Impact of Evidence-Based Instruction on Teachers’ Views of Teaching and their Learning of TEYL-Related Concepts

This exploratory practice study attempts to investigate the impact of a newly designed TEYL (Teaching English to Young Learners) course on pre-service teachers’ learning at the Institut Supérieur des Arts et Métiers, Tataouine (ISAMT). The study also examined their views of teaching as they will soon graduate and join the teaching profession. Several types of assessment (formative and summative) were designed to diagnose and assess students’ views of teaching and knowledge of TEYL-related concepts before and after the TEYL course. Findings reveal that while students’ understanding of TEYL concepts has improved, their English language proficiency remains a major obstacle to fully benefitting from the course.


INTRODUCTION
The Teachers College (TC)-Tunisia Project is a teacher training program that was delivered online from January to October 2022 to a cohort of university teachers and teacher advisors involved in Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) in primary schools across Tunisia.
The training provided rich input in terms of TEYL content and methodology.I was a participant in the training program.
At the ISAMT, TEYL is taught to pre-service teachers in the second semester of their second year as well as in their final year during their three-year undergraduate program in Education and Teaching.The purpose of this program is to provide training in different subjects including education sciences, languages, math, and science in view of preparing students to teach at primary schools in Tunisia.The TEYL course has therefore been revamped based on the content of the training and on the principles of teaching as a scienceand evidence-based practice (see Appendix A).
The TEYL course for Semester 1 encompasses five units.The first unit is an introductory unit where students' attention is directed to the concept of teaching as a science.Unit 2 develops students' knowledge of the processes and conditions of second language learning.Unit 3 discusses the characteristics of young learners (YLs) and provides guidelines towards evaluating national English as foreign language (EFL) textbooks in Tunisia.In units 4 and 5, the implications of second language acquisition (SLA) theory and principles of meaning-oriented approaches to English language teaching are presented via a set of English language learning tasks reflecting those SLA principles.Various examples, tasks, and demos are integrated in order to scaffold the students' learning of various SLA concepts, taking into consideration the students' English language proficiencies and perceived needs as future primary school teachers in Tunisia.

THE PUZZLE
Designing an evidence-based course informed by a careful analysis of the context of its implementation (e.g., students' actual and perceived needs, their English language proficiency) is an important step towards enhancing the quality of teaching.However, an equally critical step is assessing the way a course is delivered, student learning, and students' affective responses.This study therefore sought to preliminarily assess the impact of a TEYL course on the attitudes and learning of pre-service teachers at the ISAMT, guided by the following question: To what extent has the newly designed TEYL course influenced preservice teachers' learning of and attitudes towards TEYL?
To answer this research question, different types of assessment were created and implemented to diagnose and assess the students' attitudes and knowledge before and during the course.The findings were intended to help shape the content of the TEYL course which also ran during Semester 2 (immediate impact) and to inform future course implementations (delayed impact) at the ISAMT and beyond.

THE DATA
Data was collected from final-year Education students.Based on informal observations conducted over two years, these students were generally confident and motivated about becoming a teacher and were familiar and well-versed in group and teamwork activities and oral presentations as they had been doing these tasks on a regular basis since their first year.These pre-service teachers were not English majors.Many did not like English, while others did but clearly needed to improve their English proficiency.They gave tremendous importance to the national textbook.One student last year asked this question: "Why this course since we will be following the national EFL textbook?"Nonetheless, all students were keen on making teaching English fun and meaningful for YLs and were genuinely committed to changing old pedagogical practices which they considered as unsuitable to this population.When it comes to understanding abstract concepts and notions such as "incidental learning" or "scaffolding," however, they tended to be unmotivated and to overemphasize the technical (craft) aspect of teaching.
The data collection procedure began in October 2022 and lasted till January 2023 in four classes in the Department of Education and Teaching at the ISAMT.On average, there were between 26 and 28 students per class.
Three sets of data were collected for this study.One set was compiled from three instruments: KWL chart, open-ended prompt, and exit slips.Students' responses on these were qualitatively analyzed to derive categories.Responses were then assigned to these categories and quantitatively analyzed in terms of frequencies and percentages.A second set of data reflected my assessment of their mid-term group project performance.A third and final set of data was obtained from a final exam where the grades were quantitatively analyzed for students' overall performance.
To assess students' learning and attitudes towards TEYL, two methods of assessment were used.The first was diagnostic assessment which was implemented during the first session using a KWL chart, observations, and dialogues to tap into the students' current attitudes toward teaching and TEYL.This diagnostic assessment was then compared to my own observations and informal discussions with the pre-service teachers at the ISAMT, as well as to results of formative assessments conducted in subsequent sessions.The objectives of the diagnostic assessment were twofold.Firstly, this type of assessment would expose students' background knowledge regarding TEYL.Secondly, it would uncover their attitudes towards teaching.Thus, the initial diagnostic assessment enabled me, the course instructor, to reshape the ongoing course to better meet the students' perceived needs, and to anticipate potential issues and/or misconceptions that might arise during the remainder of the course.The second method of assessment was formative.Formative assessment was conducted through two exit slips and group projects.Finally, an end-of-term final exam provided a summative assessment.
The diagnostic assessment of the students' knowledge of TEYL and expectations of the TEYL course was conducted using the KWL chart.Students in three classes were divided into thirteen groups of four and were asked to fill in the two first parts of the KWL chart (see Appendix B), "What they Know" and "What they Want to know," which respectively measured participants' areas of knowledge of TEYL and expectations of the TEYL course during the third year.Students brainstormed for 10 minutes and were given an extra five minutes to look at the suggestions I provided for them (See Appendix C).The third part of KWL, "What they learnt," was left blank for the students to fill at the end of the semester.The KWL sheets were then collected and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.
The diagnostic assessment of the students' views of teaching was also conducted using an open-ended prompt formulated as: "In groups, decide whether teaching is an art, craft, or science.Give two arguments to support your position."The concepts of "art," "craft," and "science" were first presented and discussed with them to provide a common understanding of these notions.They were then given ten minutes to discuss their views and reach a decision.Due to time constraints, only three groups presented their views orally to the rest of the class.Most groups noted down their views on a sheet of paper that I collected at the end of the session.Results were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively and discussed in class with them in a subsequent session.
In addition, two exit slips (see Appendix D) were distributed to students after two sessions to measure their immediate intake from two distinct lessons.The first exit slip was intended to reveal the extent to which input regarding TEYL in Tunisia and the need to view teaching as a science impacted students' takeaways from the lesson.Seventy exit slips out of eighty-one were retained for analysis.The second exit slip attempted to measure what students retained from the second lesson, which described the process of second language learning and introduced the concepts of incidental versus intentional learning as well as conditions for second language learning.Students were given 10 minutes to complete the forms and were asked to answer the prompts using a maximum of three sentences.For this second exit slip, only 19 out of 24 were retained for analysis; the remaining five were excluded from the analysis because they either were blank or lacked any relevant answers to the prompts.
For the mid-term examination of the course, eighteen group projects were submitted and presented.Students were asked to select and evaluate one EFL textbook designed for K-12 pupils in Tunisia.The evaluation criteria were presented and discussed during class (see Appendix E).
A final exam representing 70% of the students' final grade was administered in January 2023 as part of the national examination requirements for the TEYL subject (see Appendix F).The exams were graded and a score out of 20 was assigned to each copy.The exam comprised four parts that reflected the different foci of the TEYL course for the first semester.In part 1, students' ability to identify various views of teaching was tested.In part 2, students were requested to identify different feedback strategies based in two lesson extracts.Part 3 assessed their understanding of three different learning styles (viz., auditory, visual, and tactile).Part 4 assessed their ability to evaluate the effectiveness of a lesson against the SLA principles introduced during the course.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The results are given here in five parts.The first part reports the findings of the KWL chart, which participants completed with items they remembered from last year's TEYL course as well as with what they wanted to learn during the present TEYL course.The second part provides an overview of their views of teaching and beliefs.Part three provides information on the students' takeaways from sessions one and two, which respectively deal with teaching as a science, TEYL in the Tunisian context, and the process of second language learning.In the fourth part, a discussion of the pre-service teachers' projects is provided.Finally, the results of the participants' grades on the final exam are presented.

Pre-Service Teachers' Prior Knowledge and Expectations
The participants' reported takeaways from last year's course were qualitatively analyzed to derive the categories shown in Table 1.Findings suggest that the focus of the course was on learner motivation, classroom management techniques, theories of language learning, and the use of teaching aids in the classroom.This corresponds to a great extent to the syllabus of the second year TEYL course.Most of the participants reported that strategies to motivate children (over 16%) and manage the classes (15%) are the two major items that they remembered from last year's TEYL course.This is followed by two different theories of learning (almost 22%) and the use of teaching aids (10%).The remaining items in Table 1 could possibly be derived from the other items.For example, characteristics of young learners, the language learning process, and differentiated pedagogies could have been discussed as part of the unit on theories of learning (Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories).
To go beyond what students reported they knew already, participants were then asked to identify areas in TEYL that they would be interested in studying during their third year.Their responses are presented in Table 2  Most of the responses related to techniques and approaches used to facilitate learning English as a foreign language (over 17%) and strategies used to motivate learners (10.66%).Seven responses representing over 9% of the total number of responses were related to the design of lesson plans.Unsurprisingly, the rest of the table displays the extent of variation in the participants' expectations of the TEYL course.
Similar to the results shown in Table 1, Table 2 reflects the pre-service teachers' concerns with both the teaching approach they should adopt to teach English to young learners and ways to motivate YLs.Based on the results from both prompts, the two categories appear to represent the major concerns of the participants regarding TEYL.This is not surprising as the participants frequently referred to their experience learning English in primary schools using traditional methods of teaching which they considered boring.

Views of Teaching
In lesson 1, participants were asked whether teaching is an art, craft, or science.The group responses are displayed in Figure 1 below.

FIGURE 1 Views of Teaching
Most respondents (57%) reported that teaching is an art, followed by the statement that teaching is a science (29%), and finally 14% of the responses described teaching as primarily a craft.This runs counter to my observations where I noted a tendency for the participants to view teaching as craft.This highlights the need for informal observations to be supported by the implementation of a rigorous scientific procedure to investigate attitudes.In fact, my initial observations pointed to a prevailing view of teaching as craft, which is now countered by the data obtained above.
To delve deeper into the motives behind these reported views, the arguments that the pre-service teachers presented are displayed in Tables 3, 4, and 5 below.In Table 3, participants who stated that teaching is primarily an art argued that this is so because teaching involves "creating new methods" and "inventing new ideas" (about 47%) and "communicating complex ideas in simple ways" (20%).Two inferences can be drawn here.The first is that participants tended not to capitalize on their pedagogical training at the ISAMT since they believed that they would need to invent new approaches.The second inference is the possible confusion between teaching as a science and teaching as a craft since "communicating complex concepts in a simple way" can be achieved by developing skills and implementing specific teaching techniques, such as presenting information in different forms, presenting new materials in small steps, or scaffolding difficult tasks.
The second most prominent view of teaching is "teaching as a science."This view was justified on the basis that teaching requires attempts to implement research-informed approaches in the classroom and an ongoing assessment of one's own practices.Again, participants may have confused craft with science.In particular, the fact that teaching requires a lot of preparation is an indicator of the craft side of teaching.Finally, Table 5 presents the arguments that some participants provided to support their view of teaching as a craft.Here, they reported on the importance of skills and experience in teaching.

TABLE 5 Arguments for Teaching as Craft
Responses n % Skills to teach YLs 2 50% Experience to understand the needs of YLs 1 25% Experience to solve problems that arise 1 25% Total 4 The results were shared with students in a subsequent session.One objective was to raise their awareness of their underlying assumptions regarding teaching and the need to consciously approach teaching primarily as a scientific enterprise, especially given that they are novice teachers with little teaching experience.The students were surprised that most of them considered teaching as an art.Some mentioned that the findings may reflect the preservice teachers' desire to teach outside the beaten tracks by using new techniques and strategies that will ultimately lead to developments in language proficiency and will be more motivating to students.Another objective behind sharing these results with the students was to demonstrate how a teacher can conduct empirical work to add to or adjust their teaching based on a scientific analysis of students' profiles.
Still, positive attitudes, especially beliefs, are difficult to build within a short time span.This has been even more daunting due to unexpected strikes from students, which limited the number of class meetings and thus the course content.

Assessing Learning
Results of students' learning from the exit slips, the group projects, and the final exam are presented below.First, responses to the two questions in exit slip 1 are shown in Table 6.The responses provided by the students reflected the focus of lesson 1 on the importance to approach teaching primarily as a science (35%).The second set of responses "teaching English using clubs" (over 22%) reflected the second focus of the lesson where students read an article that provided background information on TEYL in Tunisia.The importance of early language education, particularly when it comes to pronunciation, and the significance of primary school teachers' language proficiency were also extensively discussed with the students during the lesson, which may explain why these categories came out at the top of all responses.Overall, students' responses to exit slip 1 reflected a high interest in lesson 1, which suggests that this lesson should be retained for future implementations of the TEYL course.
On another note, a few of the responses (highlighted in Table 6) echo what their peers orally reported in class regarding their views of teaching.In fact, one group mentioned that teaching is a dynamic system involving art, craft, and science.In the same class, another group argued that their view of teaching as art was supported by the fact that teaching cannot be "standardized" since learners in different contexts are likely to have different needs.The fact that some students used the same words and ideas as their peers reflects interesting instances of peer learning that can be exploited in my future TEYL classes and group projects.The evidence of peer learning is supported by my observation that pre-service teachers at the ISAMT formed a community and appreciated working together as a team.
Table 7 below shows participants' responses to the question in exit slip 2. Most responses revolved around incidental and intentional learning of a foreign language.Most interestingly, students were eager to know about ways the teacher can promote incidental learning in the classroom.Several tasks and/or lessons as well as procedures for their implementation were thus designed to be used in class as one way to deepen their understanding of these two concepts, especially after some issues related to such concepts were identified in their group projects.
It should be noted that the low literacy skills of many students may have affected the students' written feedback on the two exit slips.Future assessment tools should encompass oral feedback or combine both modes to generate content-richer responses.
In addition, a few issues related to various aspects of the project including content, methodology, presentation structure and delivery, and language were identified.These mainly concern missing justifications and illustrations from the textbook for the scores that the groups provided, as well as a lack of understanding of the concepts introduced in the course (e.g., incidental learning, negotiation of meaning, and input).Language issues relate to accuracy, including pronunciation and sentence structure, as well reading comprehension.It was also noted that many students understood meaningful input as input that reflects the culture and the immediate environment of the pupils rather than the target culture.For example, many groups found that a picture of a hamburger should be replaced by a traditional Tunisian dish, arguing that there are pupils who would not recognize this dish.Such evaluations reveal that there is a need for these students to understand that teaching about the target culture is an integral part of foreign language teaching.Another concern was for the students to overemphasize the value of non-verbal input considering it as an indicator of rich input.All of these issues were brought up at the end of the class presentations and discussed with students with a view to improving understanding and views about the course content.
Turning now to exam scores, individual students' scores (N=99) were entered on an Excel spreadsheet and calculated for descriptive statistics that include the mean, median, mode, and standard deviations.The objective was to provide a summary of students' performance and a view of its distribution across the sample.As shown in Table 8, the scores range from 1 (lowest score) to 16 (the highest score).An analysis of the mean, median, and mode reveals that students' performance scored below the threshold set for the students to pass the exam which is 10 out of 20.The standard deviation shows quite a spread of scores from the mean which in turn reflects variability in the students' performance.The scores are also negatively skewed.These statistics are expected as the English proficiency level is not a major criterion for entry into the undergraduate Education program.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
The findings of this exploratory study can be summarized as follows: 1.The pre-service teachers view teaching as primarily an art.This reflects, at least in part, the students' concern with the challenges that they will be facing in the field and the way they need to meet them once they start teaching.2. Lesson 1 on views of teaching and TEYL in Tunisia was successful.It revealed instances of peer learning that can be exploited in future lessons to enhance students' uptake from the TEYL course.3. Pre-service teachers' expectations of the TEYL course are centered on teaching techniques to facilitate learning, strategies to motivate young learners, and lesson planning.Again, this mirrors their concern about the skills that they perceive to be the most important when they start teaching.4. Formative assessment through exit slips and group projects revealed the pre-service teachers' limitations in their English language proficiency.These limitations impeded them from expressing themselves clearly and comprehensively about TEYL-related questions.This observation was confirmed by the feedback the students provided after the delivery of their projects as well as by the results of the final exam. 5. Formative assessment was beneficial to identify parts of the course the pre-service teachers were curious about and/or struggling with.For instance, they were interested in the way incidental learning can be promoted in the YL classroom in Tunisia and expressed their need to consolidate their understanding of this concept.This was confirmed by the issues identified in their group projects which pointed to a limited understanding of the concept of incidental learning.6. EFL tasks designed for YLs were set up for the students to deepen and enhance their understanding of concepts such as incidental and intentional learning.For example, students had to evaluate a set of tasks based on the SLA principles introduced and discussed during the semester (see Appendix G).Based on the students' feedback and performance in the final exam, it seems that these notions were well understood.
These findings have several pedagogical implications.The first is that students' English language proficiency represents a major obstacle to fully benefiting from the course and providing quality input to YLs.This is especially reflected in the average scores students achieved in the final exam.Second, formative assessment using both oral and written modes should be implemented to get richer and more reliable data on students' views and attitudes.Third, the study showed the benefits of using formative evaluation to help adjust teaching to the needs of the students.This finding reflects the dynamic nature of teaching of which assessment is an integral part.Activity 4: In groups, decide which moral would you choose for the story "The lion and the mouse" and explain your choice.

The morals Useful language
Moral 1: A friend in need is a friend indeed.
Moral 2: A kindness is never wasted.Kindness is very important ---Friendship is more important Activity 5: The teacher distributes cut outs of the story for each pupil.The teacher gives instructions one by one (e.g., Make my paws grey and my tail yellow; Make the mouse grey; Make the lion yellow.).Students listen and color accordingly.

Moral 3 :
Size doesn't matter.Each one has a different talent.I think….What do you think?I think the same---I don't think the same I like Moral 1 because….

TABLE 1 Prior Knowledge of TEYL
below.