Ice-breaking"--The Making Of Three Immersion Teachers

There is a central dilemma embedded in the relationship between theory and practice of second language teaching and teacher education. We all know that theories, even "good theories" may not have practical value to the practice. This "intimate divorce1' between research and teaching practice deserves the reinvestigation of our research literature.If we reviewed the research literature of second language teaching in the last century, we would find that "Most of what is done in language teaching and in language teacher education is based on conventions that define disciplinary knowledge from linguistics, psychology, and various other fields as the foundation for what language teachers should know and therefore what they should do in their classrooms.(Freeman, 1994) Although linguistics, psychology and teaching methodology do provide necessary support for our understanding of second language teaching, these subjects can't substitute for language teaching itself. If we despise or forget the person who is teaching, we'll never get the clear vision of second language teaching. We know that good theories and good methodologies can't make good teaching without the involvement of qualified teachers.The other interesting thing that we find from the research literature of language teaching and language teacher education is the illegitimate status of teachers' "voice". Although we have been working on language teaching and language teacher education for a long time, scant attention has been paid to understanding the process of language teaching and teachers' learning to teach from the perspectives of teachers. As Freeman said: "Teachers know the story of the classroom well, but they usually do not know how to tell it because they are not often called upon to do so, nor do they usually have opportunities. Researchers on the other hand are very skilled at telling certain things about classrooms; However, they often miss the central stories that are there". This must be one of the biggest embarrassments that we're facing in the field of language teaching and language teacher education. The only way that we can break this embarrassment lies in an approach which puts the person who does the teaching at the center.In recent years, teaching is beginning to be viewed as a complex, contextually determined, and personally constructed process (Connelly and Clandinin 1988; Elbz 1983; Louden 1991; McDonald 1992; Olson 1992). With this new understanding, the concepts of "narrative"(Clandinin 1992; Clandinin and Connelly 1988; Connelly and Clandinin 1990), "biography"(Butt and Raymond 1987; Goodson and Walker 1990), "life history"(Knowles 1991; Woods 1987) are emerging in the field of language teaching and language teacher education. This not only reflects the research shift from the behavioral view to the interpretivist view, but also marks a great step that we are taking from the outsider's perspective to the participant's perspective. Actually, although the names are different, all the above approaches are focusing on the individual teacher and his or her experience, and on the critical importance of portraying this experience from the teacher's point of view. They also share a common point of view, that understanding teachers' conceptualizations of teaching, their beliefs, their working circumstances gives us a better understanding of language teaching and language teacher education.Although there might be different attitudes towards this shift, I personally appreciate the efforts that some researchers are making to understand the complexity of language teaching through the perspective of the individual teacher. My research on the making of three immersion teachers in Xi'an through the tools of''narrative" clearly represents my position.My research relates a series of stories about what Lin Yufei, He Wenxi, Chen Menglan (pseudonym names) went through in becoming immersion teachers. I'd like to examine the nature and processes of the making of the immersion teachers from their perspectives. All the three teachers are...