The Language Teacher
December 2003

On the Road to Teacher Development: Awareness, Discovery and Action

Andrew Boon

Takushoku University, Sumikin Intercom



Introduction

In the "hectic activity" of teaching (Burton & Mickan, 1993, p. 115), we often have little time to reflect on successes or failures within our classes, and valuable opportunities for gaining new insights into pedagogic practice can be lost. There is a need, therefore, for a practical medium which enables us to explore these experiences more deeply and discover what is actually happening in the classroom. As a framework for teacher empowerment, Edge's (1992, 2002), Co-operative Development (CD) may offer teachers this kind of practical approach. This article examines how CD can be used by colleagues working together in a modified interactional environment to facilitate what Johnson describes as the fusion of "theoretical, personal, practical and experiential knowledge" (Johnson, 2000, p. 5) which may help us to develop greater awareness of and discover new possibilities in our teaching.

Co-operative Development

CD involves two colleagues working together as either Speaker or Understander for a set period of time, suspending the rules of ordinary conversation by agreeing to a number of constraints on their language behaviour. The Speaker has the freedom but also the responsibility to express and explore his or her ideas about teaching, while the Understander works to understand and clarify by reflecting back "in the Speaker's own terms" (Edge, 1992, p. 29) the developing opinions, attitudes, and ideas. Edge argues that new discoveries exist in the process of putting "our thoughts together so that someone else can understand them" (Edge, 1992, p. 6). The articulation of these thoughts produces a heightened sense of awareness in which a Speaker can "bring back what is known and work on it again, to change it, to make it more conscious, more precise, more useful . . . connected with other . . . knowledge" (Gattegno, 1976, cited in Freeman, 1989, p. 34) and thus begin to realise potential ways forward. In order to facilitate this, the Understander's advice, experiences, and evaluations must be deliberately withheld. The Understander must resist the temptation to encroach on the Speaker's space and avoid introducing his or her own topics or steering the conversation toward a private agenda. Rather, the Understander "makes as much space as possible for the Speaker (to communicate his or her thoughts) while, at the same time, actively working to help the Speaker use that space creatively" (Edge, 1992, p. 10).

In what follows, I describe my involvement in a four-week CD program and examine how the Understander played a pivotal part in facilitating the process of my development.

The Commitment to Develop

In order to make the first step toward development, I decided to keep a diary to record any critical incidents which occurred in my classes. Just as the Understander makes space for the Speaker to develop his or her ideas in CD, so the act of recording entries in a diary provided a space for my initial reflections on what had just happened in the classroom. These entries documented my joys, frustrations, questions, and criticisms immediately after teaching particular classes. For example, one diary entry focused on an English course I had designed for company employees. From previous experience teaching business English, I had selected role play as a method of giving students opportunities to practice real-life situations in the classroom, but as my diary entry shows, I slowly began to question the value of such methods:

Is what I'm doing worthwhile with the class? Are (students) actually going away with something useful?
Role play is supposed to be this rehearsal for a real-life event but it seemed somewhat stilted . . . I'm just not sure if it's productive . . . It was fun but was it real? Students fixed in on this one phrase from the textbook . . . I began to think, would you say that in a business meeting?

By reflecting on the class, identifying a particular problem and writing it down to facilitate its future recall, I established an area of my teaching which I needed to work on and could talk about during the CD sessions.

The Move to Greater Awareness

The second step was to record my interactions with the Understander to clarify my thoughts by revisiting the problem. Here, during the CD process, it is important for the Understander to be able to listen attentively and provide carefully-timed reflective responses which do not try to interrupt the flow of the Speaker. The Understander tries to capture the essence of the Speaker's developing thoughts and emotions, allowing both parties to check for understanding and heightening the Speaker's awareness as the Speaker hears his or her ideas reflected back from an Understander acting as a "warm, human, thoughtful, selective tape recorder" (Edge, 1992, p. 29). If these reflections are "in tune with" (Curran, 1978, p. 4) the Speaker but restated, made more explicit and focused by the Understander, the Speaker can hear coherently and differently what he or she has just said and thus may be able to discover something new in a particular situation. In my CD experience, some of which is transcribed below, the Understander was able to not only reflect the problem but also my attitude toward my use of role play, allowing me to hear and clarify my own feelings about it:

So, what you're saying is you don't feel comfortable with the role play and you question or wonder how real classroom interaction is compared to what would actually happen . . . in a normal business situation . . . ? (The Understander)
You wonder if (the role play) could be made more realistic? (The Understander)

Thus, the Understander encouraged me to explore the relationship between what I considered to be real, my original objectives for the lesson and what had actually happened in the class:

A real communicative event is somewhat unpredictable and yet students were anchoring on the crutch of the input phrases . . . . (The Speaker)

This helped me to re-establish that I had wanted students to be able to adapt the target language to react to any situation that arose during the role play. However, students had just followed the presented patterns, resulting in artificial interaction. By successfully reflecting what I had said and inviting me to establish connections between my previous statements, the Understander helped me to link the various ideas, which in turn led me to a new perspective:

So what you are saying is that you would like your students to be more creative with how they use the language rather than following the patterns presented . . . .Is there a connection with that and what you said earlier about not being sure if you are approaching it the right way? (The Understander)

Here the Understander is more than just a sympathetic listener but someone who brings to the surface potential thematic links that may have gone unnoticed by the Speaker. There is a danger that the Understander may influence the direction of talk, but if the question is framed in a way that mirrors the words of the Speaker, and he or she is given the opportunity to consider or disregard possible connections, it can facilitate the development of the Speaker's ideas.

In my case, the question asked by the Understander enabled me to consider my method of eliciting language from the students and move from an uncomfortable feeling about the unnaturalness of classroom interaction to a greater awareness of what may have affected student performance in the role play. I realised:

  1. The materials I selected for the class may have provided students with inauthentic language.
  2. The language elicited from students was carelessly arranged on the whiteboard. Thus, it was difficult to retrieve phrases during the role play.
  3. Although identifying sequences in interactional situations has its uses, a reliance on expected sequences may leave students unprepared for the unexpected.

The Move to Discovery

Talk needs to be focused in order to move beyond mere awareness of our teaching and toward discovery and action (Edge, 1992; Ren Dong, 2000). However, focusing may be the most difficult aspect of CD because the Understander must provide opportunities for the Speaker to choose to explore more deeply one of the many ideas that have developed during the CD session whilst resisting the urge to give any advice, opinions or suggestions on the matter. In my role of Speaker, as I tried to consider the question of making role plays more realistic in my classes, my thoughts began to spiral off on tangents. The Understander was able to summarise the ideas I had articulated and encourage me to narrow my focus:

What I hear you saying . . . the factors which have affected this role play; students' level, the textbook, how much time was involved, how you sequenced the activities, how you managed the activities . . . .Could you comment on one of these being more important than the others? (The Understander)

This question was fundamental in helping me discover two aspects that I wanted to change about my teaching and how to achieve this:

  1. Improve board-work: Make sure board-work is more accessible for students by categorising the phrases on the board.
  2. Find a new method of presenting the language: Instead of using the whiteboard, ask students to write phrases on cards and then put them into a logical sequence to provide a framework for the role play. During the role play, experiment to see if students can change the sequence in response to unexpected developments.

The Move to Action

Edge states "the whole purpose of CD is to act . . . and to help us have those actions as close as we can to what we want them to be" (Edge, 1992, pp. 65, 80). At this stage, the Understander should help the Speaker to further develop the ideas generated in a Eureka! moment in order to make them a coherent and workable course of action. The Understander continues to reflect the thoughts of the Speaker but talk is aimed at deciding exactly what is to be done:

So what you're saying is trying this another way using the cards rather than putting it on the board might be more effective in creating that more realistic interaction you are trying to get to? (The Understander)

Here, the Understander not only reflected my initial idea but encouraged me to explore the reasons I had for thinking that using cards instead of the whiteboard might be the right direction forward:

During the role play, students knew if they couldn't remember the phrase . . . .they were looking at the whiteboard for security . . . it becomes somewhat artificial whereas in the real-world there would be no whiteboard, so next time, if we put the phrases on cards, do a lot of work with them, when it comes to the role play maybe if the cards aren't there then they are forced to look at the person they're speaking to and use the English they've got to do the task and that would be more real. (The Speaker)

Thus, I was able to become aware of other related factors contributing to the artificiality of the original role play. By breaking eye-contact to check for a required phrase on the board, students had stepped out of their role play roles, and re-entered the world of the classroom. Having the language on the board may have undermined the opportunity for students to "deal with the unpredictable nature of language . . . think on their feet and handle the skein of language as it unravels" (Maley, 1987, p. 6). I therefore had a clearer idea of the action I needed to take and this was succinctly restated in the Understander's reflection of my goal:

So you use the cards . . . set up a support structure . . . students work with it and become familiar with it but when the role play actually starts you remove that structure and the students are left to swim on their own and more authentic natural language will come out of that interaction. (The Understander)

The next stage of CD interaction involves deciding exactly how to implement the set plan of action or goal in subsequent classes and working further on the ideas to resolve any anticipated problems. In this process of trialling (Edge, 1992, p. 71), the Understander can invite the Speaker to consider areas which may have been overlooked and which the Understander regards as significant. It is important, however, that any contributions made by the Understander are expressed only in terms of the Speaker's own views. For example:

Here, the Understander worded these questions in a way that avoided any involvement in the decision-making but gave me the opportunity to establish for myself how the card activity might work in the classroom. At this stage, my journey from initial frustration about role plays to self-development was near its conclusion. I had a preliminary plan of action for the next class in which the language would be elicited from students; they would transfer this language to cards and work in pairs to order the cards to determine possible sequences in such interaction. The cards would then be taken away so that students could engage in more realistic and unpredictable role plays. I also had a set of criteria from which to judge whether the subsequent role plays could be considered successful or unsuccessful. The final stage, therefore, was to teach the class in order to

. . . try it out . . . to see what happens and see if it works or not. ( The Speaker)

and reflect on this new experience in order to begin a new journey of awareness, discovery and action.

Does CD Facilitate Development
? Experiencing discovery in CD-in-action

The modified interaction with the Understander was instrumental in providing the space I needed to resolve my doubts about the usefulness of role plays. Although, I initially believed the idea of using cards rather than the whiteboard to present the language for a role play "came out of nowhere" (The Speaker, post-CD discussions) after examining the process, the discovery can be seen as the outcome of my exploration as the Speaker, hearing my thoughts through the Understander's reflections.

Experiencing a successful change of approach in my teaching

A few weeks after the final CD session, I implemented my plan of action during a class about job interviews. In this lesson, students listened to and maintained eye-contact with each other and seemed able to respond to unpredictable situations that occurred during various simulated interviews. An immediate outcome of the CD sessions, therefore, was what I considered a successful change in classroom role play interaction resulting from ideas I formulated as the Speaker.

Conclusion

I found the most difficult part of CD was resisting the temptation to step out of my assigned role of either 'Speaker' or 'Understander' and ask for or offer opinions or judgements on the topic at hand. However, what is important throughout the whole CD process is that the Speaker is the one responsible for finding his or her own direction forward. Thus, during my turn as Understander, I had to meet the following criteria outlined in Edge (1992):

Respect

Empathy

Speaker's space

Reflecting

Focusing

Goal-setting / Trialling

Paradoxically, the constraints placed on interaction are where I found the most freedom. Rather than being pulled into someone else's perspective or holding back in fear of evaluation from that person, as the Speaker I was provided with an interactional environment in which I was truly free to revisit, explore, and discover new aspects of my own classroom experiences. The Understander, on the other hand, was freed from the norms of ordinary conversation where one needs to be thinking about what to say next while the other person is still speaking. He was therefore able to give his full attention to listening to me, understanding me, and demonstrating this understanding by "giving back . . . the heart of (my) communication . . . . [I]t is this hearing from a new perspective that enables (the Speaker) to flow forward in the unfolding of him or herself" (Curran, 1978, pp. 4, 59). Thus, through talking about what had happened in the business English class and hearing my thoughts spoken back to me, it helped to trigger my awareness of and to examine more deeply the particular role play incident, make connections between my thoughts, knowledge, and experiences, and ultimately discover my own way to improve my teaching.

References

Burton, J. & Mickan, P. (1993). Teachers' classroom research: Rhetoric and reality. In J. Edge & K. Richards (Eds.), Teachers develop teachers research (pp. 113-121). Oxford: Heinemann.
Curran, C. (1978). Understanding: A necessary ingredient in human belonging. East Dubuque, IL: Apple River Press.
Edge, J. (1992). Co-operative development. London: Longman.
Edge, J. (2002). Continuing co-operative development. Michigan: Michigan University Press.
Freeman, D. (1989). Teacher training, development, and decision making: A model of teaching and related strategies for language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 23(1), 34.
Johnson, K. (2000). Innovations in TESOL teacher education: A quiet revolution. In K. Johnson (Ed.), Teacher education: Case studies in TESOL practice series (pp. 1-7). Alexandria, VA: TESOL Publications.
Maley, A. (1987). Introduction. In G. Porter-Ladousse, Role-play (pp. 5-17). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ren Dong, Y. (2000). Learning to see diverse students through reflective teaching portfolios. In K. Johnson (Ed.), Teacher education: Case studies in TESOL practice series (pp. 137-153). Alexandria, VA.: TESOL Publications.

Andrew Boon has just completed a master's degree in TESOL from Aston University. His research interests focus on professional self-development. He is currently teaching at Takushoku University and Tokyo Woman's Christian University. He can be reached at bromleycross@hotmail.com.


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