Do coursebooks de-skill teachers? What happens if the important decisions about planning get left to coursebook writers rather than teachers? How much of the coursebook should schools tell teachers to use? And what can you do if your school doesn’t let you deviate from the prescribed materials? Dave Weller, author of “Lesson Planning for Language Teachers” and friend of the podcast discuss.
Do Coursebooks Stop Teachers Developing? (With Dave Weller) Transcript
Ross Thorburn: Welcome back, Dave.
Dave Weller: Hurrah! Nice to be back.
Ross: Thanks. Dave and I were having a conversation a couple of nights ago, and we got talking about teachers uses of materials, right?
Dave: Yes, perhaps in the over‑reliance of materials in the classroom.
Ross: It reminded me of this quote from Ian McGrath, who says, "It's been argued that if teaching decisions are largely based on the textbook and the teacher's book, this has the effect of deskilling the teacher. If the person doing the teaching cedes to the textbook rights have responsibility for planning, he or she gradually loses the capacity to exercise the planning functions."
He says, "The teacher's role is trivialized and marginalized to that of a mere technician." [laughs]
Dave: It seems over my many year's teaching and training, one observation is that when I see teachers who have been encouraged to use, only use and teach from the materials they have. They seem to develop habitual actions in the classroom that they do without thinking without reflection. There is definitely a parallel there between the quotation from the graph that you read.
The teachers executing their plan without really understanding or taking into account some of the learners. [laughs]
Ross: At the same, it's quite obvious from a management point of view, why is a school you'd want to provide as much support as possible for your teachers? Both in terms of maybe getting teachers to teach as many hours as possible. You could minimize the planning. You want to ensure some minimal level of quality.
Dave: Exactly. It comes from a good place to provide more materials, and more support is a wonderful thing for the schools to want to do. Especially from the terms of the quality of the class that the students have. At least if you know the teachers are using materials and following a strict pattern, then at least the students will reach some minimum level.
It seems to be that there's a limit to downsides of perhaps hiring newer or less skilled teachers. It also can limit the upside, I believe, of letting those teachers then develop over time, because they're not allowed to.
Ross: Absolutely. Over the next few minutes, how about we talk about how to find that balance between giving enough support, and then just limiting teachers to technicians?
Dave: Sounds good.
Ross: Great. From what you were describing earlier, obviously every teacher starts off as a new teacher, and every teacher, therefore, needs a lot of...
Dave: I was born ready, Ross.
[laughter]
Dave: Not everyone's Dave Weller, though, are they?
Ross: Obviously, there's an advantage to new teachers getting a lot of support, isn't there?
Dave: Absolutely, yes. We often forget how intense an experience it is for teachers who travel halfway across the world. They're dealing with culture shock, new environments, new colleagues, and they're thrown into the classroom, the day after they arrive, when they still [laughs] have jet lag.
In those situations, there's a lot to be said for the school providing a lot of support for those teachers until they can find their feet.
Ross: I guess typically, what might that look like to describe so we're all on the same page here, something that's becoming more and more common in my experiences is giving the teachers not even like a recipe book, but like a PowerPoint or something to follow that your job as a teacher is to flick through this.
You don't even necessarily even have to read the instructions because they're already on the PowerPoint for you. You might have suggested timings for just about everything, really almost like idiot‑proofing, teaching.
At the extreme end, I've had managers asking me, "Can you write a script for the teachers?" The teachers, all they have to do in the class is read out the script. It's impossible for anyone to teach a bad class.
Dave: That's interesting. Remember, that's with technology. Back in the day, I remember, when I first started, you were given the course book, and that was it. You had to pick things from there. You were given a certain guideline. Maybe each unit takes three lessons. There were six pages, so you do the math.
[laughter]
Dave: You went from there. You had a lot of autonomy over what to choose, how to sequence a lesson, you can move things around. You did have to rely a lot on your more experienced colleagues, which perhaps taught that course. Before, to give you ideas, it encouraged a definite interaction and collaboration, the staff from the people sharing ideas.
Then I remembered a few years later, when maybe an update happened, course books are suddenly accompanied by teachers notes. First, people, the experienced teachers didn't use them at all. I just flicked through and pfft.
[laughter]
Dave: You turned your nose up at the book. We found that newer teachers would arrive and be very, very interested in pulling it out and teaching those lessons, as is until they became used to it. Then they found that they began with collaboration with input from their more experienced colleagues.
They had more interesting ideas to try newer ideas, and they saw the benefit and the effectiveness of those in class. It naturally moved away from the teacher's notes. It's like training wheels on a bike, I guess.
Ross: Obviously, the issue here is if the training wheels remain forever, then...
Dave: Or mandated.
Ross: ...or mandated. That's another thing getting to mention briefly, isn't it? It's not just about what materials and what support you give to the teachers, it's about the management of what you tell the teachers that they have to do. Then also maybe what you tell parents and students they have to do.
Something that I've definitely heard about before is teachers getting complaints for deviating from the materials. Obviously, that's something that you can't say it's always the best idea to deviate from the materials. If someone never deviates...
[crosstalk]
Dave: [laughs]
Ross: Well, right, it does, isn't it? If it's a good course book, or if it's a bad course, but shit, maybe it's all good and bad, is it? It's also how appropriate that is for the group of students that you're teaching. There's a basic thing there is, isn't there, about what a customer or student expectations are? How you balance that?
Dave: Again, that one is easily change. It's often you get complaints from parents or students about the structure or the style of the class. They're used to the most grammar translation methods from their school day. That's what they expect and want. This all falls under the same umbrella of your customer's education.
It should definitely be a part of any school's program to not just educate students but educate parents. If they're young learners, or educate the students themselves in the methodology, and explain to them why the methodology they'll be learning under is the most effective way to learn a language. I would have put the materials that not meeting certain criteria under that as well.
Then your other point, which is to go back about if the training was always left on. Scaffolding around the teachers when they first come. They're not allowed to take that scaffolding away. Then you're doing so many things with that. You're creating habitual patterns of thought and teaching for the teacher. They never really improve.
Then I'll have to experiment and try new things, which can lead to boredom, frustration, both for them and the students. Obviously, it has all kinds of effects on the business itself, whether that be student retention, teacher retention, referrals or whichever metric you care to use.
If you don't let teachers develop to their full capacity, that will be a longer‑term implication for you and for your school.
Ross: Almost imagine this is looking on a graph where if you have maybe no materials or minimal materials, you're going to end up with a huge variety of amazing lessons from some teachers and with some classes to absolutely awful lessons. The more support you give and the more you mandate, people use those. Maybe the more you limit the things that are going to hit the very bottom of the quality scale.
Equally, you also end up pushing down people from the top of the scale and squashing them all into this middle of mediocrity. Where probably what's going to happen in the short‑term is, you might not get any complaints, and you might not get as many refunds.
You probably not going to get very many people sticking with your language courses in the long term, because after a year, they [laughs] find that they didn't learn anything.
Dave: It's a really good point, and for me, this is where a good manager comes in. That's exactly what a good manager should be looking out for and assessing. If they hire an experienced teacher, they perhaps know they don't need as much support in terms of content, lesson planning ideas, and so on.
They should observe them and encourage them to develop, maybe fill in the gaps of their knowledge and encourage them to developing ways that they would find interesting and useful and effective.
Whereas when they hire a new teacher, of course, it's providing a lot more support. Perhaps encouraging to use the teacher's notes and materials to get that minimum standard as quickly as possible, both for their [laughs] benefit and the students. Maybe we could talk about ways or what to do if you find yourself stuck in an environment like that.
If that is the case, then all it takes is one enthusiastic, motivated person to start to change the culture bit by bit. What I've seen is if you go in there, and you get a...Maybe you do a lot of reading online, you listen to podcasts, like this one, Ross.
Ross: [laughs]
Dave: You get some ideas, then go in and try them. Don't keep it to yourself, try, and go "Ah, right." You share those in the staff afterwards, good or bad. "I tried this thing. It didn't work very well. Have you ever done that before?" Whether it works exceptionally well, you have an amazing lesson.
Share that with your colleagues and tell them what you did and how you did it and where they can find similar resources. Encourage them to start stepping away a little bit by little bit and see what happens.
Ross: Activity books can be great for that as well. A lot of teachers' rooms have those where you can flick through or look at the back for whatever grammar point of vocabulary you're teaching. Try and find something that's useful and fits, and is just different from what's in the course, but can give it a try.
Dave: Exactly. Say, if you're not being set challenges or by managers or you're wondering what to do, then you pick a good book by a well‑known author. Set yourself a challenge to say, all you have to try one new thing every lesson for the next two weeks and see what happens. Whatever the result of that, you're going to learn something new, be enthusiastic about it, be prepared.
Things might not be as good because you're new and unfamiliar. Don't let that put you off and keep trying new things.
Ross: I think for managers as well, that can be good. CPD now and again is to bring in some activity books. In groups, your goal is to go through and find at least three activities that you think you could use in the class this week.
Present it and say, why you think they're useful, and they would be effective, and a great way of getting people out of whatever mindset that they're currently in and exposed to some new ideas and thinking about using.
Dave: A question for you, Ross, do you think this is a trend in the industry that you've seen? You probably have a wider experience and spoken to more people than I have. Have you seen this as a growing trend? Do you think it's decreasing? What do you think?
Dave: I would say I have seen this trend coming in more and more. There are probably two or three reasons for that. One is getting value for money from teachers. If you're paying a teacher to teach for 40 hours a week, then you can either have them planning for maybe 20 hours and teaching for 20 hours.
If I do all the planning for you, I can get you to teach for 40 hours, and I can make double the amount of money.
Then the second one is customer expectations. If you're going to sell something to someone, if every single teacher in every single class, you get a quite different experience, that's much more difficult to sell. You end up getting more refunds as a result when the student's expectations are different from what the reality is. That's much easier to standardized teaching.
I'm not saying that's a good idea, but that phrase I hear a lot is we should standardize teaching.
Then the third one is...Especially with AI, and cameras and things come in, it's a lot easier to surveil teachers, and check on what's happening in the classroom. You can measure, for example, if it's online, how many pages of the course book do the teachers teach. If it's offline, even now, there is seemed to be AI where you can check students' facial expressions.
Parents now in a lot of schools are able to go on and watch live streaming of what's going on in the classes. All those things together combined to make for more of this teach by numbers.
Dave: I hope there are no managers listening.
Ross: [laughs]
Dave: They might be persuaded by your argument, Ross. We might have the opposite effect.
Ross: I wonder what these some of the arguments are against it? Obviously, it's ultimately bad for the profession. There's a lot of arguments for that in the short term. If you own your own school, and you're trying to make as much money as possible in the short term, I think there's a lot of benefits to that.
Dave: Again, I see as a first part of an argument, because yet in a short term, it can be useful. It gets a new teacher up to speed in the quickest possible way. You've limited the potential earning power of your school because you done short‑term convenience. Getting them up to speed as quickly as possible, but you're missing on long‑term benefits of quality.
Without letting your teachers develop and reach a maximum capacity, you're losing out on teacher retention. They probably won't stay as long if they're not receiving professional development.
Also, the students won't hang around as long either because they'll be shopping around based on price. Probably end up staying where they do feel they're part of a community, where they can see the teacher trying new things and building rapport with them.
The first, sure, I would agree there are business benefits for the short term, but you're missing out on the long tail and the long‑term benefits of teacher development.