Who is responsible for teacher development? Should teachers be forced to develop? What stops teachers from developing? Dr. Kathleen M. Bailey is professor of Applied Linguistics at the Monterey Institute of International Studies joins us to talk about teachers’ attitudes towards development, why much of what happens in our classrooms is unknown to teachers and what to do about these issues.
Attitude & Awareness in Professional Development (with Professor Kathleen Bailey)
Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." This episode, I'm really excited to share with you an interview I did recently with Kathi Bailey.
Kathi is author of two of my favorite books about professional development. One of them is called "Language Teacher Supervision ‑‑ A Case‑Based Approach." The other is "Pursuing Professional Development ‑‑ The Self as Source" which she co‑wrote with Andy Curtis and Dave Nunan. I'm sure I've mentioned that to you before in the podcast.
In this episode, I asked Kathi about attitude and awareness. For anyone who's ever attempted to do any teacher training will know how important attitude and awareness in teachers are, but I feel these aspects of teachers development very rarely get talked about.
In this episode, I asked Kathi about the responsibility for development, teacher's attitudes towards development, and then finally, what role does awareness play in teacher development? Enjoy the interview.
Ross: Hi, Kathi. At the beginning of Pursuing Professional Development ‑‑ The Self as Source, there's a quote. It says, "No one can be made to develop. We develop as professionals if, and only if, we choose to." I'm not sure, was that a quote from you, or from David Nunan, or Andy Curtis?
Kathleen Bailey: That's Andy. That's Andy.
Ross: That sounds like Andy is very provocative. I've got to say, this is something that I used to agree with completely, that schools shouldn't force teachers to develop. More recently, I've come to realize that if teachers don't develop, their knowledge will quickly become outdated and then, they're not really effective teachers for the students anymore.
Where do you think that responsibility should lie for development?
Kathleen: Anyone, be it a teacher or someone in another profession, has a right to say, "I don't want to develop or I'm not interested in professional development." But, for anyone who says that, I have to say, "You're in the wrong profession. You're in the wrong profession."
If you want to be a teacher, you want to make your living as a teacher, you want to be paid as a teacher, then you have a professional responsibility to continue to develop. That development might be at your own pace. It might be in line with your own interests. It might be not exactly what your program wants you to develop in.
If my employer suddenly turned to me and said, "Kathi, we want you to become a world‑class phonetician." I have to say, "Are you sure that's a good choice?", but I do have a responsibility to continue developing. We're not working in a factory, Ross. We're not stamping out widgets to fit on gadgets. We're working with human beings, and human beings live in context that change constantly.
If we just look at the effect of technology on language teaching and learning in the last 20 years, someone who said 20 years ago, "I'm not going to learn about computers. I know what I'm doing as a teacher." That person is missing some wonderful opportunities.
A friend of mine, Ray Clifford, who was the provost of the Defense Language Institute for many years here in Monterey used to say, "Computers will never replace teachers, but teachers who can use computers will replace teachers who can't."
I use that example not to push technology, but just as an illustration of how our programs, our students, our context are constantly changing. There are so many pressures exerted on language learners these days that we as teachers have to continually upgrade.
I realized that it's really hard to respond to an administrative dictum, "Thou shalt develop thyself," if the direction of that development is not what we feel is appropriate. I get that, but I do think that we have a responsibility to continue our professional development whether it's in knowledge or skills in the paradigms within which we work.
You can't be stagnant and be a teacher. You cannot be stagnant and be a teacher.
Ross: Ideally then, school should be able to hold teachers accountable for their own development, but maybe give them some freedom in terms of how they develop and in what areas they develop in?
Kathleen: Yes. That would be an ideal world. I guess I would say this, Ross, that when organizations hire teachers, the contractual discussion should clearly lay out expectations for teacher development. In well‑informed, well‑run programs, teachers would have a great deal to say about how they wish to develop.
Let's remember that the teachers are the ones that are closest to the students. They're the ones that know the students' needs. They're the ones that see what students are struggling with. Those needs, those struggles should at least, in part, motivate our development as teachers.
Ross: Kathi, tell us a bit about teacher supervision. What should the supervisor's role be in terms of teachers' attitudes? Is it really possible for supervisors to change teachers' attitudes towards professional development?
Kathleen: This is a hugely important issue that varies vastly in different teaching context around the world...This maybe a kind of pie‑in‑the‑sky idealistic vision of how things happen, for me, professional development begins with me.
I may take advantage of workshops. I may benefit from a supervisor's input if I have a supervisor. I may have great peers that share their lesson plans with me or come and visit my lessons, but I'm the one that has to take the steps to improve my teaching and how I do that can be either facilitated or depressed by environmental constraints.
If I'm a working mother or a working father, especially a single parent in a very large school working with large numbers of students and I'm responsible for feeding my family, getting the groceries and making sure that my children have medical attention, making time for professional development can be extremely difficult.
I would hope that as our profession evolves over the years, that the professional associations would be able to do even more for individual teachers in hard‑pressed contexts than they can do now.
I applaud and greatly appreciate the benefit of the various professional associations around the world, but I also acknowledge that for some teachers, membership dues or the cost of bus transportation to a workshop can be a prohibiting factor.
My own, perhaps over‑idealistic view, is that professional development has to start at home. It has to start with our own desires as teachers to improve what we do. That can be extraordinarily difficult depending on the contextual factors that impede such development.
Ross: So far, we've been talking about attitude. Let's talk a bit about awareness. There's a quote that I've noticed you've used many times in your writing I think from Jack Richards and it goes like this. "Much of what happens in teaching is unknown to the teacher."
Can you tell us why is that true and why is it important?
Kathleen: I think it's true. If I remember correctly, that's a quote from Richards and Lockhart's book about reflective teaching. It happens for a number of reasons. Much of what happens in teaching is outside the awareness of the teacher because teaching is extraordinarily complex.
There was some research done in the United States some years ago ‑‑ not in language teaching but in general education ‑‑ where the researchers said that teachers make thousands of decisions every day. The basic unit of analysis in teaching should be decision‑making.
Some of those decisions are very simple. "Should I close the door to my classroom or leave it open? Should I put Fred in the front row or let him sit next to his buddy in the back?" Other decisions are extraordinarily complex.
For example, you're teaching a lesson, you notice that a student is confused, the others seem to be going on with it. Do you deal with the confused student or do you just keep going? Teaching consists of making thousands and thousands of decision, some of which are within our awareness and some of which we do almost out of awareness.
Let me give you an example. Some years ago, I was involved in a research project that was spearheaded by Dick Allwright. We were audio recording language lessons with the teachers' and the students' permission. The topic was turns, topics and tasks. We're trying to see how students got turns in the classroom.
We were audio recording and transcribing the lessons, and then, we were trying to see which student had said which thing. Fortunately, we had an observer working as the teacher's aide. There was a situation where we had identified one student is taking a lot of turns.
His pseudonym in the research report was Chuck. We thought for sure that all these turns were being taken by Chuck. We asked the teacher and she said, "Oh, no. No. He never talks. He's completely disengaged. He doesn't speak in language classes." Then we played the audio for her and she said, "Oh, my gosh. That's Chuck."
What had happened was that he was seated right underneath the microphone and all of his very quiet, egocentric speech was being recorded but not heard by the teacher. The teacher thought he was disengaged. He was speaking all the time, but not loudly enough to be heard.
Out of the teacher's awareness, we have a student that is working really hard at his lesson, but based on what she's seeing, the student is unmotivated and uninvolved. I say this not to criticize the teacher by any means, this is an example of where the teacher's awareness simply did not encompass the student's engagement.
I had a situation myself where a student would come in late to one of my morning seminars every time. She stood at the back of the room. She would scowl at me through the lessons, squinting at me as if I was making no sense whatsoever, and was totally unnerving.
Finally, after about three weeks of this behavior, I thought, "I can't stand this. This woman is upsetting my teaching. I've got to find out why she hates me so much."
I asked her to stay after class. I said, "Look. I'm getting the feeling based on what I see that you just really hate the subject matter or this class or me. I'm trying to understand what I have done to offend you so much because I keep being drawn to you and the negative effect I'm getting from you."
She apologized and said she was so sorry. That she had broken her glasses, she had an expensive prescription, she couldn't see the board, she was squinting to look at the board. She was sitting in the back of the room because she had to take a bus to school and that's when the bus got there.
My interpretation of what I saw ‑‑ she arrives late, she squints and scowls at me ‑‑ was a valid interpretation, but totally incorrect from the student's point of view. Teaching is so extraordinarily complex, working with different students' needs can be amazing, eye‑opening, awareness‑raising experience, but we all work from where we start.
I walk into the classroom every day, try to do my best that day and not knowing what the heck I'm going to face. Teaching is one of the most extraordinarily complex professions in the world. Don't talk to me about nuclear physicist. I don't want to know about brain surgeons. The people who should be paid the most on this planet are teachers.
Ross: It's funny that you mention the person squinting. I've had exactly the same experience before. It's amazing how we often just tend to jump to the least charitable explanation for why someone is quiet or why someone is squinting. Clearly, sometimes those explanations are wrong.
Given that so much of what happens in the classroom is unknown to the teachers, what should teachers be doing to learn more about what's really going on in their classes?
Kathleen: The answer to that question may depend on the nature of the students. Let me say that for many, many years now ‑‑ although I did work in junior high school for a time ‑‑ most of my teaching experience in the last 40 years has been with adults. I have the benefit of being able to ask questions.
If it's culturally appropriate, if I feel that I won't be threatening to them, I ask them what's going on with them. It's my responsibility, if not my right, to check in with my students and say, "Hey, what's going on with you? You look upset. You look confused. You look worried. You look tired. Are you getting it? Are you with me?"
If I do that, if I ask a question or if I do a midterm evaluation, if I ask my students to give me thumbs up, thumbs down or palm flat facing down meaning neutral about a particular lesson, I have to be willing to take that input. I have to be opening my heart and my mind to what the students have to share with me.
It's not OK to say to the students, "Do you understand?" and expect them to say, "Yes, teacher. We understand." all the time. I have to be ready for them to say, "No. I'm totally confused." I have to be ready for the negative input. I have to be willing to accept the uncomfortable awareness as well as the validating awareness. I have to be open to listening to what I don't want to hear.
Ross: Kathi Bailey, thank you so much for joining us as well as checking out those books I mentioned at the top of the episode. Where else do you recommend that listeners go to find out more about this topic?
Kathleen: I would just like to encourage people to visit the website of TIRF. T‑I‑R‑F stands for The International Research Foundation. This is a small non‑profit. It's full name is International Research Foundation For English Language Education.
We try to raise money to support research in our field particularly at the doctorate level, and to disseminate the findings of research for the betterment of language teaching. There are some resources that could be helpful to your listeners on the TIRF website. The website is www.tirfonline.org.
If you go to the website, you'll see a button for Resources and References. If you click on that and then click on References, it will take you to a web page that has over 200 word documents of reference lists of interest to language teachers, researchers, program administrators, teacher educators and so on.
Some of those lists are related to the topics of this discussion we've been having today. I encourage your listeners to visit that website.
Ross: I can personally vouch for how useful those lists are. I've already shared them with a few colleagues. Thanks again, Kathi. Thank you everyone for listening. We'll see you again next episode. Goodbye.