TDSIG Blog
Admin Week!
I didn’t blog for SIG last week because I was drowning in paperwork, like most of us when we start work after the summer break. I was thinking about how hard I find admin week in September, even though my tasks from year to year are quite similar. I also often...
Happy Teachers’ Day India!
Today India celebrated Teachers Day, which is actually the birthday of the country’s second President, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country”. Among the things that India’s Prime Minister, Narendra...
A Teaching Moment in Time 2014
For those of you unfamiliar with TES, their website is well worth a visit. Their rapidly growing digital community showcases a long heritage of teacher development and support. Today, I stumbled upon a project of their called A Teaching Moment in Time, where teachers...
Who do you talk to about your teaching?
Who do you talk to about your teaching? In recent research Pataraia et al. (2014) explores what the main themes of academics' conversations are and who they talk to. Participants were free to name as many contacts as they wished. "Departmental colleagues" came first...
Improvisation – Where teachers fear to tread
We here at the TDSIG are slowly recovering from a wild and wonderful week in Harrogate at the annual IATEFL conference. So many great sessions, so much food for thought and our own development. For those of you unlucky enough to miss Mojce Belak's excellent workshop...
Why Critical Pedagogy?
I'm writing this in anticipation of our upcoming IATEFL pre-conference event. It may be read as a kind of preamble, I suppose. But I wish it was more like an open invitation, an opening. And whether this is related to this particular event or not, and whether you will...
Electronic Village Online – Crafting the ePerfect eTextbook
Electronic Village online, the virtual wing of TESOL, is currently running a 5-week online collaborative course on eCourseware design, and TDSIG is proud to be listed as one of its sponsors. Follow this link to see more:...
IATEFL 2014 Pre-Conference Event
With the year slowly drawing to a close, it's time to look ahead; and what better to look forward to than the IATEFL 2014 Conference? The conference will be held in Harrogate, UK, and will run from 2-5 April - but the day before the "official" start of the conference,...
Making a difference
Schools are never neutral sites or free spaces. They are always shaped by the political structures around them. Freire (1996) felt that education could create a world of possibilities for students. We need to cultivate young people’s knowledge of where to begin to...