Zahra Kamrani; Zia Tajeddin; Minoo Alemi
Abstract
The emerging interest in scaffolding as a dynamic, multifaceted, and evolving construct has mounted over the last decades due to its impact on teachers’ professional development and students’ learning. The present paper adopted conversation analysis to analyze scaffolding intentions in content-based ...
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The emerging interest in scaffolding as a dynamic, multifaceted, and evolving construct has mounted over the last decades due to its impact on teachers’ professional development and students’ learning. The present paper adopted conversation analysis to analyze scaffolding intentions in content-based instruction (CBI) based on Van de Pol et al.’s (2010) framework of scaffolding intentions, which includes direction maintenance, cognitive structuring, reduction of the degrees of freedom, recruitment, and frustration control. Through convenience sampling, four science teachers in English-medium CBI were selected, and the videotaped recordings of 12 hours of their online classroom instruction were transcribed and analyzed. The findings indicated that scaffolding intentions mostly pertain to enhancing students’ cognitive structuring, controlling their frustration, and promoting their engagement in the learning process. The findings showed that the cognitive load of learning concepts was one of the main determiners of teachers’ scaffolding. Also, various activities to recruit interest were used by the teachers to provide scaffolding. The findings evidenced that teachers’ interactional and instructional techniques were mostly centered on directing students towards the pedagogical aims and engaging them in the various activities at hand to call students’ attention to the applicability of science matters in the real-life or personal experience. It should be noted that developing self-supporting and self-reflecting strategies were demanding for the teachers. These findings have implications for the teachers and teacher educators to heighten teachers’ awareness of scaffolding in CBI classes to enact more effective teaching.
Azra Gholamshahi; Minoo Alemi; Zia Tajeddin
Abstract
Teacher-others relationship is one of the main features of teacher identity. As an aspect of this relationship, in some educational contexts, teachers experience imposition in their work place. As there is no survey tool to measure imposed identity, the present study developed a questionnaire based on ...
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Teacher-others relationship is one of the main features of teacher identity. As an aspect of this relationship, in some educational contexts, teachers experience imposition in their work place. As there is no survey tool to measure imposed identity, the present study developed a questionnaire based on the relevant literature and interviews with 44 EFL teachers, resulting in a 45-item questionnaire which was disseminated among 450 EFL teachers. An exploratory factor analysis of responses of EFL teachers yielded eight factors, namely: (1) Instructional, assessment, and interpersonal expectations imposed by managers and Supervisors, (2) Teacher professional responsibilities expected by stakeholders in the institute and the family, (3) Restrictions imposed on classroom discussion topics, dress code, and new technologies, (4) Suitability of teaching profession as perceived by the family, (5) Teacher responsibilities as expected by learners’ parents, (6) Gender stereotypes imposed by colleagues and the institute, (7) Learners’ and their parents’ instructional expectations, and (8) Observational and gender perceptions imposed by supervisors and managers. This study revealed the multi-dimensional nature of imposition in relation to which elements of identity change and harmonize under the influence of individual, contextual, and socio-cultural forces. The results of the study suggest that this scale is a reliable and valid measure of EFL teacher imposed identity. The findings can help researchers understand in what ways identity may be imposed and how it may change. Supervisors, institute managers, EFL teachers, and stakeholders can find the results of this study beneficial considering the fact that identity shaped and reshaped will certainly lead to a better EFL context for teaching and learning a foreign language.
