draft with tweaked slide to slide timing

1. Professional Development for
Language Teachers:
Strategies for Teacher
Learning

2. Overview
1. A description of the most
appropriate audience/context
2. An overview of the content
3. The approach to SLTE reflected in
the resource
4. The description/demonstration of
one activity
5. Our commentary on the
value/quality of this resource for
SLTE

3. Audience/Context
Audience:
• Teachers (teacher-learners, novice
teachers, experts)
• Administrators, and coordinators
• Teacher-educators, supervisors, teaching
mentors
Context: Teacher development
in their own setting
• Novice & Expert
• Individual & Institutional
• Collaborative & Self-directed

4. Activities for Teacher Development
Individual Institutional
Self-monitoring Workshops
Journal writing Action research
Critical incidents Teacher support groups
Teaching portfolios
Action research One-to-one
Peer coaching
Group-based Peer observation
Case studies Critical friendships
Action research Action research
Journal writing Critical incidents
Teacher support groups Team teaching

5. Approaches to Learning
Teacher learning as skill learning
• broken down into skills
• modelling skills learned
Teacher learning as cognitive process
• teaching as a complex cognitive
activity
• how do our beliefs influence our
teaching and learning

6. Teacher learning as personal
construction
• knowledge is actively constructed
• we fit new information into our personal
framework
• focus on self-awareness
Teacher learning as reflective
process
• focused reflection on teaching
experiences

7. Implementing the Approaches
• Mostly driven by self-directed learning
• Combination of approaches
• Focused on locally-based approches
for self-exploration
• Taking charge of your own
professional development through a
variety of individual and collaborative
techniques

8. Individual Professional Development
Activities
Self-monitoring
• A systematic approach to the observation of a teacher’s
behavior
• a better understanding and control over this behavior.
Teaching Journal
• an ongoing written account of observations,
reflections, and other thoughts about
teaching.
• a source of discussion, reflection, or
evaluation.

9. Individual Professional Development
Activities
Teaching Portfolio
• a collection of documents and other items of a teacher’s
work
• describe and document the teacher’s performance, to
facilitate professional development, and to provide a basis
for reflection and review.
Analysing Critical Incidents
• a critical incident is an unplanned and
unanticipated event during a lesson
• Its documentation and analysis allow the
teacher to learn from it and improve his/her
practice.

10. Collaborative Professional
Development Activities
Workshops
• an intensive, short-term learning activity designed to
provide an opportunity to acquire specific knowledge
and skills.
• most common and useful forms of professional
development activities for teachers.
Teacher Support groups
• two or more teachers collaborating to
achieve either their individual or shared
goals or both.
• working with a group is usually more
effective than working on one’s own.

11. Collaborative Professional
Development Activities
Peer Observation
• a teacher or other observer closely watching and
monitoring a language lesson or part of a lesson.
• gain an understanding of some aspect of teaching,
learning, or classroom interaction.
Case Analysis
• information collected over time about a
teaching situation used to help better
understand this situation and to derive
principles from it.
• identification of a particular issue and then
a selection of a method for collecting
information.

12. Collaborative Professional
Development Activities
Peer Coaching
• two teachers collaborating to help one or both teachers
improve some aspect of their teaching.
• One adopts the role of coach and during and after the
process the coach provides feedback and suggestions to
the other teacher.
Team Teaching
• two or more teachers sharing the
responsibility for planning a class or course,
for teaching it, and for any follow-up work
associated with the class such as evaluation
and assessment.

13. Collaborative Professional
Development Activities
Action Research
• a teacher-conducted classroom research that seeks to
clarify and resolve practical teaching issues and
problems.
• Action research takes place in the teacher’s own
classroom and involves a cycle of activities:
1. identifying a problem or issue
2. collecting information about the issue
3. devising a strategy to address the issue
4. trying out the strategy
5. observing its effects

14. Demonstration of an Activity
Self-Monitoring:
Video-recording of a lesson

15. Before Video-Recording a Lesson
• Who will do the
videotaping?
• What should be included
in the video?

16. My Lesson
Class: Japanese Level 2 at a university.
.
I am concerned whether my instruction is
student- centered or teacher-centered.
• Who will do the videotaping?
A teacher-learner.
• What should be included in the video?
Me during a pre-activity
Students doing a presentation.

17. Video-recording a lesson

18. After Video-Recording
• What questions do you have about your
teaching as you watch your students
learning in this lesson?
• What puzzles you about what you see?
What are you unsure of?
• What aspects o the students’ learning do you
want to better understand?
• Why do you think things are happening as
they are on the tape? What speculation
does this raise about students’ learning
and/or your teaching?
• What do you know about your teaching or
their learning that you are interested in
verifying?
(Freeman, 1998)

19. Implementing
1. Self-affirmation and
assurance
2. Identification of problems
3. Areas for improvement
• By self-monitoring, teachers can raise
awareness and reflect their teaching.
• It is a good starting point in planning a
personal professional development.
• It can be used to identify issues that
might later be explored through peer
coaching, action research or in a support
group.

20. Quality of this Resource
This book is a great guidebook for any teacher, but especially for new
teachers because they usually struggle with the practical part of
teaching. All teachers need on-going renewal of professional skills and
knowledge. For this purpose, this book is a must-have.
It is a reader-friendly book, with language that is
accessible to any teacher . In each section, it provides
vignettes that help understand the concepts
introduced and also provides a practical example with
questions for personal consideration.
This book (intentionally) does not cover any link to a
single theory of teacher learning and it lacks LT
discourse. It will be the best to use this book as
supplementary material if it is used in a SLTE course.

21. Questions for Consideration
• How many of these techniques have you
yourself used? If any, do you know anyone
who has?
• Which of these techniques would be the most
beneficial for your own teaching practice?
Why? In which ways?
• How would you implement the
technique(s) you most liked?
Do you foresee any problems? If so,
how would you solve them?

22. Thank you!
Please visit our Online Survey
to provide feedback.
Danielle, Sawako and Laura