FIVE IMPORTANT FEATURES

As an elementary school English teacher and English instructional coach in Taiwan, I am interested in how professional development is delivered to in-service language teachers. I worked as the intern for an instructional coach in a school district in a northwestern U.S. city from 2009 to 2010. In the summer of 2009, instructional coaches designed and provided a 5-day workshop for special education teachers as well as pilot elementary and secondary school English Language Learner (ELL) teachers. This article discusses five major features of the workshop which have been neglected in language teachers’ professional development in Taiwan. These five features are the value of questions and concerns, an emphasis on teacher reflection, an evaluation of learning outcomes, an emphasis on interactions among teachers, and the connecting of previous knowledge to current learning.

Value of Questions and Concerns

Two-thirds of the teachers in the United States indicate that they have no say in what or how they learn in the professional development opportunities provided to them in schools (National Research Council, 2000). In the 5-day workshop, participating teachers were not only able to express their concerns, they were also able to have their concerns and questions addressed. On the first day, many teachers asked questions related to the service for bilingual students. On the next day, two invited guest speakers gave a service delivery overview on special education and bilingual education, and because of questions and concerns, additional points and PowerPoint visuals were added to the overview to address these. Furthermore, teachers were encouraged to write their wonders, concerns, doubts, and questions on Post-It notes and stick them on the Parking Lot Poster, a poster tool where participants can anonymously communicate feedback. Both of these activities showed that participants’ feedback was valued, which can promote motivation in the learning process.

Emphasis on Teacher Reflection

Teachers are seldom given the chance to reflect on what they have just learned in workshops. Bullock and Muschamp (2004) state that teachers’ reflection mirrors the practice of thinking analytically about an experience or an activity. In this workshop, teachers were given many opportunities for reflection. On the first day, the instructional coach commented on the “collaboration continuum”—a range that measures engagement in collaboration that extends from none to full participation. The instructional coach asked teachers two questions so they could reflect on their own collaboration experience or their school team’s experience: (1) Where do you see yourself on the continuum? and (2) Where do you see your school team? On the last day, the instructional coach asked teachers to reflect on the Gallery Walk protocol, where students rotate between posted charts for active engagement, and the implication for the classroom. As a result, teachers could think about how they could put this protocol into their classroom practice.

Evaluation of Learning Outcomes

The announcement and evaluation of learning outcomes for professional development is rare. Amirault and Branson (2006) claim that objectives should become the new models in modern context (p. 85). All instructors should state in advance the precise behaviors that they intend to happen and how the behaviors will be measured. Every day in this workshop, the instructional coach talked about the learning outcomes for that day at the beginning and the end of the session. He went through the learning outcomes with the workshop participants to check if they had achieved the goals or not. On the third day, based on the learning outcomes, the instructional coach asked teachers to write letters in the air to evaluate their own learning. They would write O for outstanding, A for all right, and N for not there yet. Such self-evaluation was a fun and effective way to check if teachers met the learning outcomes or not.

Emphasis on Interactions Among Teachers

Teachers learn through their interactions with other teachers (National Research Council, 2000). According to Irvin (2002), sharing reflections may cause the persons involved to reconstitute a more complex and synthetic understanding (p. 9). Teachers in this 5-day workshop were provided various opportunities for interacting with other teachers through pair work or teamwork. On the first day, the instructional coach used the jigsaw technique for reading journal articles on coteaching. After reading a particular section of an article, teachers were given 5 minutes to talk in depth about their particular piece. This activity was useful because teachers got the chance to carefully read one section and share what they learned with other team members. They needed to interact with one another to finish the article.

Starting on the third day of the workshop, teachers from the same school worked as a team to design a unit plan through brainstorming about instructional activities, discussing instructional procedures, and sharing their classroom practice. Instructional coaches went to different teams and discussed the unit plan with participating teachers. A workshop should provide opportunities for participants to absorb new information, participate in group discussion, discuss problems, and arrive at solutions and applications to their own classrooms (Richards & Farrell, 2005). In this workshop, teachers were given a chance to share what they learned with others through turn-and-talk, group discussions, and lesson planning.

Connecting Previous Knowledge to Current Learning

The National Research Council (2000) claims that all new learning involves transfer based on previous learning, and this idea has important implications for the design of instruction that helps learners learn. A KWLA chart, a revised version of Ogle’s (1986) KWL chart, was used in this workshop to activate participant teachers' prior knowledge on co-teaching. On the first day, teachers wrote their K (what they KNOW) and W (what they WANT to learn) columns; they then had to talk with their partners about K and W. On the last day, they reflected on their learning by completing L (what they LEARNED) and A (what they want to APPLY) columns. Through the KWLA chart, teachers as learners can gain a better understanding of what they have learned and thus monitor their progress toward their goals.

CONCLUSION

Educators and researchers generally believe and promote the concept that one of the best ways to improve the teaching and learning process is by providing teachers with quality professional development experiences (Eun & Heining-Boynton, 2007). The five features used in the design and delivery of this particular 5-day workshop should be integrated into the professional development model for language teachers. They should also be taken into consideration for instructional coaches, educational policymaking bodies, and teacher training institutes and universities when they design professional development in order to improve the quality of language education.

References

Amirault, R. J., & Branson, R. K. (2006). Educators and expertise: A brief history of theories and models. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 69–86). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Bullock, K., & Muschamp, Y. (2004). Reflecting on pedagogy: Outcomes from a Beacon School Network. Teacher Development, 8, 29–44.

Eun, B., & Heining-Boynton, A. (2007). Impact of an English-as-a-second-language professional development program. Journal of Educational Research, 101(1), 36–48.

Irvin, L. (2002). Reflecting on reflections—The central role reflection plays in teaching writing in a computer networked environment. Paper presented at the 2002 Computers& Writing Conference, Normal, IL.

National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Ogle, D. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. Reading Teacher, 39, 564–570.

Richards, J., & Farrell, T. (2005). Professional development for language teachers. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Grace Chin-Wen Chien received her Doctor of Education degree from the University of Washington, in the United States. She is an assistant professor in the Department of English Instruction of National Hsinchu University of Education, in Taiwan. Her research interests include language education, language teacher education, and curriculum and instruction.