Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

One of the more influential TESOL Quarterly articles I have read over the past decade was Karen E. Johnson's "The Sociocultural Turn and Its Challenges for Second Language Teacher Education." It helped guide me during the early stages of my doctoral dissertation. I'm revisiting now because it relates to my current position, and I wanted to see if Dr. Johnson's concerns are still valid ten years later. Theory/Practice Versus Praxis From my perspective, the theory-practice dichotomy is still quite prevalent in teacher education. I have entered discussions with our faculty on what should stand at the core of our ESL curriculum, which I perceive as research in applied linguistics or informal research in teaching and learning. I see this more as a applied linguistics-education dichotomy as research is on both ends, but education is more steeped in practice. Johnson recommends praxis as a solution to this dichotomy because it "is more suitable for the prepara...

Last month, we (the Center for English as a Second Language) hosted the Shawnee Hills IEP Camp at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.  I blogged about how we were able to organize and host it in a previous post .  As mentioned in that post, we followed the EdCamp model and shared our professional learning with IEP faculty and staff from the University of Southern Indiana and from Southeast Missouri State University.  Our program (CESL) was also hosting English language teachers from Panama, who also attended the Camp.   Starting early at 8am in the morning, we had a very good turnout with around 65 of the registered 70 participants showing up.  Above is a picture of some of the earlier attendees mingling over our sponsored and catered breakfast from yummy Cristaudo's Bakery of Carbondale.  They have always been a dependable and popular caterer at CESL events. Pictured above is a couple of our faculty members with our Panamanian visiti...

Photo taken by Mohammedreza Jalaeian On Friday, February 19th, 2016, I, with the help of many colleagues and partners, successfully ran my first and maybe the first EdCamp for intensive English programs (IEPs).  I was so overjoyed with how smoothly it ran and,even more so, how many of my colleagues considered it an enriching and engaging experience.  I have been a fan and an advocate of EdCamps ever since my first experience at the Chicago EdCamp in October 2013. What's an EdCamp? An EdCamp is a type of "unconference," which is participant-driven and inquiry-driven.  There are no plenary, keynote, or other types of speakers.  Every session is a discussion on a topic decided upon by the attendees, which in this case were IEP faculty and staff.  EdCamps were originally designed for and by K-12 educators in the United States. I have attended three EdCamps, mainly designed for K-12 educators, in Illinois and Iowa.  These EdCamps helped me design an...