Many studies have suggested that personal practical knowledge is essential for professional development. Recently, there has been growing recognition of the importance of teacher educators’ personal practical knowledge of ‘language’ for student learning development. However, the need for teacher educators to first understand their own language-oriented development in content-based classroom interaction has not received as much emphasis. The current intervention study investigates how eleven experienced teacher educators understand their language-oriented development through the control of task difficulty, small-group instruction and directed response questioning. Data were examined by conducting content and constant comparison analyses. The results showed that the intervention affected the educators’ language-oriented development, which in turn affected their awareness and decisions made to improve their methods of initiation and response during classroom interaction. The results call for more concrete ways to expend teacher educators’ practical knowledge of language to further develop and enhance their language-oriented teaching performance in content-based classroom interaction.
Many studies have suggested that personal practical knowledge is essential for professional development. Recently, there has been growing recognition of the importance of teacher educators’ personal practical knowledge of ‘language’ for student learning development. However, the need for teacher educators to first understand their own language-oriented development in content-based classroom interaction has not received as much emphasis. The current intervention study investigates how eleven experienced teacher educators understand their language-oriented development through the control of task difficulty, small-group instruction and directed response questioning. Data were examined by conducting content and constant comparison analyses. The results showed that the intervention affected the educators’ language-oriented development, which in turn affected their awareness and decisions made to improve their methods of initiation and response during classroom interaction. The results call for more concrete ways to expend teacher educators’ practical knowledge of language to further develop and enhance their language-oriented teaching performance in content-based classroom interaction.
Teaching history requires clear, detailed and subject specific language. History teachers teaching in a second language are confronted with students' second language limitations, which likely have an aggravating impact on their application of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). We analysed and compared 12 Dutch spoken and 12 English spoken paired history lessons in junior grades 7 and 9. Contrary to our expectation, we found a strong similarity of the teachers’ PCK application in both grades 7 and 9, irrespective of the used language. The PCK application in both grades and languages was of average quality, while the PCK used in grade 9 was more advanced.
