Problematization Sequences in Pre-service Language Teachers' Lesson Plan Adaptation Talks in an Online Setting

Abstract

Planning for the purpose of teaching languages has long been a research concern in the field of language teacher education. Despite such an interest, only a handful of studies have investigated what happens during the collaborative lesson planning processes. With this in mind, this thesis study examines the interactional practices a group of pre-service English language teachers use in collaborative lesson planning processes with a focus on problematization in an online interaction setting. Using multimodal conversation analysis for the examination of the screen-recorded lesson planning sessions, this thesis study analyses the pre-service English language teachers’ interactions in online meetings conducted for the purpose of adapting the lesson plans for online instruction. The analysis showed that the pre-service English language teachers follow the interactional steps identified as topicalization, problematization, suggestion, and agreement. With a particular focus on these steps characterized as problematization sequences, the conversation analytic treatment of the data revealed that problematization might be delivered in an immediate manner or in a delayed way. Delayed problematization includes pre-problematization agreement, pre-problematization positive assessment, pre-problematization mitigation, pre-problematization question sequences. This study offers important insights into the interactional practices employed by pre-service English language teachers for the problematization and suggestion-giving practices. Lastly, the findings contribute to the growing body of literature on planning talk in the field of L2 teacher education and offer implications for L2 teacher education programs.