Innovation in Language Learning

Scholars in the reading field frequently define reading as a learnt cognitive skill that begins with the visual decipherment of written signs (letters and vocalization in Hebrew and Arabic) and ends with absorption of the meaning of words in the mental lexicon of long-term memory—i.e., understanding written words (Bentin & Ibrahim, 1996). Many concur that reading consists of three fundamental processes: the visual-ocular, the aural, and the cognitive (Blachman, Ball, Black, & Tangel, 1994). According to this scheme, reading acquisition is a developmental process that requires a gradual transition between various developmental stages until the individual’s reading skills become honed and automatic (Ibrahim, Eviatar, & Aharon-Peretz, 2002).

     This study proposes a new and novel metaphor for understanding reading and the decipherment of the text for those engaged in training and mentoring teachers in their first year on the job. Conducted in the framework of a mentoring programme run by a large academic institution in the north of Israel designed to help novices assimilate into the education system by offering professional, cultural, and emotional assistance as they begin their teaching careers, it examined the way in which the contribution made by the support group was experienced and described by a set of novices and how it helped them cope with the “reality shock” discussed in the professional literature.

     The leading research approach being qualitative, the data were collected from a number of sources that were triangulated: on-going reflective journals, in-depth interviews, and documentation of the discourse processes in in-depth workshops held over approximately one working year. Analysis of the data revealed that the novices regarded the support framework as making a significant contribution to helping them in the transfer of knowledge in their first year on the job, speaking of the transfer in terms of a process of “reading a map or text.” This metaphor running like a scarlet thread through all the testimonies, under the influence of and in relation to the definition of reading as an interactive process (Carell, Devine, & Eskey, 1988), this theoretical lens was selected to describe the learning path taken by novices from the end of their final year of study to their first teaching post. It conveys both their learning and the interpretation they gave to the transfer of knowledge from theoretical to practical. The theory that derived from the field—which draws an analogy between the first year of teaching and the process of deciphering texts—is presented and illustrated via the novices’ authentic and persuasive narratives. Shedding light on the intrinsic process of learning as experienced by teachers, it theory helps teacher-training faculty improve and revise teaching-training courses in an age that calls for sophisticated skills capable of coping with the demands of the twentieth century.