Journals Proceedings

Abstract

This research is a series of major research: A model of professional learning practice for 21st century learners, focusing on English language learning. There are seven English development projects to be used as a tool to investigate how 21st century learners practising learning English in various courses. The projects are the followings: project1. How to write an abstract, project2. English conversation for beginners, project3. English conversation for intermediate level, project4. English conversation for advanced level, project5. Standardized test, project6. English conversation for Engineering students, and project7. Job application. The aims of this research were to investigate how 21st century learners learning to practice learning and to provide a short model of professional learning practice through an English course: English conversation for beginners. Learners in this project meant as follows: participants practicing learning how to reach their speaking goal at their own pace, teachers practicing learning how to enhance participants to reach their speaking goal, a researcher practicing learning how to conduct research and to facilitate both participants and teachers to reach their speaking learning and teaching goal. Twenty one participants acted as learners in this course. Fourteen officials were from the College of Industrial Technology and the rest from the Audit unit of President Department, King Mongut’s university of Technology North Bangkok. There were ten hours for this course. Six hours for a Thai teacher and four hour for a foreign teacher. There are two steps in this research. Step1. action research in action (adapted from Hadley, 2003): goalsetting, focus and investigate were used to narrow the scope of research. Step2. action research procedures: plan, act, observe, reflect, revise and report were used to obtain a simple model of professional learning practice of learners in project 2. The research reported that using action research in action and action research procedures encouraged some participants to reach their speaking goal at their own pace, to increase teachers’ reflection on how to help students to reach goals and to increase a researcher’s confidence in doing research. A simple model of professional learning practice of project 2: English conversation for beginners was summarized and shown below.