As a practicing teacher and teacher training, I very much believe that our learning should never stop. English language teachers have continued to develop their own practice, formally but mostly informally for generations (Richardson & Maggioli, 2018). And the recent shift online has reinforced the importance of this: the pandemic became a huge learning opportunity, fully embraced by many teachers and trainers.
Professional learning
It is not a surprise that professional learning, regarded as more sustained teacher learning, is essential. First, teachers are in the business of learning therefore it only seems logical to keep learning. As William (2019) states “every teacher needs to improve because they are not good enough but because they can be even better…” Secondly, effective teachers make a difference. Improving teacher quality is essential and it has an important impact on how much is learned in the classroom (William, 2016). The quality of teaching is not fixed (Kennedy,2016): teachers can improve through effective professional development.
Research has shown that effective professional development plays a key role in improving our teaching and students’ learning opportunities but what that effective professional learning exactly means is still an area that needs further research as our ideas about teacher learning are not as well-developed yet as those about student-learning (Kennedy, 2016).
Various ways for professional learning
In addition, there isn’t a simple relationship between our qualifications and the effectiveness of our teaching. But good teachers tend to read, explore and take part in whatever they can to keep learning: they read books, magazines, blogs, they talk about learning and teaching with colleagues; observe lessons or are being observed; watch webinars, explore YouTube © and reflect on their practice and they might even sign up for workshops course or online courses. The Internet offers a great source for inspiration and development. This truly is the golden age of professional learning, we don’t even need to leave our house as most things we are looking for are accessible online, and often even for free!
However, the tsunami of courses offered online can be truly overwhelming. How do we know what to focus on and how do we know which courses are worth our hard-earned money? This is not an easy question to answers, and I’m certainly in no position to tell you what the best course is for you, for the simple reason that professional learning is not a one-size-fits-all commodity, the usefulness of a course very much depends on where you are in your developmental journey as a teacher (see the Cambridge Teacher Development Framework) and even more so on your local learning and teaching context: the impact of your learning is context-sensitive. I mean, how can a course on teaching with tech be the right investment if your learning and teaching context lacks solid WIFI connections?
Whereas many courses are offered for free; they are not. Monetary, yes maybe but committing to a course means taking away time from other activities you could have participated in such as time with family, self-care etc. In order words, we are giving up something invaluable: out precious time! It is therefore key that we decide for ourselves how to make the best use of our time and design a focused pathway for development, instead of just accepting what is on offer right in front of you and doing a bit here and there on this and that: like a smorgasbord-approach!
The following questions might be worth considering when selecting an online course:
- Is this course contributing to my longer-term plan?
- Can you commit to the time it requires?
- Does it build on your prior knowledge?
- Will it provide you with a healthy level of challenges?
- Is your learning measurable?
- Are you provided with some personalised feedback on your learning activities?
- Is the course structured according to principles of effective practice?
- Are the materials and resources based reliable, from relevant research and sources?
- Is the content and focus area relevant and useful for your context?
STEEL your approach
Of course, there are many more things to consider when selecting online courses to further your teaching but based on my own experiences I strongly advocate you plan a more structured approach to professional learning if you want to support better learning in the classroom. Here’s my S.T.E.E.L. approach to structure this process.
Step 1 –Students’ needs inform our learning needs
In CLT we always try to focus on our learners’ needs, so why not when we select our focus area for PD? We need to realise that our job is not about teaching, it’s about optimising students’ learning opportunities. In your lessons, be observant and reflect to identify an area or element of your teaching where you feel your improvement would benefit your learners the most. This is a relevant goal. If you want to get someone to observe you and highlight a few areas that you can grow in or simply use learners’ performance or feedback as a pointer. For example, learners take quite a bit of time each lesson time to get on task. This might be a sign your task-setting needs more work. Also, make sure you have clarity about your goal. Select one area you feel will benefit your students’ learning and establish a SMART-goal for this area:
- Specific: not just task-setting, but e.g. when setting group tasks;
- Measurable: how can you measure that you have progressed/ achieved this goal? e.g. students get on task faster/ within 1 minute;
- Achievable: have you got the resources to work on this? Is this within your zone of proximate development or way beyond?;
- Relevant: is it relevant to your students in your context? Would it benefit their learning journey?
- Timely: plan youractions and set a date when you want to achieve your goal so you have a ‘deadline’ or it won’t happen at all (I’m speaking from experience here…)
Step 2 – Theory and practice need to be balanced
Look out for courses that provide an opportunity for you to engage with some theory. Of course, developing your skills related to teacher interventions and designing learning activities are important but having knowledge about something precedes developing skills. Gaining a deeper understanding of learning theories as well as of evidence that underpins our practice is also invaluable to apply learning to your context and to be able to critically analyse its value and usability. Therefore, it is important that the resources and research referred to come from reliable sources and are not just taken from any website but instead from renowned authors and organisations in the field of education, language education and educational research.
Step 3 – Experiment in your context: put your learning into practice
To get the most out of the time you have invested in your PD, we need to go beyond gaining knowledge and a deeper understanding. Whereas this declarative knowledge, knowing what, is useful and give us a clear rationale for our actions in the classroom, we need to give ourselves time to put things into practice with our own learners in our classroom to fully consolidate this knowledge and to extend our knowledge. You might know the facts and concepts, however, the knowledge to put things into practice, the procedural knowledge, or knowledge how to is a different kind of knowledge as is our metacognitive knowledge: what we have learned about our learning. It is not enough to do a course, get the certificate and then move on to the next course without trying to implement and experiment with your learning in context. It’s a bit like buying shoes and saying how comfortable they are, without ever wearing them!
Step 4 – Evaluate the usefulness of your learning
Once you have put the theories you have learned into practice in your context it is important to check if this really makes a difference for the learners in your context. Feel free to be critical here and if you decide that something doesn’t work that is absolutely fine. Learning what doesn’t work for your specific students in your setting is also learning, this is invaluable information and can inform your next step; adapting the ideas so they do have some effect for your learners or in looking for the next approach you could implement and re-evaluate. Reflecting, not only on what you have learned but also on how you have put it into practice and the outcome of that in your setting is also an important part of professional learning.
Step 5 – Learn with others
One of the most powerful ways to develop your own practice is to share it with others. There are many ways in which you can do this. You can decide to take the same online course together, watch the same webinar, etc after which you buddy-up together and reflect on the content and its usefulness for your context. You can also get together with your community of practice on Zoom e.g. and all share your different experiences, like a mini-PD session, where you each share what you’ve learned and how that could be applied. Remember, sharing is caring!
In the perfect world, we would all have a mentor, who is there to support us when we face challenges and challenges us to engage with professional learning. Someone who encourages us to identify areas for growth, explore these areas, experiment with new learning in order to enhance the impact of our teaching. But for those who don’t… just remember we do have our beautiful ELT community and each other! And if you are looking for a supportive mentor to share your learning journey with, feel free to contact me so we can see what I can do for you!
References
Kennedy (2016), How does Professional Development Improve Teaching?, Review of Educational Research, 86 (4), pp. 945–980.
Richardson, S. and Diaz Maggioli, G. (2018) Effective professional development: Principles and best practice. Part of the Cambridge Papers in ELT.