Teaching and Learning in Postmodernity
Teaching and Learning in Postmodernity

Author(s): Agata Radecka
Subject(s): Language studies, Foreign languages learning
Published by: Fundacja Rozwoju Systemu Edukacji
Keywords: ESP teacher; learning; teaching; foreign language for specific purposes; learning in professional life; professional role of teachers; postmodernity; narrative research; critical research
Summary/Abstract: The monograph is part of the socio-pedagogical directions of pedeutological research carried out in the qualitative paradigm. The aim of the study was to describe the professional role of academic English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teachers in the context of postmodernity. The author was interested both in how the ongoing cultural changes shift the teaching paradigm towards learning and in how academic ESP teachers respond to such challenges, as well as what problems and limitations may stand in their way of consciously transcending their professional role. In her research, the author used the narrative interview method, and the analysis of the conducted interviews allowed her to address the above research problems. The work consists of five main chapters: a methodological chapter, two theoretical chapters and two empirical chapters, as well as an introduction, conclusions and a post scriptum chapter. In the methodological chapter, the author presents the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the qualitative paradigm, under which the research is carried out, as well as the research method. In the second chapter, the author shows the cultural and social context of postmodernity and the individual immersed in it. The third chapter focuses on the social and professional roles of teachers and presents a glottodidactic perspective on ESP teachers. In the empirical part, in the fourth chapter, the author presents the knowledge of the study participants about their world and themselves using the holistic model of learning in the working life by Knud Illeris and his associates, as well as about “self- -world” relations using the author’s original interpretation of the professional role prescription. In the next empirical chapter (fifth chapter), the author focuses on a critical analysis, which revealed the oppression to which the participants of the study were subjected. The last part of the work is a ”post scriptum” chapter, showing the autoethnographic roots of the research.

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