In which sense is the ‘recipe’ not satisfying?

Yes, because I need to know whether to follow a certain line, yes, I need to know the theoretical presuppositions of why we act in a certain way, also because we as teachers are exposed to certain pressures, I would say, to different types of demands on the part of the learners, isn’t that so?¹²⁴

Teacher N51 criticises those examples of teacher training that offer “recipes” without giving the theoretical background, which she thinks she needs (this will be discussed more in detail later in this chapter in the section about the teachers’ perceptions of usefulness). According to her and teacher A54, going beyond the ‘recipe’ seems necessary in order to expand one’s own knowledge base and be able to cope with the various demands placed on language teachers.

Although they also benefit from practical aids, what they seem to learn from teacher training is of a more abstract kind and refers to rather intangible aspects, such as confirming that their own teaching is fine or gaining more confidence, as in the following examples:

[Interview N51: 116] I felt confirmed that, also in an academic setting, my way of teaching was fine¹²⁵. Other abstract gains are touched upon also by teacher P73. In her case, she sees the gains from workshops in terms of opportunities to incorporate new perspectives. On the question of whether she thinks she feels the need for further teacher training, she reacts positively, the reason being her need to know about new ways of seeing a phenomenon and to look for intellectual challenges¹²⁶:

[Interview P73: 31-33] ja klar, nicht nur lernen und das war’s, wir können nicht bleiben … und das ist auch persönlich, … [short pause] in jedem Moment denkt man, wir machen das Beste, aber dann kommen andere Leute, die anders denken, anders sehen, und wir müssen es hören, es sehen, und dann vielleicht „Ok“.

124[Sì, quello che si è imparato fino ad adesso, fino a poco tempo fa era sopratttutto un insieme di strategie, un insegnamento, o anche sì, a livello anche proprio abbastanza limitato, magari, tra la ricetta e la strategia, diciamo, soprattutto, direi …

Q.: Invece, adesso?

Mah, ultimamente adesso, con il master e con questi workshops, ecco, si cominciano a incontrare i presupposti teorici, di certe ricette. Io sono arrivata ad un punto in cui ero un po’ disamorata, insomma, mi riferisco soprattutto ai workshop organizzati dalle case editrici, per esempio, che sono le cose più frequenti che ci vengono offerte.

Q.: In che senso la “ricetta” non è soddisfacente?

Sì, perché la mia esigenza era sapere se mi muovo su una certa linea, ecco, conoscere i presupposti teorici per cui si agisce in un certo modo, anche perché si è sottoposti come insegnanti a tensioni, diciamo, a richieste di tipo diverso da parte dei corsisti, no?]

125Ho trovato la conferma che, anche in ambito accademico diciamo, il mio modo di insegnare poteva andare bene.

126In her case, the range of concrete and abstract gains can be found in the same person: [Interview P73: 48]

Diesen anderen Blick, neue Perspektiven. Und natürlich, [short pause to think] es ist, muss ich auch sagen, es ist manchmal gut, auch solche Seminare zu haben, wo man ganz praktische Aktivitäten lernt, weil ich zB.

Konversationskurse habe, die schon 7 Jahre laufen, und irgendwann sage ich: “Was soll ich zum Unterricht bringen? Jetzt weiß ich nicht mehr“.

Later she refers to the project KommUNIkation and summarises what she thinks she learned from it in this way:

[Interview P73: 63] Es war das Feedback, das die Kollegen gegeben haben, “Das können wir nicht so in der Uni beibringen!“ und dann habe ich mehr überlegt, … Damals habe ich nicht an der Uni gearbeitet, es hat mich noch mal erinnert, dass es nicht nur die Grundschule oder die VHS gibt, es gibt andere, es war wichtig für mich persönlich.

This sounds like a recognition of her learning attitude, according to which she is always looking for challenges and – at the same time – also an indication of her communicative and social orientation, according to which knowledge is socially constructed (Johnson 2009: 9).

This emphasises the social aspects in teachers’ development¹²⁷, and denotes the „zone of proximal development“ as a social and cognitive zone of development, in which the peers play a critical role in learning, as teacher P73 further explains:

[Interview P73: 48] Q.: What do you think you learn from teacher training in general?

Diesen anderen Blick, neue Perspektiven.

According to teacher P73, she sees the gains from teacher training in terms of professional or intellectual insights, such as expanding her professional experience through different perspectives, through new ways of seeing things. If professional growth is an increase in something, the broadening of perspectives is one example of it and teacher P73 makes this clear in her words.

As for teacher I312, she also profits from teacher training:

[Interview I312: 37] New ideas, new approaches, and um...yeah that’s it.

Methods seem to be not only constitutive of the teachers’ domain, they also appear to be indispensable in maintaining both the learners’ interest and motivation at a high level and in avoiding being bored themselves as teachers, as I312 states:

[Interview I312: 80] they [the workshops] gave me new ideas, then it helped me add something new to my repertoire. For me it is important, absolutely. If it’s routine it gets boring and then I don’t want to do it.

Within this interest in methods, the interest in multimedia and information technology (IT) applied to language teaching is one of the top concerns of the teachers:

[Interview I312: 25] You can never have enough…methods. And also with modern tools.

Technical expertise seems to be a pervasive concern for language teachers, who very often

127 And is also similar to what happens in classroom learning, cf. Klippel & Doff (2009: 208).

mention the need to become more expert in information technology, in using learning platforms, multimedia, and “technical instruments” in general (N51: 119). This even applies to those who think they do not need information technology for their lessons, as teacher B282 for her translation classes:

[Interview B282: 41] Yes, I think what would be … something I do not use at the moment and don’t really um well, … I do not use computers, is the information technology, because it does not lend itself, at the moment, to what I do.

If in the quite recent past teachers were suspected of teachers' ‘technophobia’ (Lam 2000:

413) and of being averse to technology, this does not seem to apply any longer. The teachers in this study seem to feel the appeal of the “last innovation” in teaching methodology and want to develop expertise in this domain.

In addition, what many teachers appreciate most are ideas that can be easily applied one-to-one as recipes and handouts, because they relieve the teachers of their work load. The word

“recipes” also recurs in the interviews of other teachers, either verbatim or with similar concepts, as teacher B282 conveys:

[Interview B282: 71] General ideas are good and you then have to apply them to the language you are teaching. But sometimes it is very handy if you can just take things and use them as a recipe.

The chance to “run the next class” without much effort (to quote teacher A54 again) is exactly what teacher B282 considers a learning gain and expects from workshops.

The “recipes” find their materialisation in “handouts”, which emerge as one of the most appreciated benefits for the teachers, especially for teacher B282 or teacher J106:

[Interview J106: 96-7] Q.: Can you think of one feature in the design of the KommUNIkation-Workshops that was beneficial for your development as a language teacher?

I think it was good that it was on-hand practice, with hand-outs and examples and trying it out, it was good.

As for the group 2 of teachers, they as a group are more consistent. This group mentioned practical gains from the KommUNIkation programme or from teacher training in general, which are usually related to the instructional dimension of teaching in terms of methods that help the teachers to arrange learning situations in their classes. When the researcher asked how they had profitted from the workshops, one of the most frequent words mentioned by the teachers in both the questionnaires and the interviews was “methods”. Here a selection:

[Interview M171: 47] New methods of teaching.

[Interview M96: 134] Viele Methoden… von denen ich wirklich bis heute auch einige anwende.

[Interview M96: 144- 146] Na ja, dann Methoden würde ich sagen, Methodik.