Day 2 (part 1) - My reflections from the 11th International METU Conference - Embracing Challenges

During the conference, I stayed in the Aysel Sabuncu Guest House with many of the overseas presenters. This guest house is a little isolated and situated on the outskirts of the campus forest. For the duration of the conference, we had our own little guest house 'family'. Here we are, bright and early on the conference shuttle on day 2 of the conference. Fond memories and a 'big' hello to you all  :)



On day 2, June 1st, the first plenary speaker was Simon Borg who talked about Teachers' Beliefs about Learner Autonomy (LA). Simon discussed how students beliefs on education play an important role and how conceptions based on previous educational background affect their university education. 

Based on his Learner Autonomy research carried out in Oman some points Simon discussed were:


How do teachers promote LA?

• Talking to students about it
• Encouraging learners to be autonomous
• Getting learners to reflect
• Using autonomous activities in class
• Setting autonomy activities out of class

What obstacles do teachers face?

• Institutional factors- syllabus, assessment
• Learner factors- lack of incentive, focus on passing tests, low proficiency in English, limited outside contact with English, limited experience of autonomous learning, dependence on the teacher 
• Teacher factors  - underestimate students capacity for LA

Conclusions:

• LA is valued as a concept
• LA is strongly associated with choice
• Most Teacher's feel they promote LA
• There are multiple interpretations of LA

Simon's Report for the British Council on Learner autonomy: English language teachers' beliefs and practices can be found at http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/publications


Tony Gurr's plenary on Embracing the Challenge of 21st Century Teaching  was colourful and entertaining. Tony started his plenary by talking about today's younger generation born after 1990 or  Generation C....

• Connected
• Communicating
• Content centric 
• Computerised
• Community-oriented 
• .... Always clicking

He quoted Friedrich, Le Merle, Peterson & Koster (2012) 'In the course of the next 10 years, a new generation - Generation C - will emerge…As they grow up, this highly connected generation will live “online” most of their waking hours…' So where does this leave  the teachers? According to Tony, the good news is -  technology won't replace teachers...but teachers who use technology will replace teachers who do not.

But beware... are we a) language teachers or b) technology teachers? We need to be careful and always keep 'language' in the forefront and not get too carried away with technology. The roles of today's teacher include - the learner, the model, the risk-taker, the collaborator and the 'adaptor'. 

Many thanks to Tony for the entertainment. For more information visit Tony's blog at http://allthingslearning.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/allthings21c/ or follow @tonygurr