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Plenary talk: "Principles and Practices in Teacher Development: What Teachers can Do to Become More Aware of Their Teaching"Abstract: To develop as language teachers, we can benefit from knowing how to make our own informed teaching decisions, rather than to simply follow the teaching prescriptions of others. In this presentation, I explain how we, as teachers, can become more aware of our teaching beliefs and classroom practices. I begin my talk by explaining principles that underlie my notion of teacher development. I then explain and illustrate what teachers can do to gain awareness of teaching, including their beliefs about second language acquisition, as well as their classroom teaching practices.
Biographical statement: Dr. Gebhard is a recently retired IUP professor where he taught in the English Department Composition & TESOL Program. Throughout his career, he has been an international speaker and advocate for ESL/EFL students and teachers, and he has taught English to a variety of different students, including Buddhist monks in Northeast Thailand, Vietnamese and Laotian refugees in Hawaii, immigrants in New York City, intensive language institute students in New York City and Indiana, Pennsylvania, university English majors and non-English majors in Thailand, businessmen in Japan, and undergraduates at IUP. He has also taught English teachers and developing scholars enrolled in the Ph.D. Program in Composition & TESOL and in the MA TESOL Program at IUP, as well as teachers in China, Japan and Hungary where he taught as a visiting professor. After earning his doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, he focused on developing principles & practices teachers can use to make their on informed teaching decisions, rather than to depend on the prescriptions of others.
Dr. Gebhard is the author of Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language (University of Michigan Press, second edition, 2006) and Language Teaching Awareness: A Guide to Exploring Beliefs and Practices (Cambridge University Press, 1999, with Robert Oprandy). He has also published scores of book chapters and journal articles. His most recent book chapter is The TESOL Practicum (In A. Burns and J.C. Richards, eds. The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Teacher Education, Cambridge University Press, in press).
Last modified: August 7, 2007