SESSION 2B

Amin Zargarian, The University of Adelaide
Teach them how to fish with friends: Student engagement in projects and the nature of inquiry in language education

Abstract
There have been various studies in the world of language education on encouraging students to involve and contribute to class activities. However, not every teacher considers such engagement a step in a series of steps in students’ participation in class. In other words, the purpose of such engagement often does not go beyond socializing, making friends and having a conversation, which is the reason why this study attempts to illustrate a wider picture of where engagement is placed in language teaching.

This presentation will also offer a chance to the teachers who wish to explore further on the theories that are particularly involved with student engagement not only for the young and adult age group, but also for children and even more so in a variety of subjects and disciplines. There are some key take-away facts that this study borrows from Inquiry-based Learning and Project-based Learning (PBL). In particular, as Boss and Krauss (2013) describe inquiry as "the engine of deep learning", I will set a few examples from my teaching experience to envision a learning environment for teachers that provides experientially shareable and practically beneficial advice they can apply to their teaching and enhance the chances of “deep learning” for their students.

Bio
An MA graduate in Applied Linguistics, Amin Zargarian is an Academic English Language teacher at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is currently teaching at Kansaigaidai University, Japan, as an Assistant Professor and his interests are along the teaching spectrum ranging from student learning, teacher education, philosophy of education, psychoanalysis in education and critical pedagogy.