A pedagogy for teacher education: Making theory, practice, and context connections for English language teaching

Abstract

This article discusses a pedagogic intervention on a pre-service teacher education course for studentteachers learning to teach English in the Singaporean, multilingual primary school. A case-method pedagogy was conceptualised in response to the teaching environment of Singapore and driven by two questions: one about the ability of student-teachers to make theory/practice connections, and the other about how they might develop professional values. Two examples of the case studies were presented as they were employed during the course provide data. Another set comes from a survey which elicited student-teachers’ reflections on their experiences of learning using this case-method pedagogy. The findings demonstrate that the contextualisation provided by the cases gave studentteachers opportunities for making effective theory/practice connections. It also led them to personalise their learning. Additionally, the results about ethics were suggestive of the development of professional values, showing an unexpected catalysis of a future-orientation to the profession. However, since the results about the development of teaching values were not conclusive, the article provided discussions on the current issue. Nevertheless, the case-method pedagogy is recommended as effective in teacher preparation, enabling theory and practice to be visibly connected through context.