An Assessment of Language Teacher Educators' Classroom , Performances: The Case of Awassa College of Teacher Education

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Date

2007-02

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Publisher

Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Since the start of modern education in Ethiopia, many reforms have been made in education in general and teacher education in particular to improve its quality. As part of this, very recently, a guiding material called Teacher Education System Overhaul (TESO) was developed and put in to effect with detailed pedagogical competence and personal qualities teacher educators should exhibit in their classrooms. This is believed to provide the student teachers with good model practices of the theories they have learned. Thus, the researcher is inspired to assess the language teacher educators' classroom performances in accordance with the suggested methods of language teaching and personal qualities. The researcher, therefore, set the following objectives: assessing their perception on the methods and personal qualities, their performances, and the potential problems that could affect their classroom performances. The study addresses issues related to the language educators' perception of the methods and personal qualities suggested both in the general language teaching pedagogy and in the TESO material and their classroom performances. Besides, the language educators' relationships with the student teachers, modelling, practicum, problems that affect their performances, and higher diploma are discussed. For this, Awassa College of Teacher Education was selected as area and four willing language educators were made subjects of the study. These language educators were observed twice teaching in their classes, evaluated by their students, interviewed and made to discuss in a group. Then the data was explicitly described. The findings indicated that the language teacher educators' classroom performance was below satisfactory. Based on this, the researcher recommends that professional development oriented programmes should be organised and/or strengthened to help language educators develop professionally and become better practitioners. This will shorten the journey for quality education.

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Keywords

Assessment, Language Teacher Educators

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