Cognition and learning

class much more easily than if only actions but not explanations are generated. The extent to which a teacher will be able to construct rich representations in the classroom depends on how well her knowledge is linked and on her skill in creating such on-the-spot representations of practice.

Figure 9.3: Model of Teacher Learning

experiences, like writing academic papers, that are not as similar to teaching. It should also be noted, however, that not all knowledge gained from such experiences is useful for teaching. As a teacher or student you may acquire knowledge such as the favorite soup of one of your students or the middle name of the girl who sat behind you in math class in 7^th grade, but this probably will remain inert rather than be used for teaching.

9.3.2.2 Feedback

Feedback refers to any kind of information teachers acquire about actions in the classroom. When participating in teaching or teaching-related activities, teacher students, teachers and observers received feedback on what happens in the classroom. For example, teachers notice the extent to which their expectations about how students would understand and participate in activities were matched; students notice the teacher’s reactions to their language production and other behaviors; and observers notice the developing dynamics between students in classroom activities. Feedback can range from specific, explicit information about how well students performed a task to more subtle information such as students’ expressions, pauses in student work, or vague feelings that the activity is or is not going well. Even in solitary activities such as lesson preparation or responding to student work, there is feedback for teachers. For instance, I may think that a Venn diagram would be useful for a lesson on understanding differences between types of math problems in an ESL math class, but when I try to categorize the problems myself I find that the differences are too complex and subtle for such an activity.

Feedback is part of the experience of participating in teaching activities and so contributes to implicit knowledge. Over time such experiences can produce a rich implicit knowledge base about activities, students, language learning, etc. Furthermore, if feedback is compared and linked to feedback from other experiences, experienced-based abstractions can be formed. For example, if a teacher (a) notices in a lesson that open-ended questions tend to elicit more communication (and more language production) with advanced students but less with beginning language students and (b) links this information to similar experiences, then (c) an abstract but practice-specific notion of

“communicative questions” can form over time. The flip side of this process is that biases can also be formed through this process. If a teacher attempts to engage EFL students in project work several times but break off the attempts early each time because of the noise level in class, she may form the implicit conception that project work

“doesn’t work” with such students. This could, however, be a misinterpretation of the situation since it is also possible that project work would work with that group of students, but only if they are taught how to engage in project work.

9.3.2.3 Deliberate practice

Deliberate practice refers to activities in which teachers engage in order to learn more themselves, both in terms of conceptual knowledge (i.e., knowledge of specific activities, student cues or teaching routines) and procedural knowledge (i.e. developing skill in using specific activities, student cues or teaching routines). This may be part of their teaching or a separate activity; they can be organized by others or by the teacher herself.

Teacher education experiences can be considered a type of deliberate practice. In this model, deliberate practice is important because there are many things teachers will not learn through their experiences in the classroom. For example, a teacher may want her instruction to focus on communication only interrupted briefly for compact input on aspects of language, but not possess representations for such aspects of language which can be communicated to students clearly in very limited time. She could then engage in deliberate practice by developing such representations (e.g., explanations, examples and/or graphics) with the help of reference materials, try these in class, see how long they take, checking students comprehension and ability to learn from such representations, and then further modifying the representations. Deliberate practice does not always occur, however, which is why in the figure 9.3 the arrow linking it with implicit knowledge contains gaps. Note that in the model presented here, deliberate

practice does not necessarily result in useful implicit knowledge. In addition, deliberate practice may result in inert knowledge if it is not done well or if its goal is not realistic given the constraints of practice.

As well as developing implicit knowledge, deliberate practice may also have the goal of linking and organizing knowledge. A teacher may want not only to develop a repertoire of representations of article usage, supersegmentals in questions, or turn-taking rules, but also to develop understandings of which representations work better with beginning students or more advanced students, what student cues (e.g., target language production) suggest that such representations are either helpful (because students are ready to learn that aspect of language) or not (because that aspect of language has already been learned or the students are not ready to learn about it). Some representations may work better if used one after another, while it may be better for students if other representations are used alone (e.g., if they are fairly complex or difficult to grasp).

The effectiveness of deliberate practice depends on several factors. First, it depends on how well cognitive load is managed. If a teacher has to monitor too many factors, she will find it difficult to learn from such experiences. Second, the quality of feedback the teacher gets determines how effective the deliberate practice is. If a teacher is not able to keep track of how much time it takes to use a representation of negation in English or monitor the extent that L2 students understand the representation, then it will be difficult for her to construct and refine a quick and understandable representation. Third, the usefulness of such activities depends on the extent to which it helps the teacher acquire practice-specific, implicit knowledge. Reading an article on the acquisition of past tense forms may be the first step (of many) in deliberate practice, but alone it is unlikely to produce knowledge useful for teaching. Fourth, effectiveness of deliberate practice is determined by the extent to which it helps teachers to organize their knowledge better, to generate abstractions from examples in practice, and to make connections between what they already know and any new knowledge acquired. It is important to note, however, that deliberate practice will also result in inert knowledge, for example knowledge of representations that students don’t understand or insights that the teacher lacks procedures to achieve in the classroom. The final factor is the extent to which the teacher has been trained to develop and carry out deliberate practice. The evidence presented in the previous chapter suggests that teachers do not necessarily engage in deliberate practice after they have achieved a minimal level of proficiency in teaching.

9.3.2.4 Explicit knowledge

In the second chapter a good deal of evidence was presented that explicit knowledge, if used inefficiently, simply produces a great deal of inert knowledge. The reason for this is that explicit knowledge does not directly guide the formation of implicit knowledge or practice. However, in this model of teacher cognition there are several important ways in which explicit knowledge can be used to enrich teachers’ implicit knowledge bases although, unfortunately, explicit knowledge is often not used for these purposes. The first use of explicit knowledge, as mentioned above, is to monitor the explanations and actions suggested by implicit cognition. This influences learning in that it may produce better explanations and actions which, when experienced, reinforce implicit knowledge in this area.

A second use for explicit knowledge is to monitor and evaluate feedback from teaching activities. For example, if L2 students are having the same problems with articles despite

repeated focus on this area, the teacher might use her explicit knowledge to evaluate feedback from lessons to see if this is due to (a) their not understanding the teacher’s representations of articles, (b) they are not developmentally ready to learn this, or (c) the students are playing a joke on the teacher. This is what Schön (1983) referred to as reflection-on-action. The process of evaluating classroom feedback results in implicit knowledge of that feedback. The extent to which teachers are able to do this, however, is contingent on how well cognitive load is managed. Monitoring activities to make sure students really communicate is feasible; monitoring activities to make sure all factors of CLT mentioned by Canale and Swain (1981) are present is probably not.

The last, but most important role for explicit knowledge is in contributing to deliberate practice. Explicit knowledge can provide ideas for deliberate practice, materials and information to be modified, and can help monitor the process. Several studies suggest that explicit knowledge is important for these processes (Schwartz & Bransford, 1998;

Strasser & Gruber, 2004; Tsui, 2003). Thus, while explicit knowledge may not be used directly to create implicit knowledge or to direct teachers’ practice, it plays a key role in developing teachers’ implicit knowledge base if used in deliberate practice. For example, if teachers have learned how to analyze a novel’s narrative structure in a literature class, they may be able to use that knowledge for deliberate practice. They could experiment with having their L2 students analyze the narrative structure of young adult novels in order to understand how structuring novels in different ways adds or subtracts to the quality of the book. If teachers do this with the goal of working out how to get their students to connect these insights into their own reading or writing skills, then such experimenting with activities could help develop schemata on using analysis of literature to increase L2 students’ reading and writing skills. However, the research data in chapter eight indicates that it is difficult for teachers to use explicit, academic knowledge for deliberate practice. Therefore, it may be necessary for teachers to be apprenticed into using explicit knowledge to develop, carry out and evaluate their deliberate practice for teaching. For instance, learning about narrative structure in a traditional literature course on late 19^th century British literature might not lead to deliberate practice. However, a literature class which includes the analysis of novels commonly taught in schools and discussions of how certain aspects of narrative structure improve writing may be more successful in sparking deliberate practice in teachers.

In many ways the role of explicit knowledge in teacher learning is similar to the role of explicit knowledge in second language learning. In L2 learning the goal is not to acquire explicit knowledge of question formation or intonation patterns, but to acquire the implicit knowledge which enables you to form questions and intonation patterns similar to the speech community you would like to be a part of. Learning explicit KAL may not result in any language learning and one can learn a language without any explicit KAL.

However, when used in a way that (a) supports the acquisition of implicit KAL and (b) does not cause cognitive overload (for example by focusing only on one aspect of grammar and not all grammar problems), KAL can be a very useful tool in language learning. In the same way, explicit knowledge does not necessarily result in knowledge for teaching. People can learn to teach well without academic knowledge, but explicit, academic knowledge can be a useful tool for developing teacher knowledge. However, for it to be useful in this process, teachers need to (a) be provided with experiences which help them use explicit knowledge to develop implicit, practice-specific knowledge and (b) learn how to use explicit knowledge to develop implicit, practice oriented knowledge.