Of Teachers and Trainings: Some Reflections
By Akash Shandilya
Abstract
In this article, I am attempting to reflect upon my experiences from various trainings and workshops with primary school teachers, especially the negative perception of such trainings/workshops among teachers and the possible reasons for such a perception. The article contextualises Guskey1and some other educational researchers to understand the process of teacher change and the role of staff development programmes in that process.
At a teachers’ workshop at the cluster level in an interior location, during the discussion, I referred to the Components of Foundational Literacy. The look on all the participants’ faces seemed to convey that they were familiar with this term. They had also attended a six-day training on this just about three months back, which I too attended first as an observer and then, as a facilitator.
So, I asked them to list these components and the room went into disrupted murmurs with differing (but all hushed) responses coming from here and there. Some of the teachers began naming the components, however, they remembered just one or two and none of them seemed to be sure. A teacher sitting in the front row was a participant in my batch of the In-service Teacher Training (ISTT). I addressed him and asked, ‘Sir! Aap to mere hi batch me the. Ye sab baatein saath mein ki thi. Kuchh yaad aa raha hai?’ (You were in my batch, and we discussed all of it together. Do you remember anything?) In response, he said, ‘Sir! Diary me sab likha hai. Aur diary ghar par rakhi hai. Yaad kuchh nahi hai.’ (I wrote down everything in my diary and the diary is at home. I can’t seem to remember this.) I could not help but laugh with other participants about the honesty and simplicity of his answer.
This incident, once again, reiterated the common perception of trainings/workshops among teachers as something separate from their work, something that is only on paper; that needs to be attended and documented in a diary but not implemented in their practice. During cluster workshops, many teachers also complained that they were being taken out of the school – out of their ‘actual’ work – for such trainings/workshops too often. The core question here seems to be: Why do teachers, by and large, unable to perceive trainings/workshops as opportunities for skill enhancement or capacity building that would help them in getting better at their jobs?
From my experience with trainings/workshops and some supplementary readings, I could list the following three main issues that create apprehensions in the minds of teachers towards trainings/workshops:
1. Quality
2. Apparatus
3. Relevance
Quality
This perhaps is one of the more obvious reasons. The quality of trainings/workshops cannot always be ensured in such engagements. As Fullan2 rightly remarked that teachers engage in staff development programmes because they want to become better teachers (Guskey 1986, p.6).3 Hence, the quality of these engagements can only be ensured by delivering content that would help teachers in becoming better teachers in their classrooms. Ranging from lack of facilities in the training rooms (such as unavailability of fans, drinking water, or ventilation) to the lack of competence of Master Trainers (MTs) /Key Resource Persons (KRPs), many factors compromise the quality of these trainings. In many trainings/workshops, the MTs/KRPs are selected from among the lecturers and teachers who are designated for teaching higher grades and, consequently, are unfamiliar with the challenges and nuances of teaching in primary grades. This limits their capacity to deliver content that aligns with teaching at the primary level.
The MTs and KRPs also lack proper training for their roles. Usually, a cascade model is followed in which the State Resource Group (SRG) designs the module or receives training at the state level and they, in turn, deliver it to MTs and KRPs who further deliver the content to teachers at their cluster or block. The time and effort required to understand the details of a given module/content are not apposite, that is, the procedure for preparing KRPs or MTs as facilitators or experts on any given topic/module is not very robust. They get the same kind of training that they are supposed to deliver further, the only difference is that they get it earlier than others (barring a few KRPs who are part of the module creation process – this number too is very small). Efforts towards specifically enhancing the facilitation skills and content knowledge of MTs/KRPs are totally absent. Lacking mastery over content, relevant experience (in some cases), and adequate facilitation skills, the MTs/KRPs complete the formality of conducting a training/workshop in most cases. Without any relevant content for their practice, teachers, in turn, mostly walk away from such trainings/workshops with a perception that trainings/workshops are just a formality, isolated from their work in schools.
There have been occasions when some quality discussions or activities could be delivered in such trainings, and teachers too, by and large, seemed interested. Interestingly, most of these discussions were around problems faced in actual classrooms. As Guskey writes in Staff Development and the Process of Teacher Change, ‘…to be effective, a staff development program must offer teachers practical ideas that can be efficiently used to directly enhance desired learning outcomes in students.’ (Guskey 1986, p.6).
Therefore, if more discussions oriented towards solving classroom challenges could be ensured in trainings/workshops, some change in the larger perception towards such engagements can be expected. There are, however, many other variables involved.
Apparatus
Guskey, in his article, talks about two models of Staff Development Programmes. The three events that are expected out of these programmes – a change in the classroom practices of the teachers, a change in their beliefs and attitude, and a change in the learning outcomes of the student – occur in different chronologies in these models. Roughly these two models expect these changes to occur in the chronologies shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Some other educational researchers, such as Cobb, Wood and Bennett, and Kettle and Sellars see a dialectic relation between change in classroom practice and change in belief (Villegas-Reimers 2003, p.20). Nevertheless, the availability of classroom evidence for the effectiveness of any new practice and on-site support remain crucial aspects of any teacher professional development programme.
The onus of changing practices of teachers in the current apparatus of teacher professional development largely falls on trainings. There are structures for on-site support, such as provision for mentor teachers or appointment of Resource Persons at the Block level,4 however, rarely do these functionaries engage in any academic activity with specific schools apart from the mandatory trainings and workshops. Functionaries and officers who visit the schools for ‘support’, often end up limiting their engagement to the ‘inspection’ of various scheme-related documents. Seldom does an officer delve into the nuances of teaching-learning processes in classrooms. In this situation, the process of teacher change remains limited to trainings and workshops which are perhaps expected to change the beliefs of the teachers who, in turn, would change their practice and that would improve learning outcomes among the students – following the first model illustrated by Guskey.
However, this model, based on various research as Guskey suggests, becomes ineffective due to a lack of evidence along with many other factors.
Beliefs and attitudes about teaching and instructional practices are similarly derived, largely from classroom experience. For example, a teacher who has been consistently unsuccessful at helping students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds attain a high standard of learning is much more likely to believe they are incapable of academic excellence than a teacher who has experienced success in teaching these students. However, if the first teacher tried a new instructional strategy that successfully helped such students learn, that teacher’s belief likely would change. The point is that evidence of improvement (positive change) in the learning outcomes of students generally precedes and may be a prerequisite to a significant change in the beliefs and attitudes of most teachers. (Guskey 1986, p.7)
This evidence of the effectiveness of any new method that is proposed in the trainings and workshops can only be garnered through working on the ground with the teachers. Without rejuvenating and empowering the structures that can help and motivate the teacher with changes in practice at a micro level, no change in their beliefs can be expected. As pointed out by Bolster, ‘…efforts to improve education must begin by recognising that teachers’ knowledge of teaching is validated very pragmatically, and that, without verification from the classroom, attitude change among teachers with regard to any new program or innovation is very unlikely.’ (Guskey 1986, p.7)5
On a positive note, the latest policies seem to be encouraging local structures of support within the teacher community – the formation of clusters and the appointment of mentor teachers are two such examples. The difference between ‘support’ and ‘inspection’ must be emphasised in these structures very carefully along with ensuring the quality of instructions.
Teachers are also getting increasing stakes in developing the modules and policies. A positive change regarding the availability of opportunities for professional development has also been noticed. With platforms like NISHTHA, teachers can take the responsibility for their professional development into their own hands to some extent. However, they would only find it relevant when they realise that these platforms might help them with their classroom challenges. Given the specificity of the challenges that teachers face, one way to promote such platforms could be strengthening the local structures of support which can make the teachers aware of the specific channels that they can access to resolve any specific issue. To ensure any desired outcome and relevance of workshops/trainings, the structures of on-site support need to be rejuvenated within the system.
Relevance
An employee or a professional seeks opportunities for upskilling and reskilling as it opens the pathways for their professional growth. On the contrary, barring the exceptional cases where teachers have been promoted to become officials, the professional development of primary school teachers has little to no consequence in terms of their professional growth. Besides getting self-satisfaction and respect from the children (and sometimes even from the community), primary school teachers are seldom appreciated for their efforts and enhanced professional capacities officially. The paradigm of growth remains largely the same for all primary teachers regardless of the individual efforts toward professional upskilling. Some of them are selected as MTs but even that selection process is not always based on performance. At times, rather than performance, political influence, networking or experience/seniority play the key role in these selections. This offers little motivation to the teacher for taking skill enhancement programmes oriented towards change and improvement in their practices with seriousness.
It is important to evaluate in each country the possibilities for promotion that exist within the teaching profession, as one of the criticisms that is usually mentioned among teachers in different regions of the world is that the only possibility a teacher has of being promoted is to leave the classroom and move into an administrative role. (Villegas-Reimers 2003, p.67)
In recent years, an effort has been made towards acknowledging the good work of teachers. Some primary teachers are selected as Mentor Teachers, and some are also given the opportunity to get involved in research and the task of designing various training and curricular modules as SRGs. Primary teachers are also awarded at various levels on different occasions. However, only a handful of teachers avail of these opportunities. Also, the criteria for selection to these are based on their work experience. The same is true for increments which remain the same for all teachers with the same experience. While the task of fairly reviewing the performance of such a large workforce seems herculean, it is nevertheless important to promote better performance, by say, acknowledging the good work of a teacher by sharing it with the larger teaching community or giving such teachers the opportunity to become MTs and SRGs. A structured, sustainable effort towards appreciating and promoting the good work by teachers at a large scale is still absent.
In conclusion, I believe that we need a more long-term and thorough plan for the professional development of our teachers. Workshops and trainings will only have relevance and desired impact when other structures of supporting, encouraging, and strengthening teachers are well in place. In the current scenario, because of the ineffective functioning of these structures, the trainings/workshops remain isolated efforts towards the professional development of teachers. Hence, teachers struggle to align the purpose of these trainings and workshops with their practice.
References
Bolster, A. S. (1983). Toward a More Effective Model of Research on Teaching. Harvard Educational Review, 53(3), 294-308. https://doi.org/10.17763
Fullan, M. (1982). The Meaning of Educational Change. New York: Teachers College Press
Guskey, T. R. (1986). Staff Development and the Process of Teacher Change. Educational Researcher, 15(5), 5-12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189×015005005
Villegas-Reimers, E. (2003). Teacher Professional Development. Paris: International Institute of Educational Planning
AUTHOR
Akash Shandilya is a Resource Person with Azim Premji Foundation, Rajasthan. He has completed his master’s in English from English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. In his current role, he works in Teachers’ Professional Development and Content Creation primarily in the domain of English Language Teaching.
