Over the last two decades, many ELT professionals and researchers have called for contextually appropriate forms of ELT pedagogy to be developed, arguing that the dominant discourse on ELT methodology, as promoted by local Ministry of Education (MoE) policy makers around the world, has been largely generated in ideal (North) contexts and so does not reflect the challenging realities of the majority of language teaching and learning contexts in which they are being imposed. Despite these calls, there has been very little research that shows how contextually appropriate ELT pedagogies can be developed. To fill this gap, there is a need for research that develops from the bottom-up by relying on input from teachers and learners who constitute the major stakeholders in the teaching and learning process. This study, therefore, set out to investigate students' and teachers' perspectives regarding what counted as good and appropriate English language teaching in two English medium primary school contexts in Cameroon. To achieve this, data was collected through classroom observation, friendship group interviews with children and stimulated recall with teachers from six English medium primary schools from Yaounde and Buea. A further two-day workshop group discussion based on videoed lessons from the six classrooms was organised with 30 teachers in both research sites. The findings of this study revealed that teachers and students possess shared, but also - in some respects - divergent notions of good/appropriate ELT pedagogy which are largely different from MoE enforced methodological procedure, and it is these notions - rather than what the Ministry says - that have the biggest impact on their experiences and practices. The study also revealed that, in exploring insights into their, as well as students’ perspectives on good teaching, teachers in the workshops were able to develop new ideas about appropriate teaching which took on board ideas from children’s perspectives as well as successful practices from the videoed lessons of their colleagues. These findings highlight the potential contribution of a bottom-up research approach to teacher development which takes account of context in the process of generating and disseminating good practice.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:589872 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Kuchah, Kuchah |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/58585/ |
Page generated in 0.0105 seconds