Hi Albert,

I think that two of the qualities, to name a few, should be  : readiness to share and  being a good listener.

 

Hi Pilar

Yes, I do agree with you.  Readiness to share and willingness to listen to others are two important qualities of a successful teacher trainer.  There are a few more qualities and skills that are very important for teacher trainers and educators.

They are expected to have excellent 'people skills'.  They should also be open-minded and ready to learn from trainees too.  Some trainers find it very difficult to come down to the level of trainees and think that they know everything and they need not learn any more. Successful trainers continue to learn and update themselves. 

In the era of digital technology and globalization, teacher trainers face a number of challenges.  What are the challenges?  Let's continue our discussion by finding answering to the question.

Albert P'Rayan

 

Dear Pilar and others

Participants of different training programme complain that some trainers are not customer-oriented and they fail to understand the needs of participants.  A good trainer before taking up any training activity carried out a needs analysis and deliver what the trainees need. 

Pilar, could you please elaborate the statement: "Teacher trainers should be teaching at the level they are training."  I find it difficult to decode it.

Best wishes

Albert

 

 

 

Hi Gavin and Albert,

 

This is exactly what I meant, thanks." the idealised view of a past-remembered classroom" is a wonderful metaphor.

 

Hello to you all,

I'm wondering what "successful" means in the question raised at the top of this discussion. I'm sure we each have our images of our own trainers and educators being teachers who we connected to during their sessions, lectures, and workshops. And I'm now reflecting on those that I really liked at the time, and was sure I'd do something with their ideas and tools they were sharing. But then as the years went past, I've found those good ideas continuing to pile on my shelves. These interpersonal qualities of active listening, empathy, and wisdom, as well as the intellectual reach and research supporting these personality strengths and skills, seem very good and obvious; and the trainers I've had are memorable and liked due to those qualities; but to what extent do these qualities really affect us as teachers, especially in the long term, as we move through different teaching contexts, with different types of students?

I've also had trainers who were terrible in terms of these qualities above, but it's been from those that I've learned some long lasting lessons too.

Also, I wonder about the context in which we are placing "teacher training" ... are we presuming this activity (?) to take place in lecture theatres and seminar rooms in hotels? Or might it be useful to consider training to happen in other ways, other contexts ...  

cheers,
Lance

Hi Lance, 

I think that part of  the disagreements in this forum have to do with the questions you have raised, I do not believe that training in LSRW is all that there is at teacher training, but as you said we have not defined the context yet. 

Teacher training should be about  what comes after you have got your degree as a teacher. Teacher training should be in line with teacher development.

Hi there,

 Lance, I think that successful training can be measured in terms of feedback. How to get feeedback after a teacher trianing seminar is the real questio. Especially if the trainees are from different contexts and meet solely for the period of the training.

Hi Albert,

Sorry about the typing mistakes I have made...

Well, setting training aims and objectives is the first step, and they should clearly be defined to the trainees as well. I think Albert, that we cannot narrow down seminar goals to what you have written, I'd rather say that it is one of the goals. But if we think in specific training aims and objectives, meeting them can be seen only in the long run.

Has the teaching of our trainees changed in any way since they have participanted in the training sessions? Has their approacn to teaching altered in any way? Can we see any impact of the teacher training on their everyday work?After thetraining event our trainees get back to their own contexts, and can we ever contact them or see the result of our training?

Hi Gabriella,

I think that's an interesting point... In our centre we ask for feedback on training sessions, but on thinking about your post I realise that when we do observations of teachers we have no mechanism forfollowing up on this - seeing how / if training has been turned into practice, or even asking the teachers as a sort of follow up, how useful they have found the training in their own teaching, or how they've managed to put it into practice.

This is something I think we can really look at in future, so thanks for planting that seed!

Nick

I agree that what we see when observing classes can indicate how effective our training sessions have been, and observation can also plant the seed for future training sessions we run. This can work well if the teachers you train all work in your school and you can observe them easily. However, if teachers from different schools come together for the purpose of attending training [which might be your case, I guess, Gabriela?] then follow up is a little more difficult. Sometime you can ask for feedback on the sessions after the sessions, but of course what you want to know is whether the teachers are reflevting on, and perhaps adapting, their practcie because of the training session and your, and the other participants', input. Maybe using questionnaires could help, if teachers are working in different schools? www.surveymonkey.com is an online questionnaire tool which is really easy to use and which will help calibrate the results for you too. If you use an online questionnaire, you can leave a  period of time between recieving the training and getting the feedback on its effect in the classrooms practice.

Well, yes, and in fact we have teachers form different countries at our training events.

The online questionnaire is a superb idea, thank you for calling my attention to it.

 There is feedback after each day of the training and also at the end of the seminar, but receiving feedbavk well after the training event would be really useful.

Thanks again for the idea!

 

Hi Maureen

Since your idea of introducing online questionnaire is liked by many, I think it is good to have further discussion on how we can go about. 

Why don't you throw some light on it? Let's have something concrete.  

Best wishes

Albert

 

It's a bit hard for me to give you anything concrete because I don't have any examples of questionnaires I have created to hand, I'm afraid. But when I have delivered teacher training sessions, and teachers have returned to their schools, I have tried to keep the support going a little bit and also the sense of ';teaching community' or 'community of practice'. Sometimes I have set up a topic-based Descussion Forum on my Moodle site, and this is very easy for enyone who wants to have some kind of online presence - www.moodle.org is a good starting point. I have used this to post questions, run 'Agony Aunt' questions and answer sessions, and post examples of activities, useful articles etc on the site. This has worked for me especially if the same group of teachers is going to regroup for training at a later date, so that you can keep the energy and enthusiasm going, as well as the ide of teaching community. I have incorporated an online survey as part of this, generally 3 or 4 weeks after teachers have returned to their schools after the training. The questions are set by me, so I can ask what I want! I tend to ask things such as 'have you used any of the training ideas you explored in the training sessions? If yes, which? If not, why not? Which of the ideas which we discussed [listed below] have been most useful in your context? Why is this, do you think? Which have been least useful? Why is this, do you think? Now that you have been back in your classrooms for a few weeks, is there anything you particularly want to work with in the next training session? Why have you selected this apsect? This sort of thing. Then surveymonkey can collate the results for me and I can post the findings from the questionnaire to the Moodle Discussion Forum, to develop the statistics into a broader discussion.

Sorry to be so vague - does this help?

Hi Maureen

Many thanks for your wonderful response.  It is very much 'concrete'.  The tips are very useful to many teachers.  Glad to know that you are a moodler.   Your enthusiasm and positive response should make us to visit the site www.moodle.com and create a course.  BTW, can you tell us how effectively we teacher trainers can use 'moodle'? 

We look forward to learning many new things from you. 

Best wishes

Albert

 

Dear All

Maureen has mentioned the site www.moodle.org   For those who are not familiar with 'moodle' this piece of information extracted from the website may be useful.

What is Moodle?

The focus of the Moodle project is always on giving educators the best tools to manage and promote learning, but there are many ways to use Moodle:

-------

If any of have used 'MOODLE", please share your experience with the members of the forum.

Best wishes

Albert P'Rayan

Hi everyone, I am hoping to keep within the discussion so far, as I am learning so much from it; but please allow me to introduce some digressions that I hope we can make meaning from ... Normal 0 false false false EN-SG X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} In my car I keep a small book called "the spirit of teaching"; it's one of those warm fuzzy motivators like the "chicken soup" series. Anyhow at the end of a difficult day I read a page while the engine was warming, and it was something about how teachers are the keepers of the future, and the comforters of childhood dreams, etc etc. These are the typical ideas which define popular and idealised understandings of good teaching. And, certainly, in my interactions with my students, I see many opportunities where such warm wisdom can scribe itself in the pages of reality. Given my day, however, and the context in which I teach, Sam's questions above, "How can we make school administrators aware of the need for giving the teachers the place they need for implementing what they learn at teacher training courses? of the need to measure impacts of change" shows the need for an entirely different viewpoint in defining good teaching. Most teacher training seems to be based on a scientist - technician metaphor, ie, the teacher uses certain tools, strategies, and concepts to achieve particular predetermined objectives with students who are defined according to certain analytical categories of behaviour, motivation, and capability. I believe that this thread so far is discussing around this metaphor. Not to dismiss the value of this approach, but I believe it must be seen as a part of teaching and not the whole. If you are aware of the "Cognitive Coaching" approach to teacher training, and Peer Mentoring approaches to staff development, these are further strategies to ongoing teacher training that take place in schools while experienced teachers are teaching. These approaches really represent the stages idea that Albert mentioned: "Taking trainees from dependent stage to independent stage, and thus to interdependent stage should be the goal of the trainer" with the additional idea that these stages straddle the trainees' (I like the word "apprentice") experience between university and school site, over many years (3-5? following coursework). However, like preservice training, these approaches aim to improve teachers' abilities with technician's tools developed through research and the experience of other teachers. But what really happens in schools? In my experience, the bureaucracy determines whether or not any training can be effectively used, or even attempted. For example, in Masters programs education and applied linguistics students are taught to apply critical literacy to testing, and thereby find that many tests are inadequate; the same goes for textbooks, and syllabi. Then, when teachers enter schools, they will find that they are required to give tests and use textbooks and syllabi that contradict everything they learned. Often these requirements are related to either: politics or finance: two forces in total control by administrators, either at school level, or in my case, higher. In another reality based example, new teachers are often thrust into difficult classes in which they find that all their inservice tools and strategies can't work; they are not provided with ongoing mentorship to show them how to apply these tools in their particular contexts. Experienced teachers are not afforded the time or opportunities to share their experience, to mentor others, or to be involved in anything resembling the art of cognitive coaching. What happens to teachers then, who are subjected to years of being unable to use their tools? My understanding of the research in this area suggests that teachers will teach the way theyve been taught, a kind of fall back or default mode ... which sustains and conserves a subservient, fearful, uncreative, uncertain, and defensive status quo in the relationships between administrators, teachers, and students.    How then to be a good teacher? "Don't make waves" (in the chicken soup) is a good maxim in many cases. Can / should / How could this maxim be incorporated in teacher training? Is it an aspect to be contained in a particular optional course? Should it continue to be ignored and let teachers learn it the hard way? cheers, Lance.  ps: I really like Maureen's idea of the moodle as a means of continuation of the training session/s. A blog could also be a simple way of achieving the same end. I'm definitely going to be trying these out with my forthcoming sessions.    

Hi Maureen,

Do you have any 'top tips' for making post-training online groups useful? I've tried with training courses here, where all the teachers work in local vocational colleges and do intensive training with us. After the course I set up a Yahoo group where files could be posted, questions asked etc. which worked well for about a couple of weeks after each course as there was a burst of activity, but then as people got back into their jobs, activity dropped off completely and of 40 trainees I think 2 now make occasional forays. (And I admit, when activity wasn't being driven by the moderator...)

I understand that 'real-life' plays a factor here. All have busy jobs (and a lot is expected of them time-wise), some live in areas where internet access is sketchy etc., so to expect them to devote their time to idea sharing online is a bit unrealistic, and it has become more  a resource for me to keep them updated with things (such as a link to this website...).

Just wondering if you (or anyone else, of course) had any experiences that would help further...

Thanks,

Nick

Hi Lance, Maureen, Nick and others,

I enjoy reading your comments.  I wonder whether we are on the track or off the track.  We have proved to be really creative by going off the track in order to be on the track.  The topic for discusson: 'Qualities of a successful teacher trainer / educator' has taken us to many other related fields thanks to your cretive contribution. 

Let's continue to express our views on the topic.  Our ultimate goal is to share our fresh ideas on how we can make teacher training interesting, useful and relevant. It is very important to get feedback from trainees after each training programme and congratulate ourselves for our achievements and learn to learn from others.

If you have come across any useful book on teacher training and education, please do share with the group.

Best wishes

Albert (Raydeal)

Moderator for TTE forum

 

Thanks for those recommendations Maureen. I'll be sure to look them up.

Perhaps, in context of what I wrote above, teacher trainers need to be creating courses which are responsive to trainees' specific needs. If in a preservice circumstances, then courses need to be giving preservice trainees the 'survival' tools they will need over the forthcoming 1-3 years of hell that many of them will endure. If the trainees are inservice already, then they could be given diagnostic type testing and asked for their questions and opinions on the topics in the trainers realm of expertise. The trainer would then try to be responsive to those, skillfully developing their course or sessions accordingly, weaving their students needs and interests with their own educational objectives. Is this too idealised to be actually practical? What do you think? In fact, I am conceding here; and my ultimate argument would be that the ideal quality of a teacher trainer is that they are conducting their training in the trainees classrooms! I believe that is the only significant way that teacher training could be 'successful'. Does anyone know of such circumstances?

cheers,

Lance

 

hi Lance and all,

 I agree with Lance, I think that  the  issue has to do with what teachers trainers want vs. reality, many teacher trainers are far away from what really happens at schools, so, there is like a kind of divorce between what you are asked to do when you are  a trainee and the classroom once you are a graduate. I believe that it is a trainers' must to work  at the same educational level you are training. You can not teach  your trainees about the classroom if you are not involved in the practise yourself, lest tell them what to teach if you are not  teaching in the very same context.

Roles, Reality, Research: Is an organic approach to teacher training possible?

Hi again Albert and members of the forum,

Albert, thinking about teacher trainers as a role to be earned once people reach a particular level of achievement as teachers, seems to be following the standard industrial line metaphor describing the transmission and reception of knowledge and learning, ie: student becomes preservice graduate trainee, becomes a beginning teacher, undergoes training and development (although, Mary, this is a shaky notion as most contexts don't value Prof Dev't very much at all), becomes an experienced teacher, becomes an experienced teacher with an interest in teacher training, becomes a teacher trainer ...

Residing in this progressive demarcation of role descriptors, is an assumption that different contents of knowledge are transmitted, unproblematically, down the managed line to eventually emerge through a 'successful' trainer on his or her students at the other end. (It's preferable to think of this as a 'mechanistic' metaphor, as, in 'organic' terms, what comes out the other end, may be slightly offensive). 

Put another way, within the bounds of this production line / industrial metaphor, these students, who are to become, or are already, teachers, receive 'training' which is conceptualised and developed as a distinct form of knowledge, and is then presumed to be able to be taken away and served up in any number of different teaching contexts. Sadly, under scrutiny, this metaphor shows up a number of weaknesses, the most significant of which, i pointed to above, and in other forums, relating to the constraints on teaching imposed by context and particular school cultures.

In response, teacher education courses are turning towards the critical reflection of (student) teachers' underlying beliefs about teaching, in the hope that  deeper levels of learning can affect real transformation from 'wanna be teacher' to 'teacher'. Hence a good teacher trainer will be someone who asks 'hard' questions, and gets teachers to rethink their notions, principles, and beliefs about teaching, students, and knowledge. Another significant response has been through the efforts of the Action Research literature and qualitative data movements that have arisen over the past few decades, and aim to develop and utilise the critical (positive) capacities of teachers to improve their practice, within context - a driver for 'teacher development' as Mary described earlier. 

Perhaps it is too radical to configure teacher trainers to be actually teaching in schools, both to regular students, as well as to their 'trainees'. Teacher trainers would generally like the idea, and the egoistic belief, that trainers are a 'step up the rung', holding some extra authority to knowledge about teaching, and if not for that reason, then certainly because most school contexts don't practically lend themselves to having successful teacher training conducted within them, that training will mostly be done and conceived as something 'outside' any actual teaching context. In this regard, most schools are not ready for change. 

Those that are, may consider the role of teacher trainer to be a more organic function of a teaching team. In such cases, teacher teams would work towards educational problem solving with their students, curricula, and coursework. And the successful teacher trainer would be not a single person, but rather a shared skillset, which would facilitate practical, purposeful discussion, and concrete problem solving, for the specific shared context. Hence this skill set would certainly incorporate such sub skills as active listening, and others mentioned earlier.

Traditional roles of the visiting educational experts, could still have a place in this training/teaching/learning/developing environment, but their delivery would be constrained within the needs and questions of the team, rather than directed at a faceless generic audience with a scattershot approach filled with abstractions and research derived from outside contexts. I've been put through a number of so called professional development sessions, and the abject failure of them has certainly inspired me into not wasting much thought on them, and to aim at designing my sessions with the needs of the audience / trainees in mind.

If people are interested I can point out a good reference for the sort of professional practice I'm talking about.

best regards,

Lance 

Hi Lance,

Certainly the audience should be kept in mind at he moment of designing the courses, and during all the course as well, my suggestion about training and teaching at the same level you are training has to do with the fact that at the place where I teach trainees look up on you  when they know what you are talking about and that means being in both places at the same time. Here it is commonplace to have teachers that work at primary, secondary and tertiary levels this is the reason why I would love to hear about the reference you mentioned.

Regards

Hi Lance, I'm sure all are interested in the reference for professional practice. 

Albert 

Results Now by Mike Schmoker. I felt like I was overloading that last post; sorry if so, ... And thanks for the encouragement.

I would give the more complete details, but its easy to look up in a google search ... and my browser isn't letting me cut and paste for some strange reason; when you do, take a look at some of the reviews and discussion that are listed in the search results.

The book uses statistics from the American schooling context, but I believe that, at least in part, they can be extrapolated internationally.

In any case, it's what Schmoker writes about inservicing and Professional Development that is most interesting. I'll dig a quote or two, from my notes over the next couple of days.

cheers,

Lance   

 

As promised, here are some quotes which stood out for me in the context of this thread ... I hope you find them as relevant to our discussion as I do.  

Professional Development shouldmake formal, immediate arrangemnts for teachers to translate learning into actual lessons or units, whose impact we assess and then use as the basis for ongoing improvement. Without this simple cycle, training is irrelevant. ... teachers need to pool their pratical knowledge by working in teams. 109

Effective teambased learning communities - not workshops - are the very best kind of Professional Development. 109 

Workshops do not work because they "don't permit the application and experimentation in real classrooms, and sharing that experience in a team effort" (citing Stiggins). Teamwork, not training, fosters continuous, targeted attention to the details and the impact of effective lessons and units. 111

Workshops ... should be based on this same team based cyclical format: that focuses immediately on producing lessons and then evaluating and refining them on the basis of results.

When teachers recognise that knowledge for improvement is something they can generate, rather than something that must be handed to them by so-called experts, they are on a new professional trajectory. They are on the way to building a true profession of teaching, a profession in which members take responsibility for steady and lasting improvement. They are building a new culture of teaching. 118. citing Hiebert and Stigler.

This new professional trajectory starts with a recongition that we must identify and cultivate the talent that already resides within our schools. 118.

Unfortunately, none of this will happen until we radically reorient the work of school improvement toward internal expertise and self managing teams, which predominant structures now undermine. 121.

 

 

Hi Lance and all

Lance, many thanks for the wonderful quotes.   

Each quote is a topic for discussion.  It is worth discussing the quote below:

"Effective teambased learning communities - not workshops - are the very best kind of Professional Development."

Has anyone been part of any 'effective teambased learning community'?  You are welcome to share your experience.

Let me share my experience.  I was an Indian expatriate in Rwanda for five years between March 2000 and December 2004.  I was on the staff of the department of English at Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST) in Rwanda during 2000-2004.   I headed the department for three years between 2002 and 2004.  Out of the 20 teachers in the department, 10 were very much interested in professional development.  We used to meet once a week and share our experiences in the classroom.  We also discussed a number of topics related to ELT.  The experience was really rewarding.  Each of the team was a resource person as well as a learner.  It was a good team-based learning community and our regular meetings paved the way for professional development.

Albert

hi Albert,

Just a few words to tell you that I feel  proud of having been given the opportunity of sharing this forum with you. You ask teachers about successful training and the answer is in you in Your commitment to this forum. thanks for  your generousity. it has been some pleasure to share this online space with you!

 

Best 

 

Pilar