IATEFL is fast approaching, so in the run-up to what promises to be a great week, we thought we’d share with you the predictions from last year’s teacher development event! We asked 7 ELT experts to describe in 2 minutes what they thought teacher professional development will look like in the next 5 years… In this post, it’s Silvana Richardson’s turn!
According to Silvana, professional development has, for too long, focussed on same old… same old… and then technology. We need to stop honing in on overly specific techniques and strategies which we package up and deliver with very little reference to the linguistic, cultural, social, and educational background information of the people we teach.
We need to start encouraging teachers to research the context of their language learning classroom more deeply. So, rather than just being consumers of knowledge, they become creators of locally, culturally and educationally appropriate comprehension. We, as teachers, should be able to tap into the single most valuable resource – a student’s own language. Teachers and teacher educators who are able to produce bilingual learners are the kind of thing that this globalised world needs!
All that is required is a critical mind-set, and educators who are genuinely able to encourage teachers to think creatively and to challenge teachers to create initiatives.
That’s it! This post marks the end of our week long series. We’ve reminisced over some great 2 minute talks, and heard some inspiring predictions along the way. If you’ve missed any, or simply want to re-visit a past post, why not pay a visit to where it all began, with Nicky Hockly’s MOOC predictions?