Seminal moments in the life of a "techie" trainer:
Reflections on personal development

Pete Sharma

This article offers me a chance to reflect back on several critical incidents which have moved me forward as an ELT professional. The four incidents I relate in the article were important to me in my personal development as a teacher trainer in the area of TELL - technology-enhanced language learning. I hope they may be interest to fellow teachers and teacher trainers.

(1) Personal development

I was doing my RSA Diploma and attended a Teacher development workshop on a sultry afternoon in Hastings, on the south coast of England. The illustrious Adrian Underhill was reporting back on a recent trip to Japan, and enthralling us with tales of exotic spas. One thing he said was: "Never allow your own professional development to be restricted by the institution you work for". In other words, if you want to go to a conference, but your institution won't sponsor you - go anyway. Teacher development comes from within, from the desire to change.

I subsequently found myself in a situation of desperately wanting - needing - a computer. My institution was happy to buy me one - but not yet - at "sometime in the future". I went out and bought my own machine, loaded it with CD-ROMs and started to play around with them, building up by knowledge and thoroughly enjoying myself to boot. The result? Well - I ended up in writing my first book, "The CD-ROM Teacher's Handbook" and the rest, as they say, is history.

(2) Learner-centred approaches

"You would have failed" are not words anyone enjoys hearing. They came from the observer of a Dip-observed lesson. Until that moment, I had been breezing through the course. Then - failure. The feedback went on: "You're trying too hard, Pete. Think about them. They are the learners - the important people." I then, in one experiential mind-shock, understood the term "learner centred". I now know this was a "confrontative" feedback style (Heron) - holding up a mirror and allowing someone to be made aware of their behaviour. Years later, I consider this feedback key in moving me forward.

This understanding in turn has helped me understand the true nature of CD-ROM as a "learner tool", something appreciated by learners rather than teachers. One example of this can be found in running training in Poland and the UK. When I ran a training session on CD-ROM in Warsaw, where all the teachers were themselves learning Polish, I noticed that teachers were more appreciative of the opportunities offered by a beginners' disc, than their counterparts in the UK, where no one was actually learning a language.

(3) Teacher change

I used to be evangelical about what I saw as the undeniable benefits of technology. I once gave a session in a German school on new discs and left thinking that all the excited teachers I had left were as fired up as me. I had really initiated "change". However, when I returned, I was in for a shock. I was disappointed to discover that only one more disc had been loaded; an interactive version of a Bob Dylan's album. The actual computer had a light layer of dust coating the surface. The teachers who were interested in CD-ROM would have been interested without my session; those who were new to the subject did not change their actual teaching practice.

I believe that initial excitement at something, which soon wears off, is commonplace, but it was a hard lesson to think that my training session had actually achieved little. Nowadays, I simply present features of new software, and assume that teachers are capable of deciding the extent to which they will integrate technology in their courses. The new range of electronic dictionaries is incredible. But much better for teachers to discuss what may be done with them than for me to impose - hence a sense of ownership of the ideas.

(4) Attitude

Last year, I ran a teacher training session on using the Web in language teaching at a college in Oxford. The feedback included the following comments:

"A very useful session - just what I needed"

"This session was not very useful - we have no time to implement these ideas"

These conflicting views made me reflect on the importance that attitude - positive or negative, plays in the uptake of new technologies (NT). Based on a model described by Freeman (1989), a training workshop such as mine may well input knowledge about exciting new developments or offer the "hands-on" opportunity to improve computer skills, but technophobic attitudes may well make teachers resist input.

Which is correct?

"The glass is half full"
"The glass is half empty"

I see this well-known example extended to many teacher statements about technology:

"Technology is exciting, inspirational"
"Technology is frustrating and always crashes"

Nowadays I am a far more relaxed teacher trainer. I no longer have some bizarre burning ambition to change the world. Rather, it is important to live with diversity. I am tolerant of completely conflicting views on the nature of teaching and learning languages, although I feel it is important that one's view is "principled".

These four incidents are key moments in my own personal development as a teacher trainer in the area of TELL. To return to Underhill and others, I agree that the process of learning can and should be joyful. If the experience of learning a language can be made less onerous and difficult with the use of new technologies, than I feel I have done a good job as a teacher and teacher trainer.

Materials

References

Freeman, D. 1989 Teacher training, development and decision making: A model of teaching and related strategies for language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly 23 (1): 27-45

Heron, J. Six-category intervention analysis www.clinical-supervision.com/six%20category%20analysis.htm

Pete Sharma is a Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and a freelance author. He has worked for many years in business English. Pete reviews software, and is a regular conference presenter at IATEFL and BESIG. He has written books on technology in language teaching; "The Internet and Business English" (Summertown 2003: co-author with Barney Barrett) was Highly Commended in the Duke of Edinburgh ESU Awards. Pete writes a weekly business English e-lesson for Macmillan. He is currently embarking on his dissertation on E-language learning as the final part of his M.Ed in Educational Technology in ELT from Manchester University. See: www.te4be.com

Please check the Skills Of Teacher Training course at Pilgrims website.