Enhancing EFL teacher trainees’ cognition through Systemic Theoretical Instruction (STI)

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (SCT) proposes that human mental functioning is fundamentally a mediated process that is organized by cultural artefacts, language being one of the primary means of mediation (Lantolf & Thorne, 2007). Based on SCT, Gal’perin (1969) conceived Systemic Theoretical Instruction (STI), a developmental theory that proposes ways of developing cognition through three key phases: 1) Materialization; 2) Verbal Action; and 3) Internalization. Given that EFL teachers must possess a solid level of knowledge (linguistic, metalinguistic and pedagogical) and that there is no exact correspondence of the forms of tense/aspect in English and Spanish, these grammatical features seem to be particularly difficult to attain for learners of L1 Spanish. Thus, following a methodological design of mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative), this study aimed to investigate the extent to which intervention with STI could contribute in enhancing teacher trainees’ cognition of these features. The study was carried out at the University of Quintana Roo in México with a group of 50 participants (teacher trainees) during 8 weeks and distributed throughout 12 sessions. Data collection included pre, post and delayed testing and participants were divided into control and experimental groups. Intervention consisted of training based on STI (including its three phases) aiming to compare the effectiveness of this with Traditional Instruction in teaching the concepts of tense and aspect in English. Results showed that STI contributed to the development of metalinguistic knowledge which eventually leads to internalisation. Having received instruction on the basis of ´minimal-conceptual-units´, materialization and verbalisation contributed to fostering cognitive development (MLK and pedagogical thinking) among teacher trainees. Microgenesis affordances resulting from verbalisation revealed that collaborative languaging activated the effective use of semiotic tools (i.e. discourse markers, reasoning markers, play and metalanguage). This served to deploy mechanisms enabling joint attention and intersubjectivity which allowed learners to attain self and other regulation and ultimately internalization of the concepts of tense and aspect.