Professionalism in English Language Teaching - Silvana Richardson

you I wanted to start by thanking Cambridge University Press for inviting me but thanks to Rupert now I also know I need to thank King Henry the eighth's so thanks to Henry the earth as well so my talk is about professionalism in English language teaching and this is the map of my talk for your information I have been asked to talk to you about professionalism so I think a good place to start is to come to a shared understanding of what we mean by professionalism in English language teaching I will be drawing on a number of sources for this but this is not really I don't this I don't want this to be an intellectual exercise I want this to be an exercise in reality checking in basically using these ideas around what is professionalism in English language teaching for you to use them as a benchmark for your reality so how do those ideas compare with the teachers that you have in your organization and in your context then I want to move on and talk a bit about the threat posed by the non professionals and I'm going to spend a bit of time around that because I think this is a very interesting industry in that respect and then I want to situate professionalism in English language teaching by comparing it to other professions so how how do we compare with them but also in different contexts actually in your context my fourth moment if you like or section is around initial teacher training and how initial teacher training programs actually prepare us for the challenge of teaching with excellence and finally I want us to think about what we can do to further professionalize the sector I think here you safe to say if you're thinking well she doesn't think that this is a very professional profession more about this later so let's get started with defining professionalism and I'm going to be using different sources and as the language teacher there's always a temptation to look it up in the dictionary so that's what I'm going to start chillie then i'm going to be looking at continuous professional development frameworks and how they define what is the knowledge and the kinds of expertise that English language teachers need in order to be do that to be doing their job successfully and I'm going to briefly tell you some insights from the teacher education literature so let's get started as I talk I would like you to engage with this question how does the description of what it means to be an ELT professional compared with the English as a foreign language teachers that you have in your organization and in your context so bear that in mind so that that reality check so let's get started with the dictionary and as we are in Cambridge let's look up the definitions from the Cambridge dictionary I'm not going to ask you to read it all I just want us to look at the sort of striking words and the recurrent words around professionalism and professional so we've got words around a people being trained and skills and the training and the education is a high level um and its specialized special training or education and a certain type of skill that these people develop that they're effective that they're organized that they're serious in terms of manner I also just to look at something different I looked at visuals which is a visual online dictionary and what I found particularly interesting is that there's a very strong connection between professionalism and expertise and that line in green actually means that professionalism is described or defined as a kind of expertise so as part of my exploration I'm going to spend quite a bit of time unpacking expertise the Cambridge dictionary also asks us to compare professional and professionalism with amateur and interestingly the amateur is somebody who does something for pleasure and not for a job and the source of this dimension of not making money for it which of course the professional does in theory let's move on so to sum up really the exploration of the dictionary tells us that professionalism is the kind of expertise acquired through education and training at a high level what the dictionary doesn't tell us so the remaining question is what kind of expertise of course do English language teaching professionals need to do the job successfully and that's why I continued my exploration by looking at the continuous professional development frameworks so I looked at three I looked at the Cambridge English teaching framework at the British Council the teaching English continuing professional development framework for teachers and the European profiling grid I'm not going to bore you with the details because we would be here until after dinner but basically I'm just going to give you the headlines and what I like I wanted to do was to compare the three in terms of those areas that they identify of professional competence and skill and it was an interesting exercise to do comparing the three I'm going to use a sort of rag red amber green system to show you those areas that are mentioned across the three professional development framework so they seem to seems to be an agreement or a consensus that these are the areas of knowledge and expertise somebody is mentioned in two of the frameworks and some areas mentioned in just the one framework don't worry I'm not going to ask you to read all that I'm going to summarize the the green area the area where the three frameworks seem to agree that these are the key areas of expertise but interestingly I was surprised that in the European profiling grid there is nothing at headline level on the skills around understanding learners and learning which I think in the 21st century is quite interesting and also ended up in the European profiling grid there are a number of areas that do not feature in the other professional development frameworks around education and training ie would education and what kind of training is required of teachers assess teaching so do have these teachers been through assessed teaching practice teaching experience intellect intercultural competence after all this is a European framework digital media which in the Cambridge English teaching work is treated separately they've got a separate framework for that and through the wider administrative tasks that teachers have to do so those are like there is where there is no agreement now to summarize the areas where the three frameworks seem to agree and there is consensus that these are the key areas of knowledge and expertise that teachers need to develop and have the three of them agree that on an area around the teachers on language ability or proficiency and awareness they call it different things but they all agree that this is an important area that teachers need to know the subject there's also agreement around planning language learning both at course level and at lesson level so of course we need to know how to plan don't we an area of agreement around managing language learning assessing language learning and around professional development either how you develop yourself but also including things like values and professional conduct and ethics if we look at them they're all mostly practical but they're all informed by formal knowledge so we've described professionalism in terms of dictionaries and the professional the CPD frameworks now let's look briefly at what the teacher education literature has to say about this for this I'm going to look at four sources Shuman imbolg Madras and Weddell Diaz Majoli and Hattie and some are within the field of second language teacher education but I always like to look a bit beyond second language teaching so also looked at teacher education and educational research so in terms of the teacher that the knowledge and the expertise that teachers need to have Schuman identified a number of areas one again subject matter content knowledge in other words teachers need to know about English and they need to know and they need to speak English well the second area is pedagogical content knowledge now this means that teaches me to be able to transfer and to adapt and to organize their own knowledge of language to be able to make it amenable to learners so is that how do I present what I know so that learners can learn it the third area is around curriculum knowledge in other words what knowing what the program that I'm teaching and the other programs that you know came before and come later what do they include would materials help me present that that that program what are the subjects my learners are learning this is particularly relevant when we teach in the primary or secondary or further education sector or higher education sector but also its called vertical knowledge so what comes first what comes comes later this is essential knowledge that every teacher should have of course general pedagogical äj-- learning how to teach not just English but things like discipline and classroom management knowing my learners and knowing what they are like knowing what helps them learn knowing what the barriers are to learning knowing where I work and knowing their charactery the characteristics of my workplace and knowing why my students need to learn this what is the ultimate goal of this program so this is human involve interestingly Madras and Weddell identified a completely different set of three different kinds of knowledge very simple the first one they call knowing about so knowing about the English language knowing about the different systems knowing about the different skills but also fundamentally a teacher needs to know how needs to have skills teaching skills personal skills and the third type which is even more interesting in my opinion is what they call knowing too now knowing too is about knowing about and knowing how in the right place at the right time to support learning so it's about this it's about being in the moment it's about this kind of improv is a Tory just like decisions that teachers made they can't make them without the knowledge how and the knowledge about they just can't DS Majoli quotes the association for professional development in America and they write a set of expectations of what a professional teacher should know and should be they say that every teacher should be educated broadly and well that every teacher should be knowledgeable about the fields to be taught know your onions they should be familiar with how learners develop how they behave and how they learn in other words the psychology of learning and that they should be knowledgeable about and skilled in the profession of Education sufficiently to be able to ensure that quality standards are met that ethics are met that they have a responsible conduct and a responsiveness to the educational needs of the greater society so not just my little language lesson can I ask the room whether you are familiar with the meta research conducted by Professor John Hattie so can you please raise hands okay not quite okay just a few people I think to me this is the most exciting piece of work in education at the moment why is had his work important because he's he synthesized the results of 900 different research reports and studies about what really helped student achieve their outcomes so how do teachers make a difference and Hattie stresses that professional experts he calls the expert teacher a fundamental why he says that after the students themselves the greatest source of a variance that can make a difference is the teacher is not you guys is not me it's not the principal is not the materials it's not the technology it's the teacher therefore excellence in teaching is the single most powerful influence on student achievement just remember this and he says something that on the surface is quite thought-provoking because he says teachers subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge the things we're talking about before they have little effect on the quality of student outcomes so thinking so what I was saying here that knowing is not important no he's not saying that at all what he's actually saying is that what matters is how teachers organize and use that knowledge so yes they need to know but there's something even more important and this is what it is Hattie says that expert teachers differ from somebody who's been doing the same thing 20 years in the same way in how they organize and use their knowledge ie they have a deeper understanding and a more integrated knowledge of the content they teach and if you start looking at what he means by that so what is it that experts teachers do let's think about what kind of knowledge is being tapped into here so expert teachers set challenging goals they are very sensitive to the context of what's going on the excellent seekers and uses of feedback information from the learners about the impact they're having on learning how all this is knowing - so this is a very important message for us and for those of us who are involved in helping teachers develop grow and professionalize just teaching teachers stuff is not enough we need higher levels higher order professional development to help teachers be good knowers - my problem when I look at all this is that I find it a bit dull I find a bit dry and to me as much as I like all this stuff the lifeblood of what a professional is doesn't seem to be there and in my experience the lifeblood of what a professional is has got to do with other stuff as well as all that without denying that so this is my little list of what a professional to me is like before everything else a professional is a creator of a safe and inclusive learning environment without that knowledge just goes affirm a believer in potential a facilitator of learning and self actualization a professional doesn't just care about teaching my lesson today a professional cares about educating a role model of curiosity about language and learning a successful model of language a fair Assessor who would argue with that a congruent practitioner somebody that has beliefs and assumptions and theories about how learning happens and you see those in action when they teach a career-long learner of teaching and learning somebody who never stops learning an ongoing analyst on the same theme an ongoing analyst evaluator improver of their own practice and not just of my own little world of the classroom but also of my organization of my field what group it was saying it's a learner together somebody who learns with other people because of that he or she is also a peer coach a mentor a critical friend to their colleagues and a team player in an organization a professional is not a loner now all these things form part of a cognition teaches cognition that's quite dynamic it's not something that's handed over to us in initial teacher education and we receive it like the tablets of the law is something that's you know informed and refined by my teaching experience by further professional development so something that grows and develops and this is you know this is sort of mutual interaction between my experience and my knowledge so we've looked at dictionaries we've looked at CPD frameworks and we blew at the teacher education literature but what does reality look like and this is where I want to move on and look at the non-professional threat I am very lucky to have worked in many different contexts and I travel a lot because of my work and the constant feature I encounter is individuals who work as English language teachers and earn money as professionals without having any or adequate or sufficient teacher training or education I see some people going yeah you recognize this that the theme and in a way if we what we describe should be the norm this could be construed as an anomaly but is it and I want you know if I have to sort of categorize the kind of non-professional individuals that I've encountered in my career I would just create two types which you may or may not recognize I encounter wherever I go one is what I call type one the native speaker conversationalist you're recognizing don't you I'm talking about the guy that thinks that in all you need to know to be able to teach English is to speak it and type two is what I called the B two but you know replace the B 2 would be 1 or C 1 certificated user more about this in a minute and I'm going to spend a few minutes with each of the types and I want us again to compare these types with what we said before about what is professionalism in English language teaching so type 1 the native speaker conversationalist very very much in demand I looked up some advertising websites day before yesterday and of course they're the in demand so native speaker wanted says this ad I'll just read to you very quickly lots of money in China and if you read the small print of the details of the job now the qualifications that you need to have are to be native English speaker so that's a good qualification bachelor's degree preferred don't be over 40 need not apply now careful or tehsil is desirable but not required experience preferred but not strictly required and what I really like is number six high spirit of adventures and the sense of humor so again it's like no teaching qualifications required you another case Russia same story native speaker of English now let's look at the detail the main responsibility of a teacher here is to perform lessons of speaking practice for students of different level and age using board games from time to time you might be relieved to know that we have a lot of board girls okay so then this is this is the kind of profile we are looking for again no EFL teaching qualifications required now let's look at it from the other side but this is people wanting so organizations wanting this kind this type let's look at this type advertising his services yeah and this is a profile from LinkedIn which I looked at three months ago this is a real person let's call him John now John advertises himself as the native speaker conversationalist and let's look at his qualifications for the role first thing he says jack of all trades and master of none wonderful now if we look at his area of expertise is not clear it's actually he says let me just before we move on let me just tell you about his a bit about his relevant experience for a job I've worked as a customer service rep in retail chains lower management and a pharmaceutical chain a mechanic and a collision repair technician so these are the relevant qualifications and experience for the job and then specialization the one thing you mean this is great isn't it that I bring to the table in any job I worked is my personality now you might want to know that outgoing honest brutally at times and diplomatic how he can be diplomatic and brutally honest it eludes me but that's not part of my conversation in my talk so let's move on basically let's go back to what BS Majoli identified as the expectations of a professional teacher and let's analyze John with reference to that first thing educated broadly and well let's give John the benefit of the doubt we don't know but he's qualification experience doesn't seem to give us a lot of indication of that knowledge about the field to be taught knowledge about English no evidence of that familiarity with educational psychology not really that we are aware of knowledge about the profession of Education no evidence of that and yet he earns money like you and me as a teacher of English tied to this is a person like me when I was a teenager who learned English as a foreign language so lives in a country where English is not the first language and passed a test of proficiency at some level yeah big one B to C one and this is the strength for which he or she is being employed having passed a v1 happy to level of English let's look at this again educated broadly and well let's give her the benefit of the doubt we don't know knowledgeable about the fields to be taught well let's give it a question mark because C one maybe be one familiar with how learners develop behave and learn yeah she's had the edge of the the experiential knowledge of learning English but not necessarily the psychological theoretical knowledge to understand how learners learn so now knowledge about the profession of Education no and yet she earns a living as a teacher of English an associated topic that comes with this b1 b2 c1 certificated user is the issue of language proficiency and this has been a hotly debated topic in the conference and sector if you like in the conference circuit and in social media lately so last year for example Cambridge English set up the language devoted to and asked a very interesting question what language level does a teacher need to have and before this debate it Cambridge English conducted a survey of a number of teachers and these were the results teachers from all over the world saying at least two common European framework levels above the students 51% of the teachers said that at least one common European framework level above the students to a point nine percent of those teachers and native speaker like proficiency thirty five point six percent of the teachers in this years I had a full conference International Association of teachers of English a foreign language and again it was a hotly debated topic so debated and so hot that it went you know it went on and on and on and for example the TEFL equity advocate's website took it on and asked this question again and that the question was what is the minimal minimum proficiency level for a teacher and it was the most popular thread in the history of the website the 112 comments of teachers talking about this and it went on in Facebook and in Twitter so I just wanted to show you a representative sample of the comments there I've chosen the disturbing ones it's no more fun um let's have a read I'm going to I don't know if you see this one so I'm going to read it out loud if a teacher teaches only elementary level then surely they only need to be one step ahead of the learners at best pre-intermediate level i've seen plenty of one step ahead teachers whose English was bad but absolutely fine for elementary level and it's worked well moving on swiftly coming back to this in a minute better to take the teachers you can get than no teacher at all and finally very quickly this is a very famous writer and teacher trainer so I find this particularly disturbing in Sicily and influence and influenza theoretically there is no reason that a teacher need know their target language at all he/she needs simply have the pedagogical skills to create the code the conditions for learning it so that's what people are thinking not everybody hopefully but you know that's what some people are thinking so I want to explore very briefly this idea of one step ahead teaching thankfully somebody in the website actually provided the answer so I don't even have to tell you what I think because I think that and this is a comment from somebody on the website and he's saying this was a major problem I saw in Korea many teachers with little or no proficiency were forced to teach English with terrible results I've seen one step ahead teaching it's not pretty I've seen one step ahead teaching it's not pretty but more importantly this idea that um you are bad and you're perfectly fine for elementary how can in which teachers was English is described as bad be absolutely fine for any level can they be adequate models of language in all its aspects Lexus grammar pronunciation spelling discourse you name it can they be adequate models I'm going to ask you to read this for a second this is these are two descriptors from the common European framework and I want you to think about whether this these two descriptors describe a professional teacher so I'm going to give you time to read them I don't know what you think my answer is no and this is B 1 and this is the 1 so for me you know the R is the one step ahead teacher professional my answer to that is no I was a one step ahead teacher of my classmates when I was 15 years old and my best friend loved PE but didn't like English that is a one step ahead teacher language teachers are professional language specialists whose job is to help learners become successful English language users that one step ahead teacher doesn't do that for us thank you very much but interestingly enough my problem is that we always look at the issue of language proficiency with reference to the likes of me the so called non-native speaker and interestingly enough we don't look as closely at the literacy issues around the so called native speaker and I would like you to read this these two paragraphs from a post graduate diploma candidates assignment have a look at it and have a look at that English there this is a teacher this teacher has issues with just by looking at those two paragraphs coherence cohesion order information accuracy referencing conventions spelling and punctuation we need to look at the literacy issue around the so-called native speakers this is important and it is development material it is professional development material that I don't know why we don't often look at is the elephant in the room so what is the problem with the non professionals basically that they devalue competent professionals and that they depreciate professionalism in English language teaching Hattie recently talked about attacks on professionalism and expertise and he identified particularly these two one when people make strong claims that teachers are born and not made more about this in a minute and two allowing people in classrooms to go unprepared if you put these two attributes in a person ALX more created a character type and he calls it the charismatic subject made in heaven and I want to spend one minute looking at the charismatic subject made in heaven because he is an attack on professionalism so John welcome back the charismatic subject made in heaven believes in personality and as this emphasis on the teacher as personality what the implications of this is that the qualities of good teachers are inherent you are born good or not which means then that you don't need training if you have the right stuff now if the qualities of good teaching are inherent if you're born a good teacher what hope is there for development and improvement but equally the charismatic subject made in heaven is over reliant on his high-profile personal attributes his popularity of his ability to infuse and inspire and in our schools this is a very popular teacher that's why we want to keep him don't we however let's look deeply please person normally has a very idiosyncratic teaching style nothing wrong with that sometimes as an organization you want to push for excellence and you want to identify areas of excellence according to research etc etc he will not play normally unprepared not a planner not a believer in planning it's all about me it's not about then it's about me highly individualistic and normally an institutional rebel so again for any learning together for any collaboration for any drawing of you know standards of quality and professional development he will not want to play so had to conclude by saying imagine amateurs no matter how bright to be doctors or pilots or engineers or dentists with no training now my question is why is this not just a possibility in our profession but but a widespread reality this is a widespread reality in our industry and I want to briefly explore the causes of this and I personally identify three you might have more and tell me more about it at dinner time or tomorrow one market forces to pour strategic planning and three lack of public awareness so let's explore them briefly market forces the famous law of demand supply and demand and in many many contexts demand for teachers far outweigh supply and we resort of desperate measures don't we we need to staff the issue of cost I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands but who doesn't need to do efficiency savings in their organization these are difficult times aren't they and you may be tempted to think in these terms if you think of your teachers if you place your teachers in a continuum from not qualified or unqualified to qualify to really very qualified and expert and cost oops of course the more qualified the more expert the more expensive and sometimes you may be tempted to make that efficiency saving I let's not renew the contracts of the more experienced and will qualify because they're more expensive and we need to save money so let's look again I'll remind ourselves on how expert teachers make a difference we are in the business of improving learner outcomes so what sense does it make to save on the expert teachers as newer says why keep pouring scarce resources into a leaking barrel when it is cheaper and more effective to repair the barrel we need to consider how to conserve and develop the workforce conserve and develop the workforce make teachers feel valued and self-efficacy for strategic planning we've all seen this where you know educational reform or reform at systems level requires to make quick changes and we don't really think through the implications for teacher expertise requirement so we've seen this we've been here we've seen for example you know whole governments or ministries of Education and order and institutions of higher education saying okay clear we're all going to start teaching clil or we're all going to start English as the medium of instruction by next year or you know English will be taught in primary schools bar in two years time without thinking what it actually means for those teachers who actually need to do this job finally lack of public awareness and this is at many levels I you know when I talk to people who are not in our industry in our profession they're not really aware of the qualifications that professional teachers need to have they're not aware of the difference in quality between a reputable awarding body and a reputable teacher training organization and one that's not or spurious ly accredited all of the difference in quality between a professional and a non professional teaching service you know the less reputable make a feast out of this and they market this to their advantage so an example of this this landed in my inbox on Monday Groupon you know Robin upin is the switch's deal of the week service okay look at that accredited online a hundred an eighty our careful course and to a specialist teaching mindfulness courses thrown in the mix who wouldn't want that discounted you know from one hundred and fifty to forty nine quick the deal I'm not going to bore you with the teachers but basically when you look at the small print you realize that there is absolutely this course no required observed and assessed teaching practice so going back to man dress and Weddell does it provide any know about of course it does you read about it you watch some videos you do some quizzes does it help these teachers with their know-how yeah does it help the teachers with the most crucial skill no to know but the public doesn't know this so with all this crazy cocktail is it any wonder that we have a bit of an image problem as an industry I heard it said that we are the Cinderella of Education or the aromatherapy of education with all the connotations of you know not serious alternative the poor relative and all that so I wanted to actually situate our own profession with other professions and see why we have this perception problem so I looked at features common features of professionals in other professionals doctors lawyers architects and these the features they have high social status they're well paid they're accountable to their clients for their work they belong to a professional body they have had a considerable period of professionally focused education beyond the first degree in preparation for the role considerable they keep up to date with developments in the field and they are autonomous so for me as I looked at those results and I thought the following that teaching professionalism teacher professionalism in our industry really is a socially situated in a very dynamic construct shape very specific it's very different it looks very different in many different contexts what it means to be a professional teacher but I think what's important here is to think as a teacher moves through one context to another which very often happens is what happens with their training and their development say for example you trained initially as a primary school teacher and then suddenly you get a job in the corporate world can you safely assume that the learning that you did and the skills that you develop will transfer automatically and easily and effectively from one context to the next so this is where we really do need to think very carefully about what professional training and development we provide the teachers once they're in the job so finally initial teacher training I'm going to breeze through this here I want to really focus on the short international teaching certificate and I want to focus on this because at the moment is one of the most popular qualifications in the world you know the qualifications certificate in the world that was conceived for the private language school sector as the means of training teachers that then work for my school a very practical non theoretical based program based on a very intensive and hands-on apprenticeship model sit with Nellie copy what I do and a viable option of course for the native speaker conversationalist which basically it's a very good kids of techniques and strategies for survival in the classroom whatever the classroom means but the question for me is once that is over how appropriate is that for working in different contexts and for the higher order professional learning that leads to a teacher being really selfish Aegis as king says the ploy with the popularity of this kind of very short one month course is that because it became popular it became widespread okay and the candidates during this course come from very many different contexts so how well do these qualification programs continue to meet the needs of the increasingly diverse candidature of ELT practitioners I'm going to move on but basically to move on Moore says we need to abandon the easy answer the one-month answer in particular those which claim universality sometimes I find like it's a little flat pack furniture kind of program wherever I go it comes with me and I do the same I don't just matter where I teach anything I would level in what country finally what can we do to professionalize more our sector and our industry what can organizations do this is the mode if I if you have to keep one message about my talk this is the one I want to leave you with as leaders prioritize leadership of learning over simply managing organizations what do I mean by this here are the five most impactful leadership dimensions that have an impact on student outcomes I'll read this quickly in case you can't see establishing goals and expectations resourcing strategically planning coordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum promoting and participating in teacher learning and development and finally ensuring an orderly and supportive environment and guess which one is the most impactful yes promoting and participating in teacher and learning and development actually it's tour is got twice the impact as the next most impactful activity this is why you want to keep your expert teachers and business-y professional development is the most important activity that we need to be doing and is the one that's first to go when we need to make efficiency savings don't protect it so ensure that teacher professional learning is identified as a priority and make time for professional learning and make it part of the culture of learning in your organization invest in professional development because investment now is saving on costs in the future see it as an investment and of course implement CPD programs that you know work and not because of your intuition that there is research evidence that they work I have no time to deal with those but basically headline classroom based collaborative professional inquiry as part of of the publications that Cambridge and CU p are developing and publishing now there's a white paper called what's new in ELT besides technologies which I co-wrote with Scot Thornbury and part four of this paper talks about this collaborative professional inquiry so once it's span out make sure you read it so finally let's go back to that comment of better to take the teachers you can get than no teacher at all for sure better than nothing however these teachers need sometimes need significant professional development so it's very very important that we give that professional development as Matthew says we are not going to get better outcomes if we don't have better teachers so let's just invest them or still and William says love the one you're with what does this mean it means let's support the teachers that we already have with ongoing systemic job and classroom embedded professional learning opportunities thank you very much I'm sorry I have no time for questions but I will appear again on Friday in the panel so if you ask me more questions

Channel: Cambridge University Press ELT

Views: 24,611

Rating: 4.9394956 out of 5

Keywords: Cambridge University Press, CUP, ELT, ESL, EFL, English language teaching, Silvana Richardson, professionalism in ELT, professionalism in teaching, English teacher, Better Learning, Better Learning Conference, Experience Better Learning, language teaching, teacher training, professional development

Id: p3JN_ghpQfY

Length: 45min 29sec (2729 seconds)

Published: Mon May 22 2017