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LEAD - Learning Enhancement and Academic Development

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14083

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Start date: 2010End date: 2019

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 27
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    Using post-test think aloud interviews to investigate student reading skills and reading test validity [Oral Presentation]
    (English UK North, 2018-10-06) Donaghue, Helen; Taylor, Lyndon
    This presentation will report on a classroom-based research project carried out in a tertiary institution in the UK with international students on a pre- sessional EAP course. Using a think aloud protocol, students described (retrospectively) how they did tasks in a reading test. Interviews yielded information about students' reading skills and strategies and the cognitive validity of test items, which enabled informed improvements to teaching and test design. The presentation will give brief background information and outline the research methodology. We will then detail interesting findings from the interviews, including information about how students approached texts and tasks, the skills and strategies they used (or did not use), and information about the validity of test questions. We will discuss how this process informed teaching and syllabus changes, ensured better teaching/test alignment, and helped improve test design
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    Help or hindrance: A critical examination of trainer talk [Oral Presentation]
    (IATEFL, 2018-04-13) Donaghue, Helen; Oxholm, Alice
    This talk will critically examine trainer talk during discussions with student teachers about teaching practice. Using data extracts, we will show instances of trainer talk that hindered or helped student teachers to reflect. We will recommend a data-led approach to examining trainer talk and will show the strategies that helped us improve our own practice.
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    Negotiating identities: Relational work in critical post observation feedback [Oral Presentation]
    (BAAL, 2018-09-09) Donaghue, Helen
    Discourse is considered an important locus for the study of identity (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). Benwell and Stokoe (2006) note the ‘enthusiastic use’ (p.34) of the term ‘discourse’ in identity theory, but maintain that empirical studies are rare, with few researchers engaging with actual situated examples of language use or looking at how identities are discursively performed. This presentation will examine how identities are negotiated during work-based talk between an inservice English language teacher and two supervisors during post observation feedback meetings. Using a linguistic ethnographic framework, micro analysis of feedback talk will be supplemented with data from interviews in which participants were invited to comment on selected meeting extracts. Linguistic analysis will draw on the concept of relational work: ‘the “work” individuals invest in negotiating relationships with others' (Locher and Watts, 2005: 10). Relational work allows examination of the full spectrum of interpersonal linguistic behaviour: polite, appropriate, inappropriate and impolite. A detailed microanalysis of data extracts from the two meetings will show interactants' use of relational work to negotiate identities. I will show how one supervisor uses politeness strategies while the other uses aggressive behaviour to claim similar identities for themselves while ascribing a negative identity for the observed teacher as they both highlight a weakness in his practice (poor instructions). I will examine the teacher's reaction and participants' ensuing identity negotiations. Analysis will show that identities are emergent, relational and co-constructed. Ethnographic data will reveal the influence of institutional goals on local identity construction and relational work.
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    Identity in post observation feedback [Oral Presentation]
    (2016-06-04) Donaghue, Helen
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    Face in post observation feedback [Oral Presentation]
    (University of Central Lancashire, 2019-05) Donaghue, Helen
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    Using a community of practice for teacher professional development in the United Arab Emirates
    (Analytrics, 2012) Gitsaki, Christina; Donaghue, Helen; Wang, Ping; Boufoy-Bastick, Béatrice
    Achieving teacher transformation through professional development training programs is not always guaranteed. Research has shown that teacher transformative learning is more likely to occur through professional interactions with colleagues and critical reflection. Such processes can help teachers develop new knowledge, change their previous beliefs about teaching, implement new strategies in class, and improve their classroom teaching practice. A Community of Practice (CoP) professional development model provides an environment where such learning can be achieved. While popular in the West, the CoP model is underused in parts of the world that have traditional educational systems, such as the Middle East. This chapter reports on a teacher professional development program using a CoP model designed to provide training on classroom teaching strategies and techniques to 25 college teachers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The chapter first describes the process of the CoP program and then reports on the results of an investigation of the participants’ attitudes towards the program and the content of the training sessions as well as how they implemented the specific teaching techniques in their classes.