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Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread ofnationalism (Rev. ed.). London, England: Verso.

Dornyei, Z. (2009). The L2 motivational self system. In Z. Dornyei & E. Ushioda(Eds.), Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (pp. 9–42). Bristol, England:Multilingual Matters.

Farrell, T. S. C. (2009). The novice teacher experience. In A. Burns & J. C. Rich-ards (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to second language teacher education (pp. 182–189). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Gao, X. (2010). Strategic language learning: The roles of agency and context. Bristol,England: Multilingual Matters.

Holland, D., Lachicotte, W. Jr., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agencyin cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expandedsourcebook (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Moscovici, S. (2000). Social representations: Explorations in social psychology. Cam-bridge, England: Polity Press.

Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educationalchange. London, England: Longman.

Norton, B. (2001). Non-participation, imagined communities, and the languageclassroom. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New direc-tions in research (pp. 159–171). Harlow, England: Pearson Education.

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory proce-dures and techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Veenman, S. (1984). Perceived problems of beginning teachers. Review of Educa-tional Research, 54, 143–178. doi:10.3102/00346543054002143

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cam-bridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Feedback From the Field: What Novice PreK–12ESL Teachers Want to Tell TESOL TeacherEducators

LAURA BAECHERHunter College, City University of New YorkNew York, New York, United States

doi: 10.1002/tesq.43

& Programs in the United States that certify PreK–12 teachers in Englishas a second language (ESL) must meet high and consistent standards intheir preservice preparation. However, there is little empirical evidence

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on the degree to which such preparation actually meets the needs ofteachers once they begin their careers. Teaching English to speakers ofother languages (TESOL) programs that do not collect data on graduateshave limited information about how graduates are faring in theirinduction years. This lack of data may prevent TESOL programs fromeffectively preparing teacher candidates to work with English languagelearners. Knowledge of actual working conditions and challenges facedby practicing teachers is essential to program self-study and appropriateteacher preparation. This article reports on 77 graduates of one MATESOL program offering PreK–12 state certification in ESL who havetaught in public schools for 1–4 years. Using online surveys, interviews,site visits, questionnaires, and a focus group, this research investigatedthe work these teachers engaged in, the challenges they encountered,and how the MA TESOL program did or did not support the demands oftheir work. The purpose was to identify areas of mismatch betweenprogram preparation and current workplace demands, both to provideimmediate feedback to the program and to generalize about the need forMA TESOL programs to identify the types of demands their graduatesmay be encountering in U.S. schools.

LINKING ESOL TEACHER PREPARATION AND ESLTEACHING

Teacher education plays a powerful role in changing and shapingteacher cognition about the practice of teaching ESL (Borg, 2005;Peacock, 2001; Richards, Ho, & Giblin, 1996; Urmston, 2003). How-ever, subsequent implementation of these beliefs and knowledge isinconsistent due to the lack of coherence between preparation andthe classroom environment. Researchers examining both preservice(Johnson, 1996; Numrich, 1996) and in-service (Farrell, 2003; Penning-ton & Richards, 1997) ESL teachers have suggested that the strugglesfaced by novice teachers arise in part from the disconnect betweenschool contexts and the preparation program, an experience thatJohnson (1996) refers to as “hazing” (p. 48). Pennington and Richards(1997) and Urmston and Pennington (2008) found novice teachersunable to implement practices promoted in their teacher educationprogram as they struggled to face local conditions such as large classsize, numerous responsibilities, unmotivated students, and pressure toprepare students for examinations—realities that could have beenanticipated in the preparation program. In his series of case studies,Farrell (2008) illustrates the personal, social, and psychologicaldemands faced by novice ESL teachers as they struggle to adapt to the

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realities of their work and calls for the use of their feedback in design-ing teacher education programs.

These stories and their results can be fed back into the languageteacher education programme curriculum so that language teachereducators can think more carefully about the consequences of thecurriculum they have in place and if this curriculum is really preparingteachers for their first year as a teacher. (p. 54)

When teacher preparation course content fails to connect with thereal-world knowledge that new ESL teachers need to succeed on thejob, a chasm develops “that cannot be bridged by beginning teacherlearners” (Tarone & Allwright, 2005, p. 12). Teacher educators wishingto ease ESL teachers into their induction years must first clearlyidentify the challenges these teachers are likely to encounter.

WHAT CHALLENGES ARE ESL TEACHERS LIKELY TOFACE?

One of the few studies to examine ESL teachers’ opinions of howtheir teacher education programs prepared them for the challengesof their work was conducted by Fradd and Lee (1997). As part oftheir evaluation of their TESOL teacher preparation program, Fraddand Lee engaged graduates in providing feedback about how theprogram had or had not meet their needs. Their investigationresulted in the authors making significant reforms to their TESOLpreparation program. In particular, informants from the study notedthat the program had failed to prepare them to work with Englishlanguage learners (ELLs) in special education and that they neededmore extensive field and hands-on teaching experiences, repeatedopportunities to develop understanding of literacy, and instructionon teaching with technology.

A broader study of the gap between training and classroom realityis the survey conducted by Gandara, Maxwell-Jolly, and Driscoll(2005) of 5,000 California ESL teachers. Their aim was to identifythe “most difficult challenges teachers face in EL [English learner]classrooms every day [and] how teachers themselves view theirknowledge and preparation for meeting the needs of these students”(p. 3). The top challenges cited among elementary ESL teacherswere teacher–parent communication, lack of instructional time withELLs, and wide variability in academic and English needs and levels.Among secondary ESL teachers, in addition to those of elementaryteachers, top challenges were teacher–ESL student communicationabout social and personal issues, and encouraging and motivating

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students (p. 10). Both this study and Fradd and Lee’s (1997)documented the types of demands ESL teachers face, but the extentto which these inform the design of teacher preparation in TESOLis not clear.

THE STUDY

Participants

Graduates of an MA TESOL program housed in a large, urban,northeastern U.S. university were recruited as participants for thepresent study via email and were asked to reach out to peers intheir cohort. This recruitment process resulted in 77 teacherscompleting a questionnaire, 10 individual interviews, a focus groupinterview with 8 participants, and three full-day site visits. It shouldbe noted that I had been in contact with many of the study partic-ipants on a regular basis over time as a clinical supervisor.

Data Sources and Analysis

The self-study of teacher educators’ practice (SSTEP; Loughran, 2007)was employed as a guiding framework for this inquiry. SSTEP hasdeveloped as a methodology uniting the roles of researcher and teachereducator, and it shows promise as a means to expose the connectionsbetween the preparation program and the needs of graduates.

Initial data sources included transcriptions of the individual and focusgroup interviews as well as field notes. Dominant themes from thesesources were used to develop a draft questionnaire that was piloted with20 ESL teachers, who provided feedback as to its format, content, andlength. The questionnaire was then reviewed and a revised instrumentwas created, with special consideration given to issues of item design,following guidelines by Dornyei and Taguchi (2010). The questionnaire(which may be viewed at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19873389/BaecherTQProgramSurvey.pdf) included quantitative (forced-choice)and qualitative (open-ended) questions based on issues related to K–12ESL teaching that had surfaced as salient categories in the interviews. Itwas then administered through SurveyMonkey as an anonymousquestionnaire placed on the MA TESOL program’s Listserv andforwarded to program graduates from the previous 5 years. Qualitativeresponses were coded, categorized, and connected to emerging theorybased on the principles of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990).

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Pattern matching, frequency tabulations, and category aggregation wereall used as means to interpret the data.

FINDINGS

This section briefly outlines three main categories of findings fromthe data related to participants’ (1) teaching context (grade level, ESLprogram type, daily activities); (2) beliefs about the greatest challengesthey faced in their work, and what the TESOL program should do abetter job of addressing; and (3) reflections on how the design of theTESOL preparation program supported the demands of their work.Themes presented here are those ranked in the top five concernsdiscussed across all of the participants’ responses.

K–12 ESL Teaching Contexts

Participants reported on the grade levels and program models inwhich they currently taught, as seen in Table 1. At the elementarylevel, approximately 65% of the participants taught PreK–Grade 2 and35% taught Grades 3–5; at the secondary level, 24% taught Grades6–8 and 36% taught Grades 9–12. In terms of program model,secondary teachers were most likely to teach in a self-containedclassroom (68%), whereas at the elementary level teachers were mostlikely to provide ESL instruction in a pull-out model (53%).

Participants were asked to rate the frequency with which theyconducted a variety of activities, from daily to never. Of the 35 activitiesthey were asked to evaluate, the most frequent activities were planningcontent-based ESL lessons, planning reading skill lessons, planningwriting skill lessons, developing language objectives, and teachingliterature. The least frequent activities were conducting action research

TABLE 1

Grade and ESL Program Taught by Participants

ESL instructional programElementary(PreK–5)

Secondary(6–12)

Grades taught 39.7% 60.3%Self-contained (all ELLs taught by ESL teacher) 3.1% 68.4%Pull-out (small group of ELLs taken out ofmainstream classroom)

52.8% 19%

Push-in (small group of ELLs taught withinmainstream classroom)

44.1% 0%

Cotaught with content-area teacher 0% 12.6%

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in a professional learning community, participating in IndividualizedEducational Plan meetings, providing outreach to parents, teachingscience, and teaching mathematics.

Challenges of the Work

Participants also ranked the extent to which they believed certainactivities should be better emphasized in a TESOL preparationprogram. The highest priorities were instructing ELLs with learning dis-abilities, reviewing compliance and testing mandates for ELLs, address-ing the needs of low-literacy students, and planning or co-planningcontent-based ESL lessons.

Among elementary and secondary teachers, addressing the needs ofELLs in special education was the single most commonly discusseditem across the data collection (75% of participants referenced it).One respondent expressed this common concern in this way:

At least half of my students are not ELLs in the traditional sense. Theyhave learning disabilities, which makes them fall behind in terms ofreading and writing. I do not feel knowledgeable to help them bridgethe gap.

The majority of participants (64.5%) reported that, in addition toteaching, they were also responsible for placement, testing, andcompliance of their school’s ESL program with local, state, and federalmandates. The following statement is typical of participants’ responses:

Definitely one major area the TESOL program completely failed toaddress was a course on one of the biggest jobs an ESL teacher isresponsible for: the legislation on screening ELLs, assessingnewcomers, placing newcomers, administering the LAB-R [stateassessment for ELLs], becoming knowledgeable as to the lengthy insand outs of Part 154 [the local school system’s legal process].

Among the high school ESL teacher participants (60%), concernsabout their ability to meet the literacy needs of students who are alsolong-term ELLs was a dominant theme, as illustrated here:

I really feel that even though I have graduated from the program, I amnot completely confident that I can teach a very low-literacy student toread. The classes in the TESOL program did not prepare me to dealwith students with literacy/SIFE [students with interrupted formaleducation] issues. . . . More and more students have arrived at my highschool with very low literacy skills. Some, with very limited phonicsbackground even though they have been in the U.S. public school

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system for 2 years. . . . My colleagues and I feel so inadequate andunprepared to deal with these students.

In particular, high school ESL teachers reported being overwhelmedby the low levels of literacy and the high academic demands of their set-tings, with little building-level support such as physical space, materials,or administrator-allocated time for collaboration. Additionally, highschool teachers identified the lack of focus in the preparation programon the effects of undocumented immigration status and poverty on theirELLs. This example illustrates these concerns:

I am supposed to be “prepping” the kids for the exams and their moti-vation is so low. . . . The strong students ask, “Why pass if I can’t evengo to college?” and the other students cut or are sleeping because theyare working jobs all afternoon and night. We can’t even talk aboutclassroom instruction until we talk about where these kids are really at.The program just ignores these realities. I wanted [the program] toshow examples of what you can really do for these kids. Don’t hide thereality of the school system from us.

Elementary school ESL teachers (50%) commonly discussed theneed to be better prepared for the collaborative ESL program modelsprevalent in these settings, with many participants reporting on themove toward more push-in over pull-out in their schools and the needto be effective using this model:

I find that it has been very challenging to get push-in to work in a waythat I’m best meeting the needs of my students. I would have felt bet-ter prepared knowing that this is a common model and would haveappreciated learning how to collaborate with colleagues.

Design of the TESOL Preparation Program

Overall, a combined total of 76.6% of participants agreed (62.3%)or strongly agreed (14.3%) that their TESOL program “prepared themwell for their current teaching job,” whereas 23.4% strongly disagreed(3.9%) or disagreed (19.5%), and 70% stated that there was moreemphasis on theory than on practice. In terms of which courses bestprepared them for their current work, the top-ranked course wasTheories of Second Language Acquisition, followed by K–12 TeachingMethods and the Practicum, both ranked second. The courses Firstand Second Language Literacy and Curriculum and Materials tookthird place.

In addition to coursework, students in the program were requiredto engage in 100 hours of field work prior to the practicum,

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which then consisted of two semesters of teaching (one term each inPreK–Grade 5 and Grades 6–12 settings). The majority of participants(72%) agreed or strongly agreed that field experiences greatlyenriched their courses. However, in terms of their field (clinical) expe-riences, several participants mentioned the need for greater structureand rigor in selecting and supervising the school placements, as isdemonstrated by this statement:

I often found myself being taught one thing by the student teachingprofessor and something utterly different from the cooperatingteacher! In both schools (high school and elementary) I was pairedwith average teachers at best and didn’t gain nearly what I could have,had [the program] taken more extraordinary efforts to pair me withextraordinary teachers.

In regard to the content of courses, a number of participantscommented that they had experienced both redundancy ofinformation being presented across classes and significant gaps in theapplication of theory:

As a largely bilingual, diverse student body of professionals who wereaccepted into the TESOL MA program with an interest in teachingpeople from other countries, much of the time spent “overselling”ideals of inclusion and diversity was really “preaching to the choir” andwas time poorly spent. I would have liked to have spent more time onlearning how to plan a lesson that celebrates diversity and less timebeing told how I need to celebrate diversity!

These comments were connected to others stating the desire to havemore instructors with recent or current K–12 teaching experience:

Although the TESOL program meets the needs of today’s K–12 ESLteachers, I think that more can be added to ensure that all the graduatesmeet the needs of the ELL students. At times, the discussions orassignments were not authentic and in tune with what we really face inthe field. . . . They related more to teaching adults or teaching in othersettings.

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

The data presented here are naturally tied to one context, but theresearch methodology is easily replicable by programs seeking tounderstand more about the working lives of their recent graduates.Additionally, although this program, like perhaps many others, mayhave been designed to address ESL teachers’ major concerns in itscoursework, recurrent themes from this data may point to a need to

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redesign MA TESOL program coursework for greater focus onelements such as the following:

• meeting the needs of ELLs who may struggle in ESL: those withlearning disabilities, long-term ELLs, and students withinterrupted formal education

• providing models and guidance for teaching in collaborativemodels: push-in, pull-out, and co-teaching

• deepening preparation for teaching literature and in Englishlanguage arts classrooms

• developing better understanding of the testing, compliance, andreporting regulations and mandates for ESL services

• ensuring adequate focus on early childhood education (PreK–2)teaching

• going beyond culture and addressing the role of livingconditions, poverty, family life, and legal status

• seeking faculty with extensive and/or current PreK–12 ESLteaching experience to serve as instructors

• maintaining strong partnership schools and better selection andprovision of professional learning opportunities for cooperatingteachers

The results presented here suggest that in order for TESOL teacherpreparation to better meet the needs of ESL teachers in theworkplace, two conditions must be met. First, an authenticcommitment in TESOL to self-evaluation must occur—not just asuperficial one for external agencies. This necessitates time beingdedicated to, and institutional value being placed on, programevaluation and structures that will bring together teacher candidates,graduates, and faculty willing to invest in the feedback process and useit to redesign and reconceptualize courses. Actively soliciting thisfeedback involves teacher educators in the challenging work of self-study, which Loughran (2007) acknowledges is likely to causediscomfort and which many may avoid. Wright (2010), in synthesizingthe literature since 1985, points to the surprisingly “little discussionand debate about how teacher educators learn and develop” (p. 287)in second language teacher education.

Second, there must be movement on the part of university-basedteacher educators away from conducting studies on teachers, tocollaborative inquiry with teachers. Researchers have found ESLteachers abandoning the practices that were advanced in theirpreparation and may assume that implementation failure rests withthe teacher and the conditions of the school context, rather than

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challenging the relevance of the teacher preparation program. Bydoing so, university programs unwittingly preserve the hegemony ofgrand theory (constructed by researchers) over craft theory (constructedby teachers). Without this fundamental reorientation, the disconnectbetween university preparation programs and teacher readiness forESL instruction will persist.

CONCLUSION

TESOL teacher educators who are deeply invested in thepreparation of their teacher candidates likely resonate with thequestions Tarone (2007) puts forth:

All of us must constantly ask ourselves, as part of our own ongoingneeds analysis, “How well prepared are the language teachers weeducate? Do they have the skills they need to do accurate analyses ofthe needs of their students, and then to adapt their teaching to addressthose needs?” (p. 3)

Only by engaging gradates in their induction years and taking acareful look at how program design matches their needs can MATESOL programs begin to answer these questions.

THE AUTHOR

Laura Baecher is assistant professor of TESOL at Hunter College, City Universityof New York. Her research interests relate to the connection between teacherpreparation and teacher practice, including teacher language awareness, the useof video in clinical supervision, and collaborative teaching of ELLs.

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Borg, M. (2005). A case study of the development in pedagogic thinking of a pre-service teacher. TESL-EJ, 9(2), 1–30. Retrieved from http://www.tesl-ej.org/

Dornyei, Z., & Taguchi, T. (2010). Questionnaires in second language research:Construction, administration, and processing (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Farrell, T. S. C. (2003). Learning to teach English language during the first year:Personal influences and challenges. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19, 95–111.doi:10.1016/S0742-051X(02)00088-4

Farrell, T. S. C. (Ed.). (2008). Learning to teach language in the first year: A Sin-gapore case study. In T. S. C. Farrell (Ed.), Novice language teachers: Insights andperspectives for the first year. (pp. 43–56). London, England: Continuum.

Fradd, S.H., & Lee,O. (1997). Teachers’ voices in programevaluation and improvement:A case study of a TESOL program. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13, 563–577.doi:10.1016/S0742-051X(97)80001-7

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Gandara, P., Maxwell-Jolly, J., & Driscoll, A. (2005). Listening to teachers of Englishlanguage learners: A survey of California teachers’ challenges, experiences, and profes-sional development needs. Berkeley, CA: Policy Analysis for California Education.

Johnson, K. E. (1996). The vision versus the reality: The tensions of the TESOLpracticum. In D. Freeman & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Teacher learning in languageteaching (pp. 33–49). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Loughran, J. (2007). Enacting a pedagogy of teacher education. In T. Russell &J. Loughran (Eds.), Enacting a pedagogy of teacher education: Values, relationshipsand practices (pp. 1–16). New York, NY: Routledge.

Numrich, C. (1996). On becoming a language teacher: Insights from diary studies.TESOL Quarterly, 30, 131–153. doi:10.2307/3587610

Peacock, M. (2001). Pre-service ESL teachers’ beliefs about second language learn-ing: A longitudinal study. System, 29, 177–195. doi:10.1016/S0346-251X(01)00010-0

Pennington, M., & Richards, J. C. (1997). Reorienting the teaching universe: Theexperience of five first-year English teachers in Hong Kong. Language TeachingResearch, 1, 149–178. doi:10.1177/136216889700100204

Richards, J. C., Ho, B., & Giblin, K. (1996). Learning how to teach in the RSAcert. In D. Freeman & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Teacher learning in language teaching(pp. 242–259). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory proce-dures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Tarone, E. (2007, May–June). Equipping teachers to be language explorers:Exploring language in the classroom. Paper presented at the LanguageTeacher Education Conference, Minneapolis, MN. Retrieved from https://apps.cla.umn.edu/directory/items/publication/297452.pdf

Tarone, E., & Allwright, D. (2005). Second language teacher learning and studentsecond language learning: Shaping the knowledge base. In D. Tedick (Ed.), Sec-ond language teacher education: International perspectives (pp. 5–23). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.

Urmston, A. (2003). Learning to teach English in Hong Kong: The opinions ofteachers in training. Language and Education, 17, 112–137. doi:10.1080/09500780308666843

Urmston, A., & Pennington, M. C. (2008). The beliefs and practices of noviceteachers in Hong Kong: Change and resistance to change in an Asian teachingcontext. In T. S. C. Farrell (Ed.), Novice language teachers: Insights and perspectivesfor the first year (pp. 89–103). London, England: Equinox.

Wright, T. (2010). Second language teacher education: Review of recent researchon practice. Language Teaching, 43, 259–296. doi:10.1017/S0261444810000030

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