Design and Evaluation of Training Programs - Week 11

Introduction: Hello and welcome to week eleven of the course Design and Evaluation of Training Programs and Workshops. Today we will do several activities to explore the topics of narrative frames and research about teacher talking time and teacher action zones as professional development initiatives. We will also listen to an executive summary of your teacher training course syllabi and discuss characteristics of effective workshop design. 

Task 1: Teacher Mad Libs

Let's start with a fun and simple warm up activity that you can do with students or teachers, Mad Libs. Here you elicit words from participants and use them to complete a pre-written text that the participants have not seen. Click the link below and work with your partners to complete the task.

• Word List: CLICK HERE

Now let's see what you wrote! CLICK HERE to read the complete text and discuss these questions.

• What is true about the text? Why?
• What is incorrect? How would you "fix" it?
• What do you think about the final line?
• If you could replace the final line with your own idea, what would you say?

Task 2: Sharing your PD Journal

Let's take a moment to share one of the entries you made in your PD Journal in Week 10 for the section called "Research Your Own Teaching". As you share your highlight, let's think about how this tip connects to how we as individual teachers can develop in our practice and how we as trainers can use these techniques to support the growth of the teachers we work with. We can use the RACE framework to facilitate our discussion. 

Click to see full sized image.

Task 3: Exploring Narrative Frames

In your reading this week from Richards (2017), the author suggests several tips for professional development that involve writing and narrative. Let's look deeper at the topic of writing from a teaching perspective and from a professional development standpoint.

• In your experience, what is challenging about incorporating writing in an EFL course?
• What do students tend to struggle with? What strategies have you used to help them?
• In your opinion, how does the process of writing benefit a students thinking and language development? How is the process (and benefits) of writing different than the process of speaking?

• From a teacher perspective, how often have you written about your your teaching and for what purpose did you do the writing?
• In what ways is writing about a teaching experience, belief, problem, or success story different than simply having a conversation about it?
• What are the benefits of writing about personal teaching experiences for a teacher's professional development?

What are narrative frames?

Burkhuizen and Wette (2008) discuss the use of Narrative Frames as a tool to encourage teacher reflection and processing of experience as a part of a teacher education program or ongoing professional development initiative. They list the following strengths.

• They reduce teachers' anxiety about writing reflectively and avoid concerns about whether or not they are doing it correctly. 
• They provide flexibility in terms of what teachers write but are designed in a way to elicit specific kinds of thoughts and reflections. "Frames dictate the topics that they cover by channelling the responses (p. 381)."
• They can be helpful data collection instruments for qualitative research.

One of the biggest benefits of using narrative frames with a group of teachers is that it ensures that each writing will be personalized and unique why still maintaining a similar structure and length. This makes it much easier to do activities in which teachers read each others' narratives and compare and contrast them, identify recurring themes and patterns, react to them and draw conclusions.

• What are some training and ongoing professional development contexts in which this kind of writing might be useful?

Task 4: Researching Your Teaching

Richards (2017) also mentions two other areas that teachers can research in the classroom, their Teacher Talking Time (TTT) and their Action Zone. The need to reduce TTT is a common issue in many language teaching contexts but before it can be properly addressed, the concept of TTT needs to be clearly explored with teachers. Simply telling teachers to talk less, is not likely to have a big effect.

• What functions (if any) does TTT have in the learning process?
• Are there different kinds of teacher talk? If so, are some forms of teacher talk more beneficial than others?
• If there are different forms of teacher talk, are there differnt forms of student talk? Is all Student Talking Time (STT) the same?
• Are certain forms of STT more beneficial than others?
• In your teaching context, what is the ideal ratio of TTT to STT? How could you measure this?

Avoid Falling into the Sun Ray Approach

In my experience, most teachers (myself included) are quite unaware of the actual amount of TTT and STT in their classes and their calculations are rough and based more on gut feelings than actual numbers. 

• What strategies can teachers use to measure and monitor their TTT?

I've used two strategies with teachers I have trained. The first is to have them estimate the opportunities for STT by categorizing activities in their lesson plan as being high STT or low STT. Another strategy has been to have them review a recording of their lesson and complete THIS FORM. Once teachers become aware of their actual TTT/STT ratio, they can work to improve it. Richards provides a great list of reflection questions for teachers on page 86.

Richards says "We unconsciously tend to interact more with some students than with others, and the interaction pattern that we typically make use of is known as the teacher's action zone (2017, p. 87)." In face to face classes, your action zone has a physical component.

• Where do you typically stand when interacting with students?
• How often do you move from this spot? 
• If you had to create a kind of "heat map" or track your foot path through the classroom, what would it look like?

Of course, the more important aspect of the action zone is which students are involved in the activities and speaking opportunities and to what degree they participate. An important project for professional development could be having teachers investigate their action zone, who is most clearly in the zone and who is out and then seek to define the factors (teacher, student, environmental, etc) that lead to this configuration.

• What strategies could you suggest to help teachers carry out this kind of research and reflective analysis?
• What are some particular challenges related to the topic of the teacher action zone in an online teacing context?

Task 5: What Makes an Workshop Effective?

In your reading response for this week your read a a chapter in Nation & Macalister (2010) about the design of in-service workshops. Discuss your experience with these kinds of workshops as a teacher and trainer.

• How often do you attend in-service workshops?
• In your opinion, what makes an effective workshop?

Let's review some key content from the STUDY GUIDE and hear your takeaways.

Let's review your upcoming assignments!

• Training Workshop Guidelines: CLICK HERE
• Ongoing PD Program Proposal Guidelines: CLICK HERE

References:

Burkhuizen, G & Wette, R. (2008). Narrative frames for exploring the experiences of language teachers. System36(), 327-387.

Nation, I.S.P., & Macalister, J. (2010) Language Curriculum Design. Routledge.

Richards, J. (2017). Jack C Richard's 50 Tips for Teacher Development. Cambridge University Press.