Teacher Development Through Action Research [Archives:2000/50/Focus]

Dr P.N.Ramani, Associate Professor of English, Faculty of Education,
Sanaa University, Sanaa

In my earlier article,Whither In-Service Training?(Yemen Times, dt. Nov.20,2000), I had observed that the organizers of in-service programs expect the participant teachers to begin to use the materials and methods recommended on these programs by specialists. However, our common experience is that some teachers may try to adopt the new methods and materials for a while after the training, but a large number of them, sooner or later, tend to slide back into their normal routines and practices without the training program having had any impact on them.
My contention is that such a situation is inevitable because the conventional teacher training programs tend to emphasize new knowledge the aim is often to help the teachers to improve their knowledge and expertise in the subjects they teach. Besides, these programs adopt an advisory mode; that is, professional advice is given by a subject specialist and the teachers are merely required to take the advice. In other words, the approach is top-down in that the recommendations for improving the classroom practices, principally based on theory, are handed down by the specialists (and through them by the policy makers and administrators) to the teachers for implementation. Teaching is often treated as if it were an industry where those higher up in the power structure (or authority) make all the policy decisions and the workers lower down the hierarchy merely carry out those decisions.
An alternative approach worth trying is bottom-up in nature that is, the process of teacher development starts from the bottom rung of the hierarchy, namely the teachers and their learners. It starts from the actual site of the action, the classroom. The pressure to change comes from the teachers and the learners who actually feel the need to change. The emphasis is on the teachers learning through personal enquiry rather than through transmitted advice.
If language teaching is to be a genuinely professional enterprise, which it ought to be, it calls for continual experimentation and evaluation. In seeking to be more effective in their teaching, the teachers can, at the same time, and in that process, provide for their own continuing education and development. Teachers must have the honesty to examine critically their own practices and experience, and confront their failures as well as successes. They must also have the courage to try out new solutions to problems in the classroom, to take risks, and to learn from taking risks.
The professional development of teachers depends upon their capacity to adopt a research stance towards their teaching. Such a stance involves teachers producing accounts (even first person narrative) of their classroom practices and their own reflections on those practices. Through such an exercise, teachers will have a clearer understanding of their own classroom experiences. This approach will also make teachers understand that they have a responsibility for their own development.
Teachers should be encouraged to collaborate in classroom research on a common theme or issue. Development may be limited if the teachers have only their own experience to draw on when reflecting about practical problems. Collaborative research would also help the teachers build a more supportive and trusting relationship with their colleagues, and to realize the mutual benefits that would accrue from this. Teacher-based research should penetrate the theme or issue so deeply as to draw out its implications for educational policy. The idea is that improvements in educational practice should be grounded in insights generated by the teachers themselves.
It is in this context that the concept of Action Research is appealing. Action Research aims to contribute to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation. It encourages systematic attempts to improve educational practice by groups of teachers by means of their own practical actions and by means of their own reflections upon the effects of those actions. It involves trying out an idea in practice with a view to improving or changing the present situation, trying to have a real effect on the situation. Thus, the teachers can organize the conditions under which they can learn from their own experience.
The stages of Action Research are: reflecting, planning, acting, observing, and reflecting again. Critical enquiry by the teachers themselves becomes the basis for effective action. Through this process, the teachers become self-reflective, self-monitoring,self-evaluating individuals. And this is the true meaning of Teacher Development.

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