New generation school teacher project at KUBG: students' perspective

Ключевые слова: преддипломная подготовка учителя, методика обучения иностранным языкам, учебная программа, обратная связь.

Judging by the level of the English language proficiency among Ukrainians [5], the necessity to reform the system of teaching foreign languages in Ukraine has been urgent for at least several decades. The majority of experts agree that the changes are necessary on all levels, including the system of pre-service teacher training [3].

Among various suggestions concerning the ways to tackle the problem there has been the New Generation School Teacher (NGST) project, launched by the joint effort of the British Council in Ukraine and the Ministry of Education of Ukraine in 2013 [7]. As it is stated in the general proj ect description, it pursuits the overall aim "to introduce change to the initial teacher education system in Ukraine" by training future teachers as "reflective practitioners", who are ready to "make a shift from transmitters of knowledge to facilitators of learning" [ibid].

To achieve the declared aim, it was decided to re-design the content and format of pedagogical courses at teacher-training universities, providing the change of learning focus from general declarative knowledge of theories to practical skills. The Baseline Study [2] proved that the alterations would be supported by administration, teaching staff and students at Ukrainian universities. To implement the set aim, the draft of the new Curriculum [7] was designed. According to this curriculum, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) Methodology should be studied for three years. During those three years, best practices of leading EFL teachers and methodologists should be introduced to students, all sessions should be taught in English in the format of interactive training and students should be encouraged to use the target language for all the activities, related to the methodology course. Therefore, both issues of the present-day lack of professional competence and low-level language proficiency of would-be English teachers was supposed to be addressed.

For two years 2015-2016, English and methodology teachers from those Ukrainian universities, that expressed interest in the NGST project, participated in professional training with the British Council [7]; in the process of training the design of the New Curriculum was discussed and improved, sample session materials were developed and peer-reviewed.

In September 2016, eleven Ukrainian universities started piloting the new Curriculum. Among them was Kyiv Borys Grinchenko University, where the experimental course of ELT Methodology was implemented at the English Philology and Translation department of the Institute of Philology. Eight sub-groups of second-year Bachelor program students, majoring in English philology, started experimental training. The purpose of this article is to present the students' feedback on their experience during the first year of NGST project pilot.

It is necessary to mention that the Institute of Philology at Kyiv Borys Grinchenko University was not among the project participants from the very start. The decision to join the project and pilot the experimental curriculum was made at the end of the 2015/16 academic year. Within a few months, necessary changes were made to the Department Curriculum; EFL Methodology teachers were instructed to teach the course; the work program for the first year of EFL Methodology course, named Practical Pedagogy, was developed and approved; teaching materials were obtained and sorted out; working procedures were agreed.

The only group of experiment participants, who were unaware of the change in the approach to pedagogical disciplines at the English department, were students. Therefore, it was of special importance for us, teachers of the experimental EFL Methodology / Practical Pedagogy course, to monitor the students' attitude to studies and to provide in-process adaptation of the procedures and materials. We cannot claim, that the process ran smoothly; like any innovation it faced a number of difficulties, and every step towards improvement demanded sufficient effort.

When students returned to their studies in September they found a new compulsory subject of "Practical Pedagogy" in their time-table. As they were not provided with any prior information on the NGST project, they naturally expected a traditional set of lectures and seminars in their native tongue. Moreover, the first anonymous survey revealed that more than a half of students (about 57% of the survey participants) did not intend to work as teachers in their future and did not view the subject of Practical Pedagogy as necessary for their career. Therefore, the prospect of studying a new subject did not arouse much interest among them.

Nevertheless, there were respondents, who had a more positive attitude to a teaching career; a significant number of them were graduates from the Pedagogical college at Borys Grinchenko University. Though they admitted the necessity to be aware of pedagogical theories, they had already had experience of learning Pedagogy at college and hardly expected anything new. Consequently, the initial internal motivation for learning this subject was quite low. As a result, a lot of students were subconsciously ready to apply the surface approach (to cram, to pass, to forget) and did not set any high value on regular attendance of the subject.

Luckily, the very content of the course helped to change the attitude during the first months. As students discussed different learner types and the optimal ways of studying, learning strategies and their application for mastering English etc., they came to realize, that the obtained information could help them become more successful language learners. Further topics, related to developing learner autonomy, proved to be of real practical significance for students. As the end-of-year anonymous survey revealed, 100% of those 43 students, who volunteered to answer the survey questions, found the course in Practical Pedagogy either rather useful (51.2%) or very useful (48.8%).

The other questions were supposed to provide more detailed information on how the students benefited from the course. Nine in ten students admitted that the course helped them understand their learning better, for they rather (46.5%) or strongly (44.2%) agreed with the corresponding statement.

Further questions demonstrated that 81% of participants came to know their dominant types of intelligence, and the impressive 93% of the respondents claimed to get aware of their strength and weakness as language learners. Moreover, only one in ten students still hesitated about the situations when they could apply deep or surface learning style. Based on the given results we can see that the topics connected with the psychological aspects of learning foreign languages (the theory of Multiple Intelligences, the VARK learning styles, learner types and learning strategies) were definitely useful for students.

Another important topic that was learnt in Practical Pedagogy was learner autonomy. The concept itself was in the prevailing number of cases completely new for students, and we, the teachers, were not one hundred percent confident about it. One of the possible explanations for the situation is that though the topic has recently been included into EFL methodology textbooks by Ukrainian leading methodologists (for example, Nikolayeva et al. 2013 [1, p. 500-513]), the topic was not on the curriculum when the majority of the present-day teachers completed their education. As a result, it was not considered to be an integral or important part of teaching English at school, college or university. Teachers' total control of the students' learning process used to be and, in a lot of cases, still is viewed as a sign of true professionalism. Though the alternative point of view is regularly voiced and discussed at conferences, professional training or in research materials, true learner autonomy can rarely be found in Ukrainian education.

The situation with learner autonomy in our groups of students at the beginning of 2016/17 academic year was quite typical for Ukraine. In class, very few students volunteered original opinions and in general were quite reluctant to communicate on the spot in English. When asked to reflect on their learning experience they either blamed their schools and teachers for their present-day failures and low proficiency, or explained their learning problems by unchangeable peculiarities of their personalities (e.g. My teacher was not interested in my progress so I cannot speak good English; It's difficult for me to speak English because I'm shy; I prefer to work on my own so group discussion is not for me; I will never speak well because I have problems with English grammar, etc.). These and similar in-class remarks and passages from home assignments provided evidence on students' limited sense of personal control over different aspects of their lives and studies. When facing unfamiliar situations or procedures some of them tended to demonstrate what Martin Seligman (1975) called learned helplessness [9, p. 128].

Due to the above-mentioned reasons, we had some doubts whether we would be able to provide high- quality loop input (term of Tessa Woodward (1986) [10]) of the material on learner autonomy, i.e. to demonstrate the process of learner autonomy development by developing autonomy in our learners.

In spite of our worst fears, the end-of-year anonymous survey proved sufficient progress in this direction. Almost three in four students agreed that while doing the course in Practical Pedagogy they learned to manage their learning process better, while the majority of remaining respondents opted for the "I am not sure" variant. Only three participants admitted to having made little or no progress in managing their learning.

The statement "You have made sufficient progress with developing your learner autonomy at Practical Pedagogy sessions" was strongly and rather supported by 37.2 % and 48.8% of respondents respectively, leaving only 14% uncertain. The next statement, "You are responsible for your learning" gained 79.1% of strong and 18.6% of moderate support, while only one student opted for the variant "I am not sure". The suggested numbers can verify that although all the nine steps "from dependence to learner autonomy" [6] were not covered within one year by every paricipant, the levels of awareness, preference identification and choice [ibid] were achieved by the majority of participants. This assertion can be supported by students' reaction to another statement on the survey, "You are responsible for your learning". Only one student expressed uncertainty, while 79.1% strongly and 18.6 % rather agreed with it (Figure 1).