Training future language teachers to developonline tutors’ competence throughreflective analysis

This article sets out to identify key competencies which language tutors need to develop inorder to manage synchronous online teaching. In order to aptly monitor interactions withdistant learners, it is proposed that three types of regulation pertaining to socio-affective,pedagogical and multimedia aspects are required. On the one hand, this research aims atspecifying these competencies and, on the other hand, it seeks to identify the relevance ofreflective analysis for professional development.The context of this study is a teacher training programme for Masters Degree students inteaching French as a foreign language that provides trainees with the opportunity of teachingonline to intermediate-level students of French from a North American university via adesktop videoconferencing platform. This programme first endeavours to put trainees in aprofessional situation by getting them to prepare and administer sessions in order to confrontthem with the specific challenges of synchronous online tutoring. Second, it seeks to helpthem to gain insight into their own activity by developing critical thinking towards theirown practice.The data elicited for this research derive from the tutor trainees’ interpretations of theirown practice when confronted with the film of their own situated activity. The episodes chosenby the trainees to feed the self-confrontation process constitute significant units because bybeing told and commented upon, they elucidate how and to what extent competencies arebuilt. Three discursive strategies have been identified and used to organise the content analysisof the data: description; expression of a difficulty; reflective review of the activity. The strategiesused by trainees to verbalise their own activity can inform teacher educators about theconstraints of the work situation and about the resources trainees need to deploy to face up tothis unknown professional situation.Results indicate that trainees concentrate particularly on pedagogical aspects that distanceand faulty technology have rendered complex. The encountered difficulties are equally distributedbetween a repertoire of competencies pertaining to language teaching and competenciesmore directly linked with online teaching. Finally, this study has enabled us to assessthe potential of self-confrontation for teacher practice and leads us to propose directions forimproving this training device