Inquiry Project on Professional Development

Inquiry Project final report

Nancy Fritz, The Genesis Center


Nancy and Rebecca, Leanne and Kevin at  tables
Nancy Fritz (far left, foreground), and other members of the inquiry group
at a two-day retreat for inquiry participants, October 15 - 16.


Introduction:

I am the Director of Adult Education at The Genesis Center. I've been in this position for 2 years; previously, I was an ESOL teacher at Genesis for three years, teaching a Project Opportunity class of adult women who were learning English in order to get jobs. Before coming to The Genesis Center, I worked with Project LEARN in Woonsocket as a Tutor Trainer/Coordinator and for several other adult education agencies as an ESOL instructor.

The Genesis Center is an adult education agency that primarily serves low-income immigrants and refugees. We provide English as a Second Language classes, job training programs, childcare and social services to approximately 500 adults per year in the greater Providence area. Classes are offered both days and evenings.

I'm very interested in the subject of professional development as it pertains to adult education. In adult ESOL education in Rhode Island, there are many teachers who do not have specialized training from a college or university. They have learned to do their job well from a combination of on-the-job training, experience, and workshops or other activities that they have attended as a part of professional development. Other teachers may have had formal training but have learned a great deal since their training was completed. In developing my inquiry project question, I was interested in finding out what teachers consider to be the most valuable types of professional development for improving their practice.


The question:

For my inquiry project, I decided to keep track of the professional development activities that the Genesis Center day teachers participated in over the course of an academic year and to find out which of these were the most valuable for them. I also wanted to find out what types of professional development opportunities that were not being offered at Genesis would be interesting to the teachers and to try to provide these opportunities. My question was "What happens when The Genesis Center pays attention to professional development in a systematic way?"

For my project, I used a combination of questionnaires, interviews, observation notes, and readings. I began my inquiry project by giving a brief survey to the five daytime teachers at Genesis. In this survey, I asked the teachers to indicate the types of professional development that they were most interested in pursuing during the 2002-2003 academic year. The questionnaire included the following:


Professional Development Questionnaire

What professional development activities would you like to do this year/ Check as many as you'd like of the ideas below:

  • Observe other teachers at Genesis
  • Observe other teachers at another program
  • Visit each otherıs rooms and have the teacher talk about what theyıre doing in their class
  • Have workshop presentations at Genesis (topics?----------)
  • Go to a conference or workshops (TESOL or other)
  • Continue sharing ideas at weekly teacher meetings
  • Invite other Genesis teachers (evening & worksite) for a share session
  • Other ideas_________________________________________

  • The most popular ideas were (1) continue sharing ideas at weekly teacher meetings (2) go to a conference or workshops and (3) have workshops at Genesis. These were the forms of professional development that we decided to concentrate on for this year. The format of the teacher share meetings changed during the year and is described below.


    Teacher Shares:

    The format of the teacher share changed significantly during the year as a result of trial and error and feedback from teachers. We began the year with the same format that we had used in other years. The weekly teacher meeting was basically a time to discuss scheduling issues, classroom management problems (enrollment, tardiness, etc.) and issues pertaining to Genesis as a whole (such as fund-raising events, etc.) If we had time at the end of the hour to hour-and-a-half meeting, teachers were encouraged to share ideas that they had used recently in their classes that had worked particularly well. Although this was an extremely interesting and valuable part of the meeting, the time was often short and people didnıt have time to share all their ideas. After discussing the problem, we decided to allocate the first half hour of the meeting to sharing ideas. After trying this idea for a few weeks, we found that this format didnıt work much better because the time was too short for each of the teachers to present an idea.

    During the time that we were discussing the value of teacher sharing time, I gave the teachers a questionnaire with the following questions:
    (1) During the last week, have you used any ideas in your class that you learned from another teacher here at Genesis?
    (2) If so, what idea/ideas did you use?
    (3) In the last week, how many times did you talk with another teacher or staff member about what you are doing in your class? The results of this survey confirmed that teachers were, in fact, using ideas that they learned at the teacher shares. It also confirmed that teachers were talking frequently with each other about what was going on in their classes. I spoke with each teacher informally on this topic as well and all agreed that the teacher shares were valuable and they wanted to continue them.

    In order to provide more time for teachers to share ideas, I decided to try using one teacher meeting per month exclusively as a time for sharing ideas. No business would be discussed at these meetings; these matters would be taken care of through memos or brief one-on-one meetings. The time would be open for teachers to share ideas as they wanted to. After trying this format for two months ( February and March), I informally talked with the teachers to see how they felt that this was working. People liked the fact that they had more time to share ideas, but two teachers felt that the time was not being used equitably. Some teachers used a great deal of time during the sessions and other used little. I then decided that it would be better to limit each personıs time so that teachers would all have an equal amount of time to share their ideas. They were not obligated to use all the time if they didn't want to, but they could not exceed a 15-minute limit. As we got into the spring of the year, there were many items of business that need discussion (end-of-year reporting, field trips, graduation, etc.) so once again we didn't hold the teaching sharing times. We did, however, decide to pursue a different form of teacher sharing. On a weekly basis, all the teachers met in a different teacherıs room each week. That teacher gave a brief overview of what she had concentrated on during the year and shared resources that she found to be particularly good. All the teachers agreed that these sessions were interesting and informative and worth doing again next year.

    At the end of the year, I conducted a short interview with each teacher asking them to state which professional development opportunities that they had participated in proved to be the most valuable in terms of classroom practice. All the teachers chose the teacher sharing in addition to one workshops or conference (these varied from person to person). Several teachers cited specific ideas they had learned that had improved their practice. Some discussions at the share meetings generated projects that will be of ongoing benefit to all the teachers at Genesis. We have begun to compile a binder of "Ideas that Work". These are brief write-ups of activities that a teacher has found to work very well in his/her class. We hope that this collection will be added to on an ongoing basis. We are also compiling a binder of "Readable Stories". These are stories that teachers have simplified for low-level ESOL learners. The first entries were some fables that Sandy Jacobi re-wrote for her Literacy class. Both resources will be available in the staff room for anyone who wants to use them.

    The teachers and I have decided that we want to make the teacher share sessions a priority during the next academic year. We plan to either cancel classes one afternoon per month or arrange for a speaker or video presentation for students one afternoon per month so that we can have an uninterrupted sharing time of approximately two hours. This time will be structured so that each teacher has an equal amount of time available to share his/her ideas.


    Other Professional Development Activities:

    During the 2002-2003 academic year, the five daytime teachers and I participated in a large number of professional development activities in addition to the weekly teachers shares. The list of these activities is indicated below followed by the number of staff people who participated in each:

    Inquiry Projects (3)

    Cultural Diversity Training (5)

    Equipped for the Future (4)

    TESOL Conference (3)

    Using the Internet to Teach Survival Skills (1)

    Ready for the Workforce Training (3)

    Manipulatives in the Adult Learner Classroom (1)
    (Genesis teacher presentation for teacher assistant trainees)

    Video Camera workshop (5)
    (Genesis teacher presentation

    Community Action & Service Learning (1)

    Wilson Renew & Refresh (1)

    Project READ Conference (1)
    National reporting System Training (1)

    Teachers were able to attend these workshops and conferences due to the support of the administration at Genesis. The agency paid for substitutes while teachers were attending workshops and teachers received pay for the days that they missed. Without this type of financial support, teachers would not have been able to take advantage of the opportunities to participate in these activities.

    Findings:

    At the end of the school year, I interviewed each teacher and asked the following questions:

    Professional Development Questionnaire

    1. What professional development activities have you participated in this year?

    2. Which ones have been the most valuable in terms of your actual teaching practice?br>
    3. What do you think about the professional development opportunities at Genesis?br>
    4. What could be done to improve professional development at Genesis?br>
    5. How important is the availability of professional development opportunities in your decision as to where to work?

    The answers to the questions were informative. As indicated above, all the teachers named the teacher share meetings (either Genesis or LR/RI) as one of the most valuable activities. One teacher commented that the shares were valuable because she learned "a few good new ideas at a time". She was then more likely to use these ideas than after a workshop that presents too many new ideas. Other activities that were considered valuable varied from person to person (N.B. The two teachers who participated in the Inquiry Project process named this as one of their most valuable activities). The activities chosen pertained to special interests of each teacher.

    All teachers indicated that they thought that the opportunity to participate in professional development activities was a very important factor in determining where they wanted to work. They felt that the opportunities at Genesis were quite good but they would like to see more funding be available to attend out-of-town conferences such as TESOL. Four out of the five teachers indicated that they would like more training on how to teach computers to ESOL students.


    Implications:

    As a result of my inquiry project, it is clear to me that we need to continue to make professional development a priority at the Genesis Center. Professional development is very important to the teachers and keeps the excitement of learning in the forefront. It also adds to the sense of community as teachers share their good ideas and work to help each other in many different ways. Specifically, I plan to do the following:

  • Try to find sources of funding to increase the availability of professional development opportunities for teachers. When a teacher does attend a conference or workshop, we will try to make time available so that he/she can share the new information with other staff.
  • We will continue the idea of visiting each teacher's room and having the teacher explain in some detail what she is emphasizing in her instruction.
  • We will have monthly teacher share meetings that will be fairly structured in format so that each teacher will have the same amount of time available to use to present ideas that have worked well in his/her classroom.
  • I plan to encourage teachers to engage in other forms of professional development in addition to the ones they tried this year. Some teachers have expressed an interest in trying some team teaching in the coming year. Some teachers have also expressed interest in joining a study circle to learn more about current research in the ESOL field
  • .


    In working on my inquiry project, I found the following readings to be useful:

    Burt, Miriam and Fran Keenan, "Trends in Staff Development for Adult ESL Instructors". ERIC Digest. Washing ton, D.C. National center for ESL Literacy Education.

    Focus on Basics, Volume 5, Issue D, June 2002. "Staff Development" NCSALL.

    Focus on Basics, Volume 4, Issue D, April 2001. "Research to Practice" NCSALL.

    Focus on Basics, Volume 2, Issue C, September 1998. "Theories of Change"NCSALL.

    Lytle, Susan; Belzer, Alisa; Reumann, Rebecca. "Invitations to Inquiry: Rethinking Staff Development in Adult Literacy Education". National Center on Adult Literacy.


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