1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------------------- TRẦN KIM TÚ TEAM-TEACHING AS A TOOL FOR PROFES- SIONAL DEVELOPMENT: INSIDERS’ VIEWS (Dạy cặp như một phương tiện phát triển nghề nghiệp: quan điểm của người tham gia) M. MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: Đào Thu Trang, M.A HANOI-2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES _______________ TRẦN KIM TÚ TEAM-TEACHING AS A TOOL FOR PROFES- SIONAL DEVELOPMENT: INSIDERS’ VIEWS (Dạy cặp như một phương tiện phát triển nghề nghiệp: quan điểm của người tham gia) M. MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 HANOI-2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv PART A: INTRODUCTION. Aims of the study. Significance of the study. Methods of the study.
Scope of the study. Design of the study. 4 Chapter I: Review of Related Literature.1 Overview of Teachers’ Professional Developmet.1 Concepts of Teachers’ Professional Development.2 Areas of Language Teachers’ Professional Development.2 Overview of Team-Teaching .1 Definitions of Team-Teaching.2 Forms of Team-Teaching.3 Factors affecting Team-Teaching .3 Why Team-Teaching as a valuable means for Professional Development?. 10 Chapter II: Methodology.1 The setting of the study.2 The research questions.4 Data collection instruments.1 In-depth interviews.2 Class room-observation.5 Data collection procedures.
18 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 7 Chapter III: Findings, Discussion and Recommendations .1 EFL teachers’ professional development fostered through Team-Teaching.1 EFL teachers’ professional development fostered through Team- Teaching between English teachers and Vietnamese teachers.2 EFL teachers’ professional development fostered through Team- Teaching between Vietnamese teachers and Vietnamese teachers.2 Barriers to Team-Teaching .1 Barriers to Team-Teaching between English volunteer teachers and Vietnamese teachers.2 Barriers to Team-Teaching between Vietnamese and Vietnamese Teachers.1 Recommendations for the administrators.2 Recommendations for team-teachers. Limitation and suggestion for further study. XVII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 8 PART A : INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale With the development of regional integration and global participation, the quality of educa- tion is becoming an urgent need to the Ministry of Education and Training as well as the government.
Since the Vietnamese government sees the quality of teachers as the major factor in improving education, it is setting targets for the general reform of cirriculum and teaching methods in all educational establishments. There have been many annual educa- tion workshops, conferences, researches conducted in many universities in order to help teachers sustain high quality performance in their teaching career and encourage them to pursue life-long learning which is vital to their professional development. To ensure this ongoing professional growth, teachers-as professionals-should constantly develop them- selves. Teachers’ own growth is necessary in order to cope with the ever-expanding know- ledge base in subject matter and pedagogy, rapidly changing social contexts of schooling, and increasingly diversifying students’ needs.
EFL (English Foreign Language) teachers are not exempt from this professional responsibility. In other words, teachers have to be viewed as learners- “the teacher as life-long learner”- and they need to learn together. Teachers today are experimenting with many approaches for professional development such as: self-evaluation, portforlio collections, classroom observation and performance as- sessment, peer assessment, keeping a teaching journal, peer coaching, mentoring, action research.Among these, team-teaching seems to be very effective in enhancing teachers’ professional growth, though for many teachers, team-teaching remains unexplored territo- ry. Although team-teaching is not new in some locations and used widely in many schools around the world, it is an experimental approach at my college because of some reasons below.
Firstly, in early 2001, many teachers at my college were sent to a 12-week-skill- based language teaching methodology course sponsored by the Vietnam-Australia Training (VAT) Project in Hanoi in which team-teaching was introduced as a new form to improve the quality of EFL teaching and learning. Secondly, in recent years, our college has re- ceived some British volunteer teachers from some organizations in order to help EFL teaching and learning. Then our Department has tried this form of teaching in order to take the advantage of our situation-that is, working with some British VSO (Volunteer Service Oversea) volunteers with the hope of contributing to teacher and student development. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 9 Hence, team-teaching between a British volunteer teacher and a Vietnamese teacher or be- tween two Vietnamese teachers has become a common way of conducting EFL classes.
As a teacher, the researcher has been teaching English for nearly 10 years. During that time, I have observed many team-teaching lessons and I have also team taught with some colleagues. The issue raised is that: to what extent team-teaching can help to foster teach- er’s professional growth. Thus, I decided to conduct the study on: “Team-teaching as a tool for professional development: insiders’ views” to investigate and explore the point of views, feelings and attitudes of team-teachers towards to team-teaching as a means for teacher’s growth.
Aims of the study The study was conducted to explore the team-teachers’viewpoints and attitudes towards team-teaching in order to find out the benefits of team-teaching in terms of their profes- sional development as well as the barriers to team-teaching. From the findings of the study, some recommendations were proposed for the administra- tors and team-teachers so as to use team-teaching as an effective means of professional de- velopment. Significance of the study The study is expected to offer an in-depth understanding about the team-teachers’ point of views and attitudes towards team-teaching as a tool for professional development in terms of : (i) Theoretically, it justifies team-teaching as a tool of professional development in an EFL context. (ii) Practically and pedagogically, the findings of the study contribute to the understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of team-teaching as a means of professional develop- ment.
(iii) The recommendations for administrators and team-teachers can improve the benefits and reduce the drawbacks of team-teaching in order to help team-teachers conduct a suc- cessful team-teaching.Method of the study This is a qualitative exploratory study because it was designed to deeply explore the team- teachers’ point of views regarding the effect of team-teaching on their professional devel- opment. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 10 In order to collect data for the study, two techniques were used: in-depth interview and class observation. The interviews used in this study were semi-structured interviews with most of the questions being open-ended. Besides, the researcher also used class observa- tion to triangulate the data.
Scope of the study In educational history, there are many different activities to foster EFL teachers’ profes- sional growth. However, due to the limited time and length of a minor thesis, this small- scale study only explores 9 participants’ point of views towards one of these activities: team-teaching. This study focuses on the in-depth interviews from 5 pairs of team-teachers (9 participants) and observed their lessons to explore their opinions about team-teaching as a tool to de- velop their teaching skills. Besides, the study also investigates the data from these interviews to find out the chal- lenges of team-teaching that these teachers have to face and give some recommendations for both administrators and teachers.
Design of the study The study is structured as follows: Part A- Introduction, Part B- Development and Part C- Conclusion. Part A- Introduction presents the rationale, the aim, the significance, the scope, the me- thods and the design of the study. Part B- Development consists of three chapters: Chapter I: Review of Related Literature - aims at the basic theoretical background con- cerning professional development and team-teaching. Chapter II: Methodology - focuses on the setting of the study, the research questions, the participants, the data collection instruments, the data-collection procedures, and the data- analysis.
Chapter III: Findings, discussion and recommendations - reports majors findings con- ducted from the result of previous chapter and discussion, and offers recommendations for better team-teaching. Part C- Conclusion summarises all the issues in the study, particularly the major findings and recommendations. The limitations of the study and some suggestions for further study are also included in this part. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 11 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE The opening chapter presents an overview of the nature of professional development and provides a conceptual framework for team-teaching and some related studies about team- teaching as a tool for professional development.1 Overview of Professional Development 1.1 Concepts of Teachers’ Professional Development The term “Teacher Development” or “Professional Development” for teachers is a broad term including a variety of aspects connected not only to a teacher’s professional devel- opment but also to his/her personal development (Igawa, 2002).
In other words, “Profes- sional development, in broad sense, refer to the development of a person in his or her per- sonal role” (Eleonara, 2003, p. Surely, professional development enhances competence of all members in a learning community to pursue their life-long learning. Underhill (1997) states that professional development involves teachers in a constant process of learning about their practice and discovering and using their own potential. For Richards (1998), this process requires teachers to creat their own personal teaching metho- dology that takes into account their experience, beliefs and understanding about good teaching.
He adds that reflection, self-inquiry, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation are ne- cessary elements in fostering professional development, since they help teachers to be bet- ter informed and to evaluate their professional growth, as well as to plan for improvement. Likewise, Richards and Farrell (2005) assert that teacher development involves teachers in understanding themselves and their teaching; in analysing their teaching practices, beliefs, value and principles, in keeping up-to-date with theories and trends; and in sharing their experiences with colleagues. So it can be said that in order to develop professionally, teachers should feel a continuous desire to learn more about themselves as professionals, and about their profession. Hence, teachers’ professional development becomes a miles- tone in teacher’s continuum of life-long learning and career progression.
To sum up, although definitions and concepts of teachers’ professional development may be some what different as scholars might approach it from different perspectives, they all share a common view that professional development is used to refer to the process through LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 12 which teachers attain higher professional competence and expand their understanding of self, role, context and career. It is any experience that teachers engaged in to widen their knowledge, appreciation, skills, and understanding of their work inline with goals, values, of the school and their interests and needs of teachers. (Duke and Stiggins, 1990; Beerens, D. Professional development is, therefore, seen as “an ongo- ing process and an integral characteristic of a fully professional teacher” (Mc Donough, 1997, p.2 Areas of Language Teachers’ Professional Development Educational reform, a rapidly changing student clientele, technological development, and new views on assessment are just a few of the pressures that today’s foreign language teach- ers are encountering.
Foreign language teachers must maintain proficiency in the target lan- guage and stay up to date on current issues related to the target culture. Regardless of the skills and knowledge that foreign language teachers possess when they commence teaching, maintenance and improvement must be an ongoing process. In most states, teachers must continue to accumulate academic credits, while teaching, in order to keep their teaching li- cense current. This can be done through evening cources, summer seminars, lectures, or workshops.offered by professional associations or universities, so that teachers can improve language proficiency and cultural knowledge, teaching methods.
Met (1989) states that foreign language teachers need: “competencies in the general areas of education, interpersonal skills and professional education” (p. In addition to demon- strating Met’s ideas, Peyton, in his study, presented in 1997, points out some skills and knowledge that foreign language teachers need.