The Language Teacher
November 1999

Developing Naturally

Keith Richards

Aston University


Development, as we all know, cannot be imposed; it is an internal and ongoing process and not something which can be parcelled up or delivered externally. In practice, though, it is easy to slip into the tacit acceptance of a different characterisation. The proliferation of teacher development programmes at all levels, the growth of interest in action research and the success of large-scale development projects can all lead to an assumption that in order to develop we need to attach ourselves to some external programme dedicated to this end.

While not wishing to call into question the worth of such programmes, or the value of the contribution which they have already made to professional development in our field, I should like to draw attention to something which seems to have been overlooked: the importance of development through our day-to-day practice. The assumption that the benefits of engagement in more formal development programmes will accrue naturally may be a dangerous one, because if we fail to nurture more mundane opportunities the effects of such external efforts will sooner or later fade away. In this paper I present the case for raising awareness of this "natural development", drawing on data from a small but successful language school. My aim is to identify features of the environment in that school which may account for its developmental orientation and thereby to indicate ways in which we can all work towards establishing a context which encourages everyday professional development.

The setting

The Pen school is a small language school in the heart of an English market town, attracting adult students from around the world for both general and ESP courses. The school has a core staff of five permanent teachers who have worked together for between fifteen and seventeen years, and it attracts varying numbers of part-time teachers. Although the teachers do not have a financial stake in the school, they were directly involved in its establishment and operate with a considerable degree of autonomy. Success can be measured in a number of ways, but the very positive profile derived from formal external assessments, student performance, student feedback, general reputation and staff continuity suggests that this is a successful school.

I spent the equivalent of twelve working weeks in the Pen, spread over a 15-month period, during which I taught and participated in staff meetings and social activities while keeping fieldnotes, audiotaping meetings and staffroom talk, and interviewing the teachers to understand more fully their professional lives, experiences and beliefs. For reasons of brevity, in this paper I will draw mainly on interview data but will make reference to the outcomes of the analysis of staffroom talk.

Working together

Although development is ultimately an intensely personal experience, its nurture will depend to a large extent on the professional culture in which the individual works. It is here that we have to look in order to identify the conditions which encourage teachers to draw on the resources of their everyday teaching and professional exchanges in order to explore their professional world, advance their understanding, and improve their practice. It is through this that natural development takes place.

Relatively little has been written about the world of the staffroom, and much of this makes depressing reading (e.g. Hammersley 1980, 1984; Kainan 1992, 1994), although there is one study based on fieldwork in six successful schools which offered "a positive model of adult relationships" (Nias et al. 1989:3). The outcomes of this suggested that what all these schools had in common was a collaborative culture, which was characterised by the following features:

The Pen school manifested all of these characteristics, and although their relative importance might vary from culture to culture, they provide a useful starting point for consideration of the occupational environment. In what follows I identify features within four key areas which seem to me to make an important contribution to natural development, and the overlap between these and the above list will become clear. In each case I will as far as possible let the teachers involved speak for themselves (all names have been changed).

Institutional

Institutional characteristics are likely to vary widely, and supportive leadership can be invaluable, but the single most important feature is a place where teachers can meet in order to talk privately. It is in what Goffman (1969) has called a "back region" that teachers are free to leave behind their 'public' face and share their more private reflections. As Goffman noted, these will inevitably involve a rejection of the public persona, so we find jokes at students' expense and at the expense of teaching itself, but time and again, through stories (Richards, forthcoming), jokes, exchanges of information, discussions and casual talk, the challenges of the classroom are taken up and explored with a view to finding ways forward. Without a place to talk, such exploration, and the developmental opportunities it offers, would not be possible.

Professional

If work talk is to be raised above the level of the merely entertaining it needs to be underpinned by professional commitment, and there is ample evidence of this in the Pen. In discussing the selection of temporary staff, for example, Jenny emphasises that candidates have to take the job 'extremely seriously', while Paul's statement in a staff meeting discussion is a good indication of the professional pride associated with commitment: 'I mean it really upsets me if I give a bad lesson.'

This commitment manifests itself in the practical orientation of the teachers' talk, the importance of which has been recognised by more than one researcher:

In successful and adaptable schools, interaction about teaching is consciously and steadily focused on practice, on what teachers do, with what aims, in what situations, with what materials, and with what apparent results. (Little 1982:334)

Certain types of structures are more likely than others to intensify and focus norms of good practice: organizations in which face-to-face relationships dominate impersonal, bureaucratic ones; organizations in which people routinely interact around common problems of practice... (Elmore, 1996: 20)

Annette's view sums up the general position:

I love teaching, I love being in the classroom, and I think yes, I think that does give me the biggest buzz still. I don't like what I would term the academic side of things. I'm not an academic, I'm very much a practical person.

This is not to say that theory is ignored or downplayed in the Pen staffroom; it is just that teachers expect it to be anchored to classroom realities.

Personal

The honesty which underlies much of the professional discussion in the staffroom depends on a climate of trust which arises from shared values. The importance of this is reflected in the striking similarity between Harry's comment on assessing potential colleagues, that "the first thing that springs to mind is that somebody will fit in with us actually, somebody that we can get on with" and those of participants in similar studies: "We've got to be looking for someone who will 'fit' in with the rest of the staff" (Nias et al. 1989: 79); "I don't think I would have chosen somebody who didn't fit in" (Corrie, 1995: 95).

This orientation is not the same thing as an insistence on uniformity, and if development is to take place there must be room for differences of opinion. Along with shared values there must be respect for differing views:

That's what I say, that's what so good about working here, the fact that we do get on so well even though we do have different ideas. We respect each other's ideas. (Louise)

It might be something to do with the slight difference in our personalities, I think. That there's enough difference for a conflict of a certain kind all the time. I think that's quite good, that we can strike ideas off each other and don't just completely, blandly agree. I've seen a lot of staffrooms where everyone just sort of [pronounced intake of breath and pause]. I think that's quite unhealthy. And I think we all have come to this with a curiosity about the world anyway-the world in general. Maybe a sort of childlike interest in new ideas, and I think that's still there. (Jenny)

These differences emerge in staffroom debate, providing a means of testing and sharpening new ideas and discoveries. They are founded on the professional values I have already described.

Experiential

Although everyday teaching generates more than enough material for discussion and exploration, development can easily stale into recirculated action if it does not draw in the oxygen of new ideas. The importance of making time to keep up with professional developments in order to resist what Apple (1988: 106) has called the "dynamic of intellectual deskilling" is recognised by all at the Pen:

It's vital to us staying fresh. ... It's very easy to not bother to read that article because, while you're reading in isolation, if you're not really going to get together and talk it through... If you've got somebody whose focus is our professional development, who's sort of keeping us on our toes and saying,"Have you read-" and you say, "No I haven't but I will, for the next academic staff meeting," you get that much more out of it than if you just sort of read it one evening before you got to sleep. ... It's terribly important to us as professionals, otherwise we do feel that we get into the daily grind of the full five hours a day every day. (Jenny)

Weekly staff meetings are divided into administrative and academic, and in the latter colleagues share their discoveries. Occasionally this leads to a shared commitment to experiment with the ideas introduced, sometimes it leads to a debate, but as an observer it was interesting to see the many ways in which new ideas were introduced and explored without any sense of imposition.

Where this exposure to new ideas calls into question established practice there must also be an openness to challenge. Without this, new ideas can founder on the rocks of conservatism allowing the development of a situation such as that described by Neilsen (1991: 676): "Teachers who bring their new ideas and practices to the staffroom threaten to stir up a carefully cultivated atmosphere of boredom and faded ideals." Aware of the danger this represents to a group of teachers who have worked together for so long, Jenny made a conscious effort to employ young staff with fresh ideas because "it makes you re-examine yourself quite often. 'Why do you do that?' You have to think it through again; you can't just assume that there's a pat answer."

Natural development depends on having the confidence to recognise and respond authentically to the challenge of new ideas and having the awareness to recognise the siren call of conservatism for its own sake. It is difficult to strike this balance alone, but it arises naturally within a genuinely collaborative culture. Perhaps not all the features I have described can be cultivated within all schools, but unless at least some of them are present, professional development is unlikely to flourish.

Development begins at home

Having outlined the key features of everyday development within a school context, I should now like to point to the value of seeing all development from this perspective. Apart from the fact that ultimately this is where such development must take place, there are at least two reasons why it is worth giving particular attention to the advantages natural development offers.

It is non-threatening

Development within a school context should always be challenging, but this does not mean it has to be threatening. The problem with external courses is that they carry with them the prospect of failure - a necessary feature perhaps, but not always a positive one. The Pen teachers registered for the RSA Diploma as a group. When it began all seemed well, but the illness of Annette's young child over a long period meant that she was sleeping less than two hours a night and became, in her own words, "a zombie". Course work fell by the wayside and by the time she came to take the examination she had little prospect of success. Her failure affected not only her but all of her colleagues, even though they had been successful:

I was devastated. ... I thought that I was a bad teacher. Up to then I'd felt that I was a good teacher and I suddenly felt that this was the judgement on my teaching and that it meant that I was not an adequate teacher. (Annette)

It wrecked us. ... We felt responsible for Annette then. (Jenny)

We were all devastated for her because we are such a close group. And therefore we were all feeling quite jubilant but obviously didn't want to show it. (Louise)

This is not an argument against such courses, but an attempt to set them within a wider professional context. If we think of development in only external terms there is a danger that we might devalue it by reducing it to a mere matter of success or failure.

It is career-enhancing

If an argument is to be advanced in support of natural development, it is to be found in the outcomes of research into career development. Huberman (1992:131) sums up the relevant findings succinctly:

Teachers who steered clear of reforms or other multiple-classroom innovations, but who invested consistently in classroom-level experiments - what they called "tinkering" with new materials, different pupil grouping, small changes in grading systems - were most likely to be satisfied later than their peers who had been heavily involved in school-wide or district-wide projects.

Whether or not such evidence is conclusive, experience suggests that life cannot be lived on a perpetual high; sooner or later we must come to terms with the everyday. Becoming involved in larger projects could perhaps be compared with a love affair: exciting, stimulating, carrying us forward on waves of delight and despondency, but most of all temporary. The transmutation of an affair into a long term relationship depends on finding more ordinary ways of growing together, less obvious and less interesting to the outsider, but fundamental to the nourishment of our developing selves.

Conclusion

In this paper I have argued the case for natural development and indicated the professional conditions which appear to foster this. To say that development must be embedded within our professional lives is easy enough, but we should not underestimate what this involves. To illustrate this I should like to conclude by juxtaposing reflections from a researcher dedicated to the study of this subject and a teacher whom I interviewed as part of a life history project:

Staff development will never have its intended impact as long as it is grafted onto schools in the form of discrete, unconnected projects. The closer one gets to the culture of schools and the professional lives of teachers, the more complex and daunting the reform agenda becomes. (Fullan, 1991: 21)

The more I stay in teaching, the harder I have to work to stay fresh. (Steve)

References

Apple, M. W. 1988. Work, class and teaching. In J. Ozga (Ed.), The Educational Worker: A Reader on TeachersÕ'Work, pp.99-118. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Corrie, L. 1995. The structure and culture of staff collaboration: managing meaning and opening doors. Educational Review, 47(1), 89-99.

Elmore, R. F. 1996. Getting to scale with good educational practice. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 1-26.

Fullan, M. 1991. The New Meaning of Educational Change. London: Cassell.

Goffman, E. 1969. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press.

Hammersley, M. 1980. A peculiar world? Teaching and learning in an inner-city school. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, University of Manchester.

Hammersley, M. 1984. Staffroom news. In A. Hargreaves & P. Woods (Eds.), Classrooms and Staffrooms: The Sociology of Teachers and Teaching, 203-214. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Huberman, M. 1992. Teacher development and instructional mastery. In A. Hargreaves and M. G. Fullan (Eds.), Understanding Teacher Development. London: Cassell.

Kainan, A. 1992. Themes of individualism, competition, and cooperation in teachers' stories. Teaching and Teacher Education, 8(5/6), 441-450.

Kainan, A. 1994. The Staffroom: Observing the Professional Culture of Teachers. Aldershot: Avebury.

Little, J. W. 1982. Norms of collegiality and experimentation: Workplace conditions of school success. American Education Research Journal, 19(3), 325-340.

Neilsen, L. 1991. Professional conversations: How to open the staffroom door. The Reading Teacher, 44(9), 676-678.

Nias, J., G. Southworth and R. Yeomans. 1989. Staff Relationships in the Primary School: A study of organizational cultures. London: Cassell.

Richards, K. (Forthcoming) Working towards common understandings: Collaborative interaction in staffroom stories. To appear in TEX


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