Recent TEASIG events & webinars

Joint TEASIG & TDSIG webinar 

 Date: Wednesday February 28, 2024 9:00-10:00am UK Local time. 

Title: Analysing teachers’ discourse around assessment: A critical discourse analysis perspective

Speaker: Viktor Carrasquero

The presentation:

The British Council uses standardised criteria to assess our teachers’ classroom performance. These include assessment, understood as a formative, continuous practice, which “helps students and teachers monitor progress and achievement”. In recent years, there has been an organisation-wide drive to consolidate our teachers’ technical and practical understanding of assessment, which has been fleshed out in training and a heightened focus on classroom implementation.

In this context, I set out to explore teachers’ discourse construction of assessment, to ascertain their beliefs around this notion, with the assumption that looking at teachers’ conceptualisations might allow schools and organisations to devise professional development programmes that are more finely tuned to staff development needs.

I use a critical discourse analysis perspective, given that I aim to explore teachers’ concepts as evident in their speech. To this purpose, I gathered a speech sample obtained from 10 short teacher interviews. I use the theoretical construct of affect to analyse the teachers’ evaluative language around assessment.

Preliminary results highlight teachers’ developing understanding of assessment, their knowledge gaps around continuous assessment, their biases, and positive and negative affect markers.

The speakers:

Viktor Carrasquero is currently the Primary Courses Senior Teacher at the British Council in Hong Kong. His main research interests include teacher training, pronunciation and its teaching, second language acquisition, discourse analysis and variationist sociolinguistics. He is also a Trinity CertTESOL, Cambridge DELTA and Trinity DipTESOL local tutor.

 Recording: The recording of the webinar will be available only to TEASIG members in the members’ area (“My resources”) of the IATEFL website. 


Joint Event by TEASIG & LTSIG: Exploring the impact of Generative AI on language education: insights from teachers

 

Abstract:

It feels like every morning we wake up to hundreds of opinion pieces on the use of Generative AI (Gen-AI) in education, but there is surprisingly little research into how English teachers are actually using this technology. In this webinar, we will explore language teachers’ use and attitudes to Gen-AI by drawing on findings from a recent study involving surveys from teachers from 70 countries and in-depth focus groups. Through the insights we share we hope to help the webinar participants better navigate the fast-changing AI landscape, develop a critical perspective towards this powerful and disruptive technology, and spark a few ideas for their own classrooms.

Names and bios of the speakers: Evelina Galaczi & Nahal Khabbazbashi

Evelina Galaczi is Director of Research-English at Cambridge University Press and Assessment.  Her recent work involves exploring the exciting opportunities – and challenges – of using AI in language education. She holds a Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Applied Linguistics from Columbia University, New York.  Evelina currently serves as a non-executive Trustee for the International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF), which promotes effective English language education in multilingual contexts and is co-editor for the Language Assessment Quarterly journal.



Nahal Khabbazbashi is Senior Lecturer in Language Assessment at CRELLA. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Oxford. Her research interests include the assessment of speaking, the impact of technology in assessment, multimodality and new constructs in the digital age. Nahal currently serves as the chair of the British Association of Applied Linguistics SIG in Testing, Learning and Assessment.

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