The Impact of Professional Development on Teachers’ Automaticity in Performance

Farhat, A. (2022). The Impact of Professional Development on Teachers' Automaticity of Practice. In D. Bullock (Ed.), IATEFL 2021 Virtual Conference Selections - 54th  International Conference (pp. 40-42). IATEFL.

  

Introduction

Professional development has always been a concern for educational institutions, and much effort is put into it as a result. Ongoing professional development has often been conducted in the form of training sessions. However, one-shot training sessions do not ensure that teachers acquire the practices introduced during these sessions, and thus the content of these sessions does not necessarily become part of the teachers’ in-class performance unless they are continuously prompted and reminded of these practices. In this study conducted in a small private school, language teachers (English and Arabic) took part in a three-hour session where they were introduced to seven games[1] (language activities) that encourage oral and written communication:

1. Guessing Game
2. Describe & Draw
3. Paper Conversation
4. Show & Tell
5. Surveys
6. Chain Story
7. Dictogloss

During Training

Each game was introduced to the language teachers during the training session. First, the framework of the game was explicitly communicated to the teachers. Then they practiced the game. After the practice, each teacher was requested to reflect on the activity: how it might be used in their classes, how it could improve their students’ language, how is it different from/is similar to other language activities they do in their classes.

After the training

After the training, the participants were asked to apply one of the seven activities in their classrooms, record that activity, write a reflection on how the activity went in the class and then submit to the trainer a recording of the activity and the reflection on it. The teachers had access to the training session notes and recording of the training session on the school website, and the trainer was available to provide any support needed in the implementation on the new activities in their classrooms.

Findings

Teachers’ Reflections

Teachers reported to have enjoyed the newly-introduced activities and to have found them useful in their language teaching. They also reported that they implemented the activities and that they were easy to use, requiring little resources.

Choice of Game/Activities

Studying the recordings of the teachers, it was found that nine of the ten teachers chose Show & Tell as their activity; one teacher chose the Describe & Draw activity.

Delivery of Games/Activities

The activities, as recorded by the teachers, seemed to slightly resemble those as given in the training session. One teacher abided by the protocol of Show & Tell as given in the training session but omittetd key points, such as the type of questions to be asked to the speaker by the audience.

Discussion

Self-reported data (reflections) are not always indicative of classroom success and actual classroom performance.

The majority of the teachers chose Show & Tell as the activity to use with their students. This activity was in fact a speaking activity that the language teachers already commonly used in their classrooms from grades k – 8. It is clear here that the teachers chose an activity that they were familiar with rather than choose a new activity that was introduced to them during the training session. Moreover, the delivery of this familiar activity did not change much; the protocol as introduced in the training session was not abided by.

The choice of activities along with their delivery shows that it is not easy to change practices of practitioners as they are enfossiled in their performance due to long practice with no modification. This explains why teachers continued to perform the activities as they had done them all along before the training. In addition, teachers tend to rely on activities that they are accustomed to even after being exposed to training. That is evident in the teachers choosing Show & Tell rather than any of the other six new activities.

Implications

Teachers need to be given ample time to practice newly introduced practices before they are expected to start implementing them in their classrooms. Moreover, they need to be provided with sufficient, constructive feedback on their practices to help them improve these. In this study, the teachers were able to watch the video recordings of their selected activities and reflect on them. They had they had the opportunity to compare how they delivered the activity with training session notes on that activity and assess their performance; i.e., they were able to check where they abided by the activity protocol as given in the training and where they did not.

 

Link to presentation recording.

 

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[1] These games are taken from (Scott Thornbury © Mosaik Education)