Thursday, January 12, 2012

Teachers are learners too!

With the formation of Professional Learning Teams PLT for about two years now, our school culture is now moving into collaborative system which is something of a culture shift.

Since that time, teachers have worked together in their departments, but I feel that the benefits of this spirit of cooperation need also be taken into attitudes towards teacher professional development. The old model based on ‘what happened to me’ still pervades among us. Generally, people assume that the more you can do on your own the better it is. I however, feel that this should not be the case as this begets the question of how by simply doing more improve our teaching practice. As a result, similar kind of patterns of observations followed by some shared teaching by experienced teachers is carried out for teachers. More and more sharing sessions are carried out. But I think we still need to come back to the question of how do we best learn to do complex tasks like teaching? How many teachers used these sharing ideas for their own teaching?

I see my teachers as learners, and so what do we understand about how people learn that we can apply to them? When teaching our students, we would naturally provide a big picture, scaffold and provide clear information. We would use different strategies, involving self-directed and collaborative approaches, in which the students could explore what they need to learn. We would offer time for reflection using journals, summary, etc. Yet much of teacher professional development practice lack these ideas and leaves the individual teachers to “get on with it”, whatever, “it” might be, considering that they are already not knowing what to start with.

The point is that it is the quality of professional development that is important. This I think depends, on above all else, on the quality of the collaborative relationship between teachers. Success will be strongly dependent on the attitude of the teachers to the process. Someone who believes that both of them have things to learn together is more likely to help each other than someone who thinks that the process is about monitoring and getting on with it. No one, even the most experienced teacher is an expert in every part of the subject to teach. Working with another teacher will allow even the experienced teacher opportunity to learn more and at the very least to develop the teaching approaches. I have a teacher who has applies real life applications to her Math lessons which I believe will be an enormous benefit to making the subject come alive for the students. The teacher brings a different perspective, not only on the subject, but on the students too. I too with my own children bring to school other ideas on how to approach students. Hence, I strongly believe in such opportunities to learn with my teachers and the possibilities available. Inevitably, through this process, I hope to develop together with my teachers into a better teacher.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, it is imperative that teachers are professional in their learning. Sharing of best practices are not sufficient. These endorsed best practice must be adopted by the team of teachers who are professional in their critique and contributions. Once adopted as best practice, together with the rationale and profile, teachers must be professional enough to carry these out in their classes, keeping the core focus and adding their own style, so as to be authentic and credible.
    As professional teachers, we often lack the knowledge of what are the skills, attitudes and knowledge that endures in any subject, and together with this, we do not have a clear idea how these learning can be measured, beyond the standard test scores. And when we do not know what is to be learnt and how the learning with look like, it is unlikely that we will know how to give feedback to pupils for their improvement. We are often very resourceful and good at coming up with different strategies, methods, portals, tools, softwares, games and activities to engage our pupils in learning, thinking that these are the most crucial.
    Let us remember the 3 questions of AfL:
    1. What are the intended learning outcomes; the skills, attitudes and knowledge of the subject or chapter.
    2. What are the measures or indicators of the learning; how do we measure, what do the measures tell us,
    3. What are the activities that will help our pupils learn the intended outcomes; the games, methods, activities, softwares, etc.
    Be careful that we do not keep our focus on individual methods and activities, forgetting to explore the intended outcomes and their measures.

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