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Does Formal Teacher Education Make a Difference? A Comparison of Pedagogical Thought Units of B.A. Versus M.A. Teachers
Author(s) -
AKBARI RAMIN,
DADVAND BABAK
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the modern language journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.486
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1540-4781
pISSN - 0026-7902
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2010.01142.x
Subject(s) - bachelor , psychology , mathematics education , pedagogy , session (web analytics) , foreign language , significant difference , recall , medicine , computer science , archaeology , world wide web , history , cognitive psychology
The present study investigated the differences in pedagogical thought units between teachers with a bachelor's degree (B.A.) in English and their counterparts with a master's degree (M.A.) in TESOL. English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language ( n = 8) teachers with similar teaching experiences (between 2 and 3 years of teaching experience) and teaching in similar contexts (teaching in the same institute, the same book, and the same level of learners) took part in this study. A complete teaching session of each of the participants was video‐recorded and teachers’ pedagogical thoughts were probed using stimulated recall technique. The research found that, on the whole, M.A. teachers produced significantly more pedagogical thoughts compared to the B.A. teachers: The average pedagogical thought units for M.A. teachers was 5.18 per minute, whereas B.A. teachers produced 2.58 of such units per minute. In terms of thought categories, the same families were observed for both groups; however, there were slight differences in their ranking and significant differences in their frequency.