Empathetic Understanding of Teachers’ Resistance to Change

 Published in Iatefl Blogs October 2020

EduLEADER, August 2020

     School leaders often face resistance when introducing a new approach to be adapted by teachers. This was evident when schools had to abruptly shift to online teaching during the involuntary closure of schools due to the COVID-19 lock down. While administrators were pushing for the shift to online teaching, many teachers, who are instrumental for the success of this shift, resisted it. The stand of either side is justified since each perceives teaching online from a different perspective.

      Administrators need to lead their institutions. In their attempts to keep up with change, maintain the existence of their institutions, and perform their duty of educating children, they are required to act as a driving force to cause change to occur. This is necessary but might be countered by an opposing force from the teachers. At a first glance, teachers might be perceived negatively for not wanting the change to occur, but with careful study, their attitudes are justified and need to be dealt with and understood with extreme patience and tolerance. A sudden adoption of a new approach by the school is likely to drift teachers from their comfort zone, and that can cause them stress and anxiety. The feeling of failure at trying something new is enough to cause resistance to it.  All this can be due to lack of knowledge and skills and abilities in what the school is proposing.

      Change should be planned well for proper implementation. First, school leaders need to differentiate between resistance that is caused by the individual’s indifference and resistance that is caused by anxiety and fear of failure. To deal with the latter, educational leaders must approach the issue empathetically. Empathizing with teachers means understanding their points of views, their problems, experiences, feelings, and above all the stories they have. Those stories can be understood when conversing with teachers. Conversing empathetically, rather than interviewing them to elicit answers to questions, is what helps teachers reveal stories about their experiences and how those experiences have impacted their feelings and understandings. Such conversations will allow you to know that the teacher feels uneasy when giving a lesson via a video conferencing tool and how the mother of one of her students interfered in the lesson unexpectedly and wouldn’t stop giving answers to the questions asked to the class. During such conversations, you know that a teacher has problems giving lessons early in the morning because that is the time her toddler wakes up and wants his mommy beside him or else he throws a tantrum. Such conversations will let you know that the teacher feels uneasy during a live lesson because he doesn’t know how to stop the students from annotating on the screen which disrupts the class, and they all fall into laughter. These stories give the school leader much insight into the struggles of teachers, and that is when the driving force of the administration and the resisting force of the teachers unite into one force pushing into one direction: adoption, implementation, and change.

      Making informed decisions requires that the administration and other school leaders understand the reasons behind resistance (or acceptance) of change. Once understood, they can be evaluated and rated to understand which can be influenced and which cannot. Then it becomes easy to devise a strategy to enhance the points of strength and tackle the points of resistance. In the case of integrating technology to teach online, as the case is now that schools had to close down, the strategy might include a training agenda to equip teachers with the skills they need, creating coaching groups to support and mentor those who need assistance, providing resources for online teaching, creating support groups for sharing stories of successes and disappointments, and providing the necessary infrastructure for online teaching such as internet and devices.

      Change is a process of unfreezing a certain situation. It is only natural to experience resistance when initiating this process. But this resistance is not necessarily out of ill-intentions but may be due to lack of skills, abilities, and other necessary requirements. Discerning these needs makes it easier to make informed decisions and devise plans of action that would achieve optimal results. Once new behaviors are adopted, implemented, and sustained, the school culture will be functioning with a new normal. That is change.

Are We Focusing on What Matters Most in Classrooms?

EduLEADER Newsletter, March 2020

In our leadership practice, we focus on so many variables in classrooms to collect data. We use this data, whether numerical or narrative, to improve classroom performance for the purpose of improving students’ achievement. We ensure that we collect evidence that is concrete. Concrete evidence can be analyzed with teachers, and it functions as the basis for planning for improvement. However, are we collecting the appropriate evidence? Are we focusing on what matters most?

Classroom observations tend to focus mainly on the teacher. It could be because we subconsciously think that the teacher is the center of classroom action; an idea we have acquired from the education system we have been through for decades. Or, it could be because the teacher is the sole performer in the class, and we can’t but pay most attention to him or her. Whatever the reason is, we need to shift our attention from the teacher to the learners. This shift is vital for change. When focusing on the learners, focus should be on the tasks they are carrying out. Students might be pre-occupied with their tasks and with coming up with an outcome. But what kind of task is it? What outcome will it yield to? What level of thinking does it require? How related is it to the curriculum standards? The PISA[1] results in some countries are scary in that they show that students are not functioning well on tasks that require high levels of proficiency. PISA 2018, for example, showed that, 64% of 15-year-old children in Lebanese schools achieved at or below level 2 on reading proficiency[2]. If we are to assume that tasks predict performance, we can assume that those students are not engaged in their classrooms in tasks that require high levels of thinking, and thus, they are unable to perform on tasks that require high levels of thinking.

Another example that shows the need to focus on tasks is when students are engaged in project work. Educators and curricula encourage integrating projects in teaching for the many merits they have on learning. Through projects, students can synthesize a breadth of skills they have been working on to come up with a new composition that is their own. This is how creativity is reached. However, many times the outcome of such work is a superficial product that requires minimal thinking. Simply copying textbook material on a poster board is at times portrayed as project work. At other times, you might see a replica of information in the form of a wooden model that is made by parents or a carpenter in the student’s family portrayed as a project. Students might put together a simple PowerPoint presentation of information collected from Wikipedia and present it as a project.

The same is true to integrating technology into lessons. Technology integration into teaching can transform the class into a highly interactive and engaging one. However, the essential question is, “How effective are the tasks?” They might be interesting and engaging, but do they require high levels of thinking? Or, are they merely activities of matching items or classifying them into groups? Are the tasks related to the curriculum? Again, this is a situation where focus on the task is important.

While focus on the quality of the tasks is crucial, classroom interactions are just as important. The teacher, the content and the students should not each be focused on in isolation of the others, but focus should be on how the three components interact: what interactions take place among students, what are those that take place among students and the teacher, what are the interactions between students and teachers and the content? These interactions tell us a lot about the emotional support that takes place in the classroom, how much students’ perspectives are regarded, and how positive the climate is. In addition, they allow us to know how efficiently time is being used. The interactions can inform us about the tasks; how aligned they are with the standards, the level of thinking they require, and how engaging they are. Moreover, they inform us about the quality of feedback and the type of instruction students receive.

As teachers, we often focus on ourselves rather than on our learners. This is evident in the lesson planning. We see focus on the teachers’ actions more than on the students’. The lessons might be written from the teachers’ perspectives and are phrased in the first person singular. Here, focus should be shifted to the students and what tasks they will be carrying out in class. In classrooms, teachers need to be helped to shift from focusing on their performance to focusing on how their performance affects the students. The reflection sessions that take place after a classroom observation are a great opportunity for this. In these sessions, concrete data collected plays an important role in helping teachers focus on what should be focused on; the learners, their tasks and the classroom interactions.

[1] “PISA is the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges” https://www.oecd.org/pisa/.

[2] Levels of reading proficiency of PISA are 1a, 1b, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6

Distributing Student Talk and Work

 EduLeader Newsletter , October 2019

Last night, as I sat in our family room, I saw my ten-year old son on the couch with a plate of rice in his lap. He was eating, watching the Qatari soccer league on TV, and playing on his virtual Real Madrid team on his iPad app, Dream League, all at the same time. My instinctive, motherly reaction was to order him to put his plate on the kitchen table and turn off either the TV or the iPad. His immediate response was that he wanted to both play and watch! Then it hit me. This kid can multitask, and he was comfortable doing several things at once. I recalled how in the many classes I attend, I often observe teachers doing all the work at the board while students are left bored in their desks expected to follow up on what the teacher was doing. In the post-observation conferences with teachers, I often give feedback on the amount of teacher talk time TTT in comparison to the student talk time STT. Also, I discuss with teachers the options for distributing student work and allowing them freedom to do things at their pace and preferences.

In classroom settings, it is common to see the teacher controlling the activities; when the activity starts, when it ends and how it is done. While this might be required at times, the control over students’ work is taken to extremes when the class is expected to sit and follow what is going on on the board the length of the teaching period; first the input session and then the modeling of application, followed by a student applying on the board. Up till now, all is good and logical. But when it comes to the worksheet or workbook activities, many times, it is expected that the students remain attentive and the teacher works out the activities item by item on the board with the presence of one student at the board (or none). Then students copy the correct answers off the board.

While teachers have been exposed to the concept of cooperative learning and varying classroom interaction, control over classroom happenings is highly practiced. The shift from teacher-controlled practices to distributed interaction is still not evident enough in classroom practices and teachers are not always to blame. This could be due to many factors, one being that the teachers themselves went through a teacher-controlled mode of instruction as students. Another could be that the teachers have not witnessed distributed interaction enough and have not been given enough opportunities to practice it during their pre and during service training to gain automaticity in practicing it. Whatever the case is, instructional leaders need to intervene, provide feedback and equip teachers with the appropriate practices. In addition, they need to allow teachers to reflect on their practices and come up with their own judgment on what works best for them.

Some of the practices and structures that can be introduced in classroom settings to enhance distributed work:

• ·       Think-pair-share
• ·       Talking to a face/shoulder partner about their work
• ·       Peer editing
• ·       Providing oral/written feedback to a partner
• ·       Students dividing tasks among each other and assigning roles
• ·       Using a discussion mat to reach a final consent on a topic
• ·       Buddy journal writing
• ·       Conducting gallery walks and asking questions
• ·       Flipping the classroom

      In this regard, I suggest Kagan’s book: Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures for cooperative learning structures that have been proven effective.

The activities are endless, and the shift to allow students freedom is necessary. It allows students to work at their own pace which benefits the fast achievers because they will be able to do more and those who need additional support because the task design allows them the time to get the extra support they need. The teacher will also have ample time to observe and collect information about class dynamics, which serves as basis for formative evaluation on which she/he can plan to improve student learning. Further, when work is distributed, it is expected that discipline problems decrease because all are engaged rather than controlled.

And if my son can play a soccer game and watch another simultaneously, why should I use my motherly authority to stop it and have him work at a pace I am comfortable with! But, for sure, no eating on the couch is allowed, and the use of the iPad is limited to one hour per day!

Formative Evaluation of Teachers’ Performance

Published in EduLeader - August 2019

Teacher evaluation might lead to counterproductive results if conducted in a manner that declines their status as professionals. Therefore, it should focus on the growth of teachers’ knowledge, viewpoints and inquiries. For this, evaluation must be conceived as a formative process aiming at the growth and improvement of teachers’ performance. Teachers, thus, need to be provided room to examine their practices and those of others they work with. Reflection helps teachers do so and develops their analytical skills of their practices and moves them closer toward autonomy (Robbins & Alvy, 2014). In addition, peers can take part in teachers’ evaluations which reduces the stress caused when the administration or personnel in supervisory positions (Acheson & Gall, 2011) are the sole evaluators of teachers’ performance. Learning walks that involve peers and peer visits are excellent ways to collect data on teachers’ performance and to provide them with formative feedback in low stress situations and in a collegial manner, all of which are conducive to creating positive interdependent communities at schools. At times, it might be helpful to invite external observers to conduct learning walks or classroom observations to provide teachers with data from an outside source.

Interdependent communities are enhanced when teachers are active participants in developing their own evaluation system, and the evaluation system will become more reflective of their concerns (Sergiovanni & Starrot, 2006). In doing so, the evaluation criteria become clear for the teachers, which is only fair in the process of helping them, especially novice ones, grow and develop in their careers and to boost their confidence and abilities.

Other formative methods for teacher evaluation can include portfolio complication by teachers. Portfolios are of special importance, for they allow teachers to document their growth in a visible manner. Lesson plans, evidence on implementation of new or successful practices, reflection reports, checklists and observation reports can be among the components of teacher-compiled portfolios.

Students are a good source of data for teachers’ formative evaluation. Students can provide their perceptions on how they view the practices in their classrooms. This helps clarify to teachers the impact of classroom happenings on students’ perceptions. Interviewing students or having them complete questionnaires are ways to collect data that can be shared with teachers, or better yet, teachers themselves can collect this data from their students.

Teachers keeping a checklist at hand can enhance self-monitoring. Such checklists might include practices that the school considers essential. Newly introduced practices or activities can be included in the checklists. Coaches or subject coordinators can encourage teachers to refer to these checklists periodically. This will remind teachers of these essential practices and will help them monitor how often they are implementing them.

Although summative evaluation of teacher performance is necessary for administrative purposes, it is only fair that it be conducted after a long process of formative evaluation that aims at bringing teachers as close as possible to the desired outcomes. This formative evaluation must be collegial, respectful of teachers’ opinions and knowledge and goal-oriented. All in all, it should allow teachers to grow as professionals and become autonomous learners and problem solvers.

References

Acheson, K. A., & Gall, M. D. (2011). Clinical Supervision and Teacher Development: Preservice and Inservice Applications (6 ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Robbins, P., & Alvy, H. B. (2014). The Principal's Companion: Strategies and Hints to Make the Job Easier. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

Sergiovanni, T., & Starrot, R. (2006). Supervision: A Redefinition (8 ed.). New York: Mc Graw Hill.

Learn, Grow, Inspire… and Be Inspired!

     Opening message in Al Mada yearbook - Summer 2019

It has been a very exciting academic year for all of us at Rawafid. Just when I thought we could safely say that a professional learning community has been established at our school, I realized there were more horizons for us to explore. That is where our new learning takes place, and that is where the magic happens!

Looking back at the past year, there is so much to celebrate. Our continuous growth and our success stories, story after another, bring joy and a sense of pride to the teachers and students alike and to the Rawafid community at large. This year was marked by the integration of many principles in teaching. Creating a positive spirit in the school, turning learning into social events, individualizing instruction, and trusting the learners are a few of the principles teachers and coaches have diligently worked on implementing in their practices. This implementation is evident for the observer in both the classroom and the playground.

Adopting new practices was always preceded by training. This was followed by reflecting on practices in order to evaluate and refine them. Planning for action came after reflecting, and all taking place in a cyclic process where each cycle fed into another. This goes hand in hand with the theory of experiential learning that we passionately believe in. Coaching rather than supervising was a vital practice that facilitated the process and transformed Rawafid’s students, teachers and administrators into a community of learners. One of the outcomes of coaching is reflected in hearing teachers willingly inviting colleagues to attend their classrooms to observe new activities being tried out.  

All in all, I can’t but feel proud of how far we have come at Rawafid. Of course, there are still many more horizons to seek, which we will reach and explore with enthusiasm, dedication, love to discover and willingness to surpass ourselves.

Thus, we, staff and students, will continue to learn, grow, achieve, inspire,
and be inspired!

Theories and Tenets That Are Vital in Implementing a Professional Development Plan at School

Article published in The EduLEADER

July 2019

Implementing a professional development plan at a school requires careful planning and basing practices on grounded theories and tenets in the field. Often, the personnel involved in professional development find that what applies to teacher education intersects with what applies to student learning. Here, I choose several practices and theories that have worked well when I worked with groups of teachers.

Experiential learning and the practice cycle

Kolb’s model of learning (Kolb & Kolb, 2005) aims at transforming schools through reflective observation and experimentation in a four stage-cycle of:

·         concrete experience when lesson observation takes place to collect evidence to be used in the   feedback session

·         reflective observation which is based on the evidence collected, and feedbacking occurs here to assist the teacher to reflect on practice

·         abstract conceptualization which includes encouraging teachers to discuss the deep structures of teaching to establish theoretical principles that undergo the observed behaviors

·        active experimentation in which the discussion of principles is derived from the lesson to decide how to apply them in a new situation.

This cycle goes parallel to Randall and Thornton’s (2005) practice cycle which they perceive also as a helping cycle including the phases: exploration, understanding (combines the abstract conceptualization and active experimentation phases in Kolb’s model) and action.  

The underlying concepts and the practices for experiential learning and the practice cycle are evident in many other models such as Korthagen’s ALACT model (action, looking back on the action, awareness of essential aspects, creating alternative methods of action and trial), Cogan’s eight-stage clinical supervision, and Wallace’s six-phase HORACE pattern (Hear, observe, record, analyze, consider, evaluate) (Farhat, 2011).

Collaboration and interaction

Collaboration is empowering for teachers if it allows them to increase their knowledge and to be actively involved in shaping the school culture (Glazer & Hannafin, 2006). Collaboration allows teachers to pool their resources toward the attainment of a common goal if it is done in a context of communication, trust and flexibility and responsiveness to change (Mackenzie, Zakrzewski, Walker, & McCluskey, 2008).

Collaboration allows teachers to consider themselves as leaders, for while collaborating they are participating in leadership (Lambert, 2003). This is empowering for teachers. The power of collaboration is echoed by Michael Fullan (2008) who sees that it should be positive and purposeful to achieve optimal results.

Peer coaching and peer mentoring

In a coach-teacher relationship, the coach facilitates the teacher’s thinking and helps him/her learn on the job (Miller, 2018). Here the coach is in charge of the process of having the teachers achieve a certain goal. This form of peer supervision diminishes bureaucracy from supervision since it allows teachers to work in teams, develop their own plans, share ideas, have face to face feedback, and analyze results (Marshal, 2005). Further, these practices allow teachers to have more choice, to reflect, to network, to break down the silence that teachers live, and to generate their own solutions, all of which are vital to improve practices in education (Potgieter, 2019).

“A variation of peer coaching is peer mentoring where an experienced teacher and a less experienced one form a relationship” (Farhat, 2017, p. 57). However, mentors advise based on their personal experiences. Here, the teacher is the owner of the goals and the process. Both practices, coaching and mentoring, are low cost and are proven to be conducive to professional development of teachers (Farhat, 2017).

Professional learning communities

The concept of professional learning communities has been evolving since 1989 starting with Rosenholtz, and since then several models have emerged to depict what a professional learning community is (Hassan, Ahmad , & Boon, 2018). Whatever model is considered, the professional learning community is a practice that enhances teacher collaboration and reflection which gradually facilitates the creation of a common vision and norms among teachers. All this is for the optimal goal which is student learning (Avalos, 2011). Improved student outcome is observed “in terms of achievement, social skills, emotional aspects, independence and creativity” as a study by Owen revealed through “achievement data, student work samples, teacher observation and self-reports” (Owen, 2015, p. 57).

For the school to be a professional learning community, administrators, teachers and students must be involved in responsibility and its underlying actions (Sergiovanni & Starratt, 2006). Further, the community and parents can take part in this community by providing their ideas and feedback. In this way, the school vision will be embraced by all (Hassan, Ahmad , & Boon, 2018).

A common thread passes among all the above-mentioned practices. They all subsume interaction, collaboration, sharing, scaffolding and support to reach a specific goal. Just as these practices have proven to be successful in classroom practices, they are also vital when adult learning is involved.

References

Avalos, B. (2011). Teacher professional development in teaching and teacher education over ten years. Teachign and Teacher Education(27), 10-20.

Farhat, A. (2011). The Impact of Clinical Supervision on Teachers' Performance in Classroom Managerial Skills. Beirut, Lebanon: Lebanese University.

Farhat, A. (2017). The perceptions of English language teachers and supervisors of supervisory practices. Beirut, Lebanon: Lebanese University.

Fullan, M. (2008). The Six Secrets of Change. San Francisco, California, USA: Jossey-Bass.

Glazer, E., & Hannafin, M. (2006). The collaborative appernticeship model: Situated professionl development with school settings. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(2), 179-193.

Hassan, R., Ahmad , j., & Boon, Y. (2018). Professional Learning Communities in Malaysia. International Journal of Engineering and Teaching, 7(30), 433-443. doi:10.14419/ijet.v7i3.30.18347

Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning Styles and Learning Spaces: Enhancing Experiential Learning in Higher Education. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 4(2), 193-212.

Lambert, L. (2003). Leadership redefined: an evocative cotnext for teacher leadership. School Leadership and Management, 23(4), 421-430.

Mackenzie, L., Zakrzewski, L., Walker, C., & McCluskey, A. (2008). Meeting the educational needs of fieldwork superivosrs: A collaboarative workhsop developed by New South Wales occupational therapy fieldword coordinators. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 1-10. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-1630.2001.00233.x

Marshal, K. (2005, June). It's time to rethink teacher supervision and evaluation. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(10), 727-735. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170508601004

Miller, J. (2018, 8 30). 14 Coaching Principles All Managers Should Practise. Retrieved 7 10, 2019, from Leaderonomics: https://leaderonomics.com/leadership/coaching-principles-managers-should-practise

Owen, S. (2015). Teacher professional learnign communities in innovative contexts: 'ah hah moments', 'passion' and 'making a difference' for student learning. Professional Development in Education, 41(1), 57-74. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2013.869504

Potgieter, E. (2019, 7 10). Transforming Malaysia's Education System. The Bigger Picture . (K. Anissa, Interviewer) Retrieved 7 10, 2019, from https://www.bfm.my/podcast/the-bigger-picture/live-learn/transforming-malaysia-education-system

Randall , M., & Thornton, B. (2005). Advising and Supporting Teachers. (M. Williams, & T. Wright, Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sergiovanni, T., & Starratt, R. (2006). Supervision: A Redefinition (8 ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

iatefl - Liverpool 2019

The 53 International IATEFL Conference 

 IATEFL conference is one of the main events in the English language teaching worldwide. Attending it once is enough to make this event an addiction.. This year it was attended by around 3000 professionals in the English language teaching and included about 500 talks, workshops and forums.  

Conference Venue - ACC

I had the opportunity to present this year in one of the conference's special interest groups: Leadership and Management SIG. My presentation, titled "Transforming a School into a Learning Community through Distributing Leadership" was placed in the SIG's showcased papers. 

Abstract

This presentation outlines the journey taken by an educational consultant in a school to distribute leadership among teachers so that each has a leadership role. This model can inspire similar professional development plans that can be tailored to the needs of different schools where everyone is empowered and the school culture is transformed into a culture of co-learning.

Summary:

This presentation shows how one small private school implemented a professional development program that involved its teachers in school leadership tasks, each based on his/her strengths, skills, certification and/or desire. This has been going on for the third consecutive academic year.

Implementation started with meetings with the administration and the subject coordinators to make an inventory of the professional needs of the teachers. This was coupled with eliciting teachers’ opinions on what they believed they needed assistance with through a Google Form questionnaire. Then the school launched a professional development center to cater for the logistics of training and professional development events. Themes to be worked on were

decided on and teachers from the school and experts from outside the school were contacted to carry out facilitation sessions for the different themes.

Themes included: basic theories and concepts in teaching, technology literacy, interactive technology, methods of teaching, classroom management, engaging activities, lesson planning, school publications, … For each theme, the teachers were grouped and each group had a coach. Groups met periodically to review the new concepts they learned and to discuss the challenges and merits of

their newly acquired skills. They also reflected on their practices and how they changed.

Tools used to ensure the sustainability of the new learnings: meetings, facilitating training

sessions, classroom observations, peer visits, checklists, reflection, on-going assessment, mentoring …

Finally, the presentation will show sample of outcome of the professional development program

as shown by observations, reflections and testimonies of teachers and coaches.

___________________________________________

It was a great opportunity to meet with writers, theorists, exhibitors and professionals in ELT.

With author of books on methodology and coursebooks, Lindsay Clandfield

With Scott Thornbury, an internationally recognized linguist, academic and author

With the internationally recognized linguist, author and academic David Crystal

Although attending the conference is enriching and allows for keeping up-to-date on what's new in ELT worldwide, it is great friends who make this event special and enjoyable.  

Great friends who also presented important papers: Rasha (learner autonomy) and Maysaa (integrating technology into writing)