IATEFL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE 2021: Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

  IATEFL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE 2021

This is the second in a series of posts, summarising some of my personal highlights from this year's online IATEFL conference. This time, I'll look at Teacher Training and Development.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

A large part of my job is the development of (usually very experienced) teachers, therefore I made an effort to attend talks relevant to this field. Here are some of the key takeaways from five sessions related to Teacher Training and Development, presented in the order that the talks were programmed over the three days of the conference.

Talk 1: 'Sticky objects': exploring quality of life for teacher development

 

Judith Hanks (University of Leeds), Sian Etherington (University of Salford) & Eman Alshehri (King Abdulaziz University)

This interactive workshop emerged from research done in the UK and Saudi Arabia, based on a cultural theory framework, informed by feminism and cultural studies, developed by Sarah Ahmed (2004: 7) ‘Emotions […] shape and are also shaped by, contact with objects’ – hence the ‘sticky objects’ of the title.

In this session, each of the three presenters told us an anecdote: a snapshot of a teacher’s life. For example, one teacher had set up an activity based around a video, but – when they wanted to show it, the technology (the sticky object) didn’t work. Guided by some pre-prepared questions, attendees were then invited to comment on a padlet about how much they identified with the situations, what they would have done, etc. In the absence of breakout rooms, this was a great way to feel that we were interacting with other delegates.

The focus was very much on positive stories, as the presenters pointed out that the study of psychology in language learning and teaching often focuses on negative or problematic areas: anxiety, (un)willingness to communicate, etc. and that positive psychology is underexplored. However, we should be aware of the ‘tyranny of positive attitude’ – everything can’t go well all of the time!

What can various groups do to foreground positive emotions and wellbeing?

Teachers can work on, for example:

- Interpersonal relationships: Find people you like working with and develop projects you like working on. 

- Reframing experiences: negative things do happen, but try to take a positive from them, e.g. in the anecdote above, the teacher laughed about the ‘ghost in the machine’, which became an ongoing class joke every time there was a tech issue.

Institutions can work on (issues related to pay and conditions were not mentioned), areas shown in the following slide, including, for example:

- Provide resources; Space and time for teachers to be autonomous and create their own materials and develop their own courses.

And finally, teacher education needs to foreground the importance of positive psychology and emotional wellbeing for example, by promoting collegiality and training skills of positive peer feedback and mentoring

Talk 2: What we can learn from role reversal: teachers as learners

Tania Horak (University of Central Lancashire)   

This session, part of the IATEFL Research SIG showcase, was a report on a study of language teachers going back to the language classroom as students (of Polish) for CPD. After each class, participants reflected on the following themes in a shared document.

Some of the conclusions that emerged from this role reversal experiment

- The value of repetition: Teachers often worry that this will be boring (or are under pressure to get through the book). On the contrary, learners, especially the slightly older demographic represented in this sample, really appreciate the opportunity to go over the material. 

- Learning strategies: allow the group time to share suggestions of things that have worked for them: strategies and resources.

- Empathy with students: The teachers in this study reported tiredness, frustration with memory problems and guilt for arriving late, missing class or failing to do homework.

Tania finished with the observation that this experiment was a fun, enriching and eye-opening CPD opportunity, but reminded us that this needs to fit in with teachers’ busy lives.

Talk 3: Enhancing teachers’ professional development by creating teacher activity groups (TAGs) 

Sevil Aghayeva & Konul Hajiyeva (British Council Azerbaijan)

This short session, part of the IATEFL Global Issues SIG showcase, reported project in Azerbaijan, set up by the British Council’s stability fund, financed by the UK government. The project aimed  aimed to deliver CPD and promote pedagogical skills in remote and isolated areas, but, in my opinion, many of the principles described could be implemented in most teaching contexts.

The Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs) are regular CPD sessions, similar to the Communities of Practice (CoPs) described by Ana Garcia Stone here or the ‘Grups de Treball’ (working groups) in my own institution. 

Valuable, sustainable and memorable CPD is teacher-driven. In this case, topics were pre-determined, but deviation from the topics was allowed, even encouraged. The level of autonomy depends on the size and scope of the project. In smaller institutions (like ours), the topics are chosen by teachers. It is important that this time is part of teachers’ working timetable and that a clear objective is established, e.g. sharing or publishing of work, objective evaluation of changes implemented in class as a result.

In the slide below, the presenters summarized the results of a SWOT analysis performed after the first year of the project (now continuing in its second year). It is interesting to note that many of these observations are also true for my context – and I imagine many others as well.

Talk 4: Challenging the ‘positive-negative-positive sandwich’: creating non-evaluative spaces for teacher learning 

Elena Oncevska Ager (Ss Cyril and Methodius University)   

In this talk, Elena illustrated the mentoring approach known as Systematic Informed Reflective Practice (SIRP) using examples from her own experience of post-lesson observation feedback. SIRP is a five-step technique developed by Angi Malderez (2013). For a summary of Angi's 2019 plenary on SIRP, please see this previous post.

Step 1: What stood out for you in the lesson? (good or bad?). Brainstorm ideas.

Elena described an incident during an EAP pre-sessional class at a UK university, when a student challenged her. The class had been discussing a controversial issue, and the student had interrupted Elena to ask if she actually believed any of the opinions she was expressing.

Step 2: How do you account for the episode you’ve just described? Provide as many explanations as possible.

In the incident described above, and based on previous interaction with this learner, Elena speculated that he was on the autistic spectrum, as he displayed little understanding for the rules of social interaction and had a tendency to say whatever came into his head.

Step 3: See slide.

In Elena’s case, guided by her mentor, she started to explore the area of group dynamics and its implications for this particular group.

Step 4: What is the most likely reason for the episode?

Whether or not the learner in this case had a neurological difference was probably less important than his role in the group and Elena’s approach to the activity.

Step 5: What are the implications of this process for your future teaching, your students and their learning?

After reflection, Elena realized that she tended to play devil’s advocate during class discussion of controversial issues, and explored alternative ways of addressing the topic. She also looked at some methodological principles which might help a neurodiverse learner feel part of the group.

The final slide summarises some of the advantages of using SIRP as a feedback technique.

Talk 5: Bite-sized teacher development - catering to the non-hungry teacher 

Cecília Lemos (Richmond Brazil)   

Cecilia described her experience of Teacher Development while working for a publisher as an ‘academic advisor’: the person who trains the teachers and help them make the most of the materials their school has adopted. Cecilia was able to draw some valuable lessons from this experience.

As someone who is passionate about, and dedicates time and effort to Professional Development, it is a challenge at first to realise that not all teachers feel the same. There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm towards Cecila’s initial action plan (see slide below)

She decided to reassess her approach. Guided by the observation: 

‘Training is what other people do to you. Development is what you do to yourself’ (Edge, 2002)

Cecila decided that the most important step was to get teachers participating in order for them to see the value of these activities for their own professional lives. She adopted a three-fold strategic change to foster bottom-up PD.

- Smaller tasks

- Visible impact on practice

- Developing reflective practice

Some of the changes she made are described in the slide below:

From then on, no task should take longer than 30 minutes maximum every two weeks.

These include:

- Reading of articles, not books: Curate a collection of articles on top 10 aspects of teaching emerging from classroom observations, e.g. use of L1

- More practical tasks: Ask teachers to record a portion of their lesson then count how many times they used L1

- Podcasts/Audiobooks: These can be accessed on public transport during the commute, so you are not asking teachers to give up their time outside class.

- Two-sentence reflections: Ask teachers to reflect on class immediately after, e.g. by using voice memo on mobile. If it is any longer, the teacher won’t do it or will do it later and risks losing valuable insights.

- Encourage collaboration: Foster sense of community and share problems.

After implementing these changes, a year later, the feedback found that 18/30 teachers had followed the action plan (compared to 5 before) and comments were generally positive and encouraging.

References

Edge, J. (Ed.) Continuing Professional Development – Some of our Perspectives. IATEFL Publication, 2002.