Teacher Development College and University Education Unvetted SIG Forum
The TD & CUE SIG Forum on Communities of Practice
The TD and CUE SIG will hold their annual joint forum on the topic of Communities of Practice (CoPs). Such communities can be teachers, students, company workers, or otherwise, who form in organic or natural ways. The CoP members hold a common aim or concern for the activities they do and learn how to improve as they interact regularly within the group. Some participants may be more senior in age or experience than others, thus giving way to a learning experience and successful conclusion of their efforts for everyone. The forum speakers are university and professional educators with a specific background as a member or researcher ofCoPs. James Bury will inform us about the positive outcomes achieved as a result of encouraging colleagues at two separate workplaces to interact with research, question their own teaching practices, engage in their own practice-based investigations, and then share their findings with each other. Yoshifumi Fukada will explain how Japanese EFL/ESL learners actively engaged themselves in English-mediated socialization and grew as English users and as persons in a project-based English education program held in Japan and during studying abroad. Daniel Hooper will describe the shared goals, interpersonal relationships, and local repertoire of tools that emerged from a small reflective practice group for university teachers that met regularly to discuss critical incidents they experienced in their working lives and to explore their own professional identity. Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto will talk about the potential of informal online communities to improve teachers' professional and personal lives, sharing specific examples of the meaningful impact observed with teachers in a unique English for Teachers program, and the factors that made positive changes possible.
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Jon Thomas is a tenured lecturer at Hakodate University in Hokkaido, Japan. His research background includes constructive learning, content and language integrated learning, and action research. In HE as well as the private industry, he has focused his teaching on hospitality, intercultural communication, and various EFL themes. Currently active in JALT as Teacher Development SIG Coordinator, Hokkaido Chapter Officer, Officer Support Committee Member, and will be MC of "A Forum on Communities of Practice".
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James Bury is an associate professor and researcher based in Chiba, Japan. He has a PhD in Education and his research interests include developing communicative competence, enhancing lexical retrieval, and improving students' self-perceptions of ability and levels of confidence when using English.
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Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto came to Japan in 1985 with an MATESOL and a plan to teach for two years. While she has left the country since then, she always seems to return. Barbara is a co-author of one of the world’s best-selling textbook series for children learning English, Let’s Go (Oxford University Press), co-author of the online course, English for Teachers (International Teacher Development Institute), and author of the chapter, The role of technology in early years language education, in Early Years Second Language Education (Routledge, 2015). She is an English Language Specialist with the United States State Department and is Course Director for International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi.pro).
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Yoshifumi Fukada (Ed.D., University of San Francisco; Ph.D. candidate, University of Tokyo) is a Professor at Toyo University in Tokyo, Japan. His research interests involve L2 learners’ situated learning, dynamic identities, and agency and motivation in language learning and TL-mediated socializing (both in and out of class). His recent publications include ‘An ethnographic case study of one Korean international student’s TL-mediated socializing in affinity space of the host country,’ (Internationalisation and Transnationalisation in Higher Education, Peter Lang, 2018), ‘Whole language approach.’ (The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), and L2 learning during study abroad: The creation of affinity spaces (Springer, 2019). Yoshifumi Fukada's homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/yoshifumifukadahomepage/
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Daniel Hooper is a lecturer in the Education Department at Hakuoh University He has taught in Japan for 16 years, predominantly in higher education and English conversation schools. His research interests include learner and teacher identity, communities of practice, and the English conversation school industry.