Thinking of all the teachers you've had in your life - which ones would you identify as 'good' and 'great'? What does this say about our ideas of good or great teachers?
We often talk about methodology - but is this the most important thing?
More fire!
Chris
Replies
Although the CELTA course itself is not materials led, there are many books and websites about developing fluency and facilitation skills. If you want a very good, concise treatment of this then I recommend the introduction to Friederike Klippel's book, "Keep Talking".
Chris
The CELTA course is not materials led. It is normally conducted using a mixture of socratic interaction with the CELTA trainers, demonstration from the trainers, observation of experienced teachers and teaching practice with feedback. The trainee's skills are assessed throughout the course, which lasts one month (intensive) and has 12 hours of assessed teaching practice and two written assignments. All CELTA trainers need to be trained and approved by Cambridge and have a thorough background in language teaching.
The CELTA is the initial teaching qualification for new English language teachers. It is designed to be a crash course in language teaching and gives all the basic skills needed to start out on an English teaching career. Each course is monitored by an appointed adjudicator. The new teachers who successfully pass the CELTA then build on these new skills using the 70:20:10 model.
Chris
In English teaching we have the CELTA and Trinity qualifications, which as far as I know, are the only internationally recognised qualifications for teaching English to adults. In the CELTA course, trainee instructors are taught and practise conducting this type of facilitation and guided fluency activities.
In business skills training, we often need to rely on instructors who have had, at most, a two-day preparation course with minimal prcatice. This, while cheap and convenient, results in sub-standard instructing. Given the situation, I think nothing can really be done in the short term - only through on-the-job coaching and observation of experienced instructors can unqualified instructors improve their instructing skills.
Chris
I equate having effective 'social learning skills' in the classroom to being just as important as having 'effective facilitation skills'. I believe it is a skill to create a general discussion that is generally leading to some type of key learning point that students identify at the end as a learning moment. Just as in facilitating a discussion students realise at the end they've just learnt something but they didn't realise along the way that this process was actually happening to them.
How do we identify and describe 'social learning skills' for new instructors?
As a language trainer, I know the importance 'idle chatter' can have to my participants' self confidence and fluency in the languange they are learning as well as thier cross-cultural communication skills.
Sometimes, we can get too carried away with planning and objectives ect, trying to plan every minute and every word the instructor says and match it to a defined learning objective. The reality is, learning is much more messy than administrators would like to think. The best we can do is create an environment which facilitates learning.
Chris
I'm keen to explore more ways to strategicaly factor in 'social learning' into the classroom without it looking planned. I realise this may make it appear forced and not impromptu but in our business environment we often need to explain and justify our training methodology.
Does anyone know additional methods for strategically integrating 'social learning' into the classroom?
Methodology did play a role for me. For instance I had a classical language teacher that taped the tv series "I, Claudius" (that was on too late in the evening) and gave us the opportunity to watch so we understood the timeframe better. Or my German teacher who made us listen to German popmusic and analyse the lyrics.
Therefore I would say engaging your trainees is fundamental, and methodology helps you do that. I do think that as a teacher you need to choose which method fits you.
I think a great workplace instructor needs to do similar with the students and as you said interact more with them. I reckon one of the best ways to do this is for the instructor to always have the students think about how they can use the learning content in their actual workplace setting or situation. If the students realise how the learning can help their actual work role then the students are motivated with the learning, their workplace benefits and the students think the instructor is pretty good - a win win situation for all!
I agree but not 100%. In my view learning is a human experience and so is teaching. When I conduct face-to-face training, I try to make the content and skills relevant to the participants' whole lives, not just their working lives. The key diference between face-to-face and online learning is the human interaction and evolution of a class resulting from the give-and-take between the instructor and participants; it is not something which is 100% pre-determined, as is the case with computer-delivered learning.
Last week I taught a writing skills class. While waiting for all the participants to arrive, we talked about themselves and I helped them to say things like "I live in the southern part of the third ring road" and "I have just got married." I think the participants found this just as useful as the pre-planned writing skills stuff we then moved on to.
To my mind, this is the main answer to the question "Why do we still need classroom trainers when we can deliver the same content through an elearn?"
Chris
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