Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 1; February 1999

WHAT IS TEACHER DEVELOPMENT?

Paul Davis, Pilgrims and Durham University

Failure

Just as in the language classroom fear of making a mistake inhibits the performance of many students, so in training fear of admitting failure inhibits the proceedings. I can remember as we got used to functioning as a TD group someone admitting they had made a mess of a class. I had heard people say how they had had a disastrous class before, but this was different somehow. It was not said as a jokey throwaway comment in the staff room over coffee. This was a real teacher who was not perfect and did not always retrieve the situation miraculously at the last moment. A real failure. There was a pregnant pause. How could this be laughed off? In fact, we did not laugh it off. And we found that we had all had classes that had failed. To admit it was not so dreadful after all.

There is a second aspect to failure. Sometimes, come Thursday (our day for TD), our flexible, impromptu agenda becomes a little too flexible and impromptu, and our TD session disintegrates. But what is important is not that this happens from time to time nut that it does not happen every week and that we accept it happening occasionally. A single failure for a teacher training session is a disaster for the trainer and the trainees. A failure in an established TD group could be taken as normal. It has even made it easier for the members to take responsibility for future sessions since they are not expected to come up with a perfect performance each time. And everybody shares the responsibility for each failure.

Innovation:

One good thing about EFL is that it is full of new ideas. Although you can go on a course or read about a new technique in a journal, how often do you manage to put it into practice? How can you be sure you understand it exactly? Will it be easily adaptable for your situation? You might like to try it out, but your class is at the wrong level. It sounded like a good idea, but you can only remember half of it. A TD group provides just the right safe environment to try out these half-formed ideas. So much thinking, reading and training needs a half-way house to become more than a good idea that you might use one day. TD has been a watershed experience for me which has enable me to put much of my training, reading and my own ideas and those of my colleagues into practice. If they work and are refined in the group, I can try them in class and they can become part of repertoire. If I try them out and they do not work, I can go back to the group and find out why. We share ideas and support each other in our experimentation.

Support:

The support we give each other in the group extends into our everyday working practice. Teaching is an isolating activity. 90% of our time is spent alone in a crowd in front of a class. When I first started teaching, the staff room was a very polite place and quite often the occupants were helpful and kind and eventually friendly. But the classroom was a fine and private place. I noted from snatches of conversation that they had good ideas. I picked up, from the feelings of quiet satisfaction as people came back into the staff room and from the pleasant atmosphere in classes I went into, that some good lessons and good class management were taking place. But no one talked openly about these things; perhaps if we admitted we had good lessons, we would also have to admit to the failures.

In TD we have shared our ideas. We have talked about our good lessons. (One of our early sessions was for each person to describe the best lesson they had done recently. Although people were embarrassed and uncomfortable, it was a good session). We have talked about how we manage classes. People had different ideas, and some did things that I would never have managed doing in a class. Bit by bit I learned a lot, and I learned that there are different ways of doing things. Since I work day to day with many people who will talk things through, suggest ideas and give me bits of material. Once a week, I know I am going to get some stimulation, some input, something surprising. I even have the feeling that the way we act in the staff room has had a profound effect on the way everyone else acts.

Confidence:

Over the years the group has been meeting, we have broken down the isolation of teaching, got support, shared ideas, tried out many new ideas and tackled many topics. We have worked on our teaching and ourselves. And each week, there is a feeling of progression. Bit by bit, we feel more confident about ourselves and our teaching. As the group has developed, so individuals have developed by writing, giving seminars, etc. Many of the things we have done would not have been done without a supportive group.

Time for Yourself:

Not everyone wants to come to the TD group, and not everyone who wants to can because of commitments to family, pressure of work or lack of time. But there is such a thing as making time for yourself. And there is such a thing as giving up time to save time. It ca be a strain to give up an hour or two a week to work on yourself and your job. But, if it works, it becomes an enjoyable staple of the week rather than a wasteful luxury. If it works well, it makes the day to day job easier and saves time. Why spend an hour planning lessons alone when you can get ideas from your colleagues? Why spend an hour brooding about a work programme when you can go over it with your colleagues? Teacher development saves overworked teachers time and energy.

Overview

Within what I know of English language teaching, there at present appear to be three strands to the way teacher development is developing as a tool to help teachers.

At one extreme are those who see teacher development as a management concern, a means by which managers can encourage and direct teachers to mould their teaching styles to accord with organisational policies.

A middle way is to entrust the direction of development groups to the middle managers. They lead development until teachers and conversant with the basic format and then hand over to the teachers, who were perceived as being unable to take the initial responsibility in the first place. Some people see this as essential, a way of training teachers in development and achieving the co-operation of middle managers as well.

Our view opposes the position that teacher development can be or should be the responsibility of managers. Instead, as outlined above, we believe that teacher development, by its very nature, must be teacher-led development in which teachers take control and responsibility for their own development.

A note on exclusion:

If we adopt teacher-led teacher development, as described above, then is there a role for a director of studies or teacher trainer? It may seem unfriendly to exclude them, and we have heard of groups in which managers are members. Earlier in the chapter, we talked about the importance of the peer group and the exclusion of colleagues in management positions. But there is an alternative to exclusion. This is to allow them to come in but make a contract which stipulates that the relationships in the group are peer relationships.

If a manager chooses to join the group, however, this can pose problems. Because of the higher status, a manager may find it difficult to be relaxed and honest since there is more to lose by admitting to uncertainty. In our group, one of the members does have a quasi-managerial position, but it should be noted that this person's status derives from his work elsewhere; he is not in a position of authority over any other group member.

If the person with a higher status, though has the power to hire and fire any of the group members, the situation becomes more difficult. The principal or director of studies, for example, who chooses to attend the teacher development group may feel uncomfortable or even unable to slough off the usual mantle of authority their position confers and participate as a peer in the give and take of the TD sessions. Similarly, group members may fear that a hirer and firer will be unable to separate what is heard in a development meeting from the job of evaluating teachers. The members may feel uncomfortable in the presence to 'the boss' and be uneasy about the disagreeing with him or her unwillingly to be as open about doubts and failures as they might have had. This is an acute problem for temporary teachers worried about renewal of a short-term contract or permanent teachers hoping for a promotion. Over the life of our group, three other colleagues (each in a position of authority in the workplace that a majority of the members of the group worked in) briefly attended our group sessions. In each case, there was a certain amount of unease on both sides, and the person concerned attended only a few sessions.

Subversion and Heresy Vs Job Security and Management Insecurity

Hitherto, the only places for a little gentle subversion at our workplace have been the satire of the end of term pantomime put on by the staff for the students, the drunkenness of the end of term party and the more formalised structure of union meetings. TD has changed that. Because of the confidentiality and trust built up in the group, it is possible for members to be subversive (eg., to voice their real feelings about the organisations they work for) or heretical (to challenge and question established EFL gospel). This could lead to job dissatisfaction, but on the whole I think having a forum for saying what we really think and for real professional and personal development has overwhelmingly reduced the dissatisfaction and stress felt by most of the members. Whether management feel comfortable about giving their blessing to real development is another question. Certainly within our experience, this has not usually been the case. But then assuming that the group is teacher-led, it hardly matters what the management feel.

Healthy Instincts

When we began our TD in 1985, we had no idea of many of the concepts and terms referred to in this chapter. We reached for the right ways from within one collective experience and qualities. Maybe knowing the above would have helped us avoid a pitfall or two, but on the whole I think it was more important to be positive, listen to each other, have fun and find our own way for ourselves – all healthy instincts.

Are teacher trainers redundant?

Many trainers are now beginning to acknowledge the wealth of experience that any brings with them. To paraphrase Caleb Gattegno, founder of The Silent Way, everyone knows more than they think they know and much more than you think they know. If this applies to language classes, then it applies equally to training sessions. Trainers can get better at meeting the needs of their audience. And in the real world, people do need RSA Certificates or Diplomas, MA's or whatever. Let us just say that as development becomes more powerful, the role of the trainer will become less important. Possible some areas are best left to trainers and some to development groups. In the meantime, it would be helpful to draw a clear distinction between what training and what development is. The two are very, very different.