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Project
Instructional Systems Design (ISD) intervention at ENG 434/734
class in the M.A. program in English with a concentration in Teaching
English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at SFSU
Background
The purpose of this Community Service Learning course is
to provide graduate and undergraduate students with language mentoring
opportunities, and to provide on-going support for participation in community-based
ESL programs such as SHINE (Students Helping in the Naturalization of
Elders). Participation will consist primarily of providing language “coaching”
(i.e. citizenship preparation, general ESL, etc.) to an individual or
small group of immigrants. The learners are students in Prof. Gail Weinstein’s
ENG 434/734 class at San Francisco State University. There are fifteen
students in the class. In addition to coaching, the students are expected
to work collaboratively to share their experiences with one another as
coaches and to lend support to one another. The students are expected
to participate in discussions (in-class and online) and keep a journal
to record their field experiences. The students eventually hope to work
professionally as language teachers.
What is the performance gap?
Based on the preliminary steps undertaken to arrive at a problem
statement, it is my understanding that the success of the course relies
on two factors:
1) The instructional environment needs to be learner-centered rather then
teacher-centered. A learner-centered environment in this class would require
learners to share their ESL/citizenship coaching experiences by participating
in class and online discussions. These discussions help the learner gain
insight into a variety of issues they might encounter in their task as
coaches and understand ways to deal with them.
2) Through these discussions and other interaction the class is transformed
into a community of coaches who share experiences and support each other
thereby making them better coaches.
The visible symptom of the performance gap is the lack of
participation by students in class discussions. A majority of the students
enrolled in the course come from instructional environments that were
more traditional, teacher centered, and expect this course to be similar
in nature. This lack of participation could be a hindrance to both the
sharing of experiences and the formation of a community of learners as
outlined above.
However the ‘terminal’ performance required of
the students is their ability to resolve unique situations they face in
the classrooms they teach or the people they coach. This can be categorized
as problem-solving skills. The performance gap is therefore problem-solving
skills in the students of ENG 434/734. A true measure of this performance
can be assessed by documenting the quantity and quality interactions between
students and their performance in the classes they coach (in the transfer
context).
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