Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education: What We Know
RESEARCH FINDINGS ON USING KAL
Problems with Knowledge Transfer
Furthermore, teachers’ usage of KAL is not as straightforward as it as is often claimed in the applied linguistics literature (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1997; Fillmore & Snow, 2002). In some cases the KAL that teachers received did not prepare them to help them in doing related teaching activities. Knowledge of pragmatics did not help Chaves de Castro’s teachers (chapter 16) identify and address their students’ pragmatic errors. The knowledge of grammar that the teachers in Hislam and Cajlker’s study (chapter 17) received in their teacher education program may have been good for identifying parts of speech and diagramming sentences, but it did not help them prepare and execute quality primary lessons focusing on grammar. Despite two semester-long applied linguistics courses which placed a significant emphasis on knowledge of phonetics and phonology, the teachers in Gregory’s study (chapter 12) mainly produced faulty explanations of problems students had with their pronunciation. This should not be surprising as the few studies on KAL transfer to L2 teaching have shown this to be very difficult (Andrews, 1997; 1999; Cajkler & Hislam, 2002; Morris, 1999; 2002; Lamb, 1995; Pennington & Richards, 1997). This is also true for other areas, for example physics, where it has been found that university students (and even professors) often have problems with scientific views of matter and movement after extensive instruction in physics (Clement, 1982; Halloun & Hestenes, 1985; Reif & Allen, 1992). In fact, research on general knowledge transfer has found that we humans are remarkably poor in transferring knowledge (Gick & Holyoak, 1980, 1983; Godden & Baddely, 1975; Reed, Dempster & Ettinger, 1985; see Detterman, 1993, for a summary).
In other cases, teachers were able to use their KAL somewhat, but this use was not extensive due to the constraints in particular classroom contexts that made the transfer of KAL difficult. For example, the teachers in McKenzie’s study (chapter 18) used their knowledge of testing for their normal in class assessment, but did not use it when constructing the formal, end of year exams due to the constraints placed on the administration of the exams. Xiao (chapter 13) showed that the teachers in her study could use their KAL in classroom instruction if there was adequate time in class and the lesson developed as planned. However, when the teachers were under time pressure or had many things to attend to, they were not as able in drawing on their KAL. Burns and Knox (chapter 14) present a long list of local factors that seem to have as much influence on instruction as teachers’ KAL. These results are very similar to Pennington & Richards’ (1997) study of EFL teachers in Hong Kong. The teachers in their study attempted to use their conceptions of the importance of communication in language learning and teaching in designing lessons. However, constraints in their teaching contexts made this very difficult and they eventually abandoned any attempts to use communicative activities in their language teaching.
Teachers also had difficulty when the KAL was not very compatible with with (a) their previous knowledge, (b) their personal or cultural conceptions of language and language teaching or (c) their preferred learning style. Peiling, the teacher in Lo’s study (chapter 9) did not use the knowledge gained from her SLA course because she did not feel that it was relevant in the teaching culture she worked in. Lisbeth struggled with Hazelrigg’s Field Construction Model of reading because it was so different than how she was used to conceptualizing classroom learning (Hazelrigg, chapter 21). In a similar vein, the teachers in Belz’s study (chapter 20) valued and pursued only those aspects of Discourse Analysis which fit well with their professional practice as experts in literature or structural linguistics. Finally, there is the case of Lilly, a teacher in Popko’s (chapter 22) study, who preferred to learn about teaching by focusing on techniques rather than beginning with the theoretical ideas behind them. (Kerekes, 2001, found this learning preference in a different study of teachers.) Lilly’s university program, however, did not focus on teaching techniques, making it difficult for Lilly to use the KAL gained in her teacher preparation program.
There is also some evidence that some kinds of KAL are more difficult to transfer than others. Bigelow & Ranney (chapter 11) found that the teachers in their study could use their knowledge of context based instruction (CBI) to plan lessons focusing on grammar much better than they could use their knowledge of grammar in planning CBI lessons. Xiao (chapter 13) also found that teachers had more trouble identifying complex orthographic errors than simple errors.
