Tài liệu English teachers' perceived needs and wants of anual training workshops for senior secondary schools

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI UNIVERSITY HOANG THI HONG NGOC English TEACHERS’ PERCEIVED NEEDS AND WANTS OF ANNUAL TRAINING WORKSHOPS FOR SENIOR SECONDARY schools Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements of The Degree of Master of Arts in TESOL Supervisor: Nguyen Nguyet Minh, M.A. Ha Noi October 2009 ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that the minor thesis entitled “English teachers’ perceived needs and wants of annual training workshops for senior secondary schools” and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL is the result of my work, except where otherwise acknowledged, and that this minor thesis or any part of the same has not been submitted for higher degree to any other university or institution. The research reported in this thesis was approved by Hanoi University. Signed: Dated: i TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ........................................................................................................... I ACKNOWLEGEMENT ......................................................................................................................... III ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................................. IV LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES .........................................................................................................V LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................................V CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 1.1. BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2. AIMS OF THE STUDY.......................................................................................................................... 6 1.3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY ........................................................................................................................ 7 1.4. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY............................................................................................................ 7 1.5. OUTLINE OF THE THESIS.................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................. 9 2.1. TEACHER DEVELOPMENT .................................................................................................................. 9 2.1.1. Teacher development vs. teacher training ............................................................................... 9 2.1.2. Teachers’ learning................................................................................................................. 12 2.1.3. Teachers’ needs when implementing an innovation .............................................................. 14 2.2. WORKSHOPS IN TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ............................................................ 20 2.2.1. Definitions of workshops ....................................................................................................... 20 2.2.2. Considerations in teacher training workshops ...................................................................... 21 2.3. PREVIOUS RESEARCH ...................................................................................................................... 26 2.4. SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY.......................................................................................................... 30 3.1. DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS .................................................................................................. 30 3.2. SUBJECTS OF THE STUDY ................................................................................................................ 33 3.3. PROCEDURES .................................................................................................................................. 34 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION...................................................................................... 37 4.1. TEACHER TRAINEES’ NEEDS OF THE WORKSHOP CONTENTS ............................................................ 37 4.1.1. Teachers’ needs related to theoretical ideas underlying practice ................................................. 37 4.1.2. Teachers’ needs related to practical ideas to cope with particular problems ....................... 39 4.1.3. Teachers’ needs related to their further professional development .................................................. 42 4.2. TEACHER TRAINEES’ WANTS AND NEEDS OF WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION AND METHODOLOGIES .... 44 4.3. THE EXTENTS TO WHICH TEACHER TRAINEES FELT SATISFIED WITH THE WORKSHOP CONTENTS..... 50 4.3.1. Teachers’ satisfaction of theoretical ideas underlying practice ............................................ 50 4.3.2. Teachers’ satisfaction of practical ideas to cope with particular problems .......................... 51 4.3.3. Teachers’ satisfaction of their further professional development.......................................... 53 4.4. TEACHER TRAINEES’ SATISFACTION OF WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION AND METHODOLOGIES ........... 55 4.5. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS .................................................................................................................. 61 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION .......................................................... 65 5.1. RECOMMENDATIONS ...................................................................................................................... 65 5.1.1. Pre-workshop preparation .................................................................................................... 65 5.1.2. Annual training workshop ..................................................................................................... 66 5.1.3. Follow-up meetings ............................................................................................................... 68 5.2. LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH............................................................. 69 5.3. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................. 69 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................ 72 APPENDICES .......................................................................................................................................... 78 APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS ..................................................... 78 APPENDIX 2: VIETNAMESE VERSION OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE ............................................................... 84 ii ACKNOWLEGEMENT Many people have assisted me in this study. I am greatly indebted to all those who offered enthusiastic help, expert advice, and critical comment through each stage of conducting the research. Above all, I am especially grateful to my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Nguyet Minh (M.A) for her encouragement, guidance, patience, and constant support from the very beginning stage of selecting the topic to the final stage of writing up the report. I take this opportunity to thank Dan Phuong High School’s Principal, Nguyen Tu Luc, who created convenient working conditions for me to study at the Department of Postgraduate Studies of Hanoi University. I would like to thank my colleagues at three senior secondary schools in Dan Phuong district for their responses to the questionnaire and important feedback. Finally, I owe the completion of this study to my parents and my husband, who gave me encouragement throughout the study. iii ABSTRACT This study reports on English teachers’ perceived needs and wants of annual training workshops for senior secondary schools. The subjects of the study were 27 English teachers from three senior secondary schools in Dan Phuong district. They were asked to give their responses to a questionnaire about their wants and needs of the training workshops they participated in in the past few years in former Ha Tay province. They were also asked to rate their extents of satisfaction of these training workshops. Both types of open-response questions and closedresponse ones were used to investigate teachers’ wants, needs, and the extents of their satisfaction. The findings revealed that English teachers in Dan Phuong district were in urgent needs of theoretical ideas underlying practice, skills and techniques to deal with their problems in practising communicative teaching, and especially the needs of further professional development. The findings also indicated that these teachers felt rather satisfied with the theoretical ideas they received in training workshops. However, their needs for practical ideas and further professional development were not met as perceived by them. The study ended with some recommendations of workshop content, organization, and methods to meet English teachers’ needs. iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Teachers’ needs related to theoretical ideas underlying practice……..………38 Table 2: Teachers’ needs related to practical ideas………………….........……………39 Table 3: Teachers’ needs related to their further professional development………….. 42 Table 4: Teachers’ needs related to workshop organization………………………...…44 Table 5: Teachers’ perceptions of the balance between theory and practice…………..48 Table 6: Teachers’ perceptions of modes of input………...………………...……..…..48 Table 7: Teachers’ satisfaction of theoretical ideas underlying practice…………….…50 Table 8: Teachers’ satisfaction of practical ideas……………………..…………...…...52 Table 9: Teachers’ satisfaction of further professional development………………..…54 Table 10: Teachers’satisfaction of workshop organization……………………….…....55 Table 11: Summary of teachers’ needs and satisfaction of workshop contents….…… 61 Table 12: Paired Samples T-Test Results…………………………………………...….63 Figure 1: Respective merits of TT and TD...……...…………………..……….……… 10 Figure 2: The experiential learning cycle…………………….……………...………....13 Figure 3: Teachers’ development needs………………………………..….…………...17 Figure 4: Teachers’ perception of role allocation……..……………………..….……...45 Figure 5: Teachers’ perception of workshop agenda……………………...………..…..46 Figure 6: Teachers’ perception of trainers………..……………………………...……. 47 Figure 7: Teachers’ preference for types of assessment…………………………….….49 Figure 8: Teachers’ satisfaction of the role allocation……………………………....…56 Figure 9: Teachers’ satisfaction of workshop agenda……………………….……...….57 Figure 10: Teachers’ satisfaction of trainers…………...………………………...…….58 Figure 11: Teachers’ satisfaction of the balance between theory and practice……...…59 Figure 12: Teachers’ satisfaction of workshop input…………………...…...…………59 Figure 13: Teachers’ satisfaction of assessment………………………...…………….. 60 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BA: CLT: Bachelor of Arts Communicative Language Teaching CPD: continuing professional development ELT: English language teaching ICT: Information and Communication Technology I.N: important need INSET: in-service training L2: second language M: mean Max: maximum Md: mode Min: minimum N: neutral No: numerical order NoN: no need at all PD: professional development PG: post graduate SD: standard deviation S.N: slight need SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Science TD: teacher development TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language TT: teacher training U.N: urgent need VTTN: Vietnam’s English Teacher Training Network vi vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter provides the background to the study, states the aims and research questions, discusses the scope as well as the significance of the study, and outlines the thesis. 1.1. Background to the study In-service training (INSET) or continuing professional development (CPD) is essential in almost every professional or technical field nowadays if one has an ambition to rise in the profession because the initial training and knowledge one acquires will not be sufficient for him to function satisfactorily for the whole of his career. Therefore, it can be easily understood that CPD has recently grown as a global trend with the increase in its importance and status. This is especially significant in the stage of education innovation in all countries. CPD, in fact, has been considered “the key element in strategies to raise the quality of educational provision” (Hayes 1997, as cited in Yan 2007, p. 10). School teachers need CPD opportunities in order to grow professionally, that is to develop their content knowledge and skills they need to succeed in their classroom (Moeini, 2009). Nowadays professional development is no longer viewed as separate from the teaching job but a continuous, job-embedded, and career-long process. According to Cheng and Wang (2004), there are various kinds of professional development activities that may help teachers. First, teachers may improve their English teaching by pursuing advanced degrees or participate in in-service teacher development programmes such as summer courses, conferences and workshops where they can upgrade both the subject and pedagogical knowledge. Second, working with other teachers in their schools and visiting other schools also contribute to their professional development. In fact, teachers may improve their teaching practice by being observed by others and receiving feedback. Third, writing reflective journals is of great help to teachers’ professional 1 development. Next, access to English teaching journals, books and Internet resources is another way that helps teachers grow professionally. In the stage of education innovation, in-service teacher development programmes have received much attention from studies. Moeini (2009) asserts that attending high quality professional development programs is crucial to the future of teachers. However, not all professional development programmes are of high quality and a lot has to be taken into consideration because there exist accounts of not only success but also failures in CPD initiatives as stated by Yan (2007). According to him, a number of problems and issues concerning in-service teacher training programs will arise. Guskey (2000) argues that “educators themselves frequently regard professional development as having little impact on their day-to-day responsibilities, which in turn has caused, among some teachers, a sense of apathy towards CPD” (as cited in Yan 2007, p. 10). The problems may also come from school administration. Cheng and Wang (2004) highlight that there is usually little administrative support in the schools for teachers to attend INSET courses. For example, if a teacher voluntarily attends a teacher-training programme, the missed lessons need to be covered by themselves on their return. Another problem is that the uptake of development programmes is not very high. A study by Cheng and Wang (2004) about professional challenges faced by Chinese teachers of English shows evidence for this. When asked about the ways teachers wish to do to improve their teaching, only 9.1% mentioned attending workshops and summer courses. However, the reason for this teacher low interest in teacher development programmes is not clarified in the study. My assumption is that this is partly because there is some disparity between the resources invested and the needs of the teachers. If the teachers do not feel satisfied with what the development programmes bring them, they will not want to take part in these programmes any more. In Vietnam, to meet the demands of the innovation in language teaching and learning, new training workshops are designed and delivered with a focus on 2 training communicative teachers in a bid to address the fault of teaching methodologies. Vietnam’s English Teacher Training Network (VTTN), which is supported by the British Council in Vietnam, was set up in 2000 to develop the quality and effectiveness of English language teaching in senior secondary schools, initially in 10 provinces around Vietnam. It is a forum for teachers and trainers to get together, exchange ideas and take part in discussions and events reflecting the changes happening in English language teaching in Vietnam. For the last few years, the main focus of VTTN has been on training for the key trainers in each province. VTTN has focused on changes in approaches and techniques in teaching and learning, encouraging a more learner-centered approach to language teaching to suit Vietnamese context. In practice this has resulted in teachers experimenting with pair work, group work and a whole range of strategies and activities aimed at encouraging students to communicate more effectively in English. Since 2000 through VTTN the British Council has also supported provincial workshops focusing on how teachers can apply learnercentered approaches in using the new text books in many cities and provinces around Vietnam. Another organization, International Language Academy in Vietnam (ILA Vietnam), in co-ordination with the departments of education and training in some provinces around the country, has also delivered many training workshops to improve senior secondary school English teachers’ professional quality. This program has begun since January 2008 in Hanoi, Hai Phong, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Vung Tau and Can Tho to discuss the issues related to English teaching practice. With the desire to contribute to the future practice of teacher development programmes in Vietnam, the present study aims to unravel Dan Phuong senior secondary teachers’ perceptions of annual training workshops they have participated in former Ha Tay province. Located in Ha Tay province, Dan Phuong district has three senior secondary schools. In the past, students in these schools learned either Russian or French. Then, in 1993, they began to have another choice, which was English. In the new social context, English became 3 more and more dominant. More and more students did not want to learn Russian and French any longer. As a result, to suit the new context, the three senior secondary schools in Dan Phuong district decided to give up Russian in 2003 and French in 2006. At first, English textbooks for three-year programme were introduced, and then in 2000 the seven-year programme textbooks were adopted. The latter were obviously better than the former ones. However, they were still not appropriate for communicative teaching, as they focused mainly on grammar and reading (Nguyen Be and Crabbe, 1999). That was the reason why they were soon replaced by completely different textbooks of a new English language syllabus that aims to help students acquire both linguistic and communicative competence simultaneously. This change resulted in the adoption of new teaching methods known as communicative approach. According to Le Van Canh (1999), most of Vietnamese teachers have positive attitude towards the communicative approach, but it is not easy for them to implement this new approach in their classroom. This is true to teachers in Dan Phuong district. Most of them were either Russian or French teachers who then studied English in in-service courses a long time ago. For a long time they had to teach the textbooks which focused only on grammar. Their teaching method was therefore mainly traditional and the new set of English textbooks, which involves the use of communicative approach, obviously presents an immense challenge. Compounded to this is the fact that the students and facilities do not facilitate the new approach. According to Bock (2000), Vietnamese students are familiar with only the grammar-translation approach and they are passive not only in English classes but also in classes of other subjects, where they are mostly required to stay quiet and do written exercises. The classroom setting is not supportive to communicative language teaching (CLT) either. The students sit in rows of fixed seats, which makes it inconvenient for them to do group work. It is difficult for English teachers in Dan Phuong district to overcome so many challenges in their teaching practice. Because of the limit of time and finance, very few teachers can 4 afford to pursue formal education opportunities such as postgraduate study. Reference books and magazines on language teaching and learning are not available for them. They are not introduced to useful language education websites on the Internet either. Moreover, they hardly have chances to work with more experienced teachers from other schools and mentors. Their most popular kinds of development activities are working with other teachers in the same school and being observed by them and receiving feedback. Another help that teachers receive is the help from training workshops delivered by Ha Tay Department of Education and Training. Seven training workshops focusing on providing the practising teachers with the knowledge and skills to teach the new English textbooks have been delivered in Ha Tay province since 2006. All the seven workshops were made compulsory for the teachers to take part in. If someone couldn’t participate in a workshop because of some reason, he/she had to fulfil it when it was repeated some days later. With the help of the trainers, the teachers had chances to review their teaching practice, to discuss their problems, to share experiences and to learn new things in teaching methods. Most of the trainers of these workshops were teachers from language schools for gifted children in Ha Tay province. Some of them were lecturers from University of Foreign Language. Each workshop lasted two or three days. Normally, there were about 40-45 teachers with two or three trainers in each group. Nevertheless, sometimes, due to the lack of classrooms, over 100 teachers had to gather in a big meeting hall of a school, which led to the fact that many teachers at the back could not see the board and could not hear the presenters very well. The trainers used Microsoft Office Power Point to present their lessons. First, the trainers usually talked about how to teach skills and language items effectively. Then they showed a video clip of an English lesson. The teachers then discussed the strengths as well as the weaknesses of this English lesson and suggested some other ways to improve it. Sometimes the trainers showed their lesson plans as models and asked the teachers to work in small groups to make their own lesson 5 plans for another unit on poster-size paper. Some groups then were chosen to show their lesson plan and to tell others how to teach that unit. The trainers in some training workshops had another way to help teachers. They asked the teachers to look through the new textbook to see if there were any difficult lessons to teach. Then, the trainers asked them to share their experiences and finally suggested their own ways to deal with the problems. As stated above, many English teachers in Dan Phuong district are puzzled by communicative approach. Therefore, they hope they would get much help from the training workshops they participate in. However, the fact shows that not all the teachers feel satisfied with these training workshops. This gives rise to the need to investigate what the teachers’ needs and wants of the training workshops are and to what extent they are satisfied by the workshops. An investigation into this situation may be very important for it may help workshop trainers, curriculum designers and administrators plan more effectively for the future teacher training and development in the stage of educational innovations. 1.2. Aims of the study The overall aim of this study is to explore Dan Phuong senior secondary school teachers’ experience with training workshops delivered in the former Ha Tay province in the past three years as perceived by them. To achieve the aim, this study seeks to answer the following research questions: 1. What were the teachers’ needs and wants of the training workshops they participated in? 2. To what extent did they think the training workshops satisfied their needs and wants? 6 1.3. Scope of the study This study limited itself to concentrate on how the needs and wants of the training workshops were perceived by English teachers at three senior secondary schools in Dan Phuong district, former Ha Tay province and to what extent these needs and wants were satisfied by the workshops. 1.4. Significance of the study It is hoped that the findings of this study may contribute to a better understanding of the effectiveness of the previous training workshops in former Ha Tay province. This may probably lead to suggestions for more appropriate and effective workshop design in the future in order to improve teachers’ teaching practice and their professional development 1.5. Outline of the thesis The thesis is organized in five major chapters including Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results and Discussion, Recommendations and Conclusion. Chapter 1, Introduction, provides the background to the study, the aims and research questions, discusses the scope as well as the significance and outlines the thesis. Chapter 2, Literature Review, presents the issues related to professional development by contrasting teacher training and teacher development. Then teachers’ learning and teachers’ needs when implementing an innovation are explored in the next part. Definition of a teacher training workshop and considerations in teacher training workshops are also presented in this chapter. Chapter 3, Methodology, describes the subjects of the study, the data collection instruments, and data analysis. The procedures of the data collection are presented at the end of this chapter. 7 Chapter 4, Results and Discussion, presents the results and discusses the findings. Chapter 5, Recommendations and Conclusion, presents some recommendations for more effective training workshops, provides a brief summary of key findings of the study, discusses limitations, and makes some suggestions for further research. 8 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter consists of three sections. The first section reviews the literature related to teacher development. It defines teacher development by contrasting teacher development with teacher training and discuses the issues of teachers’ learning and teachers’ needs when implementing communicative language teaching during innovation. The second section discusses teacher training workshops. It includes definition of a teacher training workshop and some considerations. Finally, some previous researches are presented to find appropriate data collection instruments used in the study. 2.1. Teacher development 2.1.1. Teacher development vs. teacher training Teacher development can be defined as a “process of continual intellectual, experiential, and attitudinal growth of teachers” (Lange 1990, p. 250). The term ‘development’ is used by Lange (1990, p. 250) with the intention to indicate that “teachers continue to evolve in the use, adaptation, and application of their art and craft”. In other words, in the teacher development process one may have opportunities to become the best teacher one can be (Scrivener, 1994). Spratt (1994, p. 54) shows some comparison to clarify the respective merits of teacher training and teacher development (Figure 1). It is clear that the two terms, teacher training and teacher development, have certain distinctions. The time of training courses is limited and fixed by administrators, while teacher development is a life-long process, a process that can be started but never finished. According to Ur (1996), this process of teacher development is vital for maintaining and enhancing the quality of teachers and in some situations, this may decide on survival or dropping out. The problem of 9 professional survival described by him starts from the first year of teaching. Because of the difficulties teachers may have to cope with during the first years, some of them give up the career; many others who remain may find they have less and less confidence and optimism. In later years of one’s teacher career, one may also have a feeling of failure: disillusionment, boredom, loss of momentum. This phenomenon is known as ‘burn-out’, which “usually comes on gradually, although it may be accelerated by personal crises such as family or financial problems” (Ur 1996, p. 318). After pointing out to first-year stress and later burnout, Ur (1996) asserts that the above problems can be forestalled or solved by constant teacher development. Therefore, this teacher development should be considered a necessary contributor to success and satisfaction in one’s teaching career. Teacher Training (TT) Teacher Development (TD)  time-bound  continuing  related to needs of course  related to needs of the individual  terminal outcomes pre-empted  terminal outcomes open  information/skills transmission  problem solving  fixed agenda  flexible agenda  top-down  bottom-up Figure 1: Respective merits of TT and TD (Spratt, 1994) The second distinction between teacher training and teacher development is that training is related to the needs of the course, for example, “helping a person with little or no previous teaching experience enter a class with some degree of confidence in what s/he is doing” (Freeman 1982, p. 22). Development, on the other hand, addresses teachers’ individual needs such as the need to grow, to explore new ideas. 10 The terminal outcomes of teacher training are pre-empted because teachers are expected to acquire and master teaching as a finite skill. Freeman (1982) makes a very interesting comparison when he claims that the way teachers learn to teach is the same as the way they learn to tie shoes or to ride a bicycle. According to him, in teacher development, teaching is considered a constantly evolving process of growth and change in which teachers are expected to acquire an expansion of skills and understanding to cope with different teaching situations. While teacher training mainly involves the transference of knowledge about teaching, teacher development pays more attention on the process of reflection and change which can lead to doing a better job. Richard (1991, p. 1) notes that “reflective teaching utilizes recordings of teachers’ performances, selfevaluation, journals, and peer observation to provide constructive feedback to help teachers improve their performance”. Jackson (1992) points out that teacher change can refer to many things including knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, understanding, self-awareness, and teaching practices. Different approaches used make another distinction between teacher training and teacher development. Top-down approaches in teacher training may apply educational research to classroom teaching or use a method approach based on systematic reasoning. Whereas bottom-up approaches in teacher development “use the teacher’s actual teaching experiences as the basis for constructing theories and for developing notions of effective teaching” (Richard 1991, p. 1). The importance of ongoing teacher development has in fact resulted in significant changes in teacher-certification regulations. Instead of offering permanent certification, many states in the US require teachers to participate in career-long professional development. In New York State, for example, a completion of 175 hours of professional development every five years is an obligation for teaching certificates to remain valid (Torff & Sessions, 2008). 11