Harmony Provisionally Maintained (HPM)

For TB, several notable factors supporting HPM through axial coding emerged. Among them the three categories are:

• Grammar teaching: quick use of English and Japanese use for explanations

• Keeping up with the pre-planned yearly lesson plan

• No time other than the accuracy focused teaching of grammar and vocabulary Grammar teaching: Quick use of English and Japanese used explanations

In contrast to the other two participants, TB is confident of using English as she had a two-year experience living in an English spoken country. She mentioned at the initial interview:

Help? You mean some workshop or training for example. I think English proficiency is the ability of what the individual person has. In that sense, I do not feel I need help for the proficiency, and do not see any problem in my using English myself. But when it comes to using English in the classroom to have students understand effectively, it may be another issue. (TAN-1)

This comment implies that holding an ability of using language and knowing how to use the language for teaching ought to be considered. One could argue that for the language teaching profession, having target language proficiency (subject knowledge) is not enough if one does not have teaching skills (pedagogical knowledge). From the first classroom

observation before beginning the interventions, it was obvious that she did not have much trouble using English in the classroom. For example, the natural flow of using English in communicating with students was seen not only in CRE expressions, such as giving directions, but also in the delivery in the repartee with the students:

(Review from the previous lesson)

TB: Three, that’s right. Then, what happened?

S1: He lost his mother.

TB: That’s right. He lost his mother. So what happened after that?

S2: Nanndattake, sonoato hitoribocchini natteshimatte, (What was it? What happened after that? Yes, he became alone….)

TB: In what way? Well, how? And Why? How did it happen? Why did it happen?

S3: He lose…

TB: What is it? Yes, he LOST … He lost what? What did he lose?

S3: Nest … He lost nest ... He lost nest after she lost his mother. Then, she shared the nest.

TB: Yes, HE shared the nest. Right? Yes, then the story told that they shared the nest and food. OK? OK, Yuki, Do you remember that?

S4: Oh, OK, OK! (laughter)

TB: OK. So, let’s check the answers. There are five questions on this paper.

Do you have this? (She showed the paper to students) So, try to answer the questions. Please write your answer on your handout and later on the board. I will ask some of you to come to write the answer on the board.

Ss: E~, yabai yabai.. [Oh, no!] (laughter) (TAN-CO1)

However, when it comes to grammar points, her English turns to be a bit quick and it became hard to grasp what she was trying to say. TB was aware of her inclining rapid use of English in general:

…[B]ut my English is fast, so I know I have to be careful not to make students confused. (TAN-1)

However, what she was not aware of was her using English at a faster speed that was remarkably observed in the grammar explanations:

Although TB seems confident to use English in the class, she speaks rather fast in explaining the text, which she already mentioned at the initial interview. She uses English rather naturally to communicate with students, for instance, scaffolding their work or trying to help students derive content understanding from text. But, when it comes to grammar explanations it becomes more mechanical, quicker and it was hard to follow what she was saying. (COFN-1)

At the stimulated recall, she commented that she did not notice her use of English when explaining grammar became suddenly quick. This tendency of TB has implications of her switching from English to Japanese in grammar teaching as she mentions in a joking

manner:

I didn’t know why my English became ambiguous in grammar explanations.

But I think students don’t listen to explanations anyway (laughter). Maybe, it does not matter whether grammar explanation is done in English or Japanese.

(TAN-SR1)

TB further elaborates that she should use more English with students, but in teaching grammar, she was not joking; she believes it needs to be done in Japanese:

I think that I should ideally use English to explain the content of the textbook and situation, and then students would listen to what the teacher says more or learn today’s point. However, when it comes to grammar explanation, it naturally shifted into Japanese. …. I don’ think I can teach English 100 % in English as I have to use Japanese to explain grammar, which seems much easier for students to understand grammar. (TAN-1)

As TB has not had chance to learn how to teach English as her background indicates, it might be natural based on her experience as a learner for her to consider that grammar teaching is transmitting knowledge to students. However, this view does not cohere with MEXT’s shift about de-emphasizing the teaching of grammar moving toward instruction to support the overall goal to develop communicative competence, which suggests that grammar teaching should be integrated with content. Duff points out in her research of functional grammar and teacher change through development that teaching language functionally for communicative purposes requires specific pedagogical knowledge skills.

She writes, “The movement toward teaching language from functional perspectives requires that teachers have a certain set of skills and knowledge” (2015, p.151).

TB’s approach to grammar teaching, as stated previously, suggests that high language proficiency skills and skills of teaching English are not synchronously operationalized in the classroom. Regarding the latter case, TB seems not too concerned with her teacher development to require more knowledge of how learners acquire L2 and how to apply different teaching approaches in the classroom. She acknowledges that grammar teaching is boring for students and that it needs to be taught in Japanese, which tends to intensify the boredom of students. She also states openly that even if she could use the communicative textbook, she would not know how to do it. Perhaps because of confidence in her language proficiency, the comments of TB reveal a lack of concern for further teacher development.

Thus, seemingly it is a cause for remaining in an HPM state. However, there are other inter-connective reasons for HPM as seen in the next category.

Keeping up with the yearly lesson plan

Unlike the other two teachers, as mentioned previously, TB’s lesson is based on the yearly

lesson plan made by a chief teacher and she is expected to cover it. The reason the chief teacher gave to the JTEs, under his supervision, for using the same teaching plan and PowerPoint slides, accordingly made by him, was that they could provide students the same quality of learning. That is, if each JTE of that grade follows the lesson plan consistently a standard can be maintained. TB seemingly conducts her class under this plan without any qualms:

Yes, it is very easy. Every thing has perfectly been planned. I don’ t have to use my energy and time for planning and making handouts, either (laughter).

I have only to follow the teaching plan and use PowerPoint that the other teacher made. Yes, easy. (TAN-2)

TB appears to accept the pre-planned lessons approach because it makes her job easier, at least for chronological purposes. However, below, she also shows that she agrees with the conceptual flow of the lesson:

Everything seems to be set perfectly, and every grammar point has to be covered… Every step of the each lesson is well constructed and after covering each steps (sections) we have the page of ‘critical thinking’, which might be more productive training for students. (TAN-2)

TB seems to be confidently on board with following the plan. However, these comments emerged at the beginning of the planning lesson stage at the 1st intervention cycle, where co-constructive discourse through dialogue was expected for developing her teaching skills.

Consequently, during the dialoguing with her to make the intervention lesson, TB reveals problems she is having with keeping up with a pre-planned lesson not made by her:

Well, first of all, I have to check students’ notebooks walking around and stamping checking marks on each student’s notebook to see whether they wrote the whole dialogue in the notebook. This is their daily homework.

Actually, this takes me around 10 minutes. I would like to finish this as soon as possible. But, I can’t do it. I don’t know why I am doing it, either. (TAN-2)

Although TB is in a HPM state when it comes to following the pre-planned lessons, she shows some frustration because she does not know the pedagogical rationale for why she is doing some of the things she is doing, not having herself been involved in the planning stages of the pre-planned yearly lesson plans by the chief teacher. She continues:

Before the term test, I count the number of the stamps for their grade [making sure students have done work in the notebook]. Students seem to deal well with this system and they already make a box for my stamping (laughter).

While I am stamping, the other students are chatting…. And more than that, by the time I finish checking all students’ notebooks, it already passes more than 10 minutes. Then immediately, I have to turn on the computer to have

students show the PowerPoint for vocabulary practice. But it takes time to switch from the mode of homework checking to study. Then, we are going to read a vocabulary sheet of 90~100 vocabulary in one time! It is like a

“Cheer up Cheer up!” [Gambatte! Gambatte!]. You may be shocked to see students read the vocabulary like that (laughter). (TAN-2)

TB seems rushed in her instruction. She feels like a cheerleader as she encourages her students to maintain their engagement while learning almost 100 vocabulary words during the lesson! Although she even laughs at this activity, she has continued to do it in a HPM state. She further elaborates on her lesson:

After reading 98 vocabularies this time, then we are moving to the section of introduction. We read introduction three times together. When I start to read the dialogue, it already passes 20~25 minutes. When I move onto the today’s target, we have only 20 minutes left. Rushing, rushing, rushing. I need to breathe (laughter). Here is the example. On the PowerPoint, students can see the Japanese translation and they translate it into English all together and I click, then the words ‘grow up ‘ ‘brought up’ show up, and on and on…Review, vocabulary check, dialogue, unrelated expressions… Time is flying (laughter). (TAN-2)

From TB’s comments, it appears that she is controlled by the chronological flow of the lesson to keep up with it. The problem of maintaining the expected pace of the yearly lesson not made by her, regardless of the particular realities of each JTE, has limitations as we see below:

Even when a student asks me some questions, usually these questions are interesting and need more time to response, so I have to skip these questions because I have to keep clicking the slides until reaching the target point, which is usually at the slide at the end of the class. Again, I feel that I am fighting with time. And sometimes I miss the useful expression and put them off to the next class. The main part of more useful expressions is often postponed to the next (Laughter). (TAN-2)

TB’s laughter seems to show that she is uncomfortable. Noticing that there seems no teacher-students interactions nor students-students interaction, other than drilling for vocabulary retention, I asked TB what she thought about implementing some content based learning activities, since she seems a bit negative against following the teaching plan and using the PowerPoint. However, she responded:

It might be good for them to give chances to use it [English] more. But they don’t have enough time and chances while the class goes in this way. And surprisingly students somehow can follow this. (TAN-2)

Again, TB demonstrates being in a HPM state of teaching as she at first acknowledges that although it would be good to add some more interesting activities to engage students, time is a factor and they find the lesson design to be appropriate. What we can see from TB’s teaching environment is that she has to make sure she is on pace in covering the yearly lesson plan, which she approves of even though she feels rushed and, at times, not knowing the learning purpose of an activity. In the end, HPM for TB is justified in keeping up with the yearly lesson plan:

Yes, it is. For me it is really easy to follow, but I don’t see much meaning or value of my teaching this class. Every one can do it (laughter). (TAN-SR2) No time other than the accuracy focused teaching of grammar and vocabulary

The following data from TB depicts areas of her instruction that show she is firmly embedded in an HPM state. In the following passages TB explicitly states that her first priority is to teach her students grammar and vocabulary through memorization. She further states that she must teach in this way because the yearly lesson plan drives her instruction:

The [yearly lesson plan] goal is to have students understand the difference of the grammar. Their homework was writing translations from the textbook and grammar exercises. So the goal is to establish the grammatical knowledge of seem to do/ seemed to have…. Yes, we teach a lot of grammar items and drills. It is really grammar-focused lesson. Furthermore, these include a lot of important structures. Students have to memorize, and they have to take tests to confirm whether they memorize them well or not… We have to do something to have students get good scores on the tests (TAN-2)

TB’s comments above show that her teaching style is firmly embedded in traditional instruction centered on grammar and translation for the instrumental purpose of passing tests as we will see below. When asked about having students express themselves in English, she adds that the goal is not on use, but on usage (structural knowledge about the target language).

Well, nothing like that… The goal is not having them use the target grammar but having them understand the grammar syntax. They are never asked to create their own sentence by using the targeted grammar and syntax. They only have to write Japanese , ,…in the right order to make sentences.

(TAN-2)

It would appear that a large portion of the instruction of TB seems to be fixed on teaching grammar with translation for tests. Moreover, data continuously show that the yearly lesson plan drives her instruction and following it takes up most of class time. When asked

clearly responds in the following passages in a manner that shows she is in a HPM state.

After seeing her instruction during an SR session after class, TB confirms her fixed position about not being able to make any more changes in her instruction:

We don't have enough time and everything is well organized. No more spare time for extra activity. (TAN-SR2)

In the comment above, TB in a straightforward manner says she is limited in what she can do in her instruction. In her view, the curriculum is organized with an emphasis on learning grammar and memorizing vocabulary, and it leaves her with little time other than to follow it. In this way, she remains steadfast that there is not much room for change.

6.1.1 Summary of HPM

TB’s instruction and why she remains in a HPM state can be seen by the data above. The priority is to teach grammar points and have students memorize vocabulary, which are taught according to the fixed lesson plan. TB seems to be at harmony with the yearly-organized plan made by the chief teacher. In addition, TB unlike the other two teachers in the study, is quite confident with her English proficiency. It should be noted that even with her confidence to use English, it does not mean that she is therefore able to teach English in a communicative way nor in her case does she seem to think it should be a priority. Grammar is important and it should be done explicitly and through translation, she believes. Moreover, she clearly states that there is no room for communicative activities and even if she had time, she is not sure how to teach it. TB therefore remains firmly in a HPM state and this has repercussions for her teacher development that will later be discussed.

However, there are some areas in her instruction that do reveal EPD in her teaching and opportunities for teacher change.