This PIM focused on the transition from EAP Teacher to EAP Teacher Educator. Although there is support available to those transitioning into EAP from more general English teaching, very little support is available to those EAP practitioners working with other teachers. Working with other teachers may involve observing other teachers on a summer school, preparing and delivering a series of workshops as part of a teacher education programme or mentoring and supporting teachers new to EAP.
This PIM provided a space to share ideas and best practice including approaches and methods to Teacher Education. This PIM was of interest to Senior Teachers, DOSs, Teacher Trainers and Educators and indeed anyone who works with or is planning to work with other teachers.
The event was delivered in-person with some plenaries and workshops live-streamed.
Lindsay Knox (Head of Teacher Development & Scholarship in Languages, Centre for Open Learning, University of
Edinburgh) delivered a lecture entitled Becoming an EAP teacher educator in a global landscape of EAP practices.
In the wider field of English language education, the route from teacher to teacher educator is a well-established one. With globally recognised qualifications such as those offered by Cambridge and Trinity, and with relevant experience, becoming a teacher educator has generally been seen as an achievable career goal. However, for EAP practitioners who have ambitions to enter teacher education, or who suddenly find themselves in this role, the route is perhaps less obviously signposted.
Initiatives such as the individual BALEAP accreditation, which allows fellows and senior fellows to pursue recognition as a TEAP mentor or mentor/assessor respectively, have gone some way to addressing this gap. The establishment of the Teacher Education in EAP SIG has also provided a forum for those involved in the professional development of EAP colleagues to meet and share practice. However, as the theme of this PIM would suggest, the principles and practices of EAP teacher education are arguably not as widely discussed or documented as they could be.
This provides the starting point for this talk, beginning with the question of whether there is a need for a more distinct, and enhanced pathway to support the development of those who wish to make the move into teacher education, before moving on to ask what such a pathway may look like. With a growing awareness of the diverse range of contexts for EAP around the globe, and with inclusivity as a core BALEAP value, establishing a teacher educator pathway which recognises the multiple settings of EAP practice is an important consideration.
In this talk, I will explore these issues further and, through a series of questions, encourage the audience to continue their own conversation about a possible future for EAP teacher education, throughout the day and beyond.
Helen Donaghue (Senior Lecturer Learning Enhancement and Academic Development at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh) and Marion Heron (Associate Professor in Educational Linguistics at University of Surrey) delivered a lecture on Post Observation Feedback Literacy.
One of the most common and potentially useful ways of enhancing teachers’ practice (and therefore students’ learning) is observation and feedback. Despite the importance and frequency of observations in EAP teacher education, scant attention, if any, is paid to the post observation feedback stage where teachers, often new to EAP, receive feedback on their teaching. How (or if) teachers then enact this feedback in their teaching is also under-researched. Drawing on Carless and Winstone’s (2020) framework of feedback literacy, this presentation argues for adopting an educator (i.e. observer) and teacher (i.e. observed) feedback literacies perspective on assessed and formative post observation feedback. Drawing on examples from research data, we exemplify how feedback literacy can influence what feedback is more likely to be enacted by the participant. We also show how the three dimensions of feedback literacy – design, relational and pragmatic – are highly applicable to different stages of the observation process and how we might leverage this model to better support EAP teachers.
There was good range of papers from teachers, teacher trainers, teacher educators, lecturers and tutors who have experience of or an interest in working with or supporting EAP teachers.
Areas of relevance include, but are by no means limited to:
The Programme can be accessed by following this link FINAL DRAFT PIM Schedule 2022 [PDF Document].
The following talks were pre-recorded and made available via the BALEAP YouTube channel prior to the event.
The majority of the talks were given face-to-face. The following presenters agreed to share slides and some of them agreed to share the recording, in which case look at the playlist embedded below.
Poster presentations:
Hybrid in EAP: a personal journey to heaven…or hell? Pete Sharma (University of Warwick)
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/eltc/baleap-pim
For further information about the event, please contact BALEAP.PIM@sheffield.ac.uk
