Imported Theories/Local Understandings: Part 1

by Donald Freeman

 

Note: This is an abridged version of a plenary address given at the 34th Annual TESOL Convention in Vancouver, March 2000. The oral character of the talk has been retained. Part 2 will appear in the December/January issue.

I want to talk about the knowledge we teach by, and I want to start with this point: We are looking in the wrong place if we turn to academic disciplines to define teaching and learning and make them understandable. The knowledge that animates language teaching can--and needs to--be found within the activity of teaching itself and not beyond it, in work about teaching. In the phrase "the activity of teaching," I mean something more than just the actions of individual teachers in the classroom, or the actions and reactions of learners. I'm referring to the teacher and learners as participants: to the ways in which they conduct their work together; to the background of that work; to the tacit norms and the explicit rules they evolve to do the work in the classroom, institution, and wider community; and to the tools they use to get the job done. All of this together constitutes knowledge--knowledge that comes through discovering and testing what teachers know in and through classroom practice. It is knowledge composed of local understandings. It does not need to depend on importing ideas from elsewhere. This is my argument; let me set the stage for it.

The dynamic of knowledge in language teaching is an interesting one. It can be framed in two interrelated questions:

What counts as knowledge in language teaching? What knowledge do language teachers teach by?

The first question is purposefully ambiguous. When I ask what counts as knowledge in language teaching, the retort comes: counts to whom?

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