Making It More
Real: Portfolios,
Teacher Training,
and Autonomy
Cath Malone

Meiji Gakuin
Daigakku
cmw@sta.att.ne.jp

This paper describes the use of portfolios on a teacher training course for pre-service lapaneseteachers of English. It includes a case study of one student's portfolio and a follow-up interview
before and after a 3-week teaching practice placement at a localjunior high school.
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Introduction

It was 9.50 on a Tuesday, a mid-morning in June. The classroom was packed with 33 twelveyear-olds, andfive observers. Each child was sitting at an individual wooden desk on a rather
uncomfortable wooden chair. The desks were crammed with books, a PEkithanging at theside.
There was little room to move between the desks, so the teacher, Y, wlw was now in the third weekof herteaching practice, generally stayed at the front on the lowpodium.
The periodjust starting wasEnglish, andfor the next50 minutes, Ytook theclass through avariety of activities: explanation of vocabulary in Japanese, somedrilling, a quick written exercise,a group mingle and match-up activity. But whatthestudents did constantly for the next 50
minutes was fidget: with books, pens, erasers, their bags, each other's hair, uniforms, thefurniture,with everything and anything. Over on theleft, I notice there's a group ofgirlshavingan animatedif subdued conversation. Elsewhere, somestudents are doodling, others scribbling in diaries, acouple flicking through their books in a desultoryfashion, one boy working intently on the next
chapter. Near thefront, one boy gives another a dead-arm punch and spins round to see if theteacher is watching: no, safe. Thirty-three kids with ants in their pants, and a constantfidgeting
like a low hum.

Throughout the class, Yat thefront waspleasant andfriendly, orsometimes distracted dealing
with an individual student. From myposition at theback of the class, at times thisfelt like being
stuck in a crowd when you can'tquitesee theparade going on at thefront. After a while with thesun coming in, the chalk in the air, a lull before lunch, andyou stopped trying.
After observing Y, a student from my teacher training course, teach one class during her
teaching practice at a Tokyo junior high school, I find myself re-considering a number offundamental issues about teaching, about how teachers can reflect on their own practice, andabout my own role as a British teacher trainer working with pre-service English teachers inJapan. I'm convinced that the challenges that Y faced are similar to those faced in classes theworld over. The problem we all have is figuring out how to engage students, and gain andkeep their attention. As a teacher trainer observing this lesson,I felt that there were a numberof things that I could suggest to help Y to maximize student participation and reduce thetime she spent addressing the class. However, I wasn't sure whether these techniques would
be considered culturally inappropriate (by a trainee teacher planning to work in the Japanese
school system), or whether the 'solutions' I could offer were reallyjust tinkering with the

problem. The fundamental issue seemed that the classroom is so completely the teacher's space.
The ball is so firmly in the teacher's court that it's the teacher running the show, and that power
relationship remains the same in my classes. Whether we are novice or experienced teachers,
teacher trainees or trainers, how can we learn to observe our own teaching so that we can makeeffective decisions about how to improve how our students learn?

This chapter is an account of my attempts to address some of these issues in my teacher
training course at a universityin Tokyo, by asking students to keep portfolios as a record of
their developing understanding of what effective teaching entails. In using portfolios on thiscourse, I had two parallel aims. I had to deal with a lack of engagement in my own teachingcontext: I too was faced by rows of antsy pantsy students. And I wanted to make their teachingpractice and their developing conception of teaching the focus of the course. In using aportfolio to gather their work,I hoped to put the ball more firmly in the students' court.
The chapter starts with part of my post-course reflection with my collaborative partner,
AndyBarfield, on using portfolios on a teacher training course. Through reflectingon
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and weaknesses of the portfolio in detail, based on the analysis of one student's work. This
analysis leads into parts of an interview I conducted with the same student, Y, pre- and posther teaching practice placement. This short case study of one of my students allows us an
intriguing glimpse of her development as she moves from university student to trainee teacher
at a junior high school. The final part of the chapter concludes with a re-evaluation of theeffectiveness of my use of portfolios on the course in this process of development.
Developing Portfolios for a Teacher Training Course

Teacher Training Course Context

The course I taught, Introduction to TESOL, was the second 12-week semester of a yearlong
course for trainee English language teachers. This was an elective for 18 third- and fourth-year
English majors, and the class met once a week for 90 minutes in the evening. As English majors,
the students can specialize in Literature, Linguistics or Pedagogy. The students on this course
had all taken the teaching track, which involved taking a number of mainly theoretical courses
about teaching. Although this kind of specialism does not result in students gaining a teaching
licence—this happens later through on-the-job training—most of the students had firm plans
to become English language teachers. They wanted to work in public sector elementary, juniorand senior high schools, although a couple were considering work in private cram schools. We
had little opportunity for teaching practice on the course itself, but many of these students wereplanning to complete a 3-week teaching practice in one of their former schools after the course
ended.

Definition and Rationale for a Portfolio

When I refer to a portfolio in this context, I'm referring to a working portfolio (Antonek,
McCormick, & Donato, 1997): a collection of worksheets, interview notes, and observation

tasks completed over the course of a 12-weekterm. The purposes of the portfolio were to act
as a record of work and to provide a concrete written record that would hopefully facilitate
student reflection on their work. The portfolio would also offer a more student-centred meansof assessment.

Among my specific reasons for choosing a portfolio format was getting the students
observing language classrooms, and their own teaching, and building a reflective record of theirteaching development. However, I wasn't initially sure what form the observation tasks would
take. I needed to find out what skills the students possessed at the beginning of the course andhow they responded to classroom tasks before I could chose the tasks that I thought might help
them. So, the observation tasks evolved over the course of the term. The final list of worksheets

and mini-assignments that we ended up with is shown in Table 1 below.

The tasks listed in Table 1 were not set sequentially as they appear there. The tasks
concerning prior experience were completed in class in the first couple of weeks. The German
lesson observations acted as a kind of needs analysis. I taught three 15-minute slots in thefirst month and used the results of the students' observations as a guide for the rest of thecourse. The first micro-teaching was a 10-minute slot where the participants had to teachtheir classmates something, not necessarily language. These happened in the first half of thesemester. The observation of native speaker language teachers was set fairly early on, but
the students conducted these observations in their other classes in their own time. For the

final micro teaching, three or four students taught their classmates an hour's Englishwith—

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material from an EFLtextbook. The extended reading was a report on reading a graded reader
themselves, and the final report was their review of the course and their portfolio, obviously set
at the end of the course.

Table 1 Overview of Portfolio Tasks

Section 1: Prior Experience
Experience as a Teacher
My Most Memorable Teacher
Section 2: German Lesson Observations
Observation 1
Observation 2
Observation 3

Section 3: Micro Teaching 1
Section 4: Observing Native Speaker Language Teachers
1. Interaction Patterns

2. Teacher/Student Relationships
3. Student Perspective
4. Language of Classroom Management
5. Aims of Different Activities of the Lesson

Section 5: Micro Teaching 2
1. Lesson Plan
2. Lesson Self Observation
3. Peer Observation
Section 6

Extended Reading
Final Report

After the course, I discussed with Andy some of my aims in developing the portfolio
component of the course.

Andy: Portfolios: What made it obvious for you? Is that connected with the range or thekeenness or class size or your own experience of using portfolios already?
Cath: A bit of everything really, but this question brings us back to the objective of
the course. Given such a short time frame, I wanted to give the students some firsthand experience of teaching, and to fine-tune their ability to observe and reflect onwhat happens in language classrooms. I think that's because I see these as key skills foran autonomous teacher, which means, I suppose, that helping my students become
autonomous is my ultimate objective. Using a portfolio for assessment allowed me tomake their reflective and observational skills the focus of the course. It's not the end

result, but the process that is of interest to me—the practice rather than the theory.
Andy: One question that strikes me is: What would you be interested in looking for in
the portfolios?

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Cath: Basically, what I'm looking for is a peek into the students' heads: So much goeson in the classroom that I'm not privy to, and this is an attempt to find out a little
more. It may also shed some light on the relationship between what I teach and what
the students learn—there sometimes appears to be a tenuous relationship here. I
would also like to see how their ideas change, if at all, in the course of the semester. The
content of the portfolio is really a collection of observation tasks, where I wanted to see
if the nature and quality of their observational skills improved at all.
There was also quite a range of teaching experience and language ability. I felt portfolios
would give everyone a fairer chance to demonstrate their skills.The teaching experience
ranged from one slightly older student who had worked as a teacher of Japanese in
the U.S. to quite a few with zero teaching experience. A number of students had someexperience in cram schools of one-to-one or small group teaching. For a class entitled
Introduction to TESOL, equally important was the range in the students' command of
English,as this class and their teaching practice were to be done in English.Veryquickly
it became clear that there was a wide range in language abilities from advanced to preintermediate, and that a couple of students might struggle to teach in English...
Putting the Portfolio into Action

I began the portfolio observation tasks with three small time slots by teaching the students
some German. These 15-minute mini lessons served a number of purposes. Firstly, to get thestudents to re-experience being beginner learners, they were also given the experience of beingtaught solely in the target language. I was also modeling what I would broadly describe as com
municative, student-centred, task-based teaching. In each class I modeled different techniquesthat we had read about and discussed (drilling, eliciting) and tried to make sure the students
spent most of the class time on task rather than listening to me.

For the first two weeks the students were given a verysimple observation task on one side of A4:

What did the teacher do?

What did the students do?

How did you feel?

These initial observation tasks were very opened-ended, and my response to student
performance of these early tasks was significant in the development of my thinking about
the course and the portfolios. The tasks were used as a kind of needs analysis, the results ofwhich determined the rest of the course. Reflecting on the students' observations here led
me to encourage more focused observation and reallymake their observation of language
classrooms—their own, their classmates', and their teachers'—a focus of their portfolio.

As the course progressed and the portfolios developed, I was faced with the question ofwhether to look across the whole group of trainees, or whether to look more closelyat one
individual student. I chose to look at one student, Y, in depth partly because of the sheer
volume of material the portfolios generated. This would, I hope, let me look in more detail at
the themes that developed from her work.
Initial Insights from Y's Portfolio

Ywas a fourth-year English major at a Tokyo university. She had specialized in teaching andhad plans to become an elementary school teacher. For administrative reasons, she was unable
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Malonepreviously and always found her to be a serious, hard working, and conscientious student. She
appeared to be a typical mid-range student in this class, and her work exemplified some of thebest that happened. Her portfolio shows that she had a little experience of teaching prior to thiscourse; it also illustrates a number of interesting challenges that relate to using a portfolio.
Some of the key questions for me here are: How much should I respond to the students'
observations during the course? How much should I direct or structure the observation tasks?
And how can I encourage students to develop their observations into more reflective insights
about effective teaching?
VolumeFirst of all,Y's portfolio generated a lot of material, which can create logistical problems forthe teacher. In my case, this meant lugging around an increasingly weighty folder. More signifi
cantly, I felt there was so much that was asking for a response. During the course, we were sobusy compiling the portfolio that I didn't feel as if there was time for feedback and reflection.
Reviewing the folders after the course, I felt there was a much greater need for more timely
interventions and, possibly, tutorials. On the one hand, it felt like reading one half of a dia
logue with my half missing. On the other, I wondered if I was clinging to inappropriate teacher
behaviour, in feeling the need to respond to everything they said. This for me was something ofan experiment, trying to step back and let go a little. I was very conscious from the outset that amajor purpose of the portfolios was to give the students space to develop their own conceptionof teaching, and not simply re-hash mine. This meant reigning in my automatic instinct to cor
rect and reformulate. During the course and later in review, I still feel a little unsure as to howmuch response is appropriate.
Range of Student Performance

Looking in more detail at the portfolios, one thing that struck me initially was the range ofstudent performance in response to the same task. Comparing Y's observations of a Germanclass with those of her classmates, it is clear that Y can divide a 15-minute class into a numberof stages and identify a number of different student activities. From this, I think we can see that
Y started the course with fairly accurate observational skills. She also shows that she is sensitive
to the different ways the class is organized, and can monitor her own feelings in these different
situations. In comparison, one of her classmates wrote a one-line observation of the wholeclass, observing that, "Teacher taught, students learnt and it was fun." Such mixed results reallystood out from the German observations and made me question why there was a diversity ofobservational insight across the class. This issue,and my thoughts about how I could develop
the portfolios to address it, became increasinglyimportant through the rest of the course.

In the post-course review with Andy, I touched on some of the issues that the quality of thefinished portfolios was raising for me:

Cathy: This was a new format for a number of students and many lacked confidence intheir own observations. I find it tricky to get the right balance and provide the students
with sufficient support to complete the task, without over-modeling and directing theiranswers.

Andy: Why would that be?

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would be that it depends on a certain confidence to be objective about your perfor
mance and analyse what you have just done. Age and degree of social confidence with
their peers also have an obvious role here. But then some of the quieter students had
some very interesting observations. There were a number of students whose observa
tion skills certainly improved, but whose reflections were rather limited. Why there's
such a difference puzzles / interests me. Why does the portfolio work for some stu
dents, eliciting genuine deep reflection and analysis, while for others, although they
have nominally completed all the tasks, I feel we're just skimming the surface?
Structuring Tasks

Each portfolio raised very different questions, and the things that struck the students as
significant were enormously varied. A massive amount of interpretation of tasks meant
there were rarely two similar responses to the same task. From this, I initially concluded
that the portfolio needed to be standardized with many of the worksheets and tasks much
more explicitly structured. For example, I tried to structure the third observation task for
the German class to guide students who were writing one-line observations for the first two
lessons. So the task changed from an open-ended descriptive task to a series of questions for thelearner to answer. While this offered more guidance, it also unintentionally made the task moreclosed, and this resulted in Y actually writing substantially less than in the first two observation
tasks.

This range in student responses could simply be an intrinsic part of the nature of portfolios.
I look at these comments now and think that perhaps they are part of my own disquiet at being
more hands off. If you allow the students to compile their own portfolios, then it's simply
unrealistic to expect a uniform response to open-ended tasks, or to expect everyone to be firingon all cylinders for all 12 weeks.

There is also the problem of developing the students' capacity to reflect more critically on
their experiences, rather than simply observe them, within the limited timeframe of the 12week course. Several teachers pointed this out in their feedback following the June Anthology
Retreat at Momoyama University. Steve Brown commented, for example: "Developing
autonomy may not happen in a short period of time like that—maybe it comes throughreflection much later, i.e., not immediately after the experience of your course and her teachingpractice." These comments made me think more about the kinds of portfolio tasks that weremost effectivefor encouraging reflection.
Importance of Reflective Tasks

Looking again at Y's work, in places I felt I was reallytapping into her thoughts and ideas; inother places, I looked at her limited responses, knowing that she's a thoughtful, responsive
student, and came to the conclusion that somehow I had not been asking the right questions.
For example, we can compareY's initialobservations of the German classes with her analysis ofthese at the end of term. For the earlier task, she gives a detailed observation of what took placein class and a summary of how she felt taking part in the various activities. These comments
are generally positive, but also short and fairly superficial.
Lesson 1: How did you feel? // was funny anda kind ofgame. I enjoyed a interesting time.
Lesson 2: How did you feel? It seemed a little difficult to remember the phrases andsentences we learned only one time.

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simply asking for 250 words. Y's feelings about these classes are much clearer here.
Final Report

What I loved most was the German lessons. I have often heard the style of teaching with
only the target language, through the teaching programme classes I haveexperienced until
now. I don't know however it isgood or bad. To besure it wasfun, but there seems to bea kind of limitation only by the style of teaching. I think above all thatmost ofJapanese
students mayfeel anxious and uncomfortable. Asfor the teachers they might worry
whether thestudents could really understand or not. It is stilla difficulty that it is suitable
for theJapanese students and even for theJapanese teachers.
What strikes me now is that the first few tasks for the portfolio required observation only,
and the more I structured these tasks, the less Y produced. Y clearly has thoughts and ideas
about relating her experiences (as a language teacher and a learner during this course) to thebroader context of teaching in Japan. She seems to be anticipating her future job and constantly
filtering her experiences, asking "Yes, that's fun, but will it work in a Japanese school?"
However, it is only at the end of the course, in a very unstructured assignment, that she feels
it is appropriate to include these thoughts. The problem here, in Y's case then, is, I feel, the lackof explicitly reflective and more open-ended tasks in the portfolio.
Scaffolding Observation and Reflection

Some students like Y could already make useful observations about teaching but needed,I think, more practice looking at language classrooms and analyzing what they could see
going on there. Other students, however,clearly needed some assistance in developing theirobservational skills before they could become more reflective. This question of how to scaffold
the development of observational and reflective skills for a class of students starting with such arange of abilities was one that I had also begun to explore in the post-course reflection.

Andy: How did you set the reflection tasks for the students?
Cath: Some observation tasks were simple 'observe and record tasks.' Others weremore reflective. For example, when observing Interaction Patterns, the students had
to keep a record for one 90-minute class period of how much time was spent with theteacher talking or the students working silently, or involved in group or pair work.
This was followed up by a discussion in class about teacher and student talking time.
In this case, the task did not ask students for reflection and synthesis of ideas—thishappened later in the post-task discussion. This contrasts with the worksheet on the
Language of Classroom Management. For this, the students were asked to record, again
in one 90-minute period, the instructions given by a teacher. They were then asked to"generalize about what characterizes effective, efficient instructions." Similarly, the Peer
Observation task finishes with a question about what they learned from watching theirclassmates teach.

Separating the observation and reflection was tricky—I asked the students to make notes
in class as to what actually happened, and this was often done in Japanese. Then the next day
or later, following a group discussion, they wrote up their observation tasks. I hoped that thistime lapse and the discussion would prompt the students to begin to reflect and not simply torecord.

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Re-thinking later the unclearline between observation and reflection has therefore become
veryimportant for me. It could be that, rather than standardize the portfolio tasks, what I
needed to do was to include more regular opportunities for reflection and evaluation. Thisis clearly suggested by a comparison of Y's comments on the native-speakerteacher's class inthe observation tasks and in her final report. For the five observation tasks in this part of theportfolio, Y, like many of her classmates, completes the activityfully, but stops short of reallysynthesizing the ideas. Take, for example, her notes on the patterns of interaction between theteacher and students:
Interaction Patterns

Task: At 15-minute intervals, draw a diagram of the classroom showing the interaction
patterns.

(Diagram of a lecture format)

Basically the class was done like this form all the time. He lectured, explained, and wrote
on the blackboard thesampleanswers of thepractice which we had done.
What percentage of the time was the teacher speaking? 100%What % were the students speaking/on task? 10%
Y has clearly observed this class, but I have no real idea what she thinks about it. In the final
report, however, she reflects much more clearly on what she has learned from this observation:
Final Report
The lesson observation, which I had done, was notfruitful so much for me. Because theteaching style taken in thatclass was completely thestyle of the lecture for the university
students. Therefore the relationship between the teacher and the students, of course, looked
one way.

We were often imposed some tasks during the class, so we had to listen the teacher's
instruction to do them. I think thestudents relatively gave the attention to the teacher's
speaking. However, this is not whatI am aimingat. There were student attention, butI
don'tthink student involvement. To get studentinvolved is very difficult. It was not until
when I tried teaching that I recognized it as real.
Having reflected on and talked through these issues, it now seems to me that the portfolio
can be divided into blocks, and that each cycle of work needs to cumulate in an explicitly
reflective task that is recorded. This would encourage students like Y to synthesize and build
their own theories of learning and teaching more explicitly at intervals throughout the course,
rather than just in the final report at the end. As my own understanding of the relationshipbetween observation and reflection develops, so I am less convinced that being able todemonstrate accurate observation is an absolute prerequisite for reflection. However, I can see
the need to offer all the students regular opportunities to reflect on their experiences.
Different Perspectives

I felt on reading the portfolios that my students were constantly foregrounding the personal. It
occurred to me again and again how sensitive the students were to the personal dynamics of theclassroom. Looking in detail at some of the themes that emerge from the portfolios also raises
questions for me about the differences between my perspective as an experienced teacher andthat of the students as novice teachers. It also leads to questions of differences in our cultural
backgrounds. I felt their perception of teaching and the experience of being in class were much
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am teaching-focused.
This I felt very clearly when looking at one of the early tasks where the students write about
an influential teacher. From the portfolios, it appeared to me as if the students were unable toseparate the activity of teaching, what the teacher does, from the personality of the teacher.
Like many of the students, Y's description of her Russian teacher describes a person whose
personality, in this case her enthusiasm, is intrinsically linked to her being perceived as a goodteacher.

My Best Teacher
I think my Russian teacher is the best teacher I haveevermet... .she of course loves Anna
Karenina. She loves Russia enthusiastically. When she talks to us aboutsomethingrelated
to Russia, she vividly interests and attracts us to it in thevoice filled out with her love to
Russia. Thepassion is communicated to us.

Similarly, while Y is an accurate observer of other people's classes and can distinguishdifferent stages and activities, her evaluation of her own teaching is much more holistic.
Consequently, in reflection on her own lesson of peer teaching her classmates, Y comes tothe conclusion that the lesson was a complete disaster: That it was "only failure." She couldn't
identify any successful parts of the lesson and only with difficulty discerned the least successful
part. Almost every aspect of the class is described in negative terms: The items on theblackboard were "too few," the "purpose was obscure,""I should have improved my English,"and "I couldn't do as I imagined."She maintained she "had no idea"whether the students
had enjoyed the class, and she thought they seemed bored. Certainly, in my observation ofthis lesson, I saw that there were things that could be improved, but I could also isolate what
I thought was the poor planning and find something positive in other aspects of the lesson.
However,Y seemed unable to distinguish the successful from the unsuccessful and concluded
that it was a comprehensive disaster. This, I think, is common for novice teachers.

This overwhelmingly negative appraisal could be a reflection of Y'slack of confidence at thisstage in her teaching. Or it could be that teachingis such a precarious thing for a novice teacher
that, when you lose your hold of one aspect of the lesson, it feels as if the whole show comes toa grinding halt. Indeed, from your perspective, it is a complete disaster. In looking at her focus
on personality in her description of her best teacher and the undifferentiated analysis of her
own teaching, I can see that Y has a very different perspective to mine. Similarly, I found herreflections on the German language lesson quite disconcerting at first. She records accurately
enough what actuallyhappened, with 80% of class time being spent with the students on task.
However, in her interpretation of these events,she is unsure about their appropriacy for a
Japanese context,and maintains that, "ft is still a difficulty that it is suitable for the Japanese
students and even for the Japanese teachers."
This is radically at odds with my own perception of the same events. Firstly,the extent towhich students use the language is to me a fairly good yardstick with which to evaluate yourown teaching. Secondly, I have used these techniques and seen them used very successfully inJapanese high schools. Her comments disconcerted me because they questioned some funda
mental assumptions I hold about language teaching. They also brought into focus the differ
ences of our perspectives. Not only the obvious novice teacher - experienced teacher difference,but the importance for Y of the cultural difference between us.
In contrast to Y's focus on the personality and demeanor of the teacher, I felt like a dry theo
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ing in the class. I also began to discern a distinct difference in our objectives. My ideal teacher
is really a facilitator, because what I find admirable is the skill, efficiency, and effectiveness withwhich they get their students to produce to the best of their ability. There's a certain distance
between teachers and students because the job of the teacher is not to inspire, but to enable andempower. My students, on the other hand, appeared to have as an ideal a much closer teacherstudent relationship where the personality, demeanor, and behaviour of the teacher are much
more significant. Perhaps their perspective on the classroom as novice teachers was really morethat of student than teacher, and so for them personal interaction takes priority.

Cultural differences concerning tolerance of ambiguity, the tenor of the student-teacher relationship, and the desirability of certain language learning behaviours may all play a part here.
However, what may also be at play are some subtle but key differences in perceptions of theappropriacy of teacher and student autonomy. It occurred to me that I had been assuming that
we shared the unsaid objective of fostering autonomy in our language classrooms. This was an
assumption, however, that I couldn't later assume was shared. While I looked at classrooms andsaw things in terms of autonomous learning and transmission teaching, for my students the
key distinction was between Japanese and foreign teaching practices. I suspected that there wasa kind of tissue rejection (Holliday, 1994) of communicative teaching practices as something'foreign.' This indicates to me the need to establish a shared meta-language to discuss student
autonomy. If I want these novice teachers even to consider experimenting with and evaluating
new ways of organizing the language classroom, we have to be able to talk about what goes onin language classrooms, the participants, their roles, and so on.
Whatever the root causes of this difference, one of the best things for me as a teacher about
reading through the portfolios was this feeling of having my assumptions and beliefs aboutteaching challenged. This simply doesn't happen in class. So, in contrast to the forum of theclassroom, I feel the portfolio creates a space which allows the students to begin to formulate
their own ideas, and allow us both to reflect on them.
Insights from Interviewing Y

Having reviewed Y's portfolio, I felt that it raised more questions than it answered. In
particular, I was intrigued by her comments about the cultural appropriacy of techniques
and approaches. Knowing that Y was about to embark on her teaching practice in a juniorhigh school, I was interested to see how this would influence Y's ideas about portfolios. I also
wanted to see if I could glean any insights into her own developing sense of teacher autonomy.
Consequently, I decided to interview Y as a follow up to the portfolio project before and after
her teaching practice, which took place the following spring term.

During interviews the following term, conducted pre- and post-teaching practice placement,
Y had a number of interesting comments to make regarding the course. Before the teachingpractice she had little to say about the portfolio and couldn't really assess which of the courses
she had taken on her degree had helped her, other than to express a general preference forpractical classes. However, post teaching, Y was much clearer about how the portfolio had
assisted her.

C: Do you think there are any benefits of using a portfolio for a course rather than a
traditional exam?

Y: Yea, it's (an) interesting idea because the exam is just (an) exam. It can't give me any
feedback so probably after I took the exam I will forget. So if I make some portfolio it
remains in me. It's more useful.

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C: Are there any disadvantages or drawbacks to using a portfolio for a course rather
than a traditional exam?

Y: Just it's hard. Usually it's just hard.
C: Do you think it helped you in any way clarify your own ideas about teaching? How?
Why?
Y: It draws me more, it drives me to teaching. If I don't do this, there is nothing toencouraged me to teaching. It makes the teaching more real. BecauseI'm a student so
I don't know the details of teaching. So what is teaching? Maybe I don't clarify what isteaching?As I make some papers for portfolio, I can recognize what is teaching.

She also developed a much clearer, more practical idea of what was and wasn't useful for herclasses.

C: How well do you think the teacher training courses at university prepared you forthis teaching situation?
Y: A little yea.

C: Why?
Y: Because (what) I learned from the classes is, it's (a) kind of theory. It's not designed
for actual students, actual situation.

C: So you learned theory at university but the reality ... ?
Y: Yes, is different. And I think that all kinds of students at university are not adapted tothe theory.
C: What theories did you learn here?

Y: I was told the style of teaching, but those were designed for the good students.
(When) all students are listening and pay attention to the teacher, maybe it's goodworking. But what I learned are not adapted the students who fidget.
C: What parts of the teacher training course were directly useful to you for your day to
day teaching? Can you give me an example?
Y: I saw maybe a video she, a female practice teacher, she is so (mimes hiding
something) "What is this?" and students asked. Students guess.That kind of concept.
C: What parts of the teacher-training course were not directly useful to you for your day
to day teaching?
Y: As I said the theory is not so useful. And also that teaching style for the good
students.

I think this excerpt clearlydemonstrates how Y's theoretical idealizations about teaching had met
the hard reality of a class of 12-year-olds, with concerns other than learningEnglish. They don't
simplyrespond to the teacher, or sit,passive and attentive, waiting to be inspired.They come to classwith fully formed personalities and their own preferences, motivations, and interests.
Student and Teacher Autonomy

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context. There is clearly a need here to establish a shared vocabulary or meta-language todiscuss these issues effectively. This is still a problem in the second interview where Y identifies
a new, weekly general studies lesson as the place for developing student autonomy. Y appears
to conceive of student autonomy as almost a separate subject, rather than as an approachto learning that can be applied to any learning environment. Whereas learner autonomy isbeing introduced at a curriculum level in Japan, I suspect that it is also being relegated to lastperiod on a Friday, being grafted very awkwardly onto a very traditional school environment.
The interviews showed that Y's concept of autonomous learning is still embryonic: She has atheoretical definition, but few practical, actual examples.
In spite of this lack of a shared vocabulary, in the second interview, Y had a lot to say about
her changing perception of the students and teachers at junior high school. Obviously, it wasa memorable experience. Introducing and attempting to define the terms together seemed tohelp a lot, and, when we revisited these definitions in the light of her experience, she had much
more to say. I felt that this capacity to re-think perceptions was an element of Y's developing
teacher autonomy.
Before teaching, she was given the impression that the students were "so calm," while, after
teaching, she had a very different idea.
C: What were the students at that school like?

Y: The students were .. .How do you describe ADHD?

C: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?!

Y: How do (you) describe the situation where this kind of thing (mimesfidgeting)(happens)?
C: Well this is very, veryextreme.

Y: Kind of (mimes fidgeting). The students can't focus. They can't concentrate. It wasdifficult for them to sit all 1 hour class. They are so.. .(mimesfidgeting, she looks it up)
fridgit? Fidgit?
C: Do you think the students at this JHS tried to concentrate?
Y: Nol (emphatic) Not enough, because they don't like to study.
This had an impact on her ideas about what makes a good English language teacher:

C: Have your ideas about what makes a good junior high school teacher changed? How?
Why?
Y: It's (a) difficult definition.

C: I think before you said a good JHS makes the students love English and is friendly tothe students.

Y: To be sure I became friendly but some of them still didn't become come to like
English so ... mmm...
C: So your ideas have changed a little bit, why?
Y: Because the students, the unmotivated students are not interested in the English
class. So, if I love English it's not important to them. The important thing for them(is) the way how the English classes are presented. For them it's (the) important
thing.

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Y: I thought the levelwas so higher than the level of the actual students. But that was invain. The thing interesting to me is not, is notnecessarilyinteresting for them.
Whereas, before teaching, Y defined a good teacher almost solely in personal terms, after
teaching practice, the importance of personality appears to diminish somewhat. Or rather she
begins to refine her concept of a "good junior high school teacher." Personality and a good
rapport with the learners are still important to Y. However, on meeting students who study
English because they have to and are simply not interested in it, Y recognizes that a pleasantpersonality is not in itself sufficient to engage all the students. This refining of her ideas about
what makes a good teacher seems to be evidence of Y's developing teacher autonomy: Herconception of a good teacher moves away from the one dimensional 'nice person' definition,
becomes more detailed, and incorporates skills. The focus moves away from an almost exclusiveemphasis on personality to recognition of the value of teaching skills, such as being able togive instructions effectively. Consequently, after the teaching experience, Y describes the mostdifficult part of teaching at junior high school in the following way:
Y: It's to convey the instructions to the students.

C: Why is that the most difficult?
Y: Because before I conducted the classes, I thought again and again how I should give
instructions to them. How I could make them to understand easily, and some ideas
hit me. And I thought it was a good idea. But actually, in the actual class, I told them,and I gave instructions, but they hardly understand what (laughs) I was saying. So I
felt it was so difficult.

While Y recognizes that an effective teacher needs more than a pleasant personality, therelationship with the learners—the contact—is still enormously important to her, as partof what Y enjoys about the job. Hence, Y described the most positive part of the teachingplacement as being the friendship she had formed with the students in and out of class. Y
describes the students as "her friends": They spend breaks together chatting about this andthat, and she is not simply friendly to them. This made me wonder about whether I have everseen novice British teachers in junior high school spending breaks with the students. Don't
all teachers rush off for a coffee in the staffroom at break time? I think the closeness of thisrelationship meant that Y feels very acutely her responsibilities to the students in class.As aresult, she is extremely critical of her ability to respond to all the students in the class and toteach across the whole range of abilities in her classes. Both Y's and my understanding of therole of affective factors are being sharpened and refined here:
C: In what ways do you think your idea of'a good junior high school teacher' is thesame as you? (Long pause: I promptby recapping herprevious responses.) So, a goodjunior high school English teacher observes the students, and can make the materials
fit the students, and can make them get interested—how is this the same as you?
Y: I could keep students interest for English.
C: How did you stop them fidgeting?
Y: I don't know why they stopped. Because maybe I think they tried to pay attention.
Maybe I can observe but I couldn't conduct. I couldn't adapt any kind of students,
there are the difference of level. I concentrated on the low-level students, so I couldn't

think about the higher students.

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The whole process of teaching practice in a school is for a novice teacher a forum where they
resolve the question of the kind of teacher they want to be. Y looked to her natural mentors
in this context—her colleagues and more senior staff—to help her resolve these issues about
what it means to be a good language teacher at a junior high school in Japan. However, herperception of the other teachers was less than glowing:
C: What were the teachers at that school like?

Y: (laughs) How can I say,so severe in some respects. They always scold. They mostly
get angry and scold the students. Of course, the students are doing something bad, so
it makes the teachers scold them. But I heard they are too scolding.
In fact, this led her to question whether she was really suited to teaching:
C: Do you think your ideas about teaching changed?

Y: To tell the truth, I believe I begin to lose my way to become a teacher. Because I cameto know it's not fit for me to see all students, because I worry about the low level
students. I couldn't pay any attention to the high level students. So I lost my way to
become a teacher.

C: You lost your?
Y: I (am) confused.
C: You're not sure?

Y: Yeah, I'm not sure my future.

C: Do you still want to be a teacher? Or you don't know?
Y: Yea, I don't know. I hesitate to become a teacher. I came to hesitate.

C: Why?
Y: I know it's difficult to fit the various level students in the same class. If I become ateacher then it's a good thing for me to (be) a private teacher, a tutor.
There are a number of issues here that I find interesting. In common with all new teachers,
Y faced a number of challenges in her first two weeks teaching, such as dealing with problemsof classroom management, learning to teach the whole class, and learning how to give effective
instructions. I think it is part of the teacher's job to establish the ground rules in a classroom inorder to create an environment conducive to study. Setting rules and establishing boundaries
is very challenging for many new teachers. Y looks at other teachers, her mentors, and isperturbed by the amount of scolding she witnessed. Off tape, she asked me what I thought
about scolding, and whether I thought it was necessary or useful. One student apparently asked
her why she didn't scold him, and, when she asked him whether he wanted to be scolded, hesaid yes. This she found more than a little puzzling and perturbing. Her questions struck me
as very significant because they indicated that Ywas grappling with the reality of attempting toestablish classroom conditions supportive of learning. The force of the students and the otherteachers' preconceptions about how this should be done didn't sit easilywith Y's conception ofherself—or of the teacher she wanted to be. Something had to give.
While Y may balk at the idea of scolding and being authoritarian, when asked about theapplication of the idea of student autonomy, she insisted that Japanese students wouldn't beable to deal with it.

C: In the teaching situation you were in, was there any chance for the students to say—

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how they wanted to study or what they wanted to study in English class? Did they
have any choice at any time?
Y: In my class?
C: In your class, in Mr O's class, in the school: Did they have any choice?
Y: No, they didn't have a choice. Because if it is allowed, they don't study English.
Because they don't like English class.
C: Not English class or no English class. But together we have English class, about
this you have no choice, but in English class the choice is not do you want to study
English, but do we do listening or do we do writing?

Y: Even in English, if choice is allowed they don't study English.
C: Do you want to study this way or this way?

Y: It's the tendency of Japanese students, to be sure it's missed (^mistaken), but it's not muchanswer. But (if) the choiceis allowed they don't want to study,probably they answer.
When asked about the relevance of the idea of autonomy to her own future as an English
teacher,Yseems to agree that it is an appropriate goal,but has little idea how to effect thischange. She seesthe way that young people are socialized and educated in Japan does nothing
to foster autonomy

Y: Hopefully the students are more autonomous (in the future), but maybe it's
impossible.
C: How can you get the students to be more autonomous—at the moment they have no
choice?

Y: Originally they don't have so much enthusiasm to study or motivation to study. So
if we want students be more autonomous, we teach the way to be autonomous when
they were born. In the process they grew up, already they lacked the autonomy.
The traditional teacher student relationship looks pretty unpalatable to Y. Yet she's convincedthat the alternatives are unworkable in Japan or are only appropriate for good students. Here I
can seeY struggling with the concept of autonomy. If education fosters autonomous learning,then the consequences for society are enormous and far-reaching. But how do we go about
squeezing this into the curriculum?
I can understand how Y reaches this negative assessment of autonomy, and I see that it's along wayfrom the simulations at college to the junior high school classroom. However, I also
see in her predicament a real need to address the issues of student autonomy in educationin Japan.For new teachers such as Ywho are dissatisfied with current teacher-student
relationships, there is a lack of viable, practical models of alternative ways of organizing
language classrooms.This prevents her and novice teachers like her from being able to imagine
how they can foster autonomy in mainstream education.To support new teachers who wish tofosterstudent autonomy in their classes, there is a need for viable working models that enable
them to translate the theory into practice.

Conclusion: Portfolios, Autonomy and Teacher Development
At the outset of the course, I had an ambitious list of objectives for the portfolios toaccomplish. Not surprisingly, the portfolios didn't achieve all of those aims, and there was

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no neat linear increase in the depth and quality of the students' observations and reflections.
However, the greater insights the portfolios offered into the development of the students'
thinking more than compensated for this apparent lack.
In review, the portfolio acts as a record of work, although the number of tasks needs to bealtered to improve accurate record keeping. The record of work is the basis for assessment, andfor self-assessment, and allowsyou to look back and pull insights together for the final report;
it also helps students remember what they learnt. Interestingly,while I was worried about pro
viding insufficient feedback,Y thought that getting feedback was one of the advantages thatusing a portfolio had over a traditional exam. I thought it worked well as an alternative meansof assessment, primarily becauseit succeeded so well, with most students, in providing a "peekinto their heads."With many of the students in this class, the portfolio gave me a much clearer
idea of their development as teachers. When their performance as teachers can be so shaky andlacking in confidence, a portfolio allows the learners to give an account of the thinking that un
derpins their classroom behaviour.

This portfolio was essentiallya series of observation tasks, and at the outset I was hoping forsome improvement in "the nature and quality of their observations." Now I believe that thisexpectation is evidence of an overly simple model that I had of how teacher autonomy devel
ops. Y started with fairly acute observation skills,and there is no real increase in her ability toobserve. The best I could say is that, with many students, there was an increase in the detailsof their observations, and, with some, there was evidence of critical reflection on their own

behaviour. This is not a fault of the portfolio. It simply points to a need to refine my own ideasof how to encourage teacher autonomy and what is achievable in such a short time span. My
collaborative reflections on this question with Andy, my collaboration partner, did alter myperceptions of developing teacher autonomy. The process that I was trying to tap into is sucha complex one, much more cyclical and organic than the simple linear input-output model I
started with.

Unsurprisingly, teaching practice was the real catalyst for Y's development as a teacher. She
had a lot more confidence in her opinions after having tested them out in the classroom.
So, where does this leave the portfolio? By providing a combination of a record of work anda peek into the students' heads (for both me and the students), the portfolios do, I maintain,
facilitate student reflection. They provide a forum for debate, a dialogue. Regularly reviewing
the portfolios allowed me to accurately gauge the state of play in my classroom. The issue of
deciding on the exact amount of individual feedback I still find slightly problematic. However,there was a dialogue between myself and the group in as much as the course developed week byweek in response to the contents of their portfolios. Much classroom debate was also generated
by my group feedback, as I responded to their portfolios at the beginning of each session.
Portfolios also act as a valuable tool to help students begin to theorize about their practice.
Y's portfolio enabled her to start breaking down the classroom experience into moremanageable elements. In her own words, it made teaching "more real" for her. This, in turn,helped Y to start building a bridge from the very theoretical world of the university teacher
training course to the practice of an actual classroom. While working within administrative
constraints, that separate teaching practice from the teacher training courses, I believe that theportfolios allowed us to bring the classroom one step closer and introduced habits of analysis
that I see as key to ongoing development as a teacher.
On a personal note, I felt that, from reading the portfolios, I learnt to value a different
perspective, to value the affective in the classroom a little more. The impact of the portfolios
did lead me to more thoroughly question my own assumptions about the role of the teacher.

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Malon eWatching the students conduct their teaching practice, I noticed how unteacherly their
behaviour was in the attention they paid to every individual. This made me realise how much
I teach on autopilot. I can give instructions and get students on task, but I have certainly lost
some of that attentiveness. And it also made me realise that one of the real challenges for me is
to figure out how to stay fresh and engage with each new student as an individual, rather thanas just one of the couple of hundred new faces I deal with each year.

Does the portfolio foster teacher autonomy? This is a trickier question than the others, but
one worth considering, and one I kept coming back to during the collaborative reflection with
Andy. Using portfolios shifted the balance of power in the students' direction and achieved thegoal of making the students, their teaching, and their thoughts the focus of the course. Given
the context in which this course is set and Y's experiences at JHS, I think that there's a pressing
need to re-evaluate what we do in class, and to keep asking these difficult questions. We havethe need to determine models of student autonomy that fit a Japanese context. Throughthis course and my reflection on it, I have learnt a little more about how portfolios can help
contribute more effectively to those processes.

Critical Reader Response i

Flavia Vieira

Cath's account resonates with my experience as a teacher educator in many ways, especiallyas regards power issues and the role of reflection in teacher training contexts. Some of her
dilemmas reminded me of something I wrote quite recently in my professional journal while
teaching a post-graduate course on Pedagogical Supervision to in-service EFL teachers:
We maysay that in teacher education, and also in my lessons, there is a constanttension
between thediversification and the unification of learning. Or, to usevan Lier's (1996)
image, there is a tension between a centrifugal force, oriented towards diversification (ofideas, perspectives...), and a centripetalforce oriented towards normalisation. Although
I seek topromote theformer, I am aware thatI do it within limits, and not in an
unregulated manner. In my role as a teacher educator, reflection is the toolwhereby I avoid
two things: totaldispersion (i.e., each person thinks as s/hepleases) and total unification(i.e., all persons are lead to think through the head of one). To avoid both situations, it is
notpossible to have absolute, unquestionable certainties: Each person stands somewhere
between T and the 'other,' between chaos and order. And maybe this is harder than I
suppose it is. . . But the truth is that Ifeel the moral obligation tofight the authorityof
thought, whoever it comes from: me or each one of mystudents. This is why I refuse to
adopt a pedagogy of transmission, butalso a pedagogy thatis neutral in terms of values
and ideals, a pedagogy where 'anything goes' Forme, commitment to valuesand ideals of
liberation from authority is an obligation of trainers and trainees. Only then can teacher
education facilitateprocesses ofpersonal and social reconstruction, only then can one build
bridges between ourselfand others, only then can we make, stealing the title of a book by
Edgar Morin(1990), 'science with conscience'.

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An intentional focus on (prospective) teachers' theories and practices, as when using
portfolios, necessarilyentails and fosters the diversification of perspective, range, and depthof reflection. However, guidance and scaffolding may instigatecritical thought and avoid anapproach where 'anything goes.' Agreeing on a common language as Cath suggests,a 'grammar'
to communicate about powerful concepts such as autonomy, helps to create a theoretical andethical framework of reference that supports reflection and gives it a purposeful direction. It isalso important, perhaps, to consider how that language is to be constructed. The confrontationand negotiation of ideas are probably as crucial as individual reflection. In this sense, I would
say that professional talk helps to avoid reflective 'autism' and turns reflection into a social act
that gives voice to different (sometimes conflicting) rationalities.
Being able to consider different rationalities is perhaps the key to deal with diversity andcomplexity in educational settings. This is true for teachers and their students, as it is also
for teacher educators and educational researchers. Cath's inquiry itself is a good example ofstruggling to understand others through herself and herself through others. In a sense, we need
to be like"kids with ants in their pants": We need to "fidget"with idea(l)s in trying to makesense of education and our place in it.

Critical Reader Response 2

Timothy Stewart

Cath's research focus closely matches my own current interests in teaching. Her chapter tackles
the gapbetween learner and teacher perspectives. It's interesting to follow Cath's insights
into her practice unfoldas she compares her owntake on classroom interaction with that ofher teacher education students. Ultimately, she aims to make her pre-service teachers awareof learner and teacher autonomy, whilst developing their observational and reflective skills.
Structuring TESOL courses more around development of these skills, instead of emphasising
the designer methods / approaches, is increasingly advocated.
Cath selected learning portfolios as a way to have "a peek into the students' heads." This
attempt is praiseworthy, as teachers tend to assume that the way welook at a lesson will be theway learners look at it. However, there is evidence that, while we as teachers are focusing on one
thing, learners are focusing on something else.
Cath admits to getting lost in the details of compiling the portfolio. Although this was her
initial foray into the use of portfolios in teaching, it would be instructive to hear more specificadvice to other teachers on this point. She was also concerned about the "mixed results" of
portfolio entries, feeling puzzled later about whether her expectations weren't set too high fora 12-week course. Since there was such a range in the students' English proficiency, I wondered
about how this might have affected success on the portfolio tasks. Observation is a skill that
requires training and extensive practice to do well. Cath might consider video taping somesessions for practice in recording detailed observations.

Additional samples of actual portfolio entries would have been appreciated. Cath's
descriptions were good; yet I questioned whether the portfolio was similar to a dialogue
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issuethat Cath raisesabout the portfolios not havingmore characteristics of a dialogue. She
could choose a specific point raised by her studentsand engage them in a written dialogue by
raising questions for them to ponder further.
The student interview adds real depth to her discussion. Through Y's responses, importantquestions are raised about the appropriateness of Communicative Language Teaching and
TESOL methods to school settings here in Japan. The young teachers Cath trains will needto find ways to make the small changes they can within well-known constraints. From one
student's expressed expectation of the need for teachers to scold learners, we could conclude
that autonomy might be quite an alien concept for some Japanese. I'm reminded of theaggressive intransigence of two renowned autonomy researchers who insisted to sceptical
Japan-based teachers that a particular method designed in Europe for developing learnerautonomy would undoubtedly work in Japan. Cath, however, sees the challenge to be at theindividual level. She muses on the importance of the personal connection in teaching and asks
How to stayfresh and engage with each newstudent as an individual? She has begun an exciting
piece of collaborative research here, and I look forward to seeing how future explorations will
move her thinking.

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