Teachers’ professional development at Rabwah

Teachers’ professional development at Rabwah

by

Dr. Afshan Huma
Ph.D Curriculum Instruction and TE

Michigan State University

In-charge Department of EPPSL

Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad. Pakistan

The education system in Pakistan generally is not compatible with the international standards and does not fulfil the needs of learning in the twenty-first century. It was decided in Oct 2016 that a series of training workshops shall be designed and implemented at the primary schools of Nazarat Taleem Rabwah. I joined this venture with an aim to improve practices of teachers in schools. I took the responsibility of training and development of teacher teaching at grade 3 to 5. Following were the larger goals that I aimed to achieve through this intervention:

Goal 1. Preparing teachers for Learner-Centered Education at Primary Level

Goal 2. Enabling them to use Teaching Strategies of the twenty-first century

Goal 3. Develop Assessment Profile in Collaboration with Parents

Before we started off with the planned activities, I first asked teachers to write an essay about teaching, answer some short questions regarding teaching and learning to identify their beliefs regarding teaching and learning as well as asked them to fill in a small battery of items which helped me to understand where do they position themselves between oldest school of thought to the newest one - behaviorism to connectivism respectively.

Under each of the above mentioned three goals, following sessions were conducted:

1.    Learner-centered Education at Primary Level

The first and foremost task was an introduction to learning theories and analysis of current practices. For this one day session was conducted on Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism and Connectivism. Teachers were given an orientation regarding each school of thought and they were given an opportunity to work in smaller groups to do similar activities that they can replicate in classrooms. Then a whole day observation of classrooms was conducted to familiarize myself with the current practices and identification of gaps. After which I found it necessary to assign a task to all teachers for experimenting with new ways of opening a classroom WITHIN FIRST THREE TO FIVE MINUTES instead of directly announcing the topic. This was a very helpful exercise for themselves to re-think how and where to begin the lessons more innovatively.

Once the teachers were comfortable with the new terms patterns of lesson planning they were given a chance to work in their subject groups. This was an exercise for enabling the teachers to learn more about creativity – how students get to construct knowledge instead of reproducing it; to design individualized learning activities as per needs of multiple learning styles. They were also shown some model lesson plans on the web and some visuals of constructivist classrooms.

2.  Teaching Strategies for the twenty-first century

Slowly and gradually the teachers were convinced to go beyond textbooks. They were asked to begin the lesson using learning materials and artefacts prepared by teachers themselves. Some very innovative and creative ideas were shared by the teachers themselves during these ex themselves. Some very innovative and creative ideas were shared by the teachers themselves during these exercises. They were given lists of some learning materials and artifacts that can be made by students as well.

Each subject teachers group then developed some lesson plans that involved technological integration as well. They shared their plans of how they can make use of computers in school for teaching concepts of science and also for language development. The teachers were not agreed to assign technology-based home assignments as they say not every child has a computer at home.

3.  Assessment through profile building and taking parents on board

I think we have now reached a point where teachers are now ready to prepare student assessment plans and profiles. Next stage is to involve parents. For that purpose, we are now preparing multiple subjects’ integrated projects. Parents will have to work with the students so that they may feel like partners in the learning process. The teachers were given extensive input on the collection of data about student learning and effectiveness of their own teaching through classroom and homework. They have been working on the creation of assessment tools for the classroom (teachers and peers) and creation of assessment tools for home (self and parents). Next bigger task is Profile building through analyzing the data, writing reports in collaboration with parents and then profile and portfolio building for assessing future learning needs.

Now that we have been able to conduct multiple sessions, we can build further upon what we have achieved so far. For some of the teachers, it was a very challenging task to even engage themselves in a learning activity where they are working in small and large groups within their own subjects and across subjects. While for some other teachers it seemed easier and interesting. They usually worked in groups during the sessions and therefore they could help each other in developing their lesson plans and presenting them in front of the whole group. Working more closely with them in schools will lead us toward more comprehensive activity-based learning plans for the next year. We did not jump into the new models rather we shall be making a gradual change towards more and more active classrooms and data-driven lesson planning.