Online Teacher Professional Development: Learnings and Reflections for Classroom Engagement

By Shankar K

This unprecedented pandemic and the subsequent lockdown opened new avenues of teacher engagement for teacher educators of Azim Premji Foundation, Puducherry. The virtual mode of teacher engagement enabled a wider reach and engagement with a larger number of teachers for the purpose of capacity-building. Short online discussions were conducted on various general topics as well as subject teaching; short certificate courses were organized in English, Tamil, and mathematics teaching, covering areas such as perspectives, content, and pedagogy of the subject. Tools such as Google Meet, Zoom, T-con, Google Forms, MS Teams were extensively used in these engagements. This article will help teacher educators and policymakers to understand the nuances of online language teacher professional development, data-based teacher needs analysis and subsequent classroom planning.

The National Education Policy-2020 has emphasised the importance of developing early literacy and numeracy. The policy also directs processes to be streamlined to achieve early literacy and numeracy by 2025. The NEP highlights, ‘The principle must be that: if students are given a solid foundation in reading, writing, speaking, counting, arithmetic, mathematical and logical thinking, problem-solving, and in being creative, then all other future lifelong learning will become that much easier, faster, more enjoyable, and more individualised; all curriculum and pedagogy in early grade school must be designed with this principle in mind’¹. Keeping this as the goal, a certificate course on Tamil language teaching was proposed for government primary school teachers in the Puducherry district. The objectives of language teaching,² such as developing competence to understand what students hear, their ability to comprehend and not merely decode, to encourage learners to express themselves freely, were considered for planning the content for the program.

Tamil certificate course: An overview

Online certificate courses are common. The challenge of an online course lies in making it interactive and lively to sustain the interest and attention of the participants. The Tamil language teaching certificate course had six modules, each of two hours. In Puducherry, compared to English and mathematics, there are very few in-service capacity development programs conducted in Tamil teaching. Teachers who participated in the certificate course have shared their happiness in being part of it.

Objectives of the course

• Understanding the principles of language teaching – what is language, how is language learned and what are the principles that guide language teaching.
• Exploring meaningful teaching of language skills – what are language skills, issues in conventional language teaching.
• Understanding integrated language teaching – should language skills, such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing, be taught separately.
• Understanding the assessment in language teaching – how to plan formative and summative assessment.

Phases of the course

1. Preparatory phase: This phase included the initial deliberation within the team on the content and design of the session. For each module, the team had carried out dry-run sessions to review and make changes. In the preparatory phase, the team also created a pre-course survey to understand participants’ view on language teaching, feedback forms for each session to collect views on the session content and facilitation, assignment formats to be shared with teachers.
2. Course phase: Sessions were conducted using Google Meet and modules were on language principles; listening and speaking in a language classroom; developing reading, developing writing; games and songs in a language classroom; and assessment. Each module was planned for two hours. Each session had an initial introduction and context setting, content discussion in small parts and a conclusion at the end. Other components in the course phase were:

• • WhatsApp group: A group was created for the participating teachers for the sharing of course-related communications, pre-course survey form, feedback forms, session summary of each day. All participants, facilitators, functionaries from the department were part of the group.
  • Pre-course survey: This was carried out with the help of Google Forms. There were nice questions in the survey covering areas such as script and comprehension, interlinkages between language skills, script and assessment. Teachers were required to fill the forms for us to assess their view and understanding of these areas.
  • Feedback forms: Just like the pre-course survey, feedback was collected using Google Forms. The objective was to get teachers’ feedback on content quality and session facilitation.
  • Assignments: Each participant was assigned two learning outcomes. Teachers were expected to design a teaching activity and an assessment idea. Written assignments were shared via Gmail.

The context

Zone 5 of Puducherry district holds 227 primary school teachers. This certificate course was conducted with 90 teachers in two batches.

Decisions from the data

Virtual engagements enabled us to gather data such as pre-course survey form responses, feedback form responses, chat and oral responses from the session, attendance, and assignment. Analysing and interpreting the collected data helped us to understand the participants’ perspectives on language teaching, learnings from the session and arrive at the pedagogical needs that need to be addressed.

Component 1: Pre-course survey

The main objective of pre-course survey was to capture the needs and expectations of the teachers from the course and to cross-check whether these expectations were aligned to the course content. This pre-course survey consisted of nine questions related to the course content as well as language teaching practices, that is, script awareness, continuous copy-writing of letters, letter identification and comprehension skills. The questions were designed on a 5-point Likert scale (Fully Agree, Partially Agree, Unable to take a decision, Partially Disagree, Fully Disagree).

Sample of pre-course survey question
Question:  Students will be able to comprehend a text if they are able to decode the letters. Responses: Fully agree, Agree, Unable to decide, Disagree, Fully disagree

For the above-mentioned question, 16 percent teachers selected ‘Fully Agree’ option and 49 percent teachers selected ‘Partially Agree’. These numbers highlight that 65 percent of total participants agreed to the conventional school of thought that if a child can identify letters then automatically, they will be able to read. So, only the remaining 35 percent were the ones who could differentiate between the decoding and the comprehension process.

Zone level response for Pre-course survey question
Teacher’s responses: 49% Agree, 22% Disagree, 16% Fully Agree, 12% Fully Disagree, 1% Not able to take a decision.

After 90 percent of the teachers submitted their responses, their teaching practices and beliefs were analysed. Major inferences drawn from the responses were:

• Most of the teaching practice revolves around conventional methods which are deviant from meaningful language teaching; there is a lot of emphasis on copy-writing, for example, students writing the alphabets multiple times.
• Most teachers believe language skills can be developed using multiple sources, like games, songs, stories etc. Meaningful use of these sources of language input is a challenge; how and when is unclear.
• Teachers are a lot less aware of the interlinkages between language skills, that is, each skill in language needs to be developed separately.
• Assessment is viewed as a separate process and not as a part of the teaching practice. Hence, the scope for ‘assessment as learning’ is less.
• Teachers assign less importance to sound-letter correspondence, that is, alphabets have two components, sound and script. More emphasis is given to the script, hence, students struggle in sound-letter correspondence.

These practices and responses can also be considered as needs of the teachers. Being conventional, some of these were addressed in the certificate course and the rest will be addressed through deliberations and reflections on classroom teaching.

Component 2: Feedback Form

The idea of a feedback form after each session helped us in two ways; one, to track teachers’ learning from the session and two, to get feedback on the facilitation and the quality of the content. The specific needs derived from the pre-course survey were incorporated in the session and tracked using the feedback form. For example, the question on and comprehension was addressed in Session 3 (Meaningful Reading) and the effect was tracked using the feedback form. The Feedback Form consisted of five questions (three, multiple-choice and two, descriptive questions).

Session 3 – Feedback Form
Question: By teaching letters/characters individually, students will not understand that words are a collection of letters or a collection of sounds. Responses: Fully agree, Agree, Unable to decide, Disagree, Fully disagree

Zone-level response for feedback form question
44% Agree, 19% Disagree, 3% Unable to decide, 29% Fully Agree, 5% Fully Disagree

For this question, cumulatively 73 percent of teachers responded, ‘Fully Agree’ and ‘Agree’ which means, teaching only letters will not help learners comprehend. In the pre-course it was 35 percent, so, there was a 38-percent increase after the session. Additionally, specific feedback given by teachers has helped facilitators update and customise the content.

In the pre-course survey, 77 percent of teachers felt that in the early grades, alphabets should be taught first, followed by short words. In the feedback response, we could find only 13 percent of teachers sticking to the above-mentioned view and the rest 87 percent agreed that even storybooks can be given to the student in early grades. This is a notable change in their beliefs.

Component 3: Learning outcome-based assignment

Submitting assignment was a part of this certificate course. Each teacher was assigned with two learning outcomes (LOs), one from the early stages (grades I and II) and the other from the later stages (grades III to V). Among these LOs, one was selected from listening or speaking skills and the other was selected from reading or writing skills. The task was to design a teaching activity and an assessment activity for each LO. Conventional practice is to design a teaching activity based on the lesson content. But here, it was LO-based. It would help the teacher to move towards lo-based teaching.

In all, fifty teachers submitted their assignments. Each assignment revealed teachers’ understanding of LOs, assessment, and their classroom practices. All assignments were reviewed, and observations were captured which helped teacher educators to chalk out a roadmap for discussions during school visits. Indicators like alignment to LO, quality of assessment activities were used for reviewing assignments. Collated assignments will be shared with teachers in a booklet format for enabling cross-learning of practices.

Teaching activity designed by a teacher submitted as an assignment for achieving assigned learning outcome.

Allocated Learning Outcomes
Two learning outcomes were assigned. One was based on speaking-listening skill and other is on reading-writing skill.

Component 4: Participation of teachers

As the sessions were designed for an interactive mode, it enabled teachers to share their opinions and learnings in the forum. Teachers were encouraged to unmute and speak or to use the chat box feature for sharing their responses. Teachers’ responses in the chat box ensured their participation and attention. These were also captured in a document for analysis.

After every session, a one-page summary of the key points discussed was shared with the teachers through the WhatsApp group.

This is the one-page summary of the session on meaningful speaking.

Reflections from the experience

Though we cannot rely fully on data collected online. A thorough analysis of the data helped us in various ways.

• The collected data helped us to understand the perspectives and pedagogical needs of the individual teachers.
• It helped to bring together teachers with similar needs into small need-based cohorts and plan further course of action with them.
• Individual responses of teachers in the pre-course survey, feedback form and assignments can be used for initial conversations and scaffolding with teachers. Specific needs can be addressed during school visits.
• The engagement has brought out specific areas requiring focus – a greater understanding is required on making language learning meaningful and an integrated approach of language teaching, that is, skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing should not be compartmentalised while teaching.
• Though Tamil is the language spoken by the learners, there is more scope to include meaningful talk and conversation in language classrooms.
• The approach of teaching songs and stories needs to change from memorizing facts and reciting to meaningfully using them to build comprehension and creative expression.
• The assessment needs to be considered as an integrated process in language teaching. Formative assessment needs to be regular and must inform the teacher of the required change in teaching practice. Summative assessment needs to be more skill-based and not rote oriented.
• The approach of the teacher professional development program should be a mix of forum-based discussions and direct classroom teaching and reflection.

For these needs derived above, the following teaching practices can be focussed while working with teachers:

• In the early stages, the teacher needs to create ample opportunities for listening and speaking in the classroom interaction by including activities like conversation, games, rhymes, storytelling, etc. The script must be introduced later.
• Ensure that the opportunities provided for reading in the classroom are used for writing and vice versa.
• In a language classroom, stories and poems usually stop at narration or recitation. Stories and songs need to be used in the classroom for independent creative expressions.
• While teaching, assessment needs to be done both orally and in writing, and the children should be assessed at the individual, small group, and whole-class levels.

To address the needs identified and bring about a change in the teaching practice, cohort-based forums and classroom support through demonstrations, co-planning and co-teaching; and periodical assessment of learners need to be planned with teachers.

Way forward

Engaging teachers through virtual forums has been a blessing in disguise. Utilising the accumulated data in a meaningful way is necessary. That will enable teacher educators to take data-based decisions and ensure the quality of teacher professional development efforts. Let us end here with the quote of British mathematician Clive Humby, ‘Data is the new oil. It is valuable, but if unrefined, it cannot really be used.’

REFERENCES
¹National Education Policy 2020, Chapter – Early Literacy and Numeracy
²Position paper – National Focus Group on Teaching of Indian Languages

AUTHOR
Shankar K, Resource Person, Azim Premji Foundation, District Institute, Puducherry.

Featured image by Oscar Mucyo on Unsplash