive of each other, who can call on one

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another for other professional projects, and who can use each other assounding boards as we seek to define other best practices in teachereducation.

THE AUTHORS

Francis Bailey is Associate Director for ESL certification at the School for Interna-tional Training. He teaches courses in language acquisition, literacy, and linguisticsand is currently doing collaborative research on ESL teaching practices in anelementary school.

Maggie Hawkins is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum andInstruction at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research interests focus onsociocultural perspectives on language, literacies, learning, and teaching and howthese intersect with teacher education paradigms and practices.

Suzanne Irujo is Professor Emerita of education at Boston University, where sheworked in the TESOL, bilingual education, and modern foreign language educationprograms. Her interest in the factors that influence teachers’ beliefs and behaviors isreflected in her recent book Teaching Bilingual Children (Heinle & Heinle).

Diane Larsen-Freeman is Professor of applied linguistics at the School for Interna-tional Training. A teacher educator for over 20 years, she has published books onEnglish grammar, language teaching methods, and second language acquisitionresearch. Her most recent book is The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course(2nd ed., Heinle & Heinle), coauthored with Marianne Celce-Murcia.

Ellen Rintell teaches at Salem State College in the Department of Education, whereshe is also the coordinator of the bilingual education and TESL graduate programs.Her research interests include the educational needs of the Khmer community ofnortheastern Massachusetts and the professional development of ESL and bilingualteachers.

Jerri Willett is Associate Professor of education at the University of Massachusetts atAmherst in the language, literacy and culture doctoral area and the bilingual/ESL/multicultural practitioner area. Her research interests include ESL teacher educa-tion, multicultural literacies, and transforming home-school-community relations.Her own classroom has served as a research site for five doctoral dissertations on ESLteacher education.

REFERENCES

Bailey, F. (1996). The role of collaborative dialogue in teacher education. InD.␣ Freeman & J. Richards (Eds.), Teacher learning in language teaching (pp. 260–280). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Clift, R., Houston, W., & Pugach, M. (Eds.). (1990). Encouraging reflective practice: Anexamination of issues and exemplars. New York: Teachers College Press.

Freeman, D., & Richards, J. (Eds.). (1996). Teacher learning in language teaching. NewYork: Cambridge University Press.

Hollingsworth, S. (1992). Learning to teach through collaborative conversation: Afeminist approach. American Educational Research Journal, 29, 373–404.

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Hunsaker, L., & Johnston, M. (1992). Teacher under construction: A collaborativecase study of teacher change. American Educational Research Journal, 29, 350–373.

Kremer-Hayon, L., & Zuzovsky, R. (1995). Themes, processes and trends in theprofessional development of teacher educators. In T. Russell & F. Korthagen(Eds.), Teachers who teach teachers (pp. 155–171). Bristol, PA: Falmer Press.

Richert, A. (1991). Using teacher cases to enhance reflection. In A. Lieberman (Ed.),Staff development (2nd ed., pp. 113–132). New York: Teachers College Press.

Russell, T., & Korthagen, F. (Eds.). (1995). Teachers who teach teachers. Bristol, PA:Falmer Press.

Smyth, J. (1989). Developing and sustaining critical reflection in teacher education.In C. Eisele (Ed.), Reflective teaching (pp. 45–61). Normal: Illinois State University.

Willett, J., & Hawkins, M. (1993). Using the web and the jigsaw in tandem to supportexploratory discussion. In D. Freeman with S. Cornwell (Eds.), New ways in teachereducation (pp. 195–199). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. Mahwah,NJ: Erlbaum.

Undeniable Insights: The Collaborative Use ofThree Professional Development Practices

KATHLEEN M. BAILEYMonterey Institute of International Studies

ANDY CURTISChinese University of Hong Kong

DAVID NUNANUniversity of Hong Kong

■ In this article we report on the experience of investigating reflectiveteaching and professional development by practicing what we preach.For one academic year we utilized, in teaching our own EFL classes,three professional development procedures—journals, videotaping, andteaching portfolios—that we have used as teacher educators with in-service and preservice teachers to promote reflective teaching andimprovement. The common framework uniting these three practices is amodel of reflective teaching that entails these characteristics: Eachpractice is data based; each is under the direct control of the teachersinvolved in professional development; and each allows teachers to buildupon strengths as well as identify weaknesses. Although these procedurescan all be used by teachers working in isolation, we maintain that theiruse with trusted colleagues in a collaborative approach to reflectiveteaching can definitely promote professional development.