Utilisation of constructivist discourse to enhance English as a Second Language proficiency in teacher education

Abstract

The study explored teacher educators’ utilization of constructivist education practices to develop ESL in a teacher training institution and student teachers’ engagement in the instructional practices. In light of Chomsky’s proposition in his Universal Grammar (UG) (Cook & Newson 2007) all humanity, under normal conditions, is wired with a language acquisition device (LAD), which is activated in any real-life context when individuals experience exposure to any language. In the formal learning context; teacher education in particular, student teachers experience academic language which presents challenges, resulting in poor academic performance. Cummins (2009) proposes context embedded communication to afford acquisition of academic language. This learning environment is supported for pedagogy in constructivist learning settings, thus constructivist theories of learning provided the study’s theoretical framework. This was a qualitative case study utilising lesson observations of a class of 150 first year student teachers and 4 of their teacher educators. The 4 educators and 5 of the student teachers also attended to open-ended survey questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, including reflective journals for the latter. Data were analysed through a discourse analysis approach to determine educators’ education practices and student teachers’ meta-learning actions. Findings indicated that student teachers could identify their ESL incompetence but rated it incorrectly. An overarching ESL challenge was with the writing mode. Teacher educators utilised student teachers’ real-life experiences but partially immersed them in independent exploration of tasks to foster meta-learning actions and acquire disciplinary discourses, thus the students relied heavily on their educators’ assistance than independent learning.