“From Teacher-Centered to Students-Centered to Collaborative Learning” Illuminating My Teacher Knowledge Through Narrative Inquiry

Teacher knowledge refers to the ways teachers know themselves and their professional work situations. This paper applies the narrative inquiry method to illuminate my own teacher knowledge. Through each vignette told in this paper, I will inquire into what I know and feel about English teaching-learning process and illuminate my teacher knowledge by referring to what education experts say regarding particular concepts of English teaching-learning. My students and I will have greater chance to share the values behind the students-centered classroom interaction, the Internet-based learning, or other kind of learning to follow in the future when ‘we', not only ‘I' redefine education practices at schools


Introduction
There is still a strong dispute on whether the content knowledge or the pedagogical knowledge is the most important attribute of a quality teacher. A research done by Kukla-acevedo proves that both are equally important in effective teaching (2009). As an English teacher who is not a graduate of an English teacher college, I often find it very challenging to prove for myself that I am able to teach. I read books and research reports on pedagogical theory and practices and I like to apply some recommendations on effective teaching provided by educational experts in my own classroom. Nevertheless, I never find myself as a confident teacher who feels all right with all that have happened in the classroom. I feel like there is always a gap between realities in my classroom and the ideal teaching practices as described in the books and research reports. Xu and Connely argue that WHDFKHUV ¶ NQRZOHGJH is more critical than knowledge-for-teachers (2009, p. 223). Bearing in mind that content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge as knowledge-for-teachers, I believe it is time for me to know about my own teacher knowledge in order to gain more confidence in teaching. By definition, teacher knowledge is ³D QDUUDWLYH FRQVWUXFW ZKLFK UHIHUHQFHV WKH WRWDOLW\ RI D SHUVRQ ¶s personal practical knowledge gained from formal and informal educational experience´ (Xu & Connelly 2009, p. 221). Teacher knowledge refers to the ways teachers know themselves and their professional work situations. This paper applies the narrative inquiry method to illuminate my own teacher knowledge. The narrative inquiry itself is adopted here because through thinking narratively, I can see everything that I experienced as happening in particular time and place and so I see each experience in sequential flow and that ³LQTXLU\ itself is a narrative SURFHVV´ ; X & Connelly 2009, p. 223 The vignette above shows that the prevalent view of teaching adjoining my learning English is that teachers believe students will learn nothing unless teachers make effort to teach them what to learn therefore the classroom activities are so structured (Raz 1982, p. 110). The rampant learning styles adopted by students in my school time is what so called as surface learning where students understand and remember knowledge already exist as it is provided by teachers, and absorb new information that do not change students engraved thinking process (Offir et al. 2008(Offir et al. , p. 1175 From the vignette of my learning English above, I like to accentuate on three things as follow. 1. I tagged along similar path of English learning like other students in Indonesia did 6 six years of formal classroom sessions with learning activities highly controlled by teachers except that I also joined English course outside school that provided less controlled learning activities. The fact that I also joined English course outside school may become one of the reasons why I managed to always score higher than the average. This course gave me additional learning activities that other students could not have in their formal education. Lier (1996, p. 43) says to guarantee improvement in language learning students must occupy their minds with that language between lessons as well as in lessons. My involvement in the course was also an indicator of my having higher motivation to learn English that helped me much in my learning (Bernaus & Gardner 2008). However, there is also another explanation for this. Perhaps I was one of what Jeffrey calls as high assessment focus students or students who win the games of learning by following exactly all rules prescribed by teachers (2009, p. 199).
High assessment focus students are the successful ones in surface learning.
My learning English at the university makes me believe that discussion on English structures must not serve as the most important section in textbooks or classroom activities since as expressions of cultures, English usage is very dependent on the users. I know that the choices for the use of particular forms or structures of English do not depend merely on the information content, time of events, etc but also on the purposes, identities, and social variables of the users (McConachy 2009, p. 117). My attitude toward teaching-learning English has also changed through my experience studying in the faculty of English literature. I preferred to look at the purposes of someone using particular chunk of English rather than the structures of that discrete English. Literary persons are very skilful in their choices of language and so if I am to teach English I believe I will let my students to study variety of possible pieces of English to achieve the XVHUV ¶ purposes to communicate in English. This is in line to what Cadman (2008, p. 30) says that teachers ¶ attitude and priority influence the teaching learning process.

Being a novice English teacher-educator
It was indeed startling, or other might look at it as silly, for me to get the position as teacher-educator as I was not a graduate of a teacher-college.
Soon as I got the position, I knew that I had chosen the right profession. My father and mother were teachers and I felt like I was born to be a teacher too. 304) this is perhaps a reason why not all my students feel secure with my new approach in our interaction. Regarding the array of experiences that students have at school in a whole, students may not remember all what their teachers taught but they will very likely not forget how they are treated (Nguyen 2009, p. 655). While other teachers are still keeping the hierarchy, it will be hard for students to treat me differently so as to lessen the power distance between me and my students. I was also unable to share the egalitarian value because I enjoyed my role as knowledge provider, which automatically positions my students as the ones need the learning, not me. Bernaus and Gardner (2008, p. 399) say teachers may apply any teaching strategy they think as of value for students but students have to perceived it as such in order for this strategy to be effective. Furthermore, since the prevailing cultures in my classroom still inhibit the desirable situations of my planned changes, the possibility for me to fail in implementing my plan is bigger (Wang & Cheng 2005, p. 20). From the training, I developed more skills in teaching English and I learnt the new trends in teaching English called as student-centered education, which put more weight on active learning experiences than on lectures, on critical thinking and open ended questions than on memorization and close ended questions, on simulations and role plays than on drills and imitating, and on self-paced or team-based learning than on teacher-control learning and competition-based learning (Felder andBrent 1996 in Isikoglu et al. 2009, p. 351). This training put me to new learning situation where students were the center of the teaching-learning process as this training was delivered this way, for example by letting the trainees do peer-assessment and self-assessment through peer-observation and selfreflection on their microteaching practices. This also changed my belief and attitude to teaching-learning. Attitude and belief are dynamic and situated and they change as product of new situational experience (Ellis 2008, p. 23).  (2001, p. 315). Team works and peer conversations could not provide same chances for all students to learn because strong students would be made dominant by the shared value that the more knowledgeable people were in the higher level of the social hierarchy and therefore had the authority to control the group. Indeed, my gradual shift of roles from a depositor of knowledge to a facilitator of knowledge gaining through involving students in classroom decision making and frequent peer teaching was taken by many students as a form of aversion to share my knowledge with them. My changing classroom practices are often blocked by the sociocultural values in Indonesia where teachers are considered as the fountain of knowledge that pour into VWXGHQWV ¶ mind all that students need to study and students deposit all without reserve (Lewis 1997, p. 14). I cannot neglect both the discrepancies between the ideals and the realities of teaching English in my own classrooms or the discrepancies between my personal and my students ¶ collective view of learning in order to create changes in learning and to address them one by one can cause minimum impact (Jeffrey 2009, p. 195) Thank to the pre-departure training that I took part in before leaving to Australia that I was not stunned by my real first experience as a student in the students-centered education. I could develop my autonomy in learning as required by this kind of education because I was made to take control in my own learning by OHFWXUHUV ¶ attitudes and facilitation. I was given all the opportunities to consult my learning problems with lecturers and they would do their best to address my learning needs, even though it was quite personal, like I needed to leave their classroom earlier as I was worried to take public transport late in the evening when the course was held in the evening, but they also remind me of my learning tasks during the weeks to come.

I was taking two years leave from doing my teaching jobs when I got an Australian Partnership Scholarship (APS) to study at La Trobe
According to Healey (2007, p. 384) taking the control in their own hands is WKH SUHUHTXLVLWH IRU VWXGHQWV ¶ autonomy.
At La Trobe, I have even undergone a new kind of learning, which I have known very little thing about it from books I read before I came to Australia, a learning which is facilitated mostly by the Internet. In this new learning, I hit upon three features so dissimilar to my previous learning experiences. Those are: 1. The use of the Internet as more than just an educational tool because the Internet very often serves as provider of knowledge, a facilitator, organisator, and other roles that teacher commonly play in teacher-centered as well as students-centered education.
2. Learners are not united by the four walls of the classroom because they are taking the same course. They are united by the same interest in learning particular area of study with unlimited people around the world.
3. Students-teacher interactions do not occur at schools only. They can be anywhere but they can still interact for the sake of learning facilitated by the Internet.  Coffin, North, and Martin (2009, p. 87) find that in online discussion students select evidences more carefully, reticent students become more involved, and students have more time to think before replying. In on line discussion the present of lecturers can also be maintained in order not to interfere with VWXGHQWV ¶ autonomy. In my on line discussion told above, the lecturer just gave the starting questions to discuss but did not involve in the discussion, because she wanted us to take control of the discussion and responsible for the outcomes. This method is suggested by Arnold and Ducati (2006, p. 46) for teachers facilitating online discussion. The learning skills developed from learning activities facilitated by the Internet are various. The definition of literacy as one of the basic skills in learning includes more than just an ability to access information from written texts. Digital literacies involve other skills such as importing texts, dragging, dropping, editing, scanning and deciding what is important and what is not, and being able to process that information in the given time (Kinnane 2008, p. 2).
My learning activities at La Trobe University I believe are more adaptable cross-culturally than learning activities frequently mentioned in textbooks describing the students-centered education. I think many concepts in the students-centered education, such as autonomy, independence, selfassessment, and so on are easier to apprehend than to practice for many students at schools whose prevalent culture values are harmony, hierarchy, and indirectness. In the new learning facilitated by the Internet, the conceptions of collaboration, community of learning, and connectedness, may sound less threatening to students ¶ from communal type of cultures as Asian students generally. The conception of learning community is indeed very fundamental in this new learning. The new learning is the practice of a new theory of learning called as the connectivism theory. Kop and Hill (2008, p. 1) argue that in the theory RI FRQQHFWLYLVP NQRZOHGJH LV ³DFWXDWHG WKURXJK WKH SURFHVV RI D learner connecting to and feeding information into a learning FRPPXQLW\´ Kop and Hill (2008, p. 6) further argue knowledge is ³VLWXDWHd within a community in which a µPRUH knowledgeable other ¶ facilitates the move from the periphery to the centre of the FRPPXQLW\´ In connectivism, the conceptions of µWUDQVIHUULQJ NQRZOHGJH ¶ or µEXLOGLQJ NQRZOHGJH ¶ are no longer the centre of discussion because learning activities are more like growing or developing µVHOYHV ¶ and µFRPPXQLW\ ¶ (Kop & Hill 2008, p. 9 to be motivated, and they also need to develop learning community that enable the members achieve their goals in various ways and to be able to make decisions in learning as adults.

Connecting New Learning with Previous Knowledge
It is obvious that I need to find a new way to cope with the learning situation in my own classroom to eventually see that my students treat me more like a friend in learning than a provider of knowledge and that they are autonomous in their learning so they will all take advantages of any classroom activities that are compromised to serve their learning needs. I have to restart my personal project to create a classroom interaction that is more studentscentered. I have learnt from what I have done so far in my classroom that: 1. The initiative to shift from a teacher-centered to students-centered approach was not shared by all students. It belonged to me and few strong students who took the shift as an opportunity to accelerate their learning.
2. My students were so diverse in their learning styles and abilities that blatantly following activities in lessons plan could favour some students learning styles and do unjust to the RWKHUV ¶

Conclusion
In order to have classroom situations in which I become a friend in learning not a sole provider of learning, students become autonomous and responsible for their own learning, and teaching-learning become a shared activity for people everywhere and anytime not limited to school building or school time, I know I have to ensure that all my students involve in personal activity to connect their previous knowledge with their new learning. My students and I will have greater chance to share the values behind the studentscentered classroom interaction, the Internet-based learning, or other kind of learning to follow in the future when µZH ¶ not only µ, ¶ redefine education practices at schools and we have to redefine it through continuous collaborative learning.