Design and Evaluation of Training Programs - Week 7 - Critical Reflection in Teacher Development

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 7 of the course Design and Evaluation of Teacher Training Programs and Workshops for the Master's in English Teaching at ULACIT Term IIIC 2023. Today we will do several activities to explore the topics of film analysis, and reflective practice as professional development strategies, discuss the ADDIE model for training development, and review a framework for connecting content, learning goals, and activities. 

Today's Goals:

• Explore the ways that film analysis can serve as an entry point for reflecting on teaching.
• Discuss the role of reflective practice in the process of ongoing professional development and as a problem solving strategy.
• Share updates on your course project and discuss posible areas of exploration related to content, input strategies, tasks, and evaluation.

Guiding Questions:

• How can fictional depictions of teachers and learners provide insight into the teaching-learning process?
• What is reflective practice and why should it be an essential skill for teachers?
• What insights from our needs analysis project might influence the training course proposal? 

Warm Up: Memorable Fictional Teachers

What teachers can you think of from fictional books, movies, TV shows, and cartoons? What were they link? Were they "good" teachers? Why or why not?

Click to see full size image.

Richards (2017) suggests the use of fictional teachers and classroom scenes as artefacts of analysis to promote discussion and reflection. Watch the film clip below and be ready to discuss the following questions.

• What teacher qualities are depicted?
• How do the students view the teacher?
• What kind of interaction takes place between the teacher and the students?
• What assumptions about teaching and learning does the clip seem to be making?
• What would you change if you could re-shoot this scene? - e.g. to make it more realistic? Contextualized for Costa Rican teachers in 2023?

Task 1: Sharing your PD Journal

Let's take a moment to share one of the entries you made in your PD Journal in Week 6. 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 teacher growth with teachers we work with.

• Engage in Critical Reflection
• Learn how to engage in critcal reflection
• Taek part in group problem solving
• Use clips from movies or extracts from fiction to explore teaching
• Try doing something different

Click to view full size image.

Task 2: Defining Critical Reflection

Richards (2017) discusses the importance of critical reflection as a professional development strategy in chapter 19, but what is critical reflection? Read the following definitions taken from Farrell (2019, pp. 16-17). What do they have in common? How are they different?

• Human activity in which people recapture their experience and think about it.
• We can stand outside ourselves and come to a clearer understanding of what we do.
• A moral as well as rational process of deciding what ought to be done in a practical situation.
• The process of making sense of one's experiences by examining one's thoughts and actions to arrive at new ways of understanding one's self as a teacher.
• The mental process of structuring or restructuring an experience, a problem, or existing knowledge or insights.
• Not an end in itself, but a tool or vehicle used in the transformation of raw experience into meaning-filled theory that is grounded in experience.
• A holistic way of meeting and responding to problems, a way of being as a teacher that emancipates us from merely impulsive and routine activity, and enables us to direct our actions and know what we are about when we act. 

Farrell takes a principled approach to reflective practice. He outlines these six interconnected principles that effective reflective practice entails:

• Reflective practice is holistic. It includes the moral, ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic aspects of our practice and our identities as teachers/learners.

• It is evidence-based. We collect and analyze empirical data from our experience to make informed teaching decisions.

• It involves dialogue. Reflection is enhanced through converations between myself, a "critical friend", and with a community.

• It bridges principles and practices. If we reflect on our teaching beliefs, we can determine if our actions are in alignment.

• It requries an inquiring disposition. A curious, open-minded attitude is needed to think critically about uncomfortablet topics.

• It is a way of life. The goal of increased awareness and responsible decision making extends to all areas of our lives.

Task 3: Levels of Reflection

Critical Reflection or Reflective Practice is a skill that one can learn and get better at. Some authors prefer to view reflective practice in terms of levels of reflection meaning that as a teacher becomes more skilled, they are able to reflect to higher levels of abstraction. Click your group link below to take your quiz. Make sure you each go to a different section of the document. When you finish, discuss your results.

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE
• Group 3: CLICK HERE

Check Your Level: Authors might differ on their particular descripion of the levels of reflection but there are generally recognized to be at least three. Farrell (2019, pp. 24-25) cites Day's model.

• Descriptive: Teachers focus their reflections on behavioral actions. This involves a focus on teacher skills. (Scores below 75)

• Conceptual: Teachers also include justifications of their actions based on current theories of teaching. This involves articulating a rationale for practice. (Scores 75-104)

• Critical: Teacher include both descriptive and conceptual reflections but also look beyond theories and practices to examine their meaning within ethical, moral, and social ramifications. This involves examining the socio-political, moral, and ethical results of practice. (Scores 105-120)

Task 4: Frameworks of Reflection

Many authors have proposed frameworks, models, or tools to help teachers engage in reflective practice in a structured way. Click your group link below and follow the instructions.

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE
• Group 3: CLICK HERE

So What? Why should we concern ourselves with critical reflection or reflective practice? Can't we just train teachers to have all the knowlege and skills they will need to be effective in the classroom? 

 

Task 5: Reading Response

Last week you completed the second part of the Linkedin Learning Course discuss the following information with your peers.

• ADDIE Model: In this section of the online course, the instructor went through the different stages of the ADDIE model. What do you think about this model as a framework for developing courses?

• Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate

• A Breakdown of the ADDIE model: Skim through the five scetions below and discuss the information. Respond to the questions in blue.

• Analyze: Research the context and needs of the potential trainees to determine what to include in the training and what to leave out. The author of the Linkedin course recommends considering these three aspects during the analysis phase.

• Readiness: - Why will this benefit the learner?

• Experience: - What relevant prior experience do the learners have?

• Application: - How will the learners apply this?

• Design: Determine your delivery method, activities, and the length of the training. In addition, you need to decide the organizational scheme you will use to give your training a "shape" or "flow". In the case of a typical English lesson, the shape or flow is often defined by common lesson planning frameworks like PPP or the Pre-Task, Task, Post-Task cycle, but what can be a good way to organize a training session? The author suggests a model by Stolovitch and Keeps as a framework to organize what happens during a training. This could be used to design a single workshop or this design principle could be incorporated in a longer training course where each lesson, module, or unit follows this sequence. What do you think about this model? Could it work for your project? What other ways of organizing a training session might be practical for us?

• Rationale: Introduce the topic and explain why it's important to the trainee.

• Objective: Share the objectives of the training with the participants.

• Activity: Have participants actually do something so they are actively engaged during the training.

• Evaluation: Include an assessment of the participants' learning.

• Feedback: Be sure that trainees receive feedback on their learning. This can be in the moment or after the fact.

• Develop: Once you have determined the content and design of the course, you will need to create all the materials and activities. This is potentially the most time consuming and labor intensive portion of the ADDIE mode and you will probably find that your design may need to be modified based on discoveries made during the development stage.

• Implement: The only way to know if your training works is to try it out by using it to train people. 

• Evaluate: You will need to plan different forms of assessing the effectiveness of the training course. The author of the Linkedin course mentioned the following questions to consider: 

• Does the training work?
• How could it be improved?
• Who achieved the goals?
• What percentage of participants achieved the goals?

• ADDIE and this Course: So now that you better understand the ADDIE model, CLICK HERE to review the stages of the project for this course at ULACIT. You will see that the stages of your major deliverables are aligned with the model as much as possible given the time constraints of the course.

Task 4: Project Check-In

So far what have we done? We have chosen an institution as the context of the new teacher orientation training proposal, carried out a needs and context analysis, and began the process of brainstorming possible content and ways of structuring the course. The next step is to put these ideas together in a formal proposal. Take some time to review the instructions for the next deliverable.

• Training Program Proposal: CLICK HERE

References:

Farrell, T. (2019). Reflective Practice in ELT. Equinox Publishing Ltd.

Graves, K. (2000). Designing Language Courses. National Geographic Learning.

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

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Devleopment.