Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): LDSIG Grant Awardee Reports

LD SIG Grant Awardee Reports | LD SIG 研究助成金受
Reflections on JALT2020:
Professional development through the pinhole of learner development
Malik Amir Feroze,
Hiroshima Shudo University
2020 LD SIG International Conference Grant Awardee
Email: <ma_feroze@yahoo.ca>
JALT2020 was my second JALT International Conference and was different from JALT2019
for two main reasons. One, it successfully brought together “communities of teachers andlearners” from around Japan in times of a pandemic that continues to affect our living andworking. Two, it was unique as it was online, which created a special call for collaboration andjoint sessions. Originally, JALT2020 was scheduled to be held in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, which is along way from Hiroshima city where I live and work. Going totally online saved me fromplanning for a long trip, and I could appropriate the grant money to research and prepare for my own talks. As a parttime university teacher without any access to research funding or monetary support to cover the registration fee andother expenses involved, I was fortunate to participate and present as well as co-present at JALT2020 Online with thesupport of a LD SIG International Conference Grant. In this essay, I would like to tell you a little about my own teachingstory and learner development interests, and share with you what I enjoyed learning about at the conference.
From 2007 I was a beginning teacher as a Canadian participant on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. I
am a Pakistan-born Canadian. I grew up in Pakistan, and my family moved to Montreal, Canada in 1998. By that time, I
had come through English-medium schooling and had finished my BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) inPakistan. This single handedly helped me the most to continue my studies in economics with an intensive one-year
masters in 2005. Encouraged by a graduate teaching assistantship but feeling fatigued by the pace of all the studying I
had done for the masters in economics, I took a couple of gap years to focus on volunteering as an adult literacy
instructor at the Reading Council for Literacy Advance in Montreal (RECLAIM; see https://www.reclaimliteracy.ca/) totutor adult literacy students with individual learners’ needs. It was here that I found my calling for teaching English.
English is not my second language: I speak Punjabi (my maternal language and a language of my ethnicity), Urdu
(Pakistan’s official language), Hindi (roughly speaking, the spoken equivalent of Urdu, but different in its written form),and English (de facto my “langue du jour” or daily language for my career as a teacher and researcher). On the JET
program, I felt I was not only a cultural ambassador of Canada, or for that matter Quebec, but also a Punjabi and aPakistani. In the classroom, the thing that excited me the most, and filled me with the most pride, was that I was a faceof Canada as well as Pakistan. This looping of multiple identities through languages helped me establish a deep
connection with my learners in the early days, as their struggles and development reminded me of my own earlyschooling experiences with a mixed sense of confusion as well as clarity: confusion as to why English, and clarity as towhy not English. For me, like the young learners I was now teaching, in my early schooling English had little use ineveryday life. Yet, as schooling progressed, the use of English in higher education clearly singularly influenced me andmotivated me to succeed.
I worked as an Assistant Language Teacher for the Hiroshima City Board of Education (BoE) for five years. The
collaborative teaching experience, specifically team-teaching practices in English language instruction at junior andsenior high schools, helped me grow as a teacher from feeling that I was on my own to developing a sense that we wereNewsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): LDSIG Grant Awardee Reports
working with the students and learning together. The collaborative classrooms singularly shifted my teaching to excite,engage, and empower young learners with practical everyday English. The JET experience was a breakthrough period in
my own development as a teacher and became the springboard for my university teaching career in 2015. Currently, I
am an adjunct lecturer at a private city university in Hiroshima. I am also pursuing my second master's degree inApplied Linguistics, and my main interests as a teacher are collaborative classrooms, learner development, andpragmatics.
In planning and developing my courses collaboratively, one of my goals is to help prepare a greater number ofstudents to graduate as capable, confident users of social English. Learner development is an integral part of myapproach to collaborative learning as I want my students to make shared decisions in socially interactive situations ofrole play and teamwork. To that end, three key components of my classes have been: (a) task-based “learning-bydoing”, (b) measurement of performance against outlined targets, and (c) self-assessment for reflection. Practicallyspeaking, I look to orient the students with a warm-up activity, review relevant past lesson content, pre-view thecurrent lesson and its focus, move into a combination of teacher-led instruction and student-centered activities, withreflection on achievement or movement toward the goals and things to be working on independently or in dyads or insmall groups. In a collaborative classroom we together create a learning environment that demonstrates the relevanceof English to our learners’ social lives. Coming back to JALT2020, I was looking forward to learning more about thesekinds of issues at the conference. I focused in particular on presentations and workshops that covered theaforementioned three components, specifically in terms of collaborative practices and learner development in online
classes.
The LD Forum offered a range of interactive presentations that focused on distinct groups of learners (high school
students, university students, teachers, teacher trainees, and practitioner-researchers). In terms of creating social
language learning communities in face of social distancing restrictions, I listened to a presentation by Jim Ronald, titled
Learner Community Development with Google Docs, on how to use these for sharing some personal news (good news,bad news, any news), preparing for activities together, and fixing problems together with students. Jim showed how ouronline classes and online presence could be all about students caring for each other in these times of feeling lonely andnervous, not to mention confused and discouraged. I appreciated the idea of turning Google Docs into a shared dailyclass journal that could teach the students how to respond in courteous and friendly ways while learning about eachother personally.
One crucial element in the LD forum discussion was self-assessment and reflection. I also focused on this in mypresentation on using End-of-Class Feedback. In face-to-face lessons, feedback opportunities always were and still areimportant; now they are arguably essential. It might be more necessary than ever for the learners in our online/hybridclasses to have a voice, and to know that they are heard. In my presentation I showed how to turn a Google Forms into
an “end-of-class feedback” form that included free-response questions as well as scaled questions. The data collected
through completed forms was helpful in establishing rapport with my students and shifting their focus towards sharedreflections.
Overall, for planning online classes, a critically central concern is how teachers present materials and information tolearners. At JALT2020 I later attended a practical workshop by Bob Aschcroft, How to Teach Online Classes Using
PowerPoint, to learn about PowerPoint as a tool for lesson presentation and as a whiteboard for online classes. I wasthrilled and excited to learn how to mesh seamlessly easy-to-use, easy-to-read PowerPoint slides with other digital classapplications such as Zoom. I got to see some creative ways of organizing teaching materials on screen with thepresenter sharing useful tips and tricks on creating with Powerpoint engaging, interactive online educational
experiences for students. I found this workshop useful and instructive as an integral part of the courses I teach is active
learning and participation through project presentation(s).
Speaking of active learning, I presented together with Cooper Howland in a research-oriented session, Student
Poster Sessions to Promote Learner Agency. We showed how students conducted their research to make and complete
posters using a rubric for assessment of poster design, poster language and public speaking skills. In our talk, wefocused on how posters on a variety of topics and issues can help students experiment with the basics of criticalthinking, media literacy, and public speaking. The use of Google Slides/Powerpoint here also enabled them tocommunicate and collaborate with each other in the absence of any face-to-face contact.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): LDSIG Grant Awardee Reports
In connection with class work and project presentation, I joined a practice-oriented workshop, Benefits of Online
Group Projects, by Kazumi Kato. The workshop was effective for learning how to set up an online group project using
the free version of Zoom. I found this workshop particularly helpful for switching from teacher-centered lessons tostudent-centered group discussions. In another practice-oriented workshop, Productive Activities in an Online
Classroom by Kirsten Waechter, I could learn how to teach better online with technology. This workshop showed
participants how to plan and prepare for writing and speaking activities that could be easily transferred to an online
interactive classroom. For example, it was encouraging to see how using Flipgrid could benefit students in theirspeaking and listening activities.
Another major part of JALT2020 Online featured presentations and workshops on the benefits of being a JALT
member and professional development opportunities for teachers who are interested in sharing and publishing theirresearch activities. One presentation, Writers’ PSG: Improving Writing for Publication, by Dawn Jin Lucovich and Paul
Beaufait, talked about the training support available to JALT members through the Writers’ Peer Support Group (PSG).
The PSG are a group of teachers who work collaboratively with interested JALT members to help them see their writing
through to publication (see https://jalt-publications.org/psg for more details). Through shared educational or researchinterests, I hope to become involved in working together on research activities and publishing projects.
In conclusion, I am glad I could join the JALT2020 Online conference as a participant, presenter, and member of theLD SIG. On the whole I was pleasantly surprised at the openness of the presenters. The presenters were friendly,approachable, and ready to share their contact information. They encouraged discussion and readily welcomed
questions and comments. There were plenty of feedback opportunities. It was easy for me to share my opinions andthoughts. The presenters were kind to provide access to useful materials, including outlines, activities, examples, andrubrics, for a variety of teaching contexts. I felt encouraged, socially as well as professionally, to collaborate with likeminded people for research activities. I could furthermore learn by engaging with their work, joining discussions, andasking questions. My one regret was that I was unable to attend a few presentations that I was keen on learning from,due to schedule conflicts with other presentations and with my on-line university teaching assignments.
Last but not least, my conference experience was greater than that of simply receiving the financial support thegrant provided. The LD committee warmly welcomed me when I attended their Annual General Meeting and received
the grant. I could feel and appreciate the committee’s open and frank atmosphere. Most importantly, this very
openness helped me through the developmental process of writing this report. The Learning Learning editors werewilling to address any of my concerns, and gave me helpful suggestions to complete this short essay. Thank you again,everyone.

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