Missing in action and lost in thought: a grassroots implementation of genre pedagogy by practitioner researchers in an English language classroom for adults

This paper reports on the grass roots adoption of a methodology for teaching reading and writing based on genre theory (Martin & Rose, 2012; Rose & Martin, 2012) in English for general purposes classes at an English language teaching (ELT) centre at an Australian university. We report on teachers’ experiences on using genre pedagogy, informed and inspired by the Reading to Learn (R2L) program and genre pedagogy from the so-called ‘Sydney School’ (Martin & Rose, 2007; Martin & Rose, 2008; Rose & Martin, 2012). We report on how we introduced elements of the R2L program into our lessons using a ‘bottom up’ approach with the view that individual teachers might find this useful for implementation of this methodology in their own contexts. We found that genre pedagogy can be adopted by teachers and implemented at the classroom level despite such challenges as teachers learning new classroom practices and reconciling differences with previous classroom practices.


Introduction
Teaching and learning writing in the English language classroom can present teachers with a range of challenges. One challenge at the planning stage is selecting appropriate examples of written texts and deciding upon classroom activities that enable learners to interact with and understand such texts. Written texts that are appropriate to both learners' future social practices (e.g. writing a report) and current language proficiency are an ideal choice. Similarly, activities that support learners to interact with and understand these written texts in a manner that aligns with learners' future social practices and current language proficiency are also appropriate. One way to proceed is for teachers to view written texts in terms of their purpose, such as that of the genre writing approach. (Christie and Martin, 1997;Cope and Kalantzis, 1993;Rose 2008Rose , 2011Rothery, 1994Rothery, , 1996. For example, this would mean viewing an argumentative essay in terms of its purpose, as arguing for a point of view. When teachers and learners examine and co-create different types of text according to their purpose, this enables learners to clearly see the role they play in social practices. This can lead to greater understanding and more effective control as learners develop greater independence in their writing and begin to engage in the target social practices.
http://online.unisc.br/seer/index.php/signo school of genre pedagogy, teaching and learning is viewed as a process of "guidance through interaction in the context of shared experience" (Martin, 1999, p. 126). In a classroom setting, this involves the teacher guiding learners to interact with written texts such as biographical recounts, expositions (i.e. arguing for a point of view) or descriptive reports. These are termed knowledge genres (Rose, 2020, p. 239) and more examples are given in Figure 1, below. Knowledge genres are often specified in a syllabus and selected by materials designers or teachers.
Teachers help learners to become aware of the social purposes of these knowledge genres, their organisation and their language features by negotiating meanings through classroom discourse. Teachers also achieve their lessons aims through a goal-oriented social process that develops through language in stages (Martin, 2009, p. 13). In other words, the language of teachers and learners in the classroom is also a type of genre, and these are termed curriculum genres (Rose, 2020, p. 239). Curriculum genres are multimodal, and involve language, body language, images and the other resources teachers use in their classroom practice to exchange knowledge with learners (Rose, 2020, p. 240 Figure 1, below. We can summarise classroom practice using these terms as teachers guiding learners to interact with knowledge genres through curriculum genres in order for learners to gain greater control and work towards mastery of the knowledge genres. In English for general purposes language courses for adults (sometimes called General English or GE), the goal is often to socialise learners into the English language community through giving them greater control of relevant genres. The knowledge genres in these courses are seemingly everyday and non-technical compared to, for example, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses. This results in different fields of activity and knowledge (Rose, 2017).
GE knowledge genres might include writing an argumentative essay or a biographical recount. GE learners are also writing to a different audience to EAP learners, leading to differences in the relationships between writer and reader (i.e. the tenor of social relations) (Martin & Rose, 2008, p.11). While an argument genre may appear across curriculums (e.g. GE and EAP), the intended audience will not be the same. For example, writing an essay for a popular magazine with a general readership in GE versus writing an essay for a lecturer in EAP will require variations in tenor.
Similarly, differences in essay topics (e.g. on medicine or business) will result in variations in the social activity (i.e. the field) (Martin & Rose, 2008, p.11). Finally, a written essay versus a video essay will see changes in the role language is playing in managing the communication (i.e. mode) (Martin & Rose, 2008, p.11). These differences in tenor, field and mode reflect variations in context; each situation has a different combination of relationships, social activity and the role language is required to play. Taken together, tenor, field and mode are called register variables because they vary systematically (Martin & Rose, 2008, p.11). Different situations result in different configurations of register (e.g. tenor, field and mode), which also vary the patterns of meaning in a text (Martin & Rose, 2008, p.11

An overview of knowledge genres and curriculum genres
The classroom is also a social space where teachers use language to achieve goals in stages.
From the perspective of genre pedagogy, interactions between teacher and learners enact relationships, classroom activities construe experience and language is used to construct and organise meanings as the lesson unfolds. In other words, classroom language use can be viewed as specialised curriculum genres with particular selections in register (Rose, 2020;Christie, 2002). These selections in register include 1) a curriculum register of knowledge and values and 2) a pedagogic register of a) pedagogic relations between teacher and learners, b) pedagogic activity of learning tasks and c) pedagogic modalities such as "spoken, written, visual and gestural modes of communication" (Rose, 2020, p. 240). Through action research and working closely with teachers over many years, curriculum genres have been carefully planned to ensure teachers can guide learners through interaction in the context of shared experience (Martin, 1999;2012). These have been reported by Rose and Martin (2012) and developed into teacher education materials for the R2L program (Rose, 2018 to ensure that everyone in the class has understood it before then guiding and supporting the class to use the linguistic resources of the text to create another. These interactions are carefully described in Section 3 below.

An overview of key curriculum genres
Curriculum genres are "the multimodal genres of classroom practice, in which knowledge is exchanged between teacher and learners" (Rose, 2020, p. 239), first described by Christie (2002). These have been made accessible to teachers through the Reading to Learn (R2L) program (Rose, 2015(Rose, , 2017(Rose, , 2018Rose & Martin, 2012), which is both a genrebased pedagogy and a professional learning program (Rose, 2020, p. 236 Construction with classroom work on whole texts, narrowing down to work on passages and sentences before returning to whole texts (see Figure 2 below).
The key curriculum genres we identified as relevant to our learners are Preparing for Reading, Detailed Reading and Joint Rewriting. These were selected because we wanted to foreground work on short passages as this allowed us to work on spelling should it arise but focus primarily on grammar, discourse and register. While we carefully prepared learners to read, time limitations did not permit us to work with learners on the joint construction of whole texts. These key curriculum genres will now be defined and the lesson planning and classroom language described. In brief, Preparing for Reading involves previewing the text by the teacher stating its purpose and giving a spoken summary of it. This provides support to learners and enables them to follow the meaning of the text when it is read allowed by the teacher. Before reading the text aloud, the teacher prepares learners by providing a summary of each sentence in language they can understand. After reading the sentence aloud, the teacher then supports learners to identify key words, phrases and language patterns which are then discussed and highlighted.
This ensures that every learner develops a detailed understanding of the passage. Joint Rewriting involves the teacher supporting learners to write a new passage using the key words, phrases and language patterns that were identified and discussed in the Detailed Reading. Each of these curriculum genres involve careful analysis and preparation by the teacher to ensure that the lesson maintains an appropriate learning pace, thereby keeping learners engaged but not leaving anyone behind.

Practitioner research
Practitioner research is a broad term that includes practicing professionals, such as nurses, social workers and teachers, engaging in systematic enquiry into their own work practices. Teacher research can be defined as systematic self-study by teachers working individually or collaboratively to lead to realworld impact. It is also made public (Borg & Sanchez, 2015a, p.1). Like all forms of research, it is systematic.
The self-study element refers to the teacher examining their own work and context. The real-world impact could be realised in terms of informing teachers' beliefs, knowledge, skills or classroom practices, learners' beliefs, knowledge of performance, or its effect on the organisation more broadly (Borg & Sanchez, 2015a, p.1). What distinguishes teacher research from reflective practice (Wallace, 1991) is that teacher research is shared with others by being made public. This defining feature means that teacher research can be critiqued, reviewed, replicated and developed as was the case for the present authors.
This is in sharp contrast to private enquiry that, no matter how systematic, cannot make a contribution to field knowledge.
There are additional terms that are commonly associated with practitioner research in education.
Action research (Burns, 2010, p.8) (Barton, 2005, p. 33). In our case, we regularly reflect and work collaboratively to develop professional practices, share our research and practices in in-service workshops and seminars, and make this experience public in order to have a realworld impact in the TESOL community.

Positive effects of practitioner research
The involvement of practitioners and the foregrounding of the workplace and those stakeholders closely associated with it (e.g. learners and academic managers) can enable previously overlooked voices to become heard and valued. This, in turn, can create new metaphors and understandings based on comments by these stakeholders that emerge from their discussion of key issues. For example, in one practitioner research project a learner likened her fear of group work to "putting your hand into a pool of dark water and the thought that there might be a snake there" (Hamilton, 2006, p.15  This has led some researchers to call for teacher research to be made more sustainable (Allwright, 1997 However, it cannot be assumed that teacher research will always occur or that it will be viewed positively by other researchers. As van Lier observes, "… reflecting and researching teachers may meet with resistance or lack of comprehension, perhaps even ridicule and active sabotage, from peers and superiors, as well as from academics who feel their turf is being invaded by unauthorized invaders" (1994, p. 340).
Traditionally there has been a clear divide between research and practice, with university-based researchers and scholars creating the theories that professionals apply in practice (Schön, 1983, p. 36).
This view may still be held by some stakeholders who see the practitioner's role as one of practice with no scope for research.

The context
The authors, who were also the teachers,

The research tools and data
From our own training and education, we began this project as reflective practitioners. The reflective model (Wallace, 1991, p. 15

Script
This sentence tells us that the writer went on a holiday when she was a child to Hawaii (an island near America) with her mother and father for about one week.
Then, we decided on the key words we wanted to focus on. How we decided on the key words depended on our learners' needs. In this example, our primary focus was on content words which could later be substituted. For example, '5 years old' could be substituted in the learners' recounts with '10 years old' or 'a teenager'. We prepared these key words as follows (Table 3.2):

Detailed Reading (Scaffolding reading texts)
What? By actualising the well-prepared script in the classroom, we could have valuable interactions which developed our learners' understanding of the text and key language. We systematically went through the script, prompting and guiding the interactions. These interactions were an example of guiding learners through dialogue in the context of shared experience (Martin, 1999(Martin, /2012. Following is a sequence of how our script for one key word unfolded (Table 3.4): Furthermore, by asking learners to highlight these key words, we increased the salience. Richard Schmidt (1990Schmidt ( , 2001    In the whole-class rewrite, one can see that the key words were substituted with new key words: '5 years old' changed to '10 years old'. In the small-group rewrite, learners took more risks: 'When I was 5 years old' changed to 'When I finished high school'. It was clear that the learners had processed the key words during the detailed reading stage and were able to effectively use them in their own rewrite. So what? The joint rewrite stage was significant because it gave valuable insights into the learners' writing knowledge and gaps. The rewrites are reproduced in Table 3.7 below and they are followed by our reflections. not 'year'". This interaction between the nominated writer and a more capable peer aided learning. As (Martin, 1999)

Reviewing the impact on learner writing
The R2L

Conclusion
Practitioner research can be seen as a state of mind (Hamilton, 2006, p. 16 and the usefulness of the findings (Hamilton et al, 2007, p. 21). We also recognise these benefits from our experiences with this project. Practitioner research has encouraged reflexivity and reflection but, more than this, it has driven the development of professional We also identify with all the benefits of teacher research identified in Table 1 above. However, the top three benefits from our own experiences are as follows. Firstly, it has promoted collaboration between teachers. We discussed our plans and lessons in much greater depth than we otherwise would have done and our plans, lessons and reflections benefitted from this.
Secondly, it gave us greater insight into our own practices. Thoroughly analysing model texts and carefully designing classroom interactions using the tools from the R2L program has greatly increased our awareness of our own practices and allowed us to change and reshape them in pursuit of greater learning outcomes for all our learners. Thirdly, it has encouraged flexibility in teaching. Before engaging with R2L methodology, we were guided by our training in communicative language teaching that emphasises student-centredness as good practice and teachercentredness as not. Our engagement with genre pedagogy has opened our minds to new possibilities in our teaching, revealing this distinction as a false dichotomy; as the above findings report, there are benefits to teachers providing clear guidance. A more nuanced approach, sensitive to the affordances provided by the roles of teachers and learners in the language classroom, has increased our flexibility in teaching.
Applying R2L methodology in our context presented us with both challenges and opportunities.
The main challenges we faced included finding time in our busy work schedules to analyse, plan and reflect on our classroom experiences. More specifically, planning the classroom interactions and then using this plan to manage these classroom interactions was perhaps the biggest challenge we faced. Overall, we are very pleased with the results. The focus on carefully analysing passages and planning classroom interactions, based on these analyses and our learners' needs, has made us more aware of and able to work with learners' emerging language. As busy teachers, we had to maintain a focus on the classroom while also engaging with the R2L methodology. Planning, reflecting on and discussing our R2L lessons together gave us a way to navigate our way through preparing and teaching writing lessons.