Critical incidents: Analyzing practices in the classroom

The analysis of critical incidents in the education field has been defined by Kennedy and Wyrick (1990 as cited in Pintos & Crimi, 2010, p.7) as a “method of reflective practice”. Critical incident technique is meant to give strategic guidance to analyze different sorts of problems that may arise in the classroom.

In accordance with Flanagan (1954), some steps in Critical Incident Technique (CIT) were distinguished in order to determine, plan, collect, analyze, and interpret quantitative and qualitative data in classrooms. Flanagan (Ibid.) outlines that it is essential the determination of aims so as to guide the study, secondly, he states effective planning to identify the procedures which will be used to collect important facts. A third step is concerned with collection of data to, then, be analyzed. The study finishes when information is interpreted and reported.

The importance of writing about critical incidents in the education field lies on the benefit that students and teachers can depict from sharing experiences, looking for solutions to problems and drawing possible courses of action along the teaching and learning process.

References

Fernández, González, J., Elortegui Escartin, N., & Medina Pérez, M. (2003). Los incidentes críticos en la formación y perfeccionamiento del profesorado de secundaria de ciencias de la naturaleza. Revista Universitaria de Formación de Profesorado, 17-001. Zaragoza. España: Universidad de Zaragoza. Retrieved September 2010, from

http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/src/inicio/ArtPdfRed.jsp?iCve=27417107

Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y (2010) Unit 2: Personal Narratives in Teaching. Buenos Aires. Universidad Caece. Retrieved September 2010, from

http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=7214

A new resource in English language teaching threatens practice

Context

The incident takes place at a primary school where a group of twenty students, who belong to 5^th grade, are going to start a forty minutes English lesson at ten o’clock in the morning. This class is composed of 8 boys and 10 girls whose ages range between 10-11. All students have attended school that day, and almost all of them are using a laptop while their Science teacher is leaving the classroom because her lesson is over.

Problem

It is time for the teacher of English to come into the classroom and start with her daily lesson. The teacher approaches the classroom and tries to greet her students but she fails since nobody in the classroom notices that there is a teacher trying to greet them. She attempts to do the same many times until some of the students stop using the laptop and pay attention to the lesson; however, the lesson itself becomes a chaos since there is no agreement between students and teacher on when and how to use the computer.

Possible Causes

ü The children may not be prepared for using a laptop in a lesson since they do not know when it is the appropriate moment for doing it.

ü The children may misunderstand the classroom rules which have been agreed when receiving the laptops.

ü The teachers may be impartial when explaining the rules.

ü The teachers may be new at working with laptops in the classroom, thus, they may not be experienced in the matter.

Possible Solutions

ü The teachers should be trained in, both, how to include a laptop in their daily practices and how to handle big groups of students whenever they use the device.

ü The coordinators could organize workshops in which they teach children when and how it is the right moment for using the laptop.

ü The teachers should make their students aware of the correct use of a computer i.e. they should use the laptop for learning purposes only.

Strategies

After discussing the current incident with other professors who teach to the same group, it was possible to set courses of action like creating consciousness on how and when to use the laptop in the classroom. Thus, several computer training courses are offered once a week at school; although they are not compulsory, these courses house almost all teachers who seem to be eager to learn about technology information (IT). Educating children on using the laptop for educational purposes, however, is still a hard task to carry out in spite of the large amount of awareness campaigns developed at school. Head teachers and teachers design informative leaflets that include important tips about how and when to use their PC.

In conclusion, critical incident techniques stand for reflective practice. CIT orientates teachers in their daily performance in classrooms (Fernandez Gonzalez, Escartin & Perez, 2003,). Analyzing and writing about real incidents allows teachers to learn how to deal with difficult situations that tend to impede the teaching and learning normal flow.

References

Fernandez González, J., Elórtegui Escartín, N. & Medina Pérez, M. (2003). Los incidentes críticos en la formación y perfeccionamiento del profesorado de secundaria de ciencias de la naturaleza. Revista universitaria de Formación de Profesorado, 17- 001. Zaragoza, España: Universidad de Zaragoza. Retrieved September 2010, from http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/src/inicio/ArtPdfRed.jsp?iCve=274 17107

Academic writing: Analysis of discourse conventions

Academic writing embodies a set of conventions within discourse that aim to understand and to write pieces of written language precisely. According to Pintos and Crimi (2010, p.9), “academic writing is one of the big steps towards advanced literacy” which can be seen as a resource to increase the growth of ideas through sophisticated thinking. Silva (as cited in Pintos and Crimi 2010, p.11) outlines the importance of conceiving academic writing as a tool for “[socializing] the students into the academic context”. However, this type of writing in professional settings cannot be acquired but learnt; in other words, qualified writers should have followed a number of conventions that rule this principle in order to be experts in this field.

Pintos and Crimi (2010) state that discourse conventions include, among others, omissions and insertion of words and/or letters. Firstly, ellipses are used to show that a part of a text in a quotation has been excluded. A rule about ellipses embraces “[a] part of a text that has been edited out” (Ibid.), for example, Myles’ (2002) paper on Second Language Writing and Research quotes Swales’ (1990) words as “[writing] should not be viewed solely as an individually-oriented, inner-directed cognitive process, but as much as an acquired response to discourse conventions . . . within particular communities”. Secondly, insertions use square brackets to incorporate words or letters in the original quotation, for instance, “[A] thought we should not cripple our students’ interest in writing (…)” (Myles, 2002, para.5). Acknowledging sources, like In-text citations, are also part of the ruling concepts of academic writing. Pintos and Crimi (2010, p. 19) outline that “every single citation (. . .) should be mentioned in [a] reference list [thus] every single resource that has been included in the reference list should appear in the body of the paper”. In other words, in-text citations are used to give credit to somebody else’s words in order to avoid plagiarism; they include parenthetical citations such as “[the emphasis is placed on] students’ strategic knowledge and the ability of students to transform information . . . to meet rhetorically constrained purposes (Grabe & Kaplab, 1996, p. 116)” (Myles, Ibid.) Paraphrased citations entail transmitting a message or a thought without using the same words that an author might have applied before. This type of citations includes the author’s surname and the year of publication between brackets, for instance, “although L2 writing is strategically, rhetorically, and linguistically different in many ways from L1 writing (Silva, 1993)” (Myles, Ibid.).

Working with in-text citations implies searching for interesting and precise words in order to “help [writers] vary structures and vocabulary” (Pintos and Crimi, 2010, p.18) this group of words is known as reporting verbs. A reporting verb list include affirm, assume, describe, explain, state, and suggest among others but it is important to look for their meanings beforehand in order to avoid misunderstanding since they should imply some kind of evaluative thinking. For example “Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) have stressed the benefit of process approaches to writing instruction and the need for more knowledge-transforming tasks” (Myles 2002).

To conclude, academic writers are requested to follow a number of rules to communicate their thoughts and to generate knowledge in every single field of skilled activity. Thus, academic writing is thought to have an objective: Creation of new knowledge in different professional settings.

References

Mile, J. (2002). Second Language Writing and Research: The writing process and error analysis in student texts. TESEL-EJ, 6, 2, 2002. Queen’s University. Retrieved November 13 from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESl-EJ/ej22/a1.html

Pintos, V. & Crimi, Y. (2010). Academic writing. CAECE University. Retrieved November 12 from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=7392

Supporting Swales’ theory of discourse community

Discourse community tends to be defined as a group of members who interact and interchange shared-knowledge information according to their cultural and historical backgrounds. One of the most significant current discussions in discourse issues is the existence of basic criteria (Swales, 1990) that describe six characteristics in discourse community which have been criticized in the discourse field due to its wide assumptions. Swales’ features have been subjected to some requirements which involve specific interests to provide information and feedback, intercommunication, genre, specialized terminology, and expertise.

The concept has been observed by Bizzel (1992, as cited in Crimi & Pintos, 2010, p. 13) whose studies demonstrate that “discourse community helps in describing how a group makes use of discourse to organize different activities” rather than sharing common knowledge information. Swales (Ibíd.), however, outlines that a group should achieve common goals to share specific interests within discourse community. In other words, it entails both “knowing about the specific language practices (…)” as well as taking part in those practices (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003) which means that a group may not endure if their members are not intercommunicated. Debate continues about the notion of Discourse Community with Senge (1994 as cited in Howley & Howley, 2005) who conditions the procedures in which learning may depend on the tendency to reflect on data about organizational performance.

Highly specialized terminology (Swales, Ibid.) in varied study fields are also involved in community discourse since it implies transaction of shared knowledge among members of a group. Thus, a community college (Kutz, 1997) can be conceived as a discourse community because its members develop a common discourse, for example, it involves shared knowledge and shared understandings about how to communicate. Community – specific genres and high general level of expertise (Swales, Ibid.) lead to phenomenological discourse (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003) which its main feature is focusing on the individual and her or his experiences. Groups that belong to a certain discourse community are identified as such according to their genre, which defines its unity and level of understanding required by the community in many aspects of life.

While a variety of definitions of the term Discourse Community have been implied, this paper attempted to support the definition suggested by Swales (1990) who saw it as an interchange of cultural and historical knowledge. Researchers contributed to the construction of a definitive concept following a number of constraints on communality of interests; they agreed that members, at some extent, share public goals.

References

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. & Lopez – Torres, L. (2003) Beyond Reflection: Teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice. Retrieved 08 August, 2010 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NQM/is_3_42/ai_108442653

Howley, A. & Howley, C. (2005). High quality teaching: Providing for rural teachers’ professional development. Retrieved August, 2010 from

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4126/is_200501/ai_n13591361

Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010). Unit 1:Building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers. Retrieved August 2010, from

http://caece.campusuniversidad.c