Mustafa Safran

Prof. Dr. Musftafa Safran Prof. Dr. Mustafa Safran was born in Kastamonu in 1958. In 1984 he graduated from Department of History in the University of Ankara. In 1992, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Ankara. He served as Dean of Faculty of Education at Gazi University from until 2011. He is a member in the XXV. Period Board of Directors of UNESCO Turkish National Commission. He is also executive member of TUBA (Turkish Science Academy) and the coordinator of Teacher Tarining Work Group in Higher Education Council. He has numerous publications- books and articles- in the field of teaching history and teacher education.  

Keith Johnson

Keith Johnson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Language Education in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. His recent publications include An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching (Second Edition, 2008), Expertise in Second Language Learning and Teaching (edited collection, 2005), Designing Language Teaching Tasks (2003), Language Teaching and Skill Learning (1996), and Shakespeare’s English (2013). He was founding editor of the journal Language Teaching Research, and his main research interest in recent years has been in language teaching expertise. Keith Johnson was a member of staff at Lancaster for thirteen years. Before that he worked at the Universities of Essex and Reading. He has travelled widely as lecturer and consultant. 

What makes an inspired teacher? Studying expertise in teaching skills

What characteristics do expert language teachers have? What do they do in the classroom that distinguishes them for novices? This presentation will consider questions like these. It will briefly look at what we know about expertise in general, then will concentrate on language teaching expertise. It will briefly review a number of small-scale research studies undertaken at Lancaster by a research group known as LATEX (for LAnguage Teaching EXpertise). Some of these studies contrast the classroom behaviour of ‘expert’ and ‘novice’ teachers, while others cover areas like expertise in materials and task design, and textbook evaluation. It will be suggested that research like this provides a fresh dimension to our understanding of language teaching processes, and on a more practical level is likely to give valuable insights which will help us train teachers better. In the course of the presentation the value of think-alouds as a research tool will be considered.

Helen Johnson

Helen Johnson has spent her career in English language teaching and language teacher education overseas and in the UK, latterly at the University of Cumbria in Lancaster.  She has published articles in the field and is co-editor of Blackwell’s ‘Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics’. Her particular interests are language teaching methodology and the development of academic literacy. 

Title: Whose job is it? Exploring the roles taken by subject tutors in developing students’ academic writing

In the field of academic writing studies, a strong case has been made that each academic subject has its own particular model of ‘academic literacy’, which is intimately bound up with the content of the subject and the ways in which it deals with its knowledge and ideas. The implication drawn from this is that the most appropriate teachers of academic writing are, not language specialists, but subject tutors. This talk will report on a small-scale research project in a UK university exploring subject tutors’ practices and beliefs with regard to their role in developing students’ academic writing.  Findings, based on an analysis of student essays with tutor feedback and on interviews with the tutors, suggest that, while they agree on the importance of academic literacy, tutors vary widely as to whether they see its development as part of their job, leading to marked differences in feedback practices.  This raises interesting questions regarding standards, consistency and best practice.