Volume 28

Explorations in Teacher Development: Volume 28 Issue 3

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In this issue, you will find the following articles, across several categories, that make fresh contributions to thinking about teacher development:

Glen Stewart and Hayo Reinders report on an action-research project that takes “active learning” as something much more than an overly familiar slogan or top-down policy. In addition to presenting and analyzing findings across multiple research cycles, they distill their interpretations into recommendations for practice. Moreover, as many of the best research articles do, their paper models a careful exploration into taken-for-granted concepts and methods.

James Taylor investigates the often overlooked issue of teacher disability, specifically of teachers dealing with chronic illness. His article draws on the strengths of an insider perspective on a sensitive issue and puts original qualitative research in productive dialogue with multiple lines of scholarship. By illuminating the experiences of teachers with chronic illness, it offers the
potential to expand conceptions of disability and perceptions of how teachers are affected.

Michael Ellis reexamines the admonition against teacher talk in his reflection on starting lessons with brief small talk, that is, lighthearted anecdotes that do not necessarily have straightforward learning objectives. This reflection blends narrative inquiry with a small mixed-methods classroom research study to suggest more nuanced ways of thinking about and using teacher talk.

Koji Osawa reflects on his experience of finding ways to scaffold in-class speaking performance in a distance-learning context. This reflection sheds light on the importance of the social scaffolding of communication, even when it is mediated by computer and even when it is initially asynchronous.

Bob Kobylack, William Kuster, and Andrew Pedersen share their exploration into enhancing teacher collaboration within a university department with familiar online tools, which have taken on even more importance in times of pandemic.

Junyuan Chen shares her deep, and necessarily deeply personal, exploration of the literature on language teacher identity.

Timothy Ang reports on his satisfactions and dissatisfactions with his experience of being a part-time teacher at multiple universities, and from this vital lesser-heard perspective, makes the case for several possible improvements.

Articles

EDITORIALS

RESEARCH ARTICLES

REFLECTIONS

EXPLORATIONS

PERSPECTIVES

Explorations in Teacher Development: Volume 28 Issue 2 (Special Edition)

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The Teacher Journeys conference has continued to evolve as a vital forum for teachers to share their own narratives of growth and for others to find resonance and inspiration in these stories. The 2021 conference featured 19 recorded video presentations, all of which ETD readers can still view online.

Additionally, the force behind the conference, conference chair Michael Ellis, hosted an insightful panel discussion with four presenters, the video recording of which is available here.

A follow-up special issue of ETD has become a venerable tradition, and this year’s special issue builds on the success of last year’s Volume 27, Issue 2.

In this issue, Devon Arthurson, Michael Blodgett, Sarah Miyoshi Deutchman, Agnes Maria Francis, Caroline Hutchinson, Nicholas Marx, Diane Raluy Turner and Ramon Mislang, Jamie G. Sturges, and Akihiko Andrew Tohei further develop their respective presentations in brief narrative-driven articles.

Following the same unified format as last year, each of the nine articles opens with an illustrative vignette before presenting clear objectives, practical implications, and finally a reflective conclusion.

Articles

Nick Kasparek – Editorial Introduction

Mike Ellis – Teacher Journeys 2021

Devon Arthurson – An Instructor’s Experience with and Students’ Opinions about Reflection Journals

Michael Blodgett – Near Death in the Mountains: My Path to Becoming a Better Teacher

Sarah Deutchman – Implementation of Data-driven Learning (DDL) and the Effects of Machine Learning on the Classroom

Agnes Maria Francis – First Year Teaching in the Pandemic Era: Survived!

Caroline Hutchinson – Overcoming Professional Self-Doubt

Nicholas Marx – Technology and Our Choices

Diane Raluy Turner & Ramon Mislang – A Year after ERT: How Online and Hybrid Classes have Reshaped F2F 2.0 Classes

Jamie G. Sturges – Neurodivergent and Teaching in the Time of Covid-19

Akihiko Andrew Tohei – Building Relationships through the Online Classroom

Explorations in Teacher Development: Volume 28 Issue 1 (Spring 2022)

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This issue features two extensive research articles. First, Miori Shimada investigates through two student narratives the complex role of anxiety in language learning. By attending to the significantly different backgrounds of these students and their experiences with anxiety in language learning, Shimada brings into focus the factors affecting when anxiety arose, how it both helped and hindered learning, and how it could be overcome.

Second, Cecilia Smith Fujishima and Tanja McCandie explore the relationships between demographics and ELT conference attendance. Inspired by work suggesting that attending conferences positively affects teacher development, they use survey data to examine potentially underrepresented identity groups at JALT conferences; in other words, they turn attention to who might be at most risk of missing out on these benefits and what could be done to make JALT conferences more accessible to all.

Articles