PREPARING FOR THE COMPLEXITIES OF TEACHING: MODELING CONCEPTUAL THINKING IN POST-OBSERVATION CONFERENCES

In order for teacher educators to prepare teachers for complexities of language teaching, their nature needs to be understood. Vygotskian sociocultural theory offers a useful framework for construing such complexities. Vygotsky distinguished between everyday and scientific concepts, and saw the interaction of the two as conceptual thinking, the basis for higher order cognitive skills. Johnson (2009) frames learning to teach as the development of conceptual thinking and considers the nature of the dialogue in teacher education activities as crucial to this development. Drawing on longitudinal data from a semester-long case study of the dialogic interactions between a teacher and teacher educator, this study illustrates how the teacher educator modeled conceptual thinking in her language. We propose a taxonomy of conceptualizations about language teaching that may help teacher educators be more purposeful in designing activities for and interacting with novice teachers.

为使教师教育者能够帮助教师应对语言教学的复杂场景，需先明晰这类复杂性的本质。维果茨基社会文化理论（Vygotskian sociocultural theory）为阐释此类复杂性提供了有效分析框架。维果茨基区分了日常概念与科学概念，并将二者的交互作用视作概念性思维，而后者正是高阶认知技能的核心基础。约翰逊（Johnson, 2009）将从教学习界定为概念性思维的发展过程，并认为教师教育活动中的对话本质，对这一发展进程至关重要。本研究依托一项针对教师与教师教育者之间对话式互动的为期一学期案例研究所获取的纵向数据，阐明了教师教育者如何借助自身语言开展概念性思维示范。我们提出了一套面向语言教学的概念化分类体系，该体系可助力教师教育者更具目的性地为新手教师设计教学活动，并与其开展互动。