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Building teacher pedagogical capacity: Connecting syllabus with practice in the English language school-based curriculum
Citation
Paper presented at the 4th Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference, Singapore, 30 May to 1 June 2011
Abstract
School leaders do recognise that there is an emerging new generation team of teachers with different abilities and life experience in our schools. These teachers bring into the classrooms diverse talents and they approach lesson planning and development in creative ways to motivate and engage their students to learn in school. A greater interplay among teachers would be useful to provide a more sustained approach for innovative and effective pedagogies to scale up across to other subjects and levels. The project allowed veteran teachers with deep teaching experiences working together with other teachers with new perspectives. Five teachers from a secondary school introduced media materials into their teaching of oracy in English Language (EL). The aim was to increase opportunities for high ability students to learn and interact with the materials outside the classroom. The focus of the paper is on the curriculum work as seen through the eyes of these five teachers in providing a more challenging school-based curriculum to engage their high ability students. The teachers planned a series of lessons guided by a modified lesson study protocol. Learning materials were packaged to achieve the syllabus and instructional objectives through the use of class tasks and small group discussions, role-modelling and in-depth study of specific interest areas in the media materials. The five dimensions in the PETALSTM Framework, namely, pedagogy, experience of learning, tone of environment, assessment and learning content were used to examine their pivotal role in predicting students’ engagement levels. Data analysis of the survey as well as interviews with somes tudents highlighted areas for future work in the use of media materials for EL teaching and learning.
Date Issued
2011