The Most Valuable Professional Development Tool? Our Students!

The Importance of Professional Development

Professional Development is a critical aspect of any job. Whether it be as a teacher or even as a sports coach, one must continually assess their methods to see if they are effective in generating the very best results.

The development of teachers beyond their initial training can serve a number of objectives (OECD, 1998), including:
• to update individuals’ knowledge of a subject in light of recent advances in the area;
• to update individuals’ skills, attitudes and approaches in light of the development of new teaching techniques and objectives, new circumstances and new educational research;
• to enable individuals to apply changes made to curricula or other aspects of teaching practice;
• to enable schools to develop and apply new strategies concerning the curriculum and other aspects of teaching practice;
• to exchange information and expertise among teachers and others, e.g. academics, industrialists; and • to help weaker teachers become more effective.


As educators, we are always reviewing our practices and methodology. Did an activity work well? Were students engaged? Did it produce the results you were looking for? Did the students learn anything? Even if something did work well, there is something we may consider adapting for a further lesson. This on-going reflective process enables professionals to remain professional.

One Important Factor

For me, I believe that our students are one of the most significant factors in professional development. I have just started a 'suggestion box' with my students. It is anonymous, and I encourage them to tell me what they liked and if they had an idea for something else. Maybe they really enjoyed an activity or conversely, they didn't enjoy an activity. Creating this dialogue with your students will mean that you become more effective in the classroom and they become more engaged and feel respected because you value their opinions.

I would always think of this as an experiment. We would always want to have participants that are a representative sample. Here, my sample is my students, and my results from them indicate what I should keep doing and what I should change in future lessons.

Jigsaw Reading in Action

Jigsaw reading is an extremely effective activity to aid student cooperation, motivation and learning. It can be used primarily when the text may be quite challenging to understand as a whole. It is predominantly an ESL reading strategy but can be correctly implemented to other subjects. This is particularly relevant for me working in an international school where, for the majority of students, English is a second or even a third language. I discovered this strategy whilst studying for the CELTA qualification at Swansea University.

So, what is this strategy? It involves students reading a particular part of the text. This part of the text becomes their piece of the jigsaw. After reading and making notes, they will then share their findings with the other students in the class. The other student will listen, take notes and then share their findings from their part of the jigsaw. This is great for learners of all abilities and can be used as a group task or individual task depending on the number of students. Mengduo & Xiaoling (2010) report that the jigsaw technique is an effective way to promote student participation and enthusiasm as well as a useful method for language learners to accomplish learning tasks in the EFL classroom.


Implementing Jigsaw Reading Into Psychology

Today, students were looking at one of the many contemporary studies that they are required to learn for their Edexcel IAL Psychology examination. The study was conducted by Haun et al. (2014). It is quite a difficult text to understand, but jigsaw reading makes the students work as a team to understand the whole text. The main areas students should look at when understanding a study are:
Aims
Procedure
Results
Conclusion
Evaluation & Future Recommendations.

This worked great for me because I had precisely five students in my year 12 Psychology class. I gave the students 10 minutes to read over their part and make notes. Then they had to find another student to share each other's findings. This carried on until each student had visited every area that was required to be covered.
Eventually, students had a full set of notes on the study, and I asked them to read carefully over the notes, check if the information is correct, and whether they need to add or remove any other information. The full set of notes becomes the completed 'jigsaw puzzle'.
The students then report back to the teacher their findings. The teacher's role is to consolidate this information and see if there are any 'gaps' in their jigsaw.

Overall, I feel that this strategy is extremely effective for students of all abilities when reading a fairly long or complicated piece of text. It fosters peer collaboration and communication in the classroom and makes a challenging idea/topic seem less daunting.


* References provided through hyperlinks to the original document
** Links to my student's blogs are provided below

http://tashapsycheblog.blogspot.com/

http://yasminepsychologyial.blogspot.com/

https://natnichanickypsychologyial.blogspot.com/

https://isabellepsychologyial.blogspot.com/
https://veerphad.blogspot.com/

Thank you for reading.

A Real Life Example - Why Some People Decide Not to Help.

For this blog post, I thought I would focus on something that I witnessed recently and break it down with a psychological explanation. This will be useful for my Y12 students, who progress to Y13 next year when we study criminology.

So, during the Songkran break, I visited Phnom Penh in Cambodia for a few days. The country is still a little behind Thailand in developmental terms but, it is undoubtedly on the rise. New investments, new cars and high-rise buildings are now dominant, but the 'third-world' is still evident in some parts.

The topic of the blog reads 'Why Some People Decide Not to Help'. Here I will be discussing why some people decided not to help during the scenario.

The Situation
While walking down a busy street in Phnom Penh, I saw this incident which remained with me every day since I witnessed it. You may read through this and think, why didn't you help? It was around 7 PM, and the sunlight had faded. As I was walking down the street, I saw a man and a woman (who I presume were husband and wife) fighting in the street. Now, when I say fighting, I mean using their fists and kicking each other. They were in a brawl, and the man was punching the woman quite hard. The woman was also fighting back and 'gave as good as she got'. It was very distressing to see. But, what was even more worrying was the number of people watching and not doing anything! There was a crowd of around 10-15 people just standing, watching and not intervening.
Why did these people just watch? Also, Why did I not do anything? There are many reasons, including cultural and psychological.

The most straightforward explanation on a cultural level is purely due to being a foreigner. It is not my country and, if I did attempt to intervene, it would probably end badly for me. It is well-documented that if a foreigner intervenes, then numerous people would 'gang-up' on the foreigner. There were several tuk-tuk drivers and motorcycle taxi drivers watching and no doubt they would all get involved if I did.

Psychological Explanation

This is the 'bystander effect'. So, what is the bystander effect? "The bystander effect describes a phenomenon in which people are less likely to take action the larger the group is. In other words, if you were to witness someone being mugged down a dark alleyway, then you would be much more likely to intervene and help than if you were to see someone being mugged in a busy street in broad daylight."
This was developed from the Kitty Genovese murder in New York during the 1960's. She was stabbed to death outside her apartment. There were many witnesses, but nobody intervened. The psychologist's Latane and Darley reported that there is a 'diffusion of responsibility'. This means that when there are a number of people present, few of us feel the intense urge to act because we are not solely responsible for doing so. The idea here is that ‘someone else’ will say something, or ‘someone else’ will call the police. On the other hand, when we are on our own, we become the sole person capable of finding a solution, and so we feel the need to act.

So in this scenario of the man and the woman fighting on the street, while there might be a cultural explanation or 'family dispute', psychology would suggest the 'diffusion of responsibility'. That no one would get involved because of the number of people present, we would expect someone else to act first.

You can read more about the original study via this link.

There are also a number of videos on YouTube describing the bystander effect.

Geoff Petty - Remarkable results as students assess each other's work

I have referenced this post from the Society for Education and Training (SET) of which I am a member. It is written by Geoff Petty, who is one of the leading experts in the United Kingdom on teaching methodology. It is a fascinating read for new and old teachers, and I aim to incorporate this strategy as often as possible in my day-to-day life at IPS.

Geoff Petty: Remarkable results as students assess each other’s work

Geoff Petty discusses how teachers deliberately taking a back seat and letting students assess their peers' work, using ‘'model answers' or 'worked solutions', can be so rewarding for their learning and lead to a marked improvement in their performance.

Geoff Petty is author of Teaching Today and Evidenced Based Teaching and has trained staff in more than 300 colleges and schools. This article first appeared in InTuition - the quarterly journal for members of The Society for Education and Training (SET). 

Most teachers work too hard. Are you one of them? It’s good to know that many of the teaching
methods that do best in rigorous classroom trials require the teacher to do less, and the students
to do more.

Here, for example, is a strategy which Graham Gibbs found almost doubled attainment (quoted
in John Biggs, 2003). At least as interesting as the strategy itself is why it worked. Have a look at the
method described in the bullets below. Students are warned about the process before they start.

Why is the method so effective?

• Students answer questions and put their name on their work.
• They hand these in, and you give them out to other students to mark. (It’s best if students do not know who will mark their work.)
• Students mark their peers’ work, using ‘model answers’ or ‘worked solutions’ and a marking scheme provided by you. (If you worry that students might not mark responsibly, you could ask markers to initial their marking.)
• You collect all the marked work and hand students back their peer-assessed answers. Students each keep the model answers and marking scheme. (Most students will probably check the quality of the peer’s marking, but you needn’t.)
• You ask the students what issues came up? What judgements were hard to make?

Gibbs reports that the teacher did not take down the marks that the students obtained, though you
could if you wish. Remarkably, the average mark on the unit rose from around 45 per cent to around 75 per cent asa result of this strategy!

The advantages of repetition 

First, there is a good deal of repetition. The student does the questions, looks carefully at the model
answers while marking their peer’s work, and will then probably check the peer’s marking of their own
work by looking again at the model answers. It’s actually helpful that students don’t trust each other’s marking, as this encourages them to look even more carefully at the model answers and how they differ from their own answers.

In this whole process, students become very clear about:

• What they should have done: This comes from having to look carefully at the model answers while marking their peer’s work, and when checking the marking of their own work. What they got right: The peer marking will tell them what they got right, and they can check this marking against the model.
• What they didn’t get right and how to fix it: The peer who marked their work will show them what they got wrong and, again, they can check this against the model. Helpfully, they have studied the correct answers carefully while using the model to mark the peer’s work as well as when they are checking the marking of their own work. As a result, they can easily see the gap between what they did do, and what they should have done, and how to close this gap.

Another powerful aspect of peer assessment is that while students don’t seem to mind handing in poor work to you (you’re only a teacher, after all), they feel uneasy about handing over rubbish to a peer. So warning students that their work will be peer assessed will raise the standard of what they do.

The great strength of this teaching method is that it provides the students with all the information they require in order to improve. When students have completed a peer assessment, it’s useful to ask them whether they could produce better answers if they were given similar questions again. They nearly always answer ‘yes’ with great confidence. Peer assessment helps to prepare students for self-assessment, which is a vital prerequisite for self-improvement.

Self-assessment skills

When a student hands in a poor piece of work, it’s often due to poor self-assessment. This is because students need to check their work while they complete it, realise the weaknesses, and address them.

It’s their self-assessment skill that enables students to produce higher quality work. So, getting students
involved in the assessment process is not laziness on the part of the teacher (honestly!). It’s the teacher developing an absolutely vital capacity for self-improvement in their students.

And while it has become traditional to ask students to mark their peer working alone, group discussion will help develop their assessment skills while creating more peer pressure to do good work.

Here is how it works:

• Students form groups of, say, three.
• Students pass their work to the student on their right, so each student now has another student’s piece of work.
• The students in the group now take turns to mark or edit the piece of work in front of them, thinking out loud, while being watched by the other two students (one of whom did the work of course).
• There is then discussion about any differences opinion which you may have to adjudicate.

References 

John Biggs and Catherine Tang, Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 3rd Edition (2007), Open University Press.