ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER TRAINING HALL PHENOMENON: LOOKING THROUGH METAPHORICAL LENSES

Abstract

I started this dissertation with a keenness to explore the phenomenon of the teacher training hall and English as a foreign language teacher learning based on that training hall experience. In this research, I have explored the training hall practices of the trainers as the motivating factors in teacher learning. My interest in this topic germinated with one and a half hour discussion we had had in one of my M Ed classes which had ended without conclusion relating to training transfer issues. Later, I reflected on my own experience and my encounter with the people who reflected on their experience, I was not surprised why we our discussion had ended without any conclusion. Personally, I have attended many EFL training sessions however, I feel they have not helped to grow teachers as effectively as possible, I often had questions why I get disinterested from the training sessions that I have attended even when I am in search of such opportunities to grow. My thought process kept on working. I thought there might underlying reasons for teachers not learning from the training sessions. Thus, an interest sprouted in my mind to explore the training hall phenomenon and factors affecting teacher learning. Thus, the issue I wanted to address was why there is no effective teacher learning from training hall sessions. My search regarding the issue with the people linked with teacher education whenever and wherever I met them, made me believe that in most of the cases, training was not effectively received by the trainees. Whatever the reasons were, the teachers were not effectively gaining knowledge from the classroom. I was keen to explore the training hall phenomenon in this respect. To explore the training hall phenomenon and EFL teachers’ learning, I used narrative inquiry. I believe this kind of inquiry requires narrative construction and storytelling. It is a process of enquiry in which the events encountered during data collection are developed in a proper plot. Meaning making of the field note is done through storytelling. I took this inquiry to see the life of individual participants in their own context as well as in the present context of training sessions. Moreover, I saw myself and my perspectives inside and outside the training hall. This helped me to link the training matter to my own life. I chose the narrative inquiry as it involves anecdotes from characters’ stories to explain the themes I generated during the analysis process. I made an attempt to portray my personal vignettes and my experiences with many issues related to teacher training. What I have sensed, after my observation and analysis process, that motivation of trainees toward training matters a lot in the training hall. The way participants receive the training concepts depends on the trainers’ way of presenting the ideas to the trainees. The context issue is also a strong phenomenon without which the trainer trainee rapport is not possible. Though it is assumed trainers have a power when they are in the training hall, if the training ideas fail to arouse interest in the trainees they try to boycott the training content. Human beings and their actions are in(directly) guided by the theories. Some are guided by the theory of need where others are guided by the theories of the cognition, and some others are guided by theory of motivation. No matter what the training context is, trainers want to train their best and the trainees want to learn their best. However, issues of contextualization and the cultural difference faced by the EFL teachers are highly responsible to make the training effective. From these results, I have concluded that exploring training hall phenomenon helps us to know about ups and downs of the training hall. Moreover, it gives us opportunities to know the ways to make training programmes effective. In most cases, during my study, the effectiveness of the training relied on the trainer’s behaviour and the way of delivery. There are resisting trainees as well, but at the same time there are trainers who can break the resistant nature of the trainees too. Identifying the importance of content being delivered seemed to me one of the key factors that happens in the training hall.