Tag Archives: professional development

For Schools

How to be a Professional

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Professionalism, like common sense, may be most frequently referred to in its absence. “That was so unprofessional.” “I’m bothered by your lack of professionalism.” “You should dress more professionally.” And so on. 

In common parlance, as in the examples above, professionalism refers to a particular type of behavior in white-collar work settings. Professionalism in this sense refers to behaviors such as arriving at appointments and meetings on time, dressing appropriately, meeting deadlines, and speaking respectfully to colleagues. Being professional is a minimum requirement for most workplaces. But being a professional can also refer to one’s membership in a profession, such as the medical profession, the legal profession, or the accountancy profession. Teaching – and since this is a blog devoted to it, specifically English language teaching – may also be a profession, and English language teachers may be able to consider themselves professionals. But why the tentativeness here? 

English language teaching – that is, teaching English to speakers of other languages – has traditionally had a low bar to entry. I started in the field, as many people did, with no formal education or training in it. My first formal qualification – which I earned five years after I began teaching English – was a one-month certificate, the RSA/Cambridge CTEFLA (I was in the last cohort before it became the CELTA). These days there are plenty of copycat certificates, many of them online requiring no actual teaching practice, that permit the holder to claim certification to teach English and are accepted by some English language schools in the U.S. and many other countries.

Certificates like these offer routines to present language and have students practice the four skills (such as PPP – presentation, practice, production), and have a smattering of ‘language awareness’ to give prospective teachers at least a bare-bones knowledge of what they will be teaching. They offer training, which I’ve characterized in another post as ‘the learning of standard routines for predictable situations.’ With only a certificate in hand, one could hardly call oneself a full-fledged professional in the sense of belonging to a professional field. 

Professionals undergo an in-depth education that gives successful students an understanding of the contexts, theories, and practices in the field. It permits them to connect these three so that rather than simply following procedures, they can make informed decisions based on – in English language teaching – an understanding of the teaching and learning context, teaching and learning theories, and knowledge of effective practices. While some masters degrees in TESOL or Applied Linguistics include a focus on classroom teaching, many also introduce students to second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language, culture and society, to provide such a broad and deep knowledge background. This background allows individuals in the field to talk to each other using a common vocabulary – in our case terminology and its underlying concepts, such as communicative competence, discourse community,  pragmatics, and, if we choose, linguistic imperialism. 

The distinction between training and education gives a basis for distinguishing non-professionals from professionals in the field of English language teaching. This is not everything, though. Earning a master’s in TESOL clearly does not automatically make one a professional – it is an initiation into the field. In addition to accumulated experience over several years, being a member of the profession requires an ongoing commitment throughout one’s career. If you consider yourself a professional in this field, what, beyond education, is the basis for your professionalism? Some of the following should be on your list. 

Ongoing Professional Development
Through reading, attending conferences, webinars, and in-house workshops, you keep up-to-date with current theories and practices in the field. For example, over the years you will have become familiar with the notions of global English and English as a lingua franca; recognized the limitations of English-only methodology; and gained an increasingly sophisticated approach to error correction. You use your evolving knowledge to try out new ideas in teaching, and importantly, to reflect on and adapt them, and take on new kinds of teaching assignments. You conduct research based in your practice – formally or informally. And you give conference presentations or publish articles in the field’s publications. 

Service
Your institution and the field need the benefit of your input and efforts beyond your classroom teaching if they are to remain dynamic and vibrant. You can serve on committees and working groups in your institution, and organize professional development sessions for your colleagues. You can volunteer and take leadership roles with organizations like TESOL and (in the U.S.) EnglishUSA. You can contribute to your organization’s accreditation effort and become a site reviewer for the accreditor.  

Collaboration and Networking
You make connections with others in the field – and outside it – to identify and find solutions to teaching-related challenges. You are collegial with those inside and outside your organization and become known as a go-to person for advice and consultation. 

Mentorship and Coaching
You pass on your experience and wisdom to those newer in the field and serve as a role model for career development. You help the less-experienced develop conference proposals and articles for publication. 

Advocacy
English learners need the right learning conditions and teachers in order to make progress. English language programs are frequently looked down on in academia. English language schools may struggle with unreasonable regulations. English language teachers teach under challenging conditions, receive poor pay, or cannot find full-time work. As a professional, you become an advocate for English language learners, programs, institutions, your colleagues, and the field. 

Ultimately, being a professional means not simply treating work as a job but rather as something you are invested in, something to which you are making a lifetime commitment. This isn’t easy – work conditions and part-time employment can leave many in our field feeling as though they are always on the receiving end of other people’s decisions, and family commitments can leave little time for professional activities beyond what’s required. But no matter your situation, taking charge of your career through an ongoing commitment to being a member of the profession is a way to empower yourself and your chosen field. You’ll also make lifelong connections and enjoy an enriching professional life. 

Other news

Deepening the well with Professional Development

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Accreditors require it. Schools mostly support it. We all know we should be doing it. Professional development is an essential aspect of the educator’s responsibility, but what is it and how should it be delivered, received, shared, and reviewed in a school or program?

To understand professional development, it’s useful to first think about what we mean by ‘professional.’ Anyone in the workplace can be said to ‘act professionally’ – which means caring about what they do, showing respect for others, knowing their field, and working conscientiously and honestly. But not every job is considered a ‘profession.’ There are plenty of definitions of profession, but I like to think of a professional as someone whose job involves making impactful  decisions based on knowledge and experience gained through specialized education and training. Hence, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are generally considered professionals. And educators are professionals too. 

Professionals don’t work with standardized products. A person making fast food meals in a restaurant must follow highly specified procedures and produce a meal for each customer that is identical to the next. If there is uncertainty, it’s referred to a supervisor or a manual. This kind of work, important though it is, doesn’t fit the definition of professional 

Professionals deal with the non-standard: people, situations, procedures, materials. And they have to use their judgment to make the best decision to achieve the optimum outcome. Educators encounter new students every year, term, or even week, each student having unique qualities, motivations, learning experiences, strengths, and weaknesses. Teachers may have to teach new courses or new levels of the same course. They have to choose appropriate materials and techniques to teach the students in front of them. This is not a fast food burger situation, where one set of procedures is followed rigidly. Teachers and other educators, such as student affairs professionals, student advisors, and counselors, must be willing to adapt and use their good judgment in each unique situation they encounter. (You might therefore say that efforts to standardize education tend to deprofessionalize educators.)

Hence, educators cannot rely on a single set of procedures they learned at the start of their career. As the world changes, they need to expand and update their repertoire of techniques, methods, and approaches. Becoming a ‘seasoned professional’ means having gone through this process of expanding and updating over a long period of time. 

There are three broad contexts for professional development: external, in-house, and self. External professional development includes conferences (attending and presenting), and webinars. In-house professional development might involve invited speakers or workshops developed by faculty or staff. And the ‘self’ context is anything an individual chooses to do independently. This could include reading a book or article, engaging in some in-class action research, or keeping a reflective journal. Even challenging oneself to teach an unfamiliar course can be useful professional development. 

Although some of these options are cheap or free, many require some financial commitment. Schools should allocate some funds to support faculty and staff professional development, but funding, like any resource, is sure to be limited, so administrators need to consider the return on investment. Here are four approaches for determining how professional development funds can be distributed and their effectiveness evaluated. 

  1. Individual need. There are cases in which a faculty or staff member needs to learn a skill or process, or has a demonstrated area of weakness. For example, a faculty member moving into an administrative position might benefit from a management or leadership workshop. The effectiveness of this training could be demonstrated by the individual on the job and observed by a supervisor. 
  2. Institutional need. If a program has or anticipates a need for certain knowledge or skills, it can prioritize professional development funding on that basis. An example is the need to develop online teaching skills to meet anticipated demand for online programs. The benefit of this training can be monitored through teaching effectiveness measures such as observations and student feedback. 
  3. Justification/priority. In this approach, faculty and staff propose their professional development plans, and those responsible for distributing funding determine which plans are likely to bring the greatest benefit – to the individual or the program – for the money spent. Those receiving funds can report back to a supervisor or to their colleagues on the results of the professional development activity. 
  4. Individual choice. In this case faculty or staff members are offered an amount of funding and can use it for any professional development, within program guidelines. They might use it to join a professional organization or attend a conference, for example. It can be difficult to determine the effectiveness of professional development funding distributed in this way. Report-back sessions from conference attendees tend to be rather brief and superficial. However, this kind of professional development can be very meaningful to the person doing it. 

On this last point, there is another type of professional development, what I’ll call participatory professional development. Specific takeaways from a conference are sometimes hard to identify, but a teacher or staff member may feel refreshed, energized and motivated by a change of scenery and the opportunity to meet, discuss, and network with colleagues from the field for a few days, and this is valuable in itself.

Another form of participatory professional development is involvement with professional organizations. In English language teaching, for example, there are volunteer opportunities with organizations such as TESOL, EnglishUSA, and accrediting organizations, including board and committee service. I can testify that engaging deeply with colleagues from around the country and the world, on meaningful projects, is some of the best professional development I’ve done, and plenty of others would agree. 

I’ve often thought of professional expertise as like a well. At the start of your career, the well is  shallow. You know enough to get by, but you don’t have much to dip into. If you take an active interest in your professional development, the well deepens and your range of options for decision-making in new and unexpected situations widens.

So professional development is a responsibility of individuals, programs, and institutions in education. Keep supporting it, keep doing it. You know you should. 

For Schools

Putting Students First

At a recent professional development session at Stafford House Boston, Miyo Takahashi Le and I presented some principles and practices of good service to intensive English program (IEP) students. The simple mantra “Students come first” particularly resonated with many in the audience. It means that in any policy or practice consideration, staff should always prioritize what is best for the students. Putting students first may seem obvious, but although individual staff and faculty approach their work with their students’ best interests in mind, in practice there can be institutional or structural impediments that inhibit good service. Here are three examples.

Silos
At one IEP, the Admissions team was responsible for first-day check-in of students for its semester-length program. The team had made the process – which included scanning passports and I-20s, checking students’ insurance, and ensuring that tuition was paid – highly efficient. There was no involvement from the Academic team in first-day check-in, because it was viewed as an Admissions process. Yet many students had academic-related questions when they came in on the first day, and there was no process to get those questions answered. Worse, for new students who had traveled thousands of miles to come and study at the program, there was little in the way of a warm welcome, no chance for students to meet their teachers, and only limited opportunities to start bonding with other students.

This was changed by having Admissions and Academics collaborate to develop a first-day check-in experience that included a warm welcome and conversation with faculty, and advisors on hand to answer students’ questions. It resulted also in the Academic staff and faculty being able to take care of some academic procedures (such as elective class selection) on check-in day, which was more efficient and of better service to students.

Breaking down silos and seeing first-day check-in as an institutional effort rather than the activity of just one department led to better service to students.

Prioritizing Staff or Faculty Interests
In an IEP that ran three semesters per year, the summer semester was set up differently from the fall and spring semesters. The daily schedule was shorter, with all days ending at 1:00 instead of 3:30, because students were restricted to one elective rather than two. The summer was divided into two six-week sessions, giving faculty the opportunity to teach less or concentrate their teaching into one half of the semester. This also meant that electives that were designed to be taught over 60 hours were crunched into 30 hours. None of this was great for students.

The original rationale given for the different summer schedule was that the IEP was running its main semesters in the fall and spring, and summer was seen as just an extra that was not taken as seriously. But students wished to study year-round, and there was no reason why the program should be any different in the summer. In fact, it looked suspiciously as though the summer had been designed for the convenience of the faculty rather than the good of the students.

After much discussion and a faculty vote, the summer semester was brought into line with the fall and spring semesters, creating a smoother study experience for students studying over several semesters.

Institutional Inertia
At a residential program, students were required to sign out when they left campus and sign back in when they returned. This was an onerous process that began twenty or thirty years before, and was intended to increase the safety of the students by enabling staff to check who was on campus at any time. Upon review, it was found that many students failed to sign out and sign in correctly, making the system ineffective. Given that the Student Service team’s mission had recently been updated to include empowering students and helping them to be more independent, the sign-out/sign-in system seemed outdated and intrusive. And on reflection, staff realized that the system had been introduced before the age of smart phones, which students now all carry at all times, making them easier to reach than ever before. The reason the sign-out/sign-in system continued was simply because that’s how it had always been done. While some staff had reservations initially, the burdensome sign-out/sign-in books were finally removed, and in a subsequent survey, students overwhelmingly supported the change.

Serving Better
No matter how much you may want to provide top-notch service to your students, impediments – such as silos, prioritizing the interests of faculty or staff over those of students, and institutional inertia – can get in the way of great service to students. Do you recognize any of these impediments in your program? How can you serve better?

 

 

Thank you to Ece Gürler of Stafford house Boston for devising and publicizing the session ‘How Can We Serve Better?’