THE PARTICIPANTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEAM TEACHERS AND TEACHING PRACTICES 

Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »

An Exploratory Practice experience.

Classroom observation (CO). “If qualitative inquiry in education is about anything, it is about trying to understand what teachers and children do in the settings in which they work” (Eisner, 1998, p. 11). As an initial experience of Exploratory Practice (EP), I decided to observe unmodified team-taught classes so that I could see, feel, and comprehend what teachers and students did in their authentic settings. In other words, my participants and I embarked upon our journey, based not on what we thought or believed the participants did, but rather on how the participants actually acted. Unlike most classroom action research that identifies teaching ‘problems’ in their classrooms, my participants and I attempted to observe and understand actual classroom practices as they were without making good or bad judgments. In observing the classes, I imagined myself sitting quietly at the back of the classroom without interacting with teachers or students, i.e., acting as a non-participant, primarily because I did not want to intrude in the lessons. However, it soon became evident that it was unnatural for me not to interact with the teachers or students. I could not behave as  if I were non-existent; neither could the students completely ignore me. I thus communicated with the teachers and students in class. The team teachers at Sakura in fact told me that they wanted to take advantage of my experience and expertise as a former JTE and conduct classes with three ‘teachers’. Each of the entire team-taught class was videotaped with a video camera placed on a tripod at the back of the classroom in order to capture what was happening from moment to moment during the lessons. At the same time, I took classroom field notes (see Appendix D for an example) when I was not communicating with the participants in the classroom. I wrote brief descriptions of the physical environment and the students. I also jotted down details of any kind of event or incident I noticed, especially those that took place where the camera may not have been able to record successfully.
Teacher pair discussion 1 (TPD1). Immediately after each classroom observation, each pair of team teachers and I discussed the observed class on that day in the counselling room at Sakura and in the teachers’ room at Tsubaki. Each discussion continued for about one hour, and the language used was English because that was the only language that could be understood well by all the teachers and is the medium through which JTEs and ALTs communicate with each other on a day-to-day basis. In deciding the focus and topic of teacher pair discussions 1, I bore in mind Fanselow’s (1992) belief that researchers and teachers can gain deeper understanding of the results of what they are doing by mining a small amount of data over and over from multiple perspectives rather than by viewing an entire lesson once from one perspective. Merriam (2009) sums it up: “The general lies in the particular” (p. 225). The teacher participants selected a five-minute video clip from the observed class (recorded for 50 minutes at Sakura and for 45 minutes at Tsubaki) after fastforwarding, stopping, and rewinding the videotape several times. Once the clip was selected, we scrutinised the activity that was occurring in the clip. Hence, the five-minute video clips from the videotaped classes became a convenient and powerful component of our project.
In the teacher pair discussions 1 during the first cycle, it was necessary for us to determine the theme which was going to be explored for the remaining cycles in order to narrow the focus as well as to have a degree of consistency over time. In relation to the fiveminute video clip that they observed during cycle 1, Sakura’s pair chose ‘Teacher instructions for student classroom activities’ as their theme. They wished to understand the ways in which they gave instructions to explain activities to students in the classroom and the reasons behind them. Tsubaki’s pair selected ‘Teacher feedback for individual student presentation’ as their theme so that they could facilitate their understanding of how they gave feedback to each student presentation in the classroom and why they did so in that way. It was at this stage that collaboration with colleagues was particularly beneficial because it mutually helped to identify and examine aspects of practice that each teacher alone might otherwise have let go unnoticed (Parsons & Stephenson, 2005). For instance, at Sakura, Aitani and Matt broadened the definition of their chosen theme (i.e., Teacher instructions for student classroom activities) by negotiating and exchanging their previously held beliefs about it. After talking about their chosen themes, the teachers grappled with questions such as: (a) In what way and to what extent do you want to change your teaching for the following classes? and (b) How
will you attempt to do that? (see Appendix A). In addition, whenever I could during the discussion, I played devil’s advocate to explore further possibilities and alternatives, thereby challenging and understanding the ideas about various topics that the participants raised. For example, in one case, I encouraged the teachers at Tsubaki to think of the issues from a different perspective in the following way: “I play the devil’s advocate here. What do you think could be the disadvantage of recasting for this activity, if any?” (TPD1, Tsubaki, C3, p. . My hope was that our free-flowing, non-conclusive discussions, initiated by the fiveminute video clips, would lead to a holistic understanding of the practice of team teachers and learners and thus enlighten subsequent classroom experiences. After each teacher pair discussion 1, I constructed transcripts of the five-minute clips (see Appendix E for an example) for reflective classes that were held a few days after the discussions.
Reflective classes. I conducted reflective classes with the students in 2A at Sakura for 50 minutes and 2B at Tsubaki for 45 minutes during cycle 1. To begin, I gave explanations to the students regarding the purpose of the research in general and the reflective classes in particular. Then, the students and I together watched the selected five-minute video clip on my lap top computer while looking at the written transcripts of the clip. Afterward, based on the five-minute video clip and following the student feedback sheets (SFSs) (see Appendix F), the students reflected on the previous class with group members (four or five students in each group). Next, all the students in the classroom and I discussed the previous team-taught class and exchanged ideas with each other, using the blackboard. Within the remaining time (from 20 to 30 minutes), I asked students to complete the student feedback sheets individually and I collected them at the end of the class.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 
Aims of the Research .
Significance of the Research
Thesis Outline
Conclusion
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .
Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE)
A Sociocultural Perspective on SLTE
Non-Native/Native English Speaking Teachers (N/NESTS)
Teachers’ Perceptions of N/NESTs
Students’ Perceptions of N/NESTs
Team Teaching
Team Teaching in Japan
Teacher Research
Exploratory Practice (EP)
The ‘what’ issues
The ‘who’ issues .
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 
Research Approach
Constructivist-Interpretive Paradigm .
Data Collection
Selecting Participants and Securing their Participation
The Research Sites .
Methods and Procedures
Phase 1: Prior to an Exploratory Practice experience
Phase 2: An Exploratory Practice experience.
Phase 3: After an Exploratory Practice experience
Ongoing data collection
Data Analysis
Transcribing, Translating, and Managing the Data
Data Display
CHAPTER 4: THE PARTICIPANTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEAM TEACHERS AND TEACHING PRACTICES 
Team Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions of JTEs
JTEs as Language Models, Learners, and Bridges between ALTs and Students .
Language models and learners .
Understanding students’ learning processes.
ALTs as ‘Natives’: Enlightening or Frightening?.
Authorities and providers of target language
Team Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions of Team-Teaching Practices 9
Teaching approach: ‘True’ team teaching or not?
Available time
Infrequent, inefficient, and tokenistic .
Discussion and Conclusion
CHAPTER 5: EFFECTS OF THE EXPLORATORY PRACTICE (EP) AS A MEDIATIONAL TOOL ON THE PARTICIPANTS’ PERCEPTIONS .
CHAPTER 6: EFFECTS OF THE EXPLORATORY PRACTICE (EP) AS A MEDIATIONAL TOOL ON THE PARTICIPANTS’ PRACTICES 
CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION
REFERENCES

GET THE COMPLETE PROJECT
UNDERSTANDING THE PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF TEAM TEACHERS AND STUDENTS IN JAPANESE HIGH SCHOOLS THROUGH EXPLORATORY PRACTICE (EP)