TY - JOUR

T1 - Campus meets classroom

T2 - Video conferencing and reflective practice in language teacher education

AU - Benitt, Nora

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2019, LinguaBooks. All rights reserved.

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - Overcoming the theory-practice gap and providing pre-service teachers with experiential learning opportunities during their university studies is one of the major challenges of foreign language teacher education. Using video conferencing is one viable way of integrating theoretical and practical elements which may thereby help pre-service teachers to develop an analytical and exploratory stance on lesson planning, materials development and teaching techniques. This article focuses on a small-scale exploratory questionnaire study featuring a school-university partnership, in which pre-service EFL teachers collaborate with a school-teacher of an English class (grade 6) from a German comprehensive school. In the scope of a university seminar, the pre-service teachers cooperatively designed tasks and exercises informed by their knowledge of theoretical concepts (e.g., task differentiation) and, in a second step, observed their ideas being implemented into practice via video conference. As the findings of the study indicate, the pre-service teachers considered video conferencing a helpful instrument to be actively involved in a teaching situation and to gain practical knowledge in the initial phase of teacher education. Moreover, the participating pre-service teachers appreciated the opportunity to collaborate with an experienced teacher within a (virtual) community of practice.

AB - Overcoming the theory-practice gap and providing pre-service teachers with experiential learning opportunities during their university studies is one of the major challenges of foreign language teacher education. Using video conferencing is one viable way of integrating theoretical and practical elements which may thereby help pre-service teachers to develop an analytical and exploratory stance on lesson planning, materials development and teaching techniques. This article focuses on a small-scale exploratory questionnaire study featuring a school-university partnership, in which pre-service EFL teachers collaborate with a school-teacher of an English class (grade 6) from a German comprehensive school. In the scope of a university seminar, the pre-service teachers cooperatively designed tasks and exercises informed by their knowledge of theoretical concepts (e.g., task differentiation) and, in a second step, observed their ideas being implemented into practice via video conference. As the findings of the study indicate, the pre-service teachers considered video conferencing a helpful instrument to be actively involved in a teaching situation and to gain practical knowledge in the initial phase of teacher education. Moreover, the participating pre-service teachers appreciated the opportunity to collaborate with an experienced teacher within a (virtual) community of practice.

KW - Didactics of English as a foreign language

KW - Community of practice

KW - Reflective practice

KW - Teacher education

KW - Video conference

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85064943378&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.theeuropeanjournal.eu/download/EJALTEFL_02_2019.pdf

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 8

SP - 121

EP - 139

JO - The European journal of applied linguistics and TEFL

JF - The European journal of applied linguistics and TEFL

SN - 2192-1032

IS - 2

ER -