Changing the Concept of Teaching English in Novice English Teachers Through Attentive Teaching

This study investigated conceptual change in novice English teachers’ understanding of English teaching fostered through an Attentive Teaching-based professional development course. In particular, the practice of an approach called Attentive Teaching applied to English teaching enabled the participants to expand their initial concept of English teaching; this change can be seen in multimodal artifacts the teachers produced, involving a visual representation, a written explanation, and an oral presentation. In the course, the concept of teaching English was explored by applying the Attentive Teaching approach, which aligns with other action-oriented approaches under the CEFR framework. The main findings reveal a change in the novice teachers’ understanding: they initially perceived teaching from the outside; as learners, however, following the course, they positioned themselves as leaders of the teaching process in the classroom. This change was observed through creative multimodal products in which each participant expressed their unique point of view, produced at the beginning and the end of the course. The findings illustrate a conceptual change at both the individual and group levels regarding the participants’ understanding of the concept of English teaching. Thus, the practice of Attentive English Teaching is a promising pedagogical tool for inducing and observing conceptual change in novice teachers.