ELT teacher education flipped classroom: An analysis of task challenge and student teachers‟ views and expectations

In this study, we explore the interplay between task complexity, task conditions and task difficulty introduced by Robinson (2001) in flipped classroom instruction at tertiary level through the data we collected from undergraduate English Language Teaching (ELT) department students studying at an English-medium state university. For the participants, we adopted the flipped classroom principle that content attainment largely takes place outside the classroom and application attainment inside the classroom. Following this principle, we systematically designed and sequenced tasks according to their complexity, difficulty, and conditions, and assigned them to the ELT student teachers over an academic semester. Data regarding flipped classroom principle in relation to task design features were collected from the students through a focus group meeting and self-report questionnaires. This paper aimed to link ELT student teachers’ opinions of task difficulty, complexity and conditions in flipped classroom principle about content and application attainment and discuss the implications of the findings for ELT teacher education.