Page 145 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

use of self-evaluation by the students to help teachers adapt their feedback was promising, because teachers reported that their students’ self-evaluations increased their understanding of the students’ learning process in speaking skills and they modified their intended feedback after seeing the self-evaluations in order to meet individual students’ needs. Furthermore, teachers also considered the self-evaluation process to be feasible and practical in teaching practice.
This pilot study gave insight into the first design principle, self-evaluation by the student. In the second phase of the research, based on reflection on the results of the pilot study and on theoretical research, other design principles to make the approach adaptive for students and practical for teachers were then elaborated and tested in the classroom. To what extent the approach is indeed practical for teachers has been reported in chapters 3 and 5. Students' experience of adaptivity is reported in chapter 4.
Main findings chapter 3
Chapter 3 reported on the development and evaluation of a practical adaptive approach to teaching speaking skills in a foreign language. The teaching approach to be developed aimed at providing both students and teachers with insight into the learning process so that feedback and improvement activities could be tailored to students’ learning needs, as well as providing opportunities for students to improve their speaking performance in an aligned set of learning activities. Based on insights from research into bounded rational and ecological rational decision-making (Todd & Gigerenzer, 2012) and practicality theory (Doyle & Ponder, 1977; Janssen et al., 2013), a Bridging Model was used to develop the practical and adaptive teaching approach. Following this Bridging Model (Janssen, Westbroek, Doyle, & Van Driel, 2013; Janssen, Westbroek & Doyle, 2015), the regular teaching practice in speaking skills was first broken down into building blocks. Building blocks are recognizable lesson segments, in this case of regular language lesson series, such as input (reading texts or listening fragments), exercises (for instance focused on grammar or vocabulary), speaking activities and feedback. The next step was to design principles aimed at achieving the goals of the new teaching approach. These principles had to allow the building blocks to be incorporated into the existing teaching practice in various ways so that the teachers could adapt the teaching approach to their own teaching practice. Three practical design principles were formulated to achieve the
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