Ramos Gay, I; Moya Guijarro, A. J. i Albentosa Hernndez, J. I. (coord.

): New trends in English teacher education: linguistics, literature and culture. Cuenca. UCLM.

Case-study research as a model for teacher training

Xavier Fontich Vicens

1. Language and literature teaching 1 and teacher training Faced with the risk of heterogeneity and a lack of systematisation, language and literature teaching has sought, from the beginning, to define its own specific nature and to constitute a science which is theoretical as well as practical in a field where various different subjects come together (linguistics, psychology, educational sciences and sociology). It resorts to different sources of knowledge according to its own aims and needs rather than following applicationist dynamics; and seeks to work with data arising from teaching and learning situations, aiming to understand the processes inherent in these situations and to provide answers to the challenges that these processes represent (Bronckart, 1989; Milian and Camps, 1990; Bronckart and Schneuwly, 1991; Camps, 1993; Bronckart and Plazaola, 1998; Mendoza Fillola and Cantero, 2003). Camps (2000: 14) formulates these aims as follows:
Research in this field has to lead to the formulation of theoretical knowledge which recognises and allows the understanding and interpretation of the activity of teaching and learning language, that is, a theory which can recognise how one type of activity, discourse, is interrelated with other types of activity, learning and teaching, which have as an aim the activity of discourse and the actions and operations which make it up; a theory which, at the same time, is oriented towards a new level of understanding of practice to establish its fundamental principles and to transform it.

Far from adopting a strict praxeological dimension, then, language and literature teaching aims to explain the complex relationships which are carried out within the methodological triangle, going from practice to theory to go back once more to practice. In this sense, knowing and thinking about practice requires an opening up of ways of Language and literature teaching becomes a new discipline in the Spanish universities in 1986, named Didctica de la Lengua y la Literatura (Language and Literature Didactics). 1
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research which overcome the dichotomy of qualitative-quantitative studies and which may respond more accurately to the complexity of the teaching and learning processes: in this diverse approach the aim of the study points to the fact that the tools used to understand the reality of teaching and learning languages may be multiple and complementary (Camps, 2000: 16). It is necessary, besides, to determine the field of play in which the research will be made effective, and the aforementioned author also determines, four additional axes: the methodological system, the language teaching and learning content, the aims that society pursues by this type of teaching, and initial and in-service teacher training. As regards research on language teaching, Van Lier (1988) proposes a distinction between research modalities based on the four parts formed by the variables [+structuration] [+control], so that in the quadrant [+structuration, +control] he places among others experimental research, and in the opposite pole [structuration, -control] he places among others case-study research.

This presentation, located on this last axis, aims to explore a model of teacher training which, based on case-study, has two closely related objectives: training reflexive

teachers and promoting knowledge about teaching which links theory and practice. As regards the former, we start from the idea that teacher training based on reflection and centered on case-study may help to avoid not only prescriptive approaches in initial training, but also a similar perception on the part of the trainees. As regards the latter, and deriving from what has just been said, it is necessary to make the trainees aware that knowing how to teach is not independent of studying and interpreting the phenomena which arise in teaching and learning situations (Camps, 2000; Ros, 2000).

2. Teacher training between theory and practice Achieving this double aim is not easy. Below we can read the words of a student, as a basis to reflect on some of the students prior ideas we find in teacher training, whether initial or not (Ballesteros et al., 2001). These words arise within the framework of the didactic sequence 2 that we present, where the general feeling of the group was opposed to recipes and, in the following fragment the student tries to justify her opinion:
Language didactics should prepare us theoretically, should make us see the different points of view of the different educators by means of dialogue between students... but it
2

Didactic sequence is the label used to design a task-based learning cycle, following Campss model (1994). 2

cannot give us a recipe, because in practice each situation is different, and we have to learn from experience.

According to these words, on the one hand there would be language didactics, which would prepare the students theoretically by means of contrasting various different teaching practices based on real material. On the other hand there would be practice, which due to its situational character (in practice each situation is different) would be opposed to recipes (some students describe recipes as predesigned tools with applicacionist and technological overtones) and would turn teacher training into a process only approachable from an experiential, individual, intuitive point of view, linked to self-training (we have to learn from experience). As it has been pointed out (Alzina, 2000), a handful of models and classroom experiences is not enough for the future teacher to construct operative and meaningful knowledge for future teaching tasks, and this brief quote we have commented on gives us the key to this insufficiency: for a student during her initial training practice, considered as an experientialist and methodological learning notion, defines practice only as what actually takes place in the classroom, and converts everything that takes place in the training room in theory. According to the words we have looked at, it is each teacher, based on his own experiences, who builds his own didactic knowledge along the lines of the Spanish saying cada maestrillo tiene su librillo (every teacher has their his own way of teaching) mentioned by Ruiz Bikandi (2006) who contrasts it with what research in training has proved: authentic professional growth on the part of teachers is centered on their integration in discursive communities, because it is in communities of this type that learning is produced (Edwards and Mercer, 1987; Mercer, 2004).

In spite of the convenience, also in the case of initial teacher training, of constructing a discourse community which leads to significant learning, we should not overlook a consubstantial paradox of this training level: the difficulty of establishing shared knowledge on educational practice due to a lack of practical references which do exist in in-service teacher training as a type of background in absentia. We believe that this lack of references, along with the common notion of what is a practical activity, in the eyes of initial training students, converts any reflection on a real didactic sequence in theory. In in-service training, on the contrary, Ruiz Bikandi (2006) highlights the fact that it was the teachers interviewing one another who emphasised the benefits of having

constructed a discourse community, by which they had been able to share a space for reflection on their own practice, a space which is hidden in the day to day of teaching. Ruiz Bikandi refers to the teachers loneliness as the mole syndrome (you dont see me, I dont see you), both as a cause and a consequence of the solitary nature of teaching. In initial training, on the other hand, reflecting on the practice of others ends up being identified as theory and often takes the form of passive observation and only generates the reflections which are expected of us.

In the present article we want to develop the following argument: among the recipes for intervention (which students tend, rightly, to reject) and self-training and nontransferable classroom experience (which language didactics rejects in principle) there is an intermediate point where we situate language didactics and especifically reflective practice. Initial training may find such reflective practice in case-study and in an emphasis on discourse community as ways of progressively modulating representations such as those we stressed in the students comments: we believe that it may be more viable to help future teachers reflection to present the training process not as accessing to finished and completely theoretical or practical knowledge , but rather as a set of procedures for collective reflection. This would help constructing, enriching and making didactic knowledge more complex. Theoretical references (explicit or underlying) which govern any action should also be made more evident, either based on reading undertaken or on previously taught notions (Carter, 1992; Munby and Russell, 1992; Altava et al., 2001).

We believe that language teacher training would require us to take into account the following four points: (a) preparing material which allows case-study to take place (Altava et al, 2006); (b) verbalising contents and procedures to share knowledge and strengthen and diversify ways of learning (Esteve et al, 2006); (c) exploring knowledge as a path to generalise (Korthagen, 2001; Ruiz Bikandi, 2006); and (d) contrasting aims and real action (Ballesteros et al, 2001; Bronckart and Plazaola, 1998; Plazaola, 2006).

3. Case-study

We now present a training experience carried out with students following the Education Degree in Pedagogy at the UAB, in the subject of language didactics.3 This subject runs annually and explores the processes of learning to read and write. After having outlined some of the methodological principles coming from both cognitive psychology (the processes of writing or the models of reader and writer) and from socio-cultural studies (the importance of interaction for learning or the concept of discourse genre), the teacher proposed that the student should explore some specific classroom experiences on teaching writing and literary education.

The experience aimed to be the object of the case-study consisted of a didactic sequence (DS) carried out in a secondary school classroom. Below we describe, briefly, the experience and the DS theoretical basis; then we will outline the activity undertaken by the Education students.

3.1. A DS on writing and literary education in secondary school As has been mentioned above, the Education students had to explore a didactic sequence (DS) on writing and literature undertaken in a 4th grade secondary school classroom (15-16 years old). This DS is organised according to Campss model (1994) and developed along various educational levels (Camps, 2003). Its characteristics are as follows: (a) it is above the unit-activity level and articulates a number of activities linked by a common thread and a final goal, being at the same time open to the students inputs; (b) it falls within the framework of language learning projects, which come out of the New School Movement at the beginning of the 20th century, and integrate main features of socio-cultural psychology, cognitive psychology, activity theory and research outcomes in language didactics; and (c) consists of three stages: one of preparation (where the task to be undertaken is negotiated and represented), another of execution (with a set of activities designed to present and help to assume the specific curricular contents addressed in the DS) and a final stage of feedback and reflection (which allows the students to become aware of what they have been working on and of what they have learnt). Formative assessment takes place through the task span, and helps reflection and judgement take place upon the work done at the end of the task sequence.

The teachers in charge of this subject are Teresa Ribas and the author of this article. 5

The DS carried out by the 4th grade students consisted, in particular, of a piece of work on a set text (a set of short stories by Ramon Solsona, Llibreta de vacances (Holiday notebook), Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1991) and aimed to approach the text through four different complementary paths: a) analyzing narrative elements (narrators, characters, spaces...), b) exploring essential or simply interesting information related to the stories, c) creating literary texts and d) expressing their own opinions. With the aim of providing the students with some guidelines to help them with several writing requirements, the DS explored the features of diverse discursive genres (from exposition to summary, through narrative, synopsis or interview) while also trying to involve the four areas of didactic action: reflection-action for the teacher (with a classroom diary), cooperative work for classroom organization (with flexible work groups), cognitive goals for the students (writing a learning log) and a significant dimension of what is to be learnt (a final publication of the texts on the Internet). A detailed description of the development of the DS can be found in Fontich (in press).

3.2. The case-study The exploration of the DS involves the above mentioned four aspects that initial teacher training should take into account: preparing material, verbalising contents and procedures, generalising and contrasting aims and real action.

(a) Materials preparation. Firstly, we understand by materials preparation a set of devices that guide the reflection to take place in the initial training room. Hence, an outline (Figure 1) will organise an exploratory path in four stages: (1) a description of the final product (2) the classroom process based on two sources: the students learning logs and, above all, the teachers diary (available in wiki) 3) some of the interactions that took place during the DS, described in Fontichs paper (in press), and (4) an elicitation of the theories that lie behind the intervention.
Figure 1

Beginning Dialogue in a large group

Stage 1 Material: - wiki - guide Points for observation: (1st) final product: description

Stage 2 Material: - article Points for observation: (3rd) interaction: observation

Final Group reflection and written conclusions

(2nd) process: observation of the students and teachers diaries Points for reflection Methodology cannot and should not provide given recipes for intervention in the classroom

of the interaction described (4th) reference theories

(b) Verbalisation. As regards verbalisation, at certain times interesting common situations may arise. At the beginning, for example, the students were asked some opening questions, to enhance discussion on what form the training should take, and on what they expect to learn about teaching writing and literary education. They considered their own training: at times with very boring teachers, who did not bring the passion to listen, at times with teachers who explained very boring things but knew how to communicate well. How do we transfer knowledge? a student asked: and went on to answer the question herself: there are teachers who know how to and there are those who do not, because maybe that [being a teacher] is something that cannot be taught. These words lead to think about the verb transfer and about what socioconstructivism has to say upon it: we do not learn by transmission of knowledge (where is knowledge?, floating in the air?, simply codified in a book?...) but rather by construction based on prior knowledge, and in the dynamics of accommodation and imbalance, based on a dialogue between the environment and ourselves. Another student, a little later on, expressed her thoughts in the form of a rhetorical question: Is this [socio-constructivism] just a fad?. I think she went on- that sometimes there are fads in theory and that irrespective of the model there is a way of teaching, that cannot be known, that allows one teacher to reach out to you and another not. Certainly it is difficult to precisely determine the reason why a teacher has more or less communicative skill, but this does not imply that we are dealing with the unknowable, with that which is impossible to examine. In this sense, if we look at what good teachers, actually do (Michalos, 2003; Castell et al., 2007) we can see that they take into account (maybe at an intuitive level), prior ideas, or aspects related to emotions and learning styles. In short, it seems that sharing opinions is propitious because students tend to think aloud and generate questions that they try to answer themselves taking into account their own memories or experience as students rather than the theory they have learnt in the initial training classroom. It is, in spite of everything, a space for the

essential common reflection which allows to learn by contrasting ones own points of view and by having to clarify for others ones own thoughts when speaking.

(c) Generalisation. As regards generalisation, our aim is that, inductively, by examining a specific case of classroom intervention, the students should be able to arrive at the principles that have inspired the actions and steps within the DS. In the outline shown in Figure 1, point (1) -a description of the wiki as a final product produced by the students- leads on to point (2) -the notes that the teacher makes in his diary- and this point, in turn, leads on to the final sentence, which constitutes a point of arrival at an idea that had been discussed in prior sessions: the fact that it is impossible for them, as future teachers who are in the stage of initial training, to obtain a set of closed recipes from language didactics. In the teachers diary we can see an exhaustive set of notes made during the DS to self regulate his own actions in accordance with the needs and unexpected events that arise during the sessions. Lets go back once again to the sentence we had to comment on in stage 1: Methodology cannot and should not provide given recipes for intervention in the classroom. Can students fairly appreciate the DS as evidence in favour of the thesis contained in this sentence?

If we look at the notes made by the students based on the proposed guidelines, it is not clear whether they have understood the intention we have just explained, and hence we are surprised by the poor quality of the descriptions, surely a consequence of their inability to explain in writing what they see, the poor effective explanation of the wiki they have in front of them, and of the often unclear instructions (prepared by secondary school students) in the wiki. Additionally, it is also worth noting that in this first descriptive stage, they do not manage to relate (a) the aims that the teacher in charge of the DS determines in his diary, with (b) the follow up of activities and (c) the final result: some students think that the aim is to work with new technologies; others think that the wiki was published in Internet from the very beginning.

As regards the theory that inspired the DS (point 4 of stage 2, cf. Figure 1), the aforementioned paper that they had to read explains the various areas of work which are set out in the DS: reflection-action on the part of the teacher; meta-cognition for the student; cooperative work for the group; the significant dimension of the material. Most of the students state that the reading clarified to a greater extent what the DS consisted 8

of and what its aim was. Hence, they say, for example, that everything that happens cannot be deduced only from the external description of the final result; that the intentions explained by the teacher in their diary are clarifying; that, in short, the description of the wiki and the exploration of the DS process (through the learning diaries) constitute a type of inductive approach to the idea that methodology cannot provide, in its task of initial training, recipes for direct intervention in the classroom. In order to arrive to this idea, we have tried to establish a whole itinerary of group analysis and reflection on a DS from the various entries (final product, process, interaction and theory) rather than start from this idea and argue it through.

(d) The contrast between aims and real actions. There are several moments when we ask students to contrast aims and real actions, for example in point 2 of stage 1 in Figure (1), on the process taken by the DS based both on the teachers diary and on the students. There is a very reductionist interpretation on the part of some students on the value of the diary: they comment, on the one hand, on the poor expressive quality of some students, in spite of noting, at the same time, their progressive involvement and the improvement of their writing skills, and they do not value the fact that the students did in fact learn how to deal with a specific text genre. Additionally, they do not understand the role of the teachers diary, which was not available at first to the pupils: in answer to the question of whether the teachers diary helped to understand the sequence development their automatic conclusion is that it has not helped precisely because the pupils could not read it. Certainly, the teachers diary is not accessible to the students until the end, but it consists of a self-regulating tool for the teacher herself, which has an indirect impact on the students. However several students do think that the teachers diary is certainly a very valuable, innovative and precise tool, which apart from being a record, allows the teacher to think about what is happening in the classroom and helps to correct it depending on his aims. As regards consistency between the aims verbalised by the teacher in the diary and their materialisation during the DS, the students do not see enough evidence to be able to answer: one student says there were probably things which had escaped the teachers control.

After reading Fontichs paper (in press) the students have a new way of looking at the experience of the DS: the systemisation that the teacher sets out in an academic genre (an article on methodology). In this systemisation the development of the DS is 9

described from a chronological point of view; that is the article presents dialogues and interactions which the teacher, in DS, has maintained with the students based on the questions they asked (Why do we have to look for information on stories if you probably already know it all already?) and presents the notions which have to be worked upon and the aims of the DS, its organisation or its final objectives (The information that you find isnt for me but for other students who read the publication on the Net). One of the Pedagogy students gets the idea: I think the teacher is trying to dosify the content which has to be worked on and designing how to do it as questions arise, an idea that another student expresses with the following sentence: The teacher is trying to avoid giving an answer before the student asks the question.

4. Final ideas Experience has served to allow us to show the importance of regulating discourse in an initial training situation (based on four key aspects: material preparation, verbalisation, generalisation and contrast). In the article we have seen that joint reflection on real classroom cases is essential in initial teacher training so that, as stereotypes and beliefs emerge, these ideas can be contrasted and modulated by theory.

5. References o Altava, V. et al. (2006) El anlisis de las situaciones de aula como instrumento para la formacin del profesorado in Camps, A. (coord.) Dilogo e investigacin en las aulas. Investigaciones en didctica de la lengua, Barcelona: Gra o Alzina, P. (2000) La formaci permanent del professorat: entre la teoria i la prctica in Camps, A., Ros, I. and Cambra, M. (coord.) Recerca i formaci en didctica de la llengua, Barcelona: Gra o Ballesteros et al. (2001) El pensamiento del profesor. Enseanza de lengua y Reforma in Camps, A. El aula como espacio de investigacin y reflexin. Investigaciones en didctica de la lengua, Barcelona: Gra o Bronckart, J. P. (1989) Du statut des didactiques des matires scolaires, Langue franaise, 82 o Bronckart, J. P. and Schneuwly, B. (1991) La didactique de la langue maternelle. Lmergence dune utopie indispensable, ducation et Recherche, 13 o Bronckart, J. P. and Plazaola, I. (1998) La transposition didactique. Histoire et perspectives dune problematique fondatrice, Practiques, 97-98 10

o Carter, K. (1992) Creating cases for the development of teacher knowledge in Russell, T. and H. Munby, H. Teachers and teaching. From classroom to reflection, London: The Falmer Press, 1993 o Camps, A. (1993) Didctica de la lengua: la emergencia de un campo cientfico especfico, Infancia y aprendizaje, 62-63 o Camps, A. (1994) Projectes de llengua entre la teoria i la prctica, Articles, 2 [Spanish version in Camps, A. (comp.) (2003) Secuencias didcticas para aprender a escribir, Barcelona: Gra] o Camps, A. (2000) Introducci: Objecte, modalitats i mbits de recerca en didctica de la llengua in Camps, A., Ros, I. and Cambra, M. (coord.) Recerca i formaci en didctica de la llengua, Barcelona: Gra o Camps, A. (comp.) (2003) Secuencias didcticas para aprender a escribir, Barcelona: Gra o Castell, J. M. et al. (2007) Relaci social i cortesia a laula, Articles, 42 o Edwards, D. and Mercer, N. (1987) Common knowledge. The development of undesrtanding in the classroom, New York-London: Methuen o Esteve, O. et al. (2006) La autonoma en su componente estratgico: una investigacin sobre la incidencia de instrumentos de mediacin en la enseanza y el aprendizaje de lenguas en adultos in Camps, A. (coord.) Dilogo e investigacin en las aulas. Investigaciones en didctica de la lengua, Barcelona: Gra o Fontich, X. (in press) Lectura i escriptura a secundria: una

wikillibretadevacances, Articles, 44 o Korthagen, F. A. J. (2001) Teacher education: a problematic enterprise in Korthagen, F. A. J. Linking practice and theory. The pedagogy of realistic teacher education, New Jersey- London: Lawrence Erlbaum o Lier, L. van (1988) The classroom and the language learner, London-New York: Longman o Mendoza Fillola, A. and Cantero, F. J. (2003) Didctica de la lengua y la literatura: aspectos epistemolgicos in Mendoza Fillola, A. (coord.) Didctica de la Lengua y la Literatura, Madrid: Prentice Hall o Mercer, N. (2004) Sociocultural discourse analysis: analysing classroom talk as a social mode of thinking, Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 1.2 o Michalos, Alex C. (2003) The best teacher I ever had. Personal reports from highly productive scholars, Notario: The Althouse Press 11

o Munby, H. and Russell, T. (1992) Frames of reflection: an introduction in Russell, T. y H. Munby, H. Teachers and teaching. From classroom to reflection, London: The Falmer Press, 1993 o Plazaola, I. (2006) Didctica y anlisis de la actividad en el trabajo: qu aportan a la investigacin en el aula? in Camps, A. (coord.) Dilogo e investigacin en las aulas. Investigaciones en didctica de la lengua, Barcelona: Gra o Ros, I. (2000) Formaci del professorat y recerca en didctica de la llengua in Camps, A., Ros, I. and Cambra, M. (coord.) Recerca i formaci en didctica de la llengua, Barcelona: Gra o Ruiz Bikandi, U. (2006) La salida del topo: caminos de transformacin prctica en un proceso formativo. Anlisis de una entrevista in Camps, A. (coord.) Dilogo e investigacin en las aulas. Investigaciones en didctica de la lengua, Barcelona: Gra

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