“Help me see”: Recognizing the importance of a core curriculum under observation in an english teacher education program for global society

Abstract

Classroom observation represents itself as an important element to teachers’ education. Within diff erent contexts, observation has been used to understand and refl ect on a classroom and on the role of the teacher and it has been adopted as a partial requirement on supervised practicum, continued teachers’ education programs, selfevaluation and others. In order to contribute to the understanding of this practice and to the education of future English language teachers for the global society, this article outlines the practice of observation that has been conducted in a group of students at York University, Glendon Campus, in Toronto. This group had taken D-TEIL program which aims at teaching English in an international context and during their undergraduation, they have been through steps that they would need to develop strategies to observe classrooms teachers and even themselves as student-teachers in Cuba. As in Kumaravadivelu (2012), it has been suggested that his macro-strategies function as an initial point of reference to give a special att ention to observation, and consequently to embed curriculum elements into the English language teachers’ education.