Design and Evaluation of Training Programs - Week 5 - Examining Critical Incidents

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 5 of the course Design and Evaluation of Teacher Training Programs and Workshops for the Master's in English Teaching at ULACIT Term IIIC 2023. In this class we will do several activities to explore the topics of the use of critical incidents for teacher development as well as explore your takeaways from the first section of the LinkedIn Learning course about determining training needs. 

Today's Goals:

• Analyze a case study of a critical incident from a teacher's classroom practice.
• Share a critical incident you have experienced and describe how it led to an increase in your professional awareness.
• Discuss your takeaways from the first section of the LinkedIn Learning course How to Design and Deliver Training Programs and reflect on their relevance to our final project.

Guiding Questions:

• What is a critical incident and how can it serve as a catalyst for teacher learning?
• How do I know if training is the right solution for a problem?

Warm Up: Would you Rather....?

Spin the wheel and make a choice. You can't sit on the fence!

Task 1: Sharing your PD Journal

Let's take a moment to share some of the ideas you explored in your PD Journal Week 4. Quickly skim through your recent post and summarize the highlight you would like to share. 

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Task 2: Critical Incidents

Baecher and Farrell (2017) define critical incidents as "any unplanned and unanticipated event, vividly remembered, which occurs during class, outside class, or anytime during a teacher's career. Incidents really become critical only when they are subjected to this conscious reflection, through which teachers can uncover new understandings in their practice." 

Richards (2017, p. 34) suggests considering the following questions when facing a critical incident.

• Why was this incident significant?
• What were your thoughts or beliefs prior to this incident?
• How did you react at the time?
• What is your understanding of the reasons for the incident?
• What assumptions about teaching / learning does this incident raise?
• Would you react any differently if it happened again? Why or why not?

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As the diagram above illustrates, unexpected occurences in the teaching/learning process have the potential to provoke us to pause and reflect on our beliefs and practices, which can serve as a catalyst for change. In response to a critical incident, the teacher must choose between continuing on his/her trajectory or initiating a change.

This article by Joshi (2018) provides a great summary of the research about critical incidents in education if you would like to read more (CLICK HERE).  

 

Task 3: What's Going On Here?

In your teaching career, have you found yourself wondering why a student acted a certain way, why an activity worked or didn't work the way you expected, why students had trouble completing an exercise you thought would be simple for them, and many other puzzling situations. Incidents like these can provide us with the opportunity to reflect on our practice and the different factors that influence the learning process. Click the link below and read your assigned case study. Then answer the questions with your partners.

• Case Studies: CLICK HERE

Task 4: The Importance of Considering Context and Needs

Last week we discussed portions of chapters 2 and 6 in Graves' (2000) Designing Language Courses. 

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• "[Training] course design, like teaching, and like architecture, is a grounded process. This means that when you design a [training] course, you design it for a specific group of people, in a specific setting, for a specific amount of time; in short, for a specific purpose. The more information you have about the context, the easier it will be for you to make decisions about what to teach [train] and how (Graves, p. 15)."

• "Problemetizing is about making choices for action. A given course can be designed and taught in any number of ways. You need to make decisions about how you will design the course, based on what you know about your context (p. 21)."

• "When designing and teaching a [training] course to meet students' [teachers'] needs, we assume there is a gap to be bridged between a current state [KASA] and a desired one, or progress to be made toward a desired goal, or a change to be made. The purpose of the [training] course is to bridge the gap or some part of it, to help students [teachers] make progress or effect the desired change (Graves, p. 101)."

Designing Training Programs - The Critical Events Model - Leonard Nadler

• Identify the Needs of the Organization

• Specify Job Performance

• Perceptions of the Job: How do different individuals or departments in the organization feel about this job? What are the expectations of this job?

• Interdependency of the Job: How does this job relate to other jobs in the organization? Who depends on the work done in this job? Does this job also depend on work done by others? How does this job fit within the overall system of the organization?

• Standards of the Job: How do we know when someone is doing this job well? What does acceptable quality and quantity look like in this job? What does efficiency look like in this job?

• Gather Data: How can you gather the information you need to make an accurate description of the perceptions, interdependence, and standards of the job?

• People: Interview, Questionnaire, Observation, Meetings, Focus Groups, Critical Incidents, etc.

• Records and Reports: Performance Reviews, Observation Reports, Incident Reports, Complaints, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, etc.

• Literature Review: What external professional standards exist for this job or similar jobs in the same field?

• Identify Learner Needs

• Determine Objectives

• Build Curriculum

• Select Instructional Strategies

• Obtain Instructional Resources

• Conduct Training

Task 5: Reading Response

Last week you completed the first part of your assigned Linkedin Learning course which looks at the design of training programs from a corporate training perspective. Respond to the following prompts with your partners.

• What did you think about the first section of this course?
• What aspects of the course did you find applicable to context of teacher training?
• What did you not find to be applicable?

Now review some of your ideas from the reading response task and share them with your partners.

• Describe in your own words how you can determine if employee training is needed. Can you give an example from a teaching context in which employee training might not be the appropriate solution?

• The speaker said that training can only address a gap in Knowledge, Skill, or Ability (KSA). What did you undertand was the difference between Knowledge and Ability? Do you think this is a helpful distinction to make?

• For our course, we will use KASA (Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills, and Awareness) as our tool for conceptualizing content for the training course we are designing. Think about the training scenario that you have chosen for your project. What specific Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills, and Awarnesses might a teacher need to acquire through your training course?

• The speaker introduced the 5 Question Framework that involves a series of questions you should discuss when you are asked to create a training. How do they help you begin the process of training development?

• Why is this project important?
• How will we know if the project is successful?
• What do people need to do to achieve our goals?
• What factors besides training might influence performance?
• What knowledge, skills, and abilities do we need to develop?

• What did you think about the ABCD framework for perfromance objectives? Do you think this could be a helpful way of articulating the objectives for your trainees? Why or why not? 

Task 6: Project Check-In

Take the remainder of class time to share your progress, ideas, and concerns about the project for this course. The following prompts might guide your conversation.

• What is the specific focus of your project?
• What data collection instruments will you make?
• Have you already applied them? If so, what were the results? If not, when do you intend to apply them?
• Have you begun thinking about potential content, tasks, organization or any other aspect of your proposal?
• What are you concerned about?

References

Farrell, T. (2008). Critical Incidents in ELT Initial Teacher Training. ELT Journal, 62(1), 3-10.  https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccm072

Farrell, T. & Baecher, L. (2017). Reflecting on Critical Incidents in Language Education. Bloomsbury. 

Joshi, K. (2018). Critical Incidents for Teachers’ Professional Development. Journal of NELTA Surkhet, 5, 82-88. https://doi.org/10.3126/jns.v5i0.19493

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