Effective Communication within Learning Interactions
Te Kōrero Whai Hua i roto i ngā Akoranga
“I don’t think what I did worked, but what else could I have done?”
The focus of this case is improving communication and engagement for inservice teacher educators within their professional interactions. Participants in the case use modelling, feedback, and reflection to explore a situation in which a facilitator perceived a teacher to be defensive and unwilling to engage with professional development. In particular, they use role play and analysis of dialogue as tools to reveal the interpersonal model informing and guiding the interaction and to shape and practise a more effective model and approach.
Case participants
Allan Powell
Allan Powell is a facilitator at Evaluation Associates in Auckland. He works with teachers and schools within Ministry of Education contracts around assessment and teaching and learning.
Catherine Hope
Catherine Hope is a facilitator at Evaluation Associates in Auckland. She works with teachers and schools within Ministry of Education contracts focusing on assessment and teaching and learning. She is recognised as one of the organisation’s most experienced and skilled facilitators.
Michael Absolum
Michael Absolum is the Director of Evaluation Associates in Auckland.
Background
Inservice teacher educators work with teachers to improve their teaching and lift student achievement. A teacher educator’s effectiveness depends on his or her ability to engage with a teacher so that together they enter into a relationship focused on enabling the teacher to learn. Many of us exhibit behaviours that prevent the development of such a relationship. We can seem defensive, to have no real intention of learning alternative pedagogical approaches, and to be unwilling to join with our colleagues in professional development.
Catherine is a facilitator working within a Ministry of Education contract on assessment for learning. Jack is a very experienced teacher in one of the schools in which Catherine is working. At whole-school workshops, he very rarely engages in discussion, and he has made it clear that he does not see the point of the current PD on assessment.
After observing a writing lesson, Catherine met with Jack to provide feedback on the extent to which he had incorporated assessment for learning strategies into the lesson. She wanted to discuss the strategies and how they might help Jack to more strongly meet students’ learning needs. The conversation left her feeling that there was again no buy-in to the professional development and that she had been completely unable to get beyond what she saw as Jack’s defensiveness. While the interaction had remained courteous and pleasant, she felt that there would be no change in Jack’s teaching or his understanding of assessment for learning.
Commentators
Viviane Robinson
Professor Viviane Robinson is based at The University of Auckland. She first encountered the work of Argyris and Schön as a doctoral student with Argyris at Harvard University. She has since incorporated his theories of organisational and interpersonal effectiveness into her research and practice on organisational learning, leadership, and collaborative teacher research. She has published extensively on the relationship between research and practice and on how to conduct teacher research that is simultaneously relevant and rigorous.
John Loughran
Professor John Loughran is based at Monash University in Melbourne. He has a particular interest in the importance of reflective practice within teachers’ and teacher educators’ learning.
Leading ISTE learning for this case
How this case reflects the ISTE inquiry and knowledge-building cycle
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