5.2. Conditions for course design as a professional development activity
5.2.1 Interaction between subject and mediating artifacts
It is evident from the data that the availability of the mediating artifacts has an influence on the subjects’ actions and decisions. For example, Thu was informed about some theory on backward course design and given some materials which had been designed by her former members (see 4.3.1 and 4.7.1). It means that Thu was provided with a number of mediating artifacts; which led her to an action: making attempt to understand the link between the informed theory and the given materials.
This action, along with her admission that she did not have any theoretical knowledge of this design approach, revealed a contradiction between Thu’s prior knowledge and the required new knowledge. However, Thu’s attempt to understand the link between
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the given mediating artifacts was not successful (excerpt 76), and it is believed that more mediating artifacts, including official trainings and further guidance by the field experts, should have been provided.
It may be argued that the teachers-as-course-developers could read more about the field on their own, whereby resolving the above-mentioned contradiction. This argument seems to be valid, but it is not. As admitted by most involved teachers (see 4.3.4), they had little knowledge and experience in curriculum development; in other words, they did not have enough input for reflection and then for further exploration.
This was the situation of Thu (when designing the 1B course), Huong, Duong, Diem, Thanh, and Bach. Thu’s situation changed when she along with her team members designed the 2B course. With the existing experience in designing the 1B course and reflection on its mismatch with the predetermined objectives, she could figure out what she should have read in more detail and how the available materials should have been used (excerpt 82). This finding is coherent with Freeman’s (2001) view that practical or experiential knowledge is considered to be an important input for teacher development. In case of Hong and Hue, besides their practical knowledge during the process of the project, prior theoretical knowledge of language teaching and learning (Hong, Hue) and of course design and the CEFR (Hue) facilitated them in analyzing available mediating artifacts (i.e. the CEFR document, the published EAP textbooks, and ideas from different colleagues) and doing further relevant research (Excerpts 1, 13, and 83 ). It can be said that the lack of prior knowledge inhibits the teachers’
process of self-reading. Without exposure to relevant theories, they may not realize the tension between their theoretical and practical knowledge, which is a significant step for meaningful learning. This finding reflects the view by Bell & Gilbert (1994) that the theoretical input is an important aspect of learning and development.
The findings of the present study also confirm Dewey’s (1938) and Kolb’s (1984) idea that the available mediating artifacts are just a necessary condition, but not sufficient for contradiction resolution. According to these authors, meaningful experiences are important for the learning process, but “learning occurs as students
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reflect on their experiences and build connections with previous knowledge”. In other words, the authors emphasize the active role of the learners as well as their employment of what is available to them in their learning process. The findings of the present study reveal the way the teacher participants utilize the available resources contributes to their learning outcomes. For example, some of the mediating artifacts were not fully or appropriately employed, including the CEFR document and the available published EAP textbooks by a number of teachers. The CEFR document has nine chapters in total, some of which particularly deals with competence-based teaching and competence-based assessment besides a list of target competences for each level. However, only Hue claimed that she read the whole document and based on the knowledge presented in that document to define the academic context for the course. The other teachers who were involved in defining the course objectives admitted that they just read the chapter about can-do statements, from which they could select a list of objectives. Bach even said that he did not understand the CEFR though he knew that it was a backbone of the project (see 4.3.1).
As explained above in this section, that teachers made different impact on the available resources was due to the lack of prior knowledge and experience. Another reason might be the individual motives. It couldn’t be denied that the teacher participants strived to work non-stop to complete the project in a certain way even though they encountered a number of challenges (see 4.6.4). This finding is in line with the literature (Cuypers, 1992; Garbin et al., 2015; Hyslop-Margison, 2010) that autonomy can facilitate the teacher working towards their goal regardless of the constraints caused by their working and family conditions. Nonetheless, these previous studies do not present how different the autonomy is among teachers and where teacher autonomy can come from. In the present study, with different motives, the degree of autonomy is different among the participants. It was presented that Hong’s and Hue’s motives were toward the quality of the course contents and materials while the others’ motives seemed to be task completion.
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Noticeably, these motives are likely to be developed under the influence of the life history, the educational and professional background of the participants, which does not seem to be discussed in other related studies. For instance, at first, Hong and Hue shared with the other teachers a collective object: completing the assigned tasks, which was created by the outsiders (see 4.1). Then, during the participation process they developed a new motive or a culturally more advanced object of (re)conceptualizing EAP courses. These teachers explained that they were “serious learners” and had desire for the quality of the course; this was not their personal trait at the specific time of the project but seemingly related to their life history. Hong was one member among the gifted students in her province, and she had a habit of digging into whatever she was taught when she was a school student. Similarly, Hue was influenced by the way one senior teacher worked on the other previous course. She also had determination to prove her abilities in whatever she participated in; which resulted from her difficulty when she started her teaching career in the university.
Meanwhile, the other teachers did not seem to be good at learning from theories on their own (e.g. Thu and Huong) even when they were students; they also realized that learning from practices had helped to raise their certain awareness. Hence, they did not have an intention of digging into the relevant theoretical knowledge during the process (see 4.1).
In short, looking into the interaction between the subjects and the mediating artifacts helps to reveal two contradictions: one between prior knowledge and new knowledge (i.e. a contradiction within the subject), and the other between prior knowledge and the given resources (i.e. a contradiction between the subject and the mediating artifacts).
However, these contradictions were not completely resolved and a culturally more advanced object was not developed in all of the activity systems because, as discussed above in this section, the subjects were influenced by different factors in different ways.
This lends support to the sociocultural view that learning is socially mediated (i.e. the available artifacts and given conditions) and personal constructed (through reflection) (Vygotsky, 1978; Leont’ev, 1981; Engestrửm, 1987, 2015).
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