Researching the Effectiveness of Professional Development in Pragmatics
DISCUSSION AND REFLECTIONS
Our investigations of our practice in this project have been illuminating for us as researchers and teacher educators. Our analyses of the teachers’ responses to both phases of the project validated some of our assumptions made in designing our project and highlighted some of the advantages and disadvantages of the activities in each phase.
The teachers involved in the first phase of the project seemed to have made enormous gains, not only in their awareness in the specific area researched, but also in their skills and confidence as researchers, and in their understandings about language and communication and how to tackle issues of interpersonal communication in the classroom. However, this gain was not made without considerable pain. They had to make a heavy commitment of time and effort, and we had to support them in this. For both teachers and researchers this meant a lot of discussion, reflection and checking, which, while greatly rewarding on a number of levels, was also very time-consuming for both parties.
Although from a research perspective using teachers in this way was not the most efficient way to conduct an empirical study, our findings suggest that a small number of teachers will find it extremely rewarding both professionally and personally to be involved in this kind of activity which allows them to explore a language specific issue in much more depth than their normal daily commitments would permit. However, it is extremely time-consuming and could never become a regular form of professional development for large numbers of teachers. Nevertheless, our research suggests that this model of professional development could prove highly beneficial for teachers in key roles in language teaching centres. This might mean targeting teachers who already have obtained some research experience through graduate degrees such as Masters courses.
The second phase of the project demanded far less of the teacher-participants. Of course, while teacher responses suggested that our aim of raising teacher awareness of the area was largely achieved by the workshops, not surprisingly, the gains in teacher subject knowledge were considerably less than in phase one. Our contact with the teachers in this phase was so brief that we were not able to probe their pre- or post-workshop attitudes and practice to any great depth. Although heartened by the positive responses to our workshops, we were unable to stimulate further response from the teachers who attended them. They appeared to be very keen to try out the materials with their students, but less willing to share their reactions to this experience with us at a later date. This seems to indicate that a longer-term relationship, such as could be fostered in a series of workshops rather than a single session, would be preferable, both to allow the consolidation of teacher knowledge of pragmatics, and to enable closer and more accurate investigation of its impact on teachers.
Our activities with this larger group of teachers required a fairly minimal time investment from us as we spent only one or two hours with them. As we interacted with them as a much larger group, we could not develop the personal relationships with them as we had with the teachers in the first phase. However, this mode of presentation is much more cost and time efficient. The responses from these teachers suggest that, for many, the sessions were useful in that they brushed the cobwebs off an area of teacher knowledge which was not necessarily active in their thinking or their teaching. A smaller number of these teachers probably actually used the material, and we had hoped that these people would report their insights back to us through a short evaluation we asked them to complete immediately after using the materials, and the questionnaire we asked to complete one week later which asked them to reflect on how the experience had changed their thinking about the teaching of mitigation pragmatics.. However, teachers in Australia, as in many places, live busy lives in which their students are paramount, and classroom preparation, report writing, following up on issues, etc. are hugely time-consuming and leave little space for responding to researcher questions. Despite several attempts to follow up with these teachers, we received only five responses – too small a number to realistically comment on the effects these workshops and activities might have had on their thinking with respect to mitigation pragmatics.
