Blogging for Effective Teacher Education Course in English as a Second Language

Abstract

Two years ago, as teacher educators, the authors decided to integrate the use of blogs into their practice in order to contribute to the development of an understanding of the knowledge base related to the processes of teaching and learning English as a Second Language (ESL) and provide their teacher candidates with a space to critically reflect collectively and individually on course content. In this chapter, the authors use discourse analysis (Johnston, 2008) of semi-structured interviews conducted with these teacher candidates to explore how they use and perceive blogs within a course specifically focused on ESL teaching methods. This allows the authors to problematize the notion of technological integration in teaching and learning and complexify the notion of blogs as democratic spaces (Kuzu, 2007). On the basis of this analysis, the authors formulate four recommendations to guide teacher educators who are working in similar contexts.