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Teacher Presence and Classroom Awareness: On the Nature of Critical Incidents in Foreign Language Instruction

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Extending the Boundaries of Research on Second Language Learning and Teaching

Part of the book series: Second Language Learning and Teaching ((SLLT))

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Abstract

In the development of teacher training programmes reflecting modern ideas in education, which stress autonomy and reflectivity, the concepts of teacher presence and classroom awareness have become basic to our understanding of what teaching and teacher’s role are, in the classroom but also beyond it. Having first defined the concepts of teacher presence and classroom awareness, this paper goes on to look at the phenomenon of the critical incident (CI) in the FL classroom. It aims to define it, discuss its essential structure and components, and comment on ways of identifying and analysing it. It will also offer a practical tool for implementing the study of CIs for the individual teacher, that is, a CI portfolio. The description of the phenomenon of a CI will be illustrated with examples from literature on critical incidents and from my own ongoing study of critical incidents in pre-service EFL teacher training.

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Correspondence to Danuta Gabryś-Barker .

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Gabryś-Barker, D. (2011). Teacher Presence and Classroom Awareness: On the Nature of Critical Incidents in Foreign Language Instruction. In: Extending the Boundaries of Research on Second Language Learning and Teaching. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20141-7_16

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