The Language Teacher
November 1999
Fostering Communication Among Teachers in Pre-service Training Sessions
Timothy Stewart
Miyazaki International College
According to Kaufman and Brooks,
Little documentation exists about innovative ventures within teacher education programs that are designed to prepare teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration and integration of language and content." (1996, p. 233)
This paper is one attempt to begin to fill this gap in the literature. It describes specific aspects of a teacher development program designed for a unique interdisciplinary team teaching environment at a small Japanese liberal arts university. Several activities which have been used in the institution's pre-service orientation sessions to encourage collaboration among faculty from different disciplines.
The paper opens with a brief overview of the recent state of professional faculty development in higher education. Next, characteristics of effective faculty development workshops are summarized. This is followed by an overview of a professional orientation program for training in English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Drawing from experiences over five years as a faculty developer in this program, I will introduce several professional development activities that have proven to be very helpful to promote communication among faculty members centering on discussions about ESP and team teaching. The reactions of trainees to these specific activities are presented.
Professional Development Programs in Higher Education
New faculty need orientation programs which encourage professional development. They cannot be expected to know everything necessary to be effective members of an institution (Boice, 1992; Fink, 1992). Boice contends that, "Learning a new campus culture requires adjustment, even for experienced faculty" (1992, p. 220). Yet, until recently, little research into the induction of new staff into higher education has been conducted, and therefore, the literature about this topic is almost nonexistent (Dunkin, 1990). Thus, there is scant evidence of the effectiveness of faculty development programs. Given this situation, the occurrence of faculty development programs at colleges has generally been haphazard (Boice, 1992). In fact, department chairs and deans are often very resistant to faculty development programs (Turner & Boice, 1986). However, some colleges have established faculty development offices staffed by experts in pedagogy (Hativa, 1995; Smith, 1995).
Facilitating Active Participation in Faculty Development Programs
Eison, Janzow and Bonwell (1990) reported that too many faculty workshops are conducted using a "teaching is telling" or "talk and chalk" style of presentation. This pattern of presentation has been used by many of the facilitators that have in the past helped to conduct the pre-service program for faculty at our institution. In higher education, the accepted method of instruction is lecturing. TESL training programs that I am familiar with tend to feature classroom presentations in lecture format. This is likely the result of the prevalence of the "empty vessel" philosophy of education. Teachers with this view of education, also known as "banking education," see learning as a unidirectional process and try to fill the empty minds of their students with their own knowledge (Crookes & Lehner, 1998). Instructors, even those who know better, easily can become preoccupied with covering as much material as possible. But, altering traditional practices is not easy. When contemplating the use of more discussion oriented and learner centered instruction, faculty workshop leaders and classroom teachers share similar fears: fear of silences; fear of challenging and quiet students; fear of the unknown directions a discussion can take; and fear of not knowing all of the answers (Eison et al., 1990, p. 85).
So what are some characteristics of successful professional development workshops? Generating an atmosphere tolerant of risk and experimentation is something that can benefit faculty developers tremendously. The creation of such an environment can begin in teaching workshops offered by faculty developers (Eison et al., 1990; Gomez, 1995; Master, 1992; Short, 1991b & 1994). However, this can be accomplished only when administrative support is provided. Having administrative backing is particularly important in programs employing innovative teaching approaches. In addition, active learning strategies should be incorporated into professional development workshops. Eison et al. (1990) offer workshop facilitators an extensive list of points for using active learning techniques in teacher training sessions. Finally, effective workshops are organized so that teachers need to collaborate to find possible solutions to salient concerns (Brinton, Snow & Wesche, 1989; Chamot & O'Malley, 1994; Jackson, 1998; Master, 1992).
Professional Development Program and Context
The scope of this paper centers on activities used in several pre-service training sessions. Before introducing the activities I would like to frame them for readers with a description of the institutional context, and a brief overview of the two orientation programs offered to new faculty at our college. (For a more extensive description of these programs see, Sagliano, Stewart & Sagliano, forthcoming.)
Less than 20% of our collegeÕs faculty are Japanese nationals. To ensure new faculty members as smooth a transition as possible into new personal and professional circumstances, they experience two types of orientation programs before entering the classroom. Personal orientation begins through email, fax, and post immediately after a faculty member is hired, with communication about housing, schools, banking, medical care and other matters of concern. This orientation continues officially for two weeks after new faculty members arrive on campus. In a small liberal arts college such as ours, this kind of extensive personal interaction between veterans and newcomers can forge new relationships and help build the academic community as it eases the transition for new colleagues.
The key professional development concerns for our new discipline-specific and ESOL faculty are learning about ESP instruction, and becoming accustomed to collaborative instruction. Once our new faculty members have dealt with important personal concerns, they begin our three-week professional orientation program. All of our first- and second-year discipline courses are designed and taught by two instructors; an ESOL teacher and a content-area teacher. Since it is rare to find models in which discipline-specific and ESOL teachers collaborate (Kaufman & Brooks, 1996), it is not surprising that the vast majority of our new faculty members have no interdisciplinary team teaching experience.
Background in ESP varies depending on experience on the job. TESL programs outside of Britain typically do not include specific courses in ESP or content-based instruction (Kaufman, 1997; Kaufman & Brooks, 1996; Master, 1997; Peterson, 1997; Short, 1991a). In addition, few of our content specialists have had prior experience teaching LEP (limited English proficiency) students, and so their understanding of the backgrounds and needs of second language learners is limited.
The pre-service professional development program commences eight weeks before the start of the academic year. It includes nine sessions over three weeks. Most sessions run about three hours. The schedule is structured so that there are no sessions for two days in each of the three weeks. Sessions with social functions are also scheduled. The remainder of this article will focus on activities from this program which have enhanced communication among teachers.
Communicating About Team Teaching Relationships
At the beginning of teaching collaborations, an issue of immediate concern is the relationship between the instructors. Johnson, Johnson and Smith (1991) argue that there is not nearly enough collaboration among university faculty members. Higher education researchers have described college professors as being isolated, autonomous, and individualistic (Boice, 1992; Hatton, 1985; Johnson et al., 1991; Smith, 1995). Thus, a challenge for facilitators in our faculty development program is to help typically autonomous faculty members become accustomed to the dynamics of collaborative team teaching relationships. Our approach has been to allow faculty to get to know their colleagues and to strengthen relationships with them by having them participate in group problem-solving exercises. This approach reflects Master's view that communication between teachers "is best fostered through preservice and in-service training" (1992, p. 80).
Our professional development program seeks to promote close working relationships between ESOL and discipline-specific faculty. Throughout this pre-service training, both the rewards and challenges of team teaching are acknowledged. To help new faculty members avoid potential interpersonal and professional conflicts, developers indicate probable areas of teaching partner disagreement. The objective here is to have instructors discuss these challenges frankly as they seek solutions to problematic scenarios based on actual cases. This is done by introducing a series of reality-based scenarios (Jackson, 1998) for faculty members to consider through cooperative learning structured tasks.
In this session, new faculty members are assigned to interdisciplinary groups. At the start of the workshop, cooperative groupings such as "expert groups" and "cooperative groups" are defined (Olsen & Kagan, 1992). The first activity is a group investigation and initially participants are organized in expert groups. Each expert group works on solutions to their particular team teaching challenge scenario. After about ten minutes, cooperative (jigsaw) groups, composed of one member from every expert group, are formed. Every member of a cooperative group is an "expert" about a different team teaching challenge that has been experienced at our institution. Cooperative group members take turns describing their scenario and explaining the solution chosen by their expert group. Each scenario is discussed in the cooperative group, together with possible courses of action. Cooperative structures facilitate faculty interchange. Thus, teachers share ideas about how challenges in team teaching can be resolved, or avoided. While this is occurring, faculty begin to appreciate each other's points of view.
Next, participants are regrouped and provided with a list of cooperative group roles (Olsen & Kagan, 1992). Each member must perform one of these roles (Gatekeeper, Cheerleader, Taskmaster, Secretary, Checker) while their group considers the following reality-based scenario:
You have tried to reach your teaching partner to plan your course each week now for the past 3 weeks but s/he is either not on campus or is usually rushed doing committee work and Japanese study. You feel a real need to meet regularly and talk about the course and students at greater length but your partner thinks, "things are going along just fine." What do you think you would do if you were in this situation?
All groups work on the same scenario and secretaries for every group report the suggestions offered by their members to all participants. Suggestions offered by each group are briefly commented on by experienced faculty developers.
This session was well received with sixty percent of participants rating it as "excellent" and forty percent rating it as "very good." Participants appreciated the "open discussion [and] realistic scenarios." One faculty member said that the workshop was helpful for "recognizing the importance of cooperation between partners." Another wrote that it was "very useful to develop some tools for partnered teaching and especially to have time to think about some of the potential difficulties and brainstorm how to deal with these problems."
Communicating About Course and Lesson Planning
Swain (1996) has pointed out the need for more extensive planning for instruction of integrated curricula. Her concerns about a lack of coherence in integrated language and content instruction have been supported by Snow, Met and Genesee (1989). Kaufman and Brooks inform us that "the design, implementation, and assessment of integrated curricula can be greatly enhanced when teachers of different disciplines form interdisciplinary teams" (1996, p. 233). But, as was demonstrated earlier, few teachers are used to working in dynamic team-based structures. Teaching remains a personal and private act and many teachers are reluctant to share power in planning course objectives and content, let alone share classroom instruction time (Bailey, Dale & Squire, 1992).
Pre-service training sessions at our institution introduce new instructors to several models of integrated classroom activities. Faculty developers have begun to take more care to plan and implement their professional development workshops in a manner that reflects the active learning core of the institution's teaching mission. Thus, new faculty experience first-hand, examples of the type of classroom dynamics, learning tasks, and teaching approaches that they are expected to employ.
One example of this hands-on practice is the workshops in Computer Assisted Language Learning. Use of computers in teaching is encouraged at our college. So in a workshop facilitators match new faculty in content-language pairs and instruct each pair to share one computer in the computer classroom. This arrangement forces learners to cooperate and share information. Colleagues communicate while working through tasks. Several classroom-tested activities are demonstrated in an interactive way allowing time for practice and discussion. These include activities to develop writing and reading fluency; writing accuracy and editing; and practice approaches to research for LEP students utilizing electronic sources.
Once the professional development program enters its final week, new faculty members are given tasks that require them to communicate at length with colleagues about course design and teaching in their new institutional environment.
In order to demonstrate practical aspects of ESP instruction more broadly, a collection of materials designed for courses at our college is displayed for new faculty members. This material is collected in one large room and contains work in every aspect of ESP course design. In this self-paced session, new faculty can browse a wide variety of material and discuss their questions and concerns at length with more experienced colleagues. In addition to syllabi, texts, task sheets, and assessment ideas, instructors can also individually examine completed student assignments and watch video recordings of classroom activities.
This material display assists new faculty to prepare for the final pre-service session in which they must describe a lesson plan and one activity that integrates language and content study. One week prior to the conclusion of the pre-service training program, new faculty are asked to meet with an assigned teaching partner and begin course planning discussions in preparation for this workshop. At the final session of this training program, teaching teams are asked to present their lesson plan and one integrated classroom activity. Comments and suggestions are made to each teaching pair after their presentations. The session concludes with an open discussion of teaching issues peculiar to our context.
This session was rated as "very good" by all of the workshop participants. One participant wrote: "preparing the first week of class was very helpful [and] hearing other's plans was helpful too". Another new faculty member liked "the fact that it forced us to get together with our partners and talk and start planning".
Communicating Strengths and Weaknesses of the Pre-Service Sessions
This article deals only with a portion of the activities offered in this extensive faculty development program. Participants in such programs need to be given the opportunity to evaluate them and offer suggestions for improvement. Evaluation of this program occurred at the end of individual sessions and then again three weeks after the conclusion of the program. In this way, participants could focus comments on specific sessions while they were fresh in their minds, and also were able to give general comments about the overall program after a period of reflection. Representative comments of a general evaluative nature are listed below.
Strengths
The biggest strength, as I saw it, was the use of cooperative learning activities during the orientation itself. It's said people teach as theyÕve been taught.... hopefully this had some impact.
Sharing of teaching activities planned for the first week of classes was my favorite session. It was very helpful to have a chance to start planning, and it was very helpful to hear what others had planned.
I also found the team teaching activities useful largely because in hearing the ideas of the content faculty I worked with in my group, I could anticipate the real problems that might come up in the classroom!
Areas for Improvement
I didn't like the sharp division between personal and professional orientation. The main problem, as I saw it, was that after we had become familiar with the personal orientation committee members, we were suddenly newcomers all over again.
. . . I think that the pedagogical theories of 'content-based, active learning' as well as other EFL concepts might have been more openly discussed at the beginning to provide everyone with more of a foundation in and respect of the concepts.
One significant weakness is the listen-in [lecture] sessions.
What advice can faculty developers glean from these comments? It seems that the use of cooperative learning methods in workshops was appreciated and should be continued. Several faculty members complained strenuously about the lecture sessions dealing with administrative issues. One participant made several positive suggestions for ways to "activate" these sessions. However, indications are that it might be advisable to hold administrative sessions separately from faculty development workshops. Comments about the team teaching challenges and course planning sessions reveal that they were highly appreciated and show that the ideas that were exchanged between faculty across disciplines were valued. Yet, a couple of participants said that they believe improvements could be made in the program if more work were done to ground participants in theoretical underpinnings of certain teaching methodologies. Finally, it seems that ensuring a continuum between orientation programs could help to establish an atmosphere more conducive to open communication between new colleagues.
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