Prof. Bakhta ABDELHAY &
Ibn Badis University of Mostaganem
Dr. Ammar BENABED
Ibn Khaldoun University of Tiaret
Abstract
The issues relating to teacher training are at the heart of the current debates of the public authorities. The economic and social changes arising from globalization imply that the quality of the educational systems must be adapted to meet the new requirements. The expectations for educational institutions and teachers are more complex than before. The Ministry of National Education (MNE) is committed to improving learning for all Algerian school-goers. The attainment of this ambitious goal cannot materialise unless all learners receive a quality education. Similar to all countries, Algeria seeks to improve the quality of teaching to better meet the socio-economic expectations increasingly higher. Teacher body, the most important human resource in the education system, is at the core of the efforts aiming to enhance learners’ achievements. However, this high quality of education requires an overhaul of the training courses from the viewpoints contents, devices, evaluation and expectations. In reality, the present situation raises multifarious challenges to policy-makers, training institutes and trainers. This is what the present article tries to shed enough light on so as to highlight and identify the gaps that preclude effective changes in both teachers’ teaching and learners’ learning. The most-experienced trainers would not compensate nowadays for poor and inadequate plans and systems of training. But conversely, the well-thought out curricula and the most attractive professional didactics will have no virtue if the trainers are not up to the task. The distinction is also questionable; the trainers are also, to a large extent, the designers of the devices or their direct interlocutors.
Keywords: IT, INSETT, teacher-trainers, competence, pragmatics, professionalism
الملخص
إن القضايا المتعلقة بتكوين المعلمين هي في صميم المناقشات الحالية للسلطات العامة. إن التغيرات الاقتصادية والاجتماعية الناجمة عن العولمة تعني أن نوعية النظم التعليمية يجب أن تتكيف مع المتطلبات الجديدة. و بالتالي فان توقعات المؤسسات التعليمية والمعلمين أصبحت أكثر تعقيدا من ذي قبل. تسعى الجزائر، على غرار جميع البلدان، إلى تحسين نوعية التعليم تلبية للتوقعات الاجتماعية – الاقتصادية المتزايدة. لن يتحقق هذا الهدف الطموح ما لم يحصل جميع المتعلمين على تعليم جيدا. وتعتبر هيئة المعلم، وهي أهم الموارد البشرية في نظام التعليم، في صميم الجهود الرامية إلى تعزيز إنجازات المكونين. ومع ذلك، فإن هذه النوعية العالية من التعليم تتطلب إصلاح الدورات التكوينية فيما يخص محتوياتها وطرق انجازها وتقييمها ومخرجاتها. والواقع أن الحالة الراهنة تثير تحديات متنوعة أمام واضعي السياسات التكوينية ومعاهد التكوين و المكونين. يحاول هذا المقال تسليط الضوء بما يكفي على الثغرات التي تحول دون حدوث تغييرات فعالة في تدريس المعلمين وتعلم المتعلمين وتحديدها.
الكلمات المفتاحية: التكوين الأولي، التكوين أثناء الخدمة، مكوني المعلمين، الكفاءة، البراغماتية، علم ، الاحتراف
Introduction
Nowadays objectives of the educational system, as in all other areas of life, should change to meet much more specific requirements in order to be in perfect agreement with the socio-cultural changes that are imposed by the fallouts of the worldwide globalisation. Algeria has already embarked on large-scale education reforms to endow younger generations with competencies enabling them meet the workforce requirements. In fact, it is a challenge which awaits all stakeholders. These reforms can only lead to the prescribed expectations if priority is devoted to the training of the trainers and the teachers. With the aging of the baby-boom generation of teachers and the retirement of many of them, it is imperative to train and recruit large numbers of new teachers, which puts the Algerian education system to a serious challenge. For these new cohorts of young trainers and teachers, we should offer more flexible training pathways, improve research bases and knowledge, raise the teachers’ qualifications status and bring them closer to the workplace, the school. The initial training improvement is important, but remains insufficient in itself. Actually, the guardianship should strive to ensure two dual different roles; first to better monitor and accompany the trainers and neophyte teachers, and second to allow the practising teachers to undertake professional development throughout their careers and encourage them. In most professions, it is important that the initial training provides a solid foundation for learning throughout life and professional development. This imperative issue is present to some extent in the initial teacher training, but it is rarely explicitly reflected in the structures and programmes. The initial training (IT), teachers’ integration and professional development are steps that need to be better interconnected for the in-service training (INSET) experiences of teachers are more coherent. That said guardianship should improve not only the quality of the ITT, but also the quality of their professional integration and development.
The pertinent questions are “who are the teacher trainers?” What is their identity? What are their knows and competences? The professionalization of the teachers’ profession deals a little with the role of teacher trainers, if not to emphasize that they have everything to gain by this evolution. It is evident; however, that there can be no professionalization of training without the essential levers of IT and INSET, and without professionalization of the profession of trainers.
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The Theoretical Aspect
I.1. Teachers’ Trainers: Who are they?
The professional training of high-level staffs involves heterogeneous resources, viz certified practitioners of the profession, but also experts in multifarious technologies, specialists in contributory disciplines, and training officers who are in charge of organizational functions. Yet, for teachers training, there are fewer unknowns. Those who train teachers are still, in their overwhelming majority, from the world of teachers. They were primary, middle and secondary school teachers who meet the requirements for the position of teacher trainers. They are assigned teachers’ accompaniment, scaffolding, supervision and guidance during the INSET. Whereas the ITT is entrusted to institute and university teachers who either were teachers, having a substantial professional capital, or who never experienced classroom practices beforehand.
For a long time, the ITT was considered as being of nature to enable teachers to practise in classes until retirement. This conception accompanies a certain way of apprehending the job and by the same to prepare for it: a rigorous pedagogical method, a part reserved for the practicum in classes of experienced/tenured teachers or at least designated as such by the school authorities, and more particularly the inspectors. Thus, the ITT is ensured by two distinct entities; institutes/universities and schools. This training, in the light of the successive reforms and the current requirements, has been little by little questioned. Over the years, and for political properties evolution and socio-economic requirements, the training of tenured teachers proved to be imperative so as to improve the outcomes of education. Thus, the INSET became of vital importance to palliate these discrepancies and keep pace with the different changes.
I.2. The Emergence of a New Type of Complementary Training: The INSET
As part of the reform of the IT, which promotes a professionalizing training, a strong movement for the valorization of training in the field is observable. The MNE has unambiguously imposed an increase in training in a practical environment, in accordance with this professionalizing logic and following consultations with the various partners involved in training.
Experts in the educational field strongly sustain the INSET as a tool for teacher development. The INSET for the teachers who are already working includes a wide range of activities such as group-based training in connection with the introduction of the new curriculum contents, textbooks to one-on-one pedagogical support that is available to teachers. The INSET may also consist of subject-based training. Given the wide array of the INSET activities, the empirical evidence does not support any strong conclusions with regard to their impact or the best ways of organizing such training. Despite the lack of empirical evidence, the INSET remains strongly favoured by policy-makers and more promising approach in terms of maximizing teachers’ professional development and learners learning outcomes (Lockheed and Verspoor 1991; Verspoor 2003). Differently couched, the aim behind the INSET courses is to ensure teachers’ classroom practices effectiveness and to increase learners’ achievements consequently. Yet, the efficacy of the INSET relies heavily on teacher trainers’ expertise, teachers’ commitment, beforehand needs analyses and evaluation.
I.3. Professionalism of Teacher Trainers: What Benchmarks?
Without intending to deal here with all that relates to professionalism (Lemosse, 1989), we refer to Trousson (1982), who summarizes the characteristic traits and the profession as follows: “a rather intellectual occupation, founded on rational knowledge, of a training whose procedures are explicit, and endowed with a strong legitimacy”. What would constitute a profession could be understood as “rational knowledge” (a set of knowledge representing the professional’s vademecum “knowledge delivered through training” in explicit procedures training “training plans and arrangements” itself legitimized, that is to say, recognized and carried by the institution to serve as a reference.
I.4. Professionalizing Teacher Training: What “rational knowledge”?
Although there is, to our knowledge, no initial training programme for the training of teacher trainers, at least at the institutional level, it seems that there are compulsory passages, unavoidable in terms of the contents to be acquired if the professionalization of trainers is to be promoted. Hereafter are some of knows that
I.4.1. Five Main Aspects of Knowledge
I.4.1.1. The first axis is concerned with the conception and the pedagogical and material organization of the courses and the construction of training situations. To this end, in addition to technical knowledge on how to combine elements and components in training preparations and concepts, precise and diversified knowledge is needed both theoretically and practically on the act of learning, education, training. A work on the trainer’s presentations and models on the three paradigms: teaching, training, and these three components articulation seems indispensable, as is a work on the analogies and differences between teaching students and training colleagues, adults, peers.
I.4.1.2. The second axis of knowledge relates to the management of groups in training sessions. It relies heavily on techniques derived from the training of adults and on the resources of socio-psychology. Managing a group of adults in training is not similar to that of a class. This cannot be improvised, but it should be learned.
I.4.1.3. The third axis is organized around evaluation and its different paradigms; it is a question of endowing the trainers at least with knowledge of the issue, in default to make specialists. The goal is to train trainers not only in school assessment, but also in a evaluation culture, lacto sinso. That is to say, to train them in the collection of clues and in the decision-making process enabling them to analyze training situations so that they can respond to each and every one situation in an appropriate way and that they, in their turn, train to these principles. It is important to train them also in the different positioning systems based on interpreted information taking, allowing self-evaluation and regulation of the action.
I.4.1.4. The fourth axis of knowledge, also essential for all trainers, concerns the helping relationship, in particular the techniques of maintenance and work on the accompaniment of the teachers and the teams in formation. Knowledge also about the valorization of the acquired knows, because the trainer must know how to value the existing, what is already done, to make the necessary changes; He must also, as far as possible, be able to provide professional help and support to his colleagues, especially if the latter are applicants.
I.4.1.5. Finally, the fifth axis encompasses a set of contents that helps to become a reflective trainer, able to analyze his own practice, integrating contents of those previous axes and which deal with the teaching sequences, their analysis, their components, their variables, such as the knowledge on the variability of the teaching action (Bru 1993), or the knows on the teaching styles (Altet 1994 & 1996), but beyond this knowledge and the acquisition of techniques, a work of analysis and understanding of the practices that the trainer uses in his training brings a reflection, a questioning on the function and act of ‘formation’ on its meaning, its impact, on the profession of trainer, its professional identity and its ‘professionnality’.
I.5. Seeking Professional Trainers: What competences?
One can also decline the competences that seem indispensable to a “professional trainer”. And there, as for the knows, there is no institutional repository. While questioned on their professionalism and the changes they thought they should make to the trainer’s training to make it more adaptable and professionalizing, trainers highlight the following competences:
Competence 1: The competence to manage the complexity of the situations encountered by rapidly assessing what is happening in the training situation in order to make the appropriate decisions and to build the strategies that are appropriate.
Competence 2: The competence to articulate the theoretical discourse that constructs its referents with the concrete situation that is proposed to the trainer.
Competence 3: The competence to create in the trainee a real project of appropriation of the followed training course; what is learned and what is supposed to be done?
Competence 4: The ability to narrow the gap between what is said (theory) and what is effectively carried out (practice), both in his own practice as trainer and teacher and in that of the trainees. A reflective practitioner (Schön 1995) is aware of the gap existing between what is said and what is done, and works to reduce this gap, producing a new type of knowledge (professional development).
Competence 5: The competence to ensure respectful accompaniment of the teachers he trains, assuring passages, if not gently, at least in an accepted and shared way (Bonniol 1986).
Competence 6: Finally, the competence to accept the confrontation of its referents and practices with other trainers, and hence to accept its limits and imperfections. This perfectible knowledge is undoubtedly an essential ingredient of any professionalization.
Maybe the best sign of a trainer’s professionalism is the search for coherence between what he is, what he does and what he says to be and do, coherence between his behaviors and strategies (Giorgi & Tozzi 1998). This articulation between the referents, the skills at work and the underlying models, could well be the cornerstone of professionalism.
In the absence of an institutional reference system determining the competencies expected and worth contract for the institution and the trainees, each institution or trainer leader is led to design his own training guide for his trainers.
In addition to these competences and the areas of knowledge defined above, what could also develop a trainers’ training to build the trainer’s professionalism holds on to three main ideas.
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It is important to propose a wide range of training proposals likely to become centers of interest for a trainer according to his project of action, this project is to be crossed with the institutional directorates.
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The trainer must acquire the broadest possible training culture, aiming at a diversification of knowledge and approaches that goes well beyond the fields in which he practices. This culture ensures him a great capacity of adaptation to the professional situations that he meets and implements.
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The trainer’s training can attain its intended objective only if it allows an individualization of its course, that is to say, the realization of an individual training project based on a large number of propositions offering the important choices. Individualization has no significance unless it is for each trainer to situate his project, his action, his practice, among other projects, other actions, and other practices.
The aforementioned competences are, in our viewpoints, of utmost importance to comply with the requirements of today’s societal and economical challenges. A compulsory adaptation proves to be urgent to respond to the swift changes taking place at a worldwide scale.
I.6. The Recent Educational Reforms: What Objectives?
To better understand the scope of the project of education reform launched by Algeria
since the beginning of 2003, we will begin by quickly recalling the ideological foundations of the former system of training whose obsolescence, in the light of the great challenges to which the 21st century prepares itself, justifies the urgency of the operated rearrangements.
The fact that a new world is in phase to be constructed according to unprecedented categories but whose summation has already given birth to a new term referred to as globalization. However, this new world order is called upon to function according to an unusual sense because it is based solely on the criteria of rationality and optimal profitability.
From there, it should be understood that the level of effectiveness of education and training systems is henceforth at the center of most of the social and economic challenges to which is preparing the 21st century.
Conscious of the issue of operating a qualitative change in the education system, the Algerian government adopted in April 2002 an ambitious reform of the education system. This reform sets out four key objectives: (i) to improve the quality of education, especially for the instruction of languages; (ii) to renovate school curricula; (iii) to reorganize school systems; and (iv) to strengthen higher education. The Algerian educational system is virtually required to align with international standards in terms of operation and performance while rapidly evolving as well on the learning quality as on learners’ profiles to attain well-trained heads.
I.7. Reforms Implementation: What difficulties?
I.7.1. Innovation and Uncertainty
Moreover, the reform undertaken will not have a significant impact on the education and training system unless the changes made affect in depth at the same time the content of curricula, methods as well as recruitment, and the TT. They are the strategic factors in any reformist/reforming approach aiming to set up a modern and efficient national education system. The latter could become a main lever of social, cultural and economic transformation of the Algerian society.
In addition to its adapting perspective, training should equip teachers with innovative aptitude (Cros 1997). This expected innovation is a development, with its steps, and its temporality, through which the teacher may experience difficulties and discoveries. This innovation should fit/fall within a certain continuity enabling an assessment of the existing practices. In the same breath, Rogers sustain that: “Old Ideas are the main mental tools that individual utilize to assess new ideas. One cannot deal with an innovation except on the basis of the familiar, with what is known. Previous practice provides a familiar standard against which an innovation can be interpreted, thus decreasing uncertainty”. (1995: 225- 226)
According to this aim, it would only be possible to assess an innovation that in so far as the latter shares similarities with common practices. It is in relation to this narrowness between the “known” and the “new” that a change can take shape and the uncertainty and risk as for the impacts of innovation are reduced.
I.7.2. Initial Teacher Training (ITT): towards a ‘Universitarisation’ of Initial Training
In an attempt to understand the impact of the evolutions experienced by the teachers’ training, it is advisable to make a brief return to the various types of procedures so far implemented. Until the creation of training institutions such as the ‘Ecole Nationale Supérieure’ (henceforth ENS) and the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l’Enseignement Technique” (henceforth ENSET), the training of primary and middle school teachers was insured within the framework of the technological institute of Education (henceforth TIE) by teachers chosen by the local directorate of education of each wilaya because of their professional expertise. It took place in the field and was based on the observation of teaching practices carried by ‘le maître d’application’. Legitimated by the institution, pedagogical models, upon which depended training, were fully imitated and replicated by teacher-trainees. In fact, there was no link between research in language didactics and primary and middle school teachers’ training. Two sealed spaces whose contact was not favoured and even less privileged. Whereby the disjunction between what was done as research work into didactics at universities and training in these institutes was twofold: their dissemination was very limited or non-existent, except for teachers interested in their own self-training, and the professional practice conducted at the level of the institutes was an unknown area for researchers. The design of the professional training fitted in a behaviourist perspective is particularly relying on a pure reproduction of the models of ‘good practices’ (Haramboure 2003: 95-108). Thus, the ITT structure, contents and implementation review needs heedful consideration to comply with the fast-paced changes.
After the transfer of the ITT to the universities, the objectives underpinning the ITT have changed to develop trainees’ scientific, cultural and professional competencies. Differently couched, the basic aim is to educate ‘competent’ teachers and develop necessary professional qualities to ensure lifelong teaching careers for teachers. In doing so, much emphasis is put on enquiry-based paradigm so as to promote teachers’ thinking process leading to reflection and research. Being regarded as places of transmission and creation of knowledge, universitarisation of the ITT can allow teacher-trainees to profit from such free and independent environments. Since then, all nominees for the teaching profession should imperatively undergo a university three- four or five-year training course. Although the ITT course provides the knowledge to teach, knowledge for teaching and knowledge about teaching, the gap between theoretical and practical knowledge still persists. It is widely acknowledged that no matter how strong the ITT preparation is, the real class situations, in view of their singular character, are of paramount challenge to almost all teacher-trainees, because the ITT has not yet succeeded to produce life-long efficient teachers, who are aware of updating their knowledge and developing suitable solutions for each and every classroom situation.
I.7.3. New Trainer and Teacher Training Designs
Since the mid-80s to mid-90s, the objective of improving the level of education has led to a wave of educational reforms, including the reform of the teacher training, whose aim was to correct the drifts of the 60s. The institutions responsible for the TT had at that time focused excessively their interest on the child, on egalitarianism, etc. at the detriment of a professional and technical teachers’ training, and an effective care centered on the learner and his learning. The establishment of a renovated training system and coaching assessment were then required. Measures have been retained for the ITT. With regard to training, the major change initiated by the guardianship is the transfer of the ITT from ex-TIEs to university, more exactly to ENS and ENSET. This decision was partly justified by the need to raise teachers’ general culture, in particular the disciplinary one, and to give them a basis of “scientific” knowledge. It was in 1997 that the MNE announced that: “Initial teachers training, in our country, will align on the global trend whereby teachers of all levels should be equipped with university level knowledge and skills.” (1997: 24)
This decision concerns all primary, middle and secondary school education teachers and the Baccaleaurate is a compulsory condition to be eligible for enrolment.
II. The Practical Aspect
II.1. Corpus Construction Method
In order to build a diversified corpus, we had to find a compromise between the necessity to contrast to the maximum topics and opinions to obtain sufficient material that can be representative. The subjects potentially concerned by our study are diverse, viz., teacher-trainees, teacher-trainers, supervisors. The intentional choice of the latter is due to two reasons. Firstly, these subjects are easily accessible in time, given our status as a university teacher, trainer and ex-inspector, and secondly, the contribution of diversity due to the complexity of the subject matter; namely the ITT and INSET issues in a professionalizing optic. The contributions of the appreciations of all these subjects directly concerned with the training allow us to put enough light on the various facets related to the subject of our investigation. Thus, we wanted to get a wider range of viewpoints on the ITT and INSET among future teachers and those already in service.
II.2. Data Analysis: The Limitations of the Linguistic Competence
Certainly, linguistic proficiency is not sufficient in itself to communicate effectively and appropriately with the other, but the acquisition of the lexical (word order), syntactic (word forms and rules) and phonological (sounds) knows and know-how-to-do is essential to facilitate this communication which requires an understanding of attitudes, systems of values, behaviours, and the whole cultural context of his interlocutor.
With reference to the figures collected from question item 6b, we note that less than thirty per cent of the respondents, i.e., 28.65% (23 ENS PEM & 26 BA holders), confirm that their sociolinguistic competence is excellent. Only 33 trainees out of the 171 respondents (19 ENS PEM & 14 BA holders) indicate that this competence is good. By cons, the majority of the respondents (64 trainees- 29 ENS PEM & 35 BA holders) think is fair. In fact, no trainee assesses his sociolinguistic competence as being poor or very poor.
In the light of the statistics generated from question item 6c in connection with the pragmatic competence self-assessment, we note that 41 trainees (23.97%) (14 ENS PEM and 27 BA graduates) confess that their pragmatic competence is excellent. Fifty-four of the surveyed trainees (17 ENS PEM & 37 BA holders) assert that it is good. Seventy-six trainees, i.e., 44.44% (40 ENS PEM & 36 BA holders) estimate that their pragmatic competence to be fair.
The communicative competence (CC) has been an overarching issue for foreign language teaching (FLT) as a cornerstone for language classrooms. The paramount constituents of the CC are the sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences, though acknowledged as being primordial for foreign language perfect mastery, are not taught and learned appropriately. Thus, the failure relative to the acquisition of the so-called sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences resides in the lack of direct or indirect contact of the students with native speakers of the FL. In addition, the absence of a methodology for teaching this pragmatic field makes the perception, interpretation and detection of the nuances that words, phrases and constructions convey impossible. Pragmatic competence, in fact, focuses much on the analysis of the meanings conveyed by utterances rather than the literatim meanings of words and phrases speakers use in their discourse.
III.2. The Impact of the Teaching Modules on Classroom Scenarii
By browsing through the data resulting from question item 7 on the module that is the most suitable for classroom scenarios, we note that owing to the different canvases for ENS PEM and BA graduates, opinions differ with respect to modules contributing in the construction of classroom scenarii. For BA graduates, besides other answers, they unanimously believe that the modules of ESP and the internship (stage) helped them construct an idea about the classroom reality. Yet, the ENS PEM acknowledged that modules such as psychology, psycho-pedagogy, material design and development, internship prepared them for the classroom situation; the future profession.
It is quite visible that the ENS PEMs seem to be somewhat prepared for the classroom practice. Undoubtedly, the IT had an impact on trainees’ styles, attitudes, self-esteem and confidence, being school-context outcomes, and have become well-established constructs within these teachers. Referring to the modular structure of the ENS PEM training course, we notice that the module of TEFL gains 90 hrs (dealing with theoretical knows= language teaching methodologies, methods and techniques) and Internship in host schools, though introduced only in the fourth year, is allotted 180 hours. This trainee-school and classroom contact, built upon a reality that is rooted in daily classroom practices, works indubitably in favour of these trainees’ integration of the new profession with less difficulty than their colleagues BA holders.
III.3. Analysis and Comments
The change that is taking place in the field of Didactics of Foreign Languages (TEFL) requires a methodological reflection in an optical sensu lacto to include the (inter) cultural dimension in different levels of education. No one, neither the trainers nor teachers, can now ignore it. In fact, the knowledge acquired by the candidates to the learning of the English language is very superficial which explains the confusion and misunderstanding. To reiterate what Abdallah Pretceille meant by intercultural competence by claiming that: “The effectiveness of the intercultural competence is not ensured by the familiarity with the other culture, but by a permanent investigation that involves a constant cultural standby.” (1996: 325).
It is principally the English language teachers’ responsibility to raise awareness and sensitize students to the cultural dimension. According to Lipiansky, it is not a question “Only to the linking of two objects, two independent and relatively fixed assemblies. It is a phenomenon of interaction where these objects constitute themselves just as they communicate.”(1995: 192).
It seems that the FLTs cannot take on this role and this is due to the deficiencies in their IT. Training should provide future teachers with capabilities to establish the link between the original culture and foreign culture, to play the intermediary between the two cultures, to manage cultural conflicts and misunderstandings, and learn how to go beyond superficial and stereotyped relationships.
Undoubtedly, it is in FL classes that FLTs inculcate the awakening to the FL socio-pragmatic rules, but it is only outside the classroom (we mean the cultural context of the TL) that this competence can flourish and reach its integral development to become an effective competence. The sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences are rarely part of learning the language in a classroom context. In the absence of the socio-cultural environment in the Algerian context, the use of authentic audio-visual media can contribute to the acquisition of different variations. Linguistic exchanges with native speakers are the best way to make students aware of linguistic phenomena and thus develop this socio-pragmatic competence. The training periods in the countries of the TL allow, beyond any shadow of doubt, future teachers to establish links between the morpho-lexical and operational semantic achievements and to produce appropriate speech from the socio-pragmatic standpoint.
With reference to the data collected, the current ITTC of future English teachers does not train teachers for analysis and reflection on the teaching practice, but rather tends to favor a receptivity rapport. The TT, as it is conceived, almost on theoretical basement, does not address the problems faced by future teachers in the field. The theoretical knows and their practical implementation in the field should be organized in a way to provide the training system with a closure making of the two spaces, theory and practice, the junction point for the capitalization of acquired throughout the IT process. In other words, the identification of problems related to the teaching and learning of the English language should be perceived as an organizing principle of the training system. In the absence of such a link between the theoretical content of the TUs offered in total ignorance of any educational difficulties future teachers could meet and identify during the few hours of practice, and their effective implementation in the field, the output profile of the future teacher of English remains unclear and IT incomplete. The gap between what is being done throughout the training and what is required of them to accomplish once on the ground inevitably would generate difficulties in developing professional competencies.
Conclusion
We cannot ignore the fact that professionalisation cannot be decreed, imposed or
dictated. Yet, only a reformulation of the ITTC in accordance with the competencies
repository aforementioned, and a reorientation of the professional training design and
foundations prove to be necessary so as to attain the expected objectives. Also, is it
appropriate to affirm the need to rethink the question of the teaching practices quality which
represents an important issue for the future of higher education in order to prepare the
teaching profession?
An urgent need to enhance and optimize the ITT outcomes is increasingly recognized.
Thus, the ITTC should shift towards a model less based on academic preparation and more on
preparing professionals in host school settings with an appropriate balance between theory
and practice. With regard to this new framework, teacher-trainees get into classrooms earlier,
spend more time there, and benefit of more and better support in the process.
To attain an ITT quality, which systematically impacts on learners’ achievements;
thinking, acting and feeling, requires that the MNE training managers work with MHESR
training managers grain rather than across, eschewing a regulatory and bureaucratic approach.
At the outset, it should be noted that researches on teacher education are not numerous for several interrelated reasons, including the relatively small number of teacher-researchers in didactics of language-cultures. Yet, the joint-collaborative work of researchers and teacher trainers proves to be more than necessary for an appropriate preparation of the future teachers
of English. The relationship and interaction between research and teaching should remain the
specificities of the training of teacher-trainees. In fact, the empirical research that focuses on classroom observations, learners and teachers activities is badly needed in Algeria. It will be too difficult to improve education quality without an insightful understanding of what occurs in the classroom space. More research on the teaching of English in schools and universities contributes undoubtedly to a research base for policy and curricula that are context sensitive (Rubin 1991, Holliday 1994). As a final note, to cope with the didactic issues that teachers, in their turn, should face, the IT should help the practitioners to take up an active role in the education system. To do so, the IT should take into account two essential elements, firstly, to ensure the teacher trainees’ shift from the learners’ status to the posture of the ones who help learners learn how to learn, to develop critical thinking, to self-access their learning. Yet, all these require an insightful knowledge of the learning strategies and methods. Secondly, the IT should help them learn how to systematically position themselves in a critical reflection on the efficacy of their classroom performance rather than being mere implementers of top-down decisions. They are required to develop high-skills helping them to question their practices and seek alternative solutions to multifarious daily hindrances.
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