Tracing a pre-service primary English teacher's development in teaching L2 pragmatics: Knowledge, beliefs, and perceived challenges

Abstract

Answering the call for greater inclusion of pragmatics into language teacher education (Glaser, 2018) as well as for increased empirical research to support this inclusion (Schauer, 2022a), this study traces a pre-service teacher's development while planning and implementing a pragmatic unit in Primary English Language Teaching (PELT) classrooms in Germany. Following the reiterative structure of Design-Based Research, the trainee developed and delivered two 45-min lessons on suggestions to nine-to-eleven-year-olds, which were video-recorded and revised for reimplementation in a parallel class. This paper documents the trainee's professional development and pedagogical reasoning (Loughran, 2019) in terms of knowledge and beliefs, as elicited in four semi-structured interviews conducted at project beginning, after the first and second implementation, and upon project completion. The qualitative thematic analysis of the four interviews shows how the trainee teacher gained in pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986) as well as confidence and developed a more positive stance towards the teaching of L2 pragmatics to young learners. The study also sheds light on other needs for pedagogical training (instruction giving, language of instruction) that interact with teaching L2 pragmatics, and derives implications for teacher education that serve to enable pre-service teachers to teach pragmatics confidently in the primary English classroom.