Becoming a Facilitator of Teacher Learning
Robert Feather, UK
Robert Feather is currently teaching English as a foreign language to professional people for Pilgrims in Canterbury. He has over 30 years of experience as a teacher and has recently started to work more as a facilitator of teacher learning. E-mail: featherrobert@hotmail.com
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Slow change
What they ask for and what they need are not necessarily the same
One teacher can learn from all other teachers
Get in step with your group
Develop a conversation with the group
Conclusions
PS
References
It is already six months ago that I led the courses for teachers that have given rise to this article, and only now am I starting fully to come to terms with this experience. Whatever change this has brought has taken time. Am I an unusually slow learner or have you had the same experience? I have needed an intervening period between the experience and the acceptance of the experience. Such a change of role as that from teacher to facilitator of teachers has required from me more than the routine application of the technology of reflection such as proposed in Kolb’s learning cycle – “Concrete experience; Observations and reflections; Formation of abstract concepts; Testing implications of concepts in new situations” (Reid & Barrington 1999:67). It has only been possible for me by working through the change in personal terms at my own pace. If motivation comes from the gut, then it is my gut that has been reluctant to revisit these training courses until now. All I have wanted to do up to this point is to put thoughts about this experience on the back burner, saying to myself: “Let it stew a little longer. Maybe I will think further about it, maybe I won’t”.
Before working on these courses, I had been preparing for several months. I had been expecting a challenge. And a challenge was what I got! While leading the courses, I sometimes felt that the ground beneath my feet had given way. Only now can I go back to the experience without my reflection being confused by the remnants of emotion arising from the course. How has this become possible? Perhaps, over the intervening time I have incorporated (included in my body, in my physical responses) the main things I have learned. And for the first time this gives me the ability to recognise consciously what I have learned. Body and emotion have come first in the sequence of change; critical understanding and analysis a slow second. Is it only me who is wired like this, or do other people experience change in the same way?
In the following sections I shall describe events and situations that led me to propose advice to myself about how to work with teachers.
On the second day of one of these courses I moved from one exercise to the next without a pause. I was trying to keep involvement levels high. But my pace was too fast. The teachers stopped me and said they needed time to note down details of the exercise I had just introduced. The teachers in my groups were hungry! They needed feeding and they needed time to make sure they had got the details of the exercises I introduced so that they could replicate them with their students. The more exercises they got, the happier they seemed to be.
I sympathised with the teachers’ need and followed their energy, focusing almost exclusively on introducing new exercises and giving time for them to take notes. But after two weeks of this, the course seemed to have lost some of its coherence. It appeared to be largely a list of diverse exercises, with any generative theme submerged in the welter of new material.
Was I right to follow the lead of the teachers by giving them more and more exercises? My answer is yes and no. Yes, because they expressly asked for them. No, because we did not focus enough on becoming the creators of new exercises ourselves. I had not developed with them a way of thinking about the exercises that would be generative. The teachers left the course happy that they had received a lot of new exercises but not so happy about the amount of creativity and thought they had brought to the course. Clearly, fixating on stated objectives instead of developing the course according to the development of the changes in the group can be counterproductive. To get the balance right the facilitator should be ready to adopt the range of facilitator roles described by Heron (Dornyei 2003:96):
Hierarchical mode, whereby the facilitator exercises the power to direct the learning process for the group...
Cooperative mode, whereby the facilitator shares the power and responsibilities with the group...
Autonomous mode, whereby the facilitator respects the autonomy of the group in finding their own way...
The most angst-producing activity I asked one group to do was to decide in sub-groups how to teach a particular language point. Many of these teachers already had a firm idea of how to teach it. When the other teachers in the group put forward another idea, this was seen as a threat by some teachers. My interpretation is that choosing only one way meant that all other ways were discarded, downgraded, seen as less competent; and this threatened to undermine the confidence of those teachers, hence their resistance and disgruntlement.
It may be that it is the pressures they are under that make teachers special as trainees. Each teacher is used to being the one leading the class with all that that entails about responsibility, authority and for some, a highly energised physical state (louder voice, hyper vigilance etc). Perhaps it is this sense of leadership responsibility that made it difficult for some of the teachers in my groups to accept team decisions; after all, requiring only one answer from a group means that all other solutions may be perceived as inadequate. Paradoxically, however, most individuals in a group get maximum benefit if they can work with and learn from others.
My learning from this is that in future I will decide whether it is productive to ask for one solution or whether a plurality of solutions to a task would be better. Encouraging a plurality of ideas will enable each teacher to give of their own experience. In this way teachers will not be deprived of their sense of validity and at the same time they could extend their range of teaching options by accepting ideas from their colleagues.
On the other hand, I also have to recognise that some exercises which involve change will cause friction. I don’t think I should avoid these exercises for fear of resistance. Disagreement can be part of learning if there is a generosity of spirit within the group. What is important is that whichever way is chosen, each teacher is confirmed as the expert in the learning and teaching relationship with their students. External influence that works against this outcome undermines the teacher and weakens their practice.
In my next course then I will make a point of bringing to the fore and demonstrating that the power of the group is greater than the sum of its members. So, early in the course I will explore the social nature of language by showing ways of getting students to co-operate. Cooperative learning could also remain a thread throughout the course which would enable the whole group to reflect on their growth as a group. This in turn might bring about smoother working relationships as well as reflection on how their own groups of students behave.
When one of my groups of teachers listed their objectives for the course they cited highly practical aspects of the job, for example, “Exercises for listening, speaking, grammar and vocabulary”; “How to get students motivated”; “How to manage group work”; “Evaluation strategies”; “How to be more creative when planning my lessons” etc. This gave me something to work with but I wanted to take it a step further to enable the teachers to be creative and to generate their own exercises. My rationale was that people learn not only through concrete demonstration but also through theorising about experiences. Uppermost in my mind was that we as teachers are usually starved of the overview that theorising gives because our days are full of practical decisions. We are typical “Activists” in Honey and Mumford’s terms, we “Learn best from experiences in association with others,” rather than “Reflectors” who “like to stand back and ponder over and observe experiences from different perspectives,” (Bee and Bee 1998:110). But when I said that I wanted to develop the group’s “theorising” there was a strong negative reaction from several of the most vociferous members.
This took me aback. Why were they so anti-theory? Perhaps they had had theory forced upon them as captives in the lecture theatre during their pre-service training and wanted none of it. Perhaps having gained experience of what teaching actually is on the ground, they rejected theory as irrelevant. I can sympathise with this view since as a teacher you are responsible for what goes on in the class, you have to react with your whole self, your emotions, your fine inter-personal instincts, not just according to a theory you have learnt. However, in this case, my objectives and my personal experience put me out of step with the participants. I realise now that it may have appeared to them that I was trying to force something on them that they perceived as irrelevant. I have learnt from this that my own personal interest in theory cannot be foisted on people who are not primarily interested in it. Knowing this about myself then, and not assuming that other teachers share my interests is crucial to establishing a group that works harmoniously with me. This does not mean that I have to abandon my belief that theorising is important. Instead, I need to develop this topic at the same speed as the group develops. Clearly, I had introduced the term theorising before I had explained or shown what I meant by it. In fact, my plan was to ask the teachers in my group to try out a lot of exercises and then to establish ways of thinking about and working on these exercises so that new exercises could be created and generalisations about applicability of exercises could be derived. My perspective might not have been so off-putting had I introduced it in this way. Now I know that such a major focus for a course should come out of conversation with the group rather than the leader assuming from the outset that it would be a part of the course.
I wanted to develop both my relationship with the group and to understand a little better each individual teacher’s feeling about the course. So I wrote letters to the group. This is an idea widely used by Mario Rinvolucri with language learners and with teachers (cf Burbidge et al 1996). In these letters I gave my feelings about how the course was developing, and reflected on some of the activities we had tried. Each member of the group wrote back with a personal reflection on these and other points. Some of these letters were highly supportive and insightful, and all were thoughtful. They were what I would call practical theorising! It was a way of opening a channel to each individual, giving them the chance to put into words their ideas and feelings about what had been happening. What was clear was that for each individual, this course was different. Each teacher was taking something different from the course according to their perspectives and experience. I answered their letters and this kept a dialogue going throughout the course. I now see that developing a conversation through the length of the course counteracts the tendency towards fragmentation resulting from the introduction of a large number of exercises. It is a way of building coherence in the course. It is as if each group can develop the story of itself. And a story necessarily depicts a change through time.
Over a short time a group develops its own identity even its own ‘culture’. And this culture is composed of ways of behaving, ways of speaking, humour and the whole range of personal interactions. For example, one group, instead of waiting for me to ask them to change partners, took the initiative and each person automatically sat next to a new person each day. Another group began to refer back to previous conversations and positive experiences and to weave these into the discussion. This consolidated the sense of belonging within the group. As this type of action comes from the group it is perhaps inappropriate for the facilitator to interfere or take the lead away from the group. But for the facilitator to recognise these moments of group cohesion and to enjoy the humour of the group’s tag lines, in-jokes and references can’t be a bad thing.
For more specifically methodological aspects though, the facilitator can take the lead by developing certain ideas into a thread which runs throughout the course. For example, I introduced the question of how to make exercises suitable for different levels of student within the same class. Having a list of these themes on a sheet of flip chart paper on the training room wall and referring back to it from one day to the next helped give coherence to the course as well as creating common ground for the group.
I can now begin to see a pattern arising in what I choose to remember from my experience of working with teachers. There’s a pattern too in the way I interpret these experiences, and indeed in the advice-giving that previously seemed to be the end of the process but which now seems rather to be a characteristic of my thought processes. This pattern reveals something about me as a person. It is recognising this pattern that gives me an opportunity to change. Describing my own tendencies gives me a perspective on my assumptions and relativises my reactions to others. This, I hope enables me to see that everyone comes to an event with a different perspective. It is becoming comfortable with the different ways individuals experience learning that defines the nature of my own change. Bringing out the richness of other people’s perspectives is where I shall put my effort when I next have the chance to work with teachers. I can begin to challenge my own basic assumptions. I may then hopefully be able to adopt a teaching presence which is relativised and which thus leaves space for the teachers to examine their own assumptions.
Half a year later, when I look at the article just before its publication, it is me but out of date. This year I was not troubled by the reactions that made me think so hard. I feel much more confident this year working with teachers. This year I have experienced amazingly creative and positive groups. I feel that all the reflection I did on last year’s courses has enabled me to have a hand in facilitating creativity for the teachers and for me too during the courses this year. There has been a gathering momentum in each course that has led to increasingly creative ideas. This has been extremely satisfying. The group gelled so well that we have also continued to communicate with each other through a NING social network page Livia Farago set up. I feel that the thought and reflection necessary for this article has been a major cause of the change that I have experienced.
Bee, F. and Bee, R.1998. Facilitation Skills. London: CIPD
Burbidge, N. Gray, P., Levy, S. and Rinvolucri, M. 1996. Letters. Oxford: OUP
Dornyei, Z. and Murphey, T. 2003. Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: CUP
Reid, M. and Barrington, H. 1999. Training Interventions. London: CIPD
Please check the Train the Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
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