MA(TESOL) Student-Teachers’ COIL Experience: Opportunities, Challenges and the Direction Ahead in Teacher Education

Abstract

<p>Situated within the context of English language teacher education, this paper discusses a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) initiative that brought together MA(TESOL) student-teachers and teacher-educators from two universities, one in Hong Kong and the other in the United Kingdom. The project was designed to broaden the student-teachers’ repertoire of ELT methodological practices, sharpen their cultural awareness and strengthen their collaboration skills. Through the use of Zoom, an online video-based platform VideoVox and other modes of communication, student-teachers from different time zones worked with concerted effort on a range of micro-teaching activities in HK and the UK in both synchronous and asynchronous ways. These involved them in co-planning lessons for target groups of learners, co-developing teaching-and-learning materials and execution of the lessons which were peer-reviewed. To track the process and evaluate the outcomes, data was collected from the student-teachers’ web-based interactions, artifacts of their work (e.g. lesson plans, teaching materials), their self- and team-reflections and the teacher-educators’ observational notes. All this was analysed using thematic coding with inter-rater reliability checks. Findings of the study indicated pedagogic, cultural, linguistic and social gains. Notably, despite challenges, student-teachers reported most positively on their methodological growth while teacher-educators valued the rich opportunities for peer feedback and joint reflections. The paper documents the teacher-educators’ critical evaluation of the implementation process of the COIL project. It highlights the importance of combining synchronous and asynchronous approaches in facilitating COIL and presents a set of guiding principles on how this could be achieved.</p>