Chapter 7 - Teacher Knowledge and Managing the Classroom for ESL Learning

Summary

In this chapter I shall examine the classroom practices of the four ESL teachers and the knowledge embedded in these practices. The investigation of classroom practices will be done under two broad areas: the management of the classroom for learning, and the enactment of the ESL curriculum. The latter refers to the way the ESL curriculum is being given meaning by the teacher and the students (see Synder, Bolin, and Zumwait, 1992). As pointed out in Chapter 4, these two broad areas are intermeshed and often difficult to disentangle. Their division is more for the convenience of organizing the discussion than real. In this chapter I shall focus on the management of the classroom for learning, or “the management of learning.” The enactment of the English curriculum will be the concern of the next chapter.

ESL Teacher Knowledge

While there are a number of studies on the knowledge of L1 English teachers (see, for example, Grossman, 1990; Hillocks, 1999), not much has been written about ESL teacher knowledge (see, however, Woods, 1996; Tsui and Nicholson, 1999). In ESL teaching, the target language is both the medium and the object of learning. While there seems to be a consensus that the ESL teacher's ability in the target language is part of teacher knowledge, it is not evident that there is consensus regarding what constitutes the subject matter knowledge of ESL teachers and whether such knowledge should be explicitly taught.