Project Overview

Author's Preface
TESOL and Service Learning
Nature and Purposes of the Project
Major Components and Activities
Content and Organization
Project Evaluation
References

Author's Preface
Immediately after finishing the coursework for an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), I moved to Boston with my husband and concurrently taught business English full-time and worked toward developing an ESL class for my church group while trying to finish my master's project. At work, I taught highly motivated and quite driven business professionals who were away from their families and jobs for three to six week stints (my classes were all they had to do). These students had all graduated from college and were successful in their careers (their companies were paying for the English lessons). My job was relatively demanding, but not nearly as difficult intellectually, emotionally, socially, and spiritually as was leading the church-sponsored ESL class.

Even with solid, masters level training in TESOL and formal experience teaching ESL in several settings, my volunteer activities felt especially out of control and complicated. In my small church class, I taught students who had lived in the US for almost 20 years and students who had immigrated in the last three months. There was a former Branch President (leader of a congregation) and a recent convert. There was a man with only an elementary school education who was unemployed and a woman with an MBA who owned her own business in Argentina. Needless to say, it was tough!
Four months into my church class, I realized that my motivation was one of my biggest issues.

Teaching ESL in a professional environment was a piece of cake compared to what I was trying to do as a volunteer. At work, my students were all pre-screened and pre-tested. I had innumerable resources available to me in my lesson planning. I had a job description. I knew that my lessons could build on each other consecutively because I knew my students would show up for each class. None of this was the case with the volunteer ESL class. I needed an approach that would work and that I could realistically manage. Out of stress and habit, I began to journal about the volunteer ESL class as I had done while an undergraduate at the University of Utah, engaging in and leading "Reflection" exercises in conjunction with the Lowell Bennion Community Service Center. I journaled about issues I was facing and how to deal with them.

I started to shape my personal reflections around the themes I had studied in my TESOL coursework, essentially structuring them around all the things I had learned in an academic context. Our ESL class was very far from perfect, but this process of structured critical reflection set in motion a course of cohesive action, fostered a feeling of unity within the class, and encouraged consistency within my lessons. It provided much needed emotional and intellectual scaffolding for my previously deteriorating capacities as a teacher.

Over the course of these reflections, I began to privately lament that I wasn't able to unite my volunteer and academic pursuits, and then realized that I probably could. I contacted my chair about changing my master's project to build a Web-enabled evaluation tool to help TESOL volunteers, and she approved the change. I restructured my review of literature, adding sources pertaining to service-learning pedagogy and TESOL teacher preparation that were not a part of my original project. The other portions of my review of literature were either already contained in my review of literature for my previous master's project or they had been completed as part of my TESOL coursework.

I began developing the content of the Website by synthesizing the information I had learned about seven key TESOL curriculum development topics (evaluation, needs analysis, objectives, teaching, learning, materials, assessment) and evaluation from various sources, many of which were primary texts for Linguistics 577, TESOL Methods and Materials; Linguistics 677, Advanced Methodology; and Instructional Psychology and Technology 663, Evaluation of Educational Programs and Curricula. Next, I developed the concept of the "wheel diagram" to illustrate how I thought the curriculum components fit together, based on a similar model I created for a curriculum development project for Linguistics 677, Advanced Methodology.

As the topic descriptions began to take shape, I began to work on the exercises themselves. Drawing on what I could remember about three levels of reflection from when I led service-learning reflections as a project director at the Lowell Bennion Community Service Center, I adapted metaphors that they use and came up with Reflection, Discovery and Vision to represent the different exploratory exercises. I then wrote the exploratory exercises pertaining to each topic that were similar to informal reflections I had personally engaged in while trying to find solutions to issues I was facing with my church-sponsored ESL class.

When the topic descriptions and exercises were written, I submitted them to my chair for approval. Once they were approved, I worked on the actual construction of the Website. My sister built the site for me using Dream Weaver software. It was then loaded onto BYU's Department of Linguistics Website, where the students with whom I piloted it accessed it. I then interviewed some of them (all of the students who had completed all of the modules at the time of my defense) about their experiences with the Website and analyzed and wrote about their feedback.

TESOL and Service Learning
A number of careers require hands-on, practical training that is considered essential for licensure or certification. Among these are professions such as medical doctors and nurses, counselors and psychologists as well as trades such as carpenters and plumbers, etc. Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) is no exception. TESOL teacher preparation involves some sort of a practicum experience. TESOL programs require students to have on-site, hands-on training. As a complement to this, community TESOL needs far outstrip supply in our society. There is both great demand and great opportunity for TESOL service. The mutually beneficial relationship between teachers in preparation and the community at large suggests that TESOL as an academic field may lend itself particularly well to service-learning pedagogy.

Service-learning pedagogy is a teaching method that entails academic learning and community service which, when combined with a component of critical reflection on the service rendered, develops students' academic skills as they engage in community work that significantly addresses local needs (Bringle & Hatcher, 1995; Campus Compact, 2002; Erickson, 1997; Furco & Billig, 2002). Service learning is the powerful synthesis of academic rigor and volunteer service. The service enlivens formal learning by providing an opportunity for real-world application and the observation of its tangible significance. In turn, the education relates to, allows for and sustains meaningful service. Service learning addresses the desire of students to learn through practice and real-world experience in addition to their studies, and provides an opportunity for them to put their education to use for the benefit of others.

In service-learning pedagogy, the reflective process is considered to be not only helpful, but also essential to the method itself. Regarding the role of critical reflection, Bringle and Hatcher (1995) state that service-learning students should engage in intentional reflection "in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility" (112-122). Service-learning reflection is a sort of internal evaluation-a process of personal meaning-making in which it is expected that students will learn from their service experiences and exploit this learning in future situations that may be similar. This process of reflection or personal evaluation is important everywhere. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be many guidelines or tools to help with this, and it is sometimes ignored or just missing in academic courses that have a service component to them.

Excellent procedures, methods and models for the evaluation of educational programs and curricula exist in TESOL. However, many are complicated and require resources of time, money and materials that may not be available to TESOL volunteers in service-learning type settings. While valuable, such processes may feel overwhelming, cumbersome and hard to apply for TESOL volunteers who are trying to mesh their academic learning with meaningful community service. Few tools help TESOL volunteers engage in structured reflection to evaluate this particular process in a service-learning type environment or situation. Such volunteers need support in completing the type of recursive evaluation that will benefit their academic learning now and that will be requisite in their professional lives for creating successful language programs that are mutually reinforcing for both the teachers and their students.

Nature and Purposes
This project involved the development of an on-line tool and an evaluation of it. It is not a research project about service-learning pedagogy. It is a Website that is designed to help TESOL volunteers appraise their practical, preparatory experiences, as well as to enable them to apply the lessons that they learn more broadly in the future. The exercises on the Website employ strategies to facilitate TESOL volunteers' evaluation of their applied efforts in a manner that is congruent with the concept of reflection as delineated by service-learning pedagogy.

In extant service-learning literature, the process of observation, contemplation, deliberation and critical thinking is normally referred to as "reflection" (Erickson & Anderson, 1997; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Litke, 2002; Mills, 2002; Shumer, 1997; Waterman, 1997). TESOL literature often identifies the same concept with the same term (Brookfield, 1995; Dong, 2000; Farrell, 1998; Stanley, 1998). In certain instances (particularly those described in association with specific techniques within teacher preparation) the actualization of this concept may take the form of reflective "journaling" (Burton & Carroll, 2001; Daloglu, 2001; Gebhard, 1999; Johnson, 1999). On a more personal note, this project began through my own personal reflective journaling in a service setting (see the Author's Preface for a description of the development of the project). In this Website, the process of critical reflection is facilitated and aided by what I am labeling "exploratory exercises."

Major Components and Activities
Structurally, the Website contains seven modules, each designed around a key TESOL curriculum development topic. These topics include evaluation, needs analysis, objectives, teaching, learning, materials and assessment, and are closely patterned after academic content typical of most TESOL programs, including BYU's undergraduate and graduate TESOL programs. The exercises within the Website are meant to help TESOL volunteers organize how they look at the whole TESOL teaching process, link their new experiences with knowledge they already have, articulate what they are trying to accomplish, internalize what they are learning, evaluate their accomplishments, and manage their expectations by putting their experience into perspective.

In short, it provides TESOL volunteers in a service-learning type environment with structured exploratory exercises that will enable them to individually evaluate the impact of their service experiences with respect to their academic pursuits, to improve their teaching, and to foster self-monitoring. It is believed that this process, "becomes a significant driving force behind [student] learning" (Shumer, 1997a, p. 86). Through this type of critical examination, the TESOL volunteers employ the use of metacognitive strategies that have been found to be characteristic of expert or strategic learners (Bransford et al., 2000: Reid, 1995, Wallace, 1996).

Each of the seven topic-based modules (evaluation, needs analysis, objectives, teaching, learning, materials and assessment) within the Website contains a one to two page description of its topic. The descriptions are followed by several exploratory exercises. The exploratory exercises are one way to look at and evaluate teaching decisions and experiences. They allow TESOL volunteers to think about what they are doing/what is happening in their classroom, to understand it, to reach conclusions about it, and then to make choices about how to move forward. Each exercise takes the form of reflective journaling. There are three different types of exploratory exercises, which are designed to help the volunteers delve into the each topic from several different angles. They are called "Reflection," "Discovery," and "Vision."

Reflection
The Reflection exercises are intended to help students ascertain their existing knowledge and facilitate describing how they are implementing each curriculum component in practice. These exploratory exercises are marked with an icon of a mirror.

Discovery
The Discovery exercises are an opportunity to look at an isolated incident in detail and consider its implications. These exploratory exercises are marked with an icon of a magnifying glass

Vision
The Vision exercises initiate the process of looking at the big picture and relating it to the things that the TESOL volunteers can influence. These exploratory exercises are marked with an icon of a pair of binoculars.

Content and Organization
This Website is geared towards TESOL volunteers who are currently in a formal academic setting related to their volunteer work, and who must meet certain conditions (in this case, fulfilling a paper requirement) to earn academic credit for their internship experience. As such, this topic-based model of educational evaluation is intended for use, not as a strict formula with predictable outcomes, but as a heuristic, an educational method for independent, self-directed exploration on the part of the TESOL volunteer. The modules in this Website are designed to help each volunteer customize the seven curriculum development topics (evaluation, needs analysis, objectives, teaching, learning, materials, assessment) to his or her situation and to engage in the valuable process of thoughtful examination.

Amie N. Casper

Figure 1. TESOL Curriculum Development Topics

Each of the seven modules, diagramed in Figure 1, is a key TESOL curriculum development topic that is closely tied to academic content typical of most TESOL programs. When a TESOL volunteer links to one of the modules via this diagram, he or she will reach a description of its topic, designed to promote comprehension of that theme.

Following the description of the topic, there are links to the exploratory exercises (Reflection, Discovery and Vision) specific to that concept. The arrangement is intended to be user-friendly and fairly non-linear. The TESOL volunteers are encouraged to select exercises that suit their current needs or that address dilemmas they are facing. They are reminded that each of the curriculum development topics is important and that it affects the others. Volunteers are therefore encouraged (sometimes required by their course instructor) to complete at least one of the three exploratory exercises per module.

Project Evaluation
As one would typically expect when developing a tool such as this, a significant component of the project is getting reactions about its efficacy to help plan for future improvements and use. This evaluation is important because the project is a new application on existing academic and pedagogical concepts. It is essential to determine whether and how the exploratory exercises were helpful to TESOL volunteers in a service-learning type environment, as well as how both the exercises and the site could be refined to make them more useful.

To this end, I piloted the tool with students enrolled in a TESOL academic internship course, and, employing qualitative methodology, gathered written feedback in the form of student reflections as well as follow-up interviews over the telephone. Broadly, my aim was to evaluate two things. First, whether the exploratory exercises in the project helped the students complete their reflective writing requirement for the internship course, and, second, if and how they benefited from completing the exploratory exercises. This evaluation is detailed in the bound copies of this project and may be accessed for reference through Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library or through the Department of Linguistics.

References

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