PD Conversation
Contributed by LUIS TIRTASANJAYA LIOE, TEE AI LEE, LIM AI WAH
Current Situation:
Prior to 2018, Professional Development (PD) session was conducted bi-weekly (every Wed morning) and most of the time the format followed a presentation style. It means that there was a speaker who gave talk and the rest was mainly listening. While this format is informative and allowed learning to take place by listening to what the speaker (who are our teachers as well) shared, there was very little time to have the staff engage in the conversation to deliberate how what they learned can be applied in their classrooms and if the staff had different ways of achieving the same objectives. We felt that the richness of our staff's strategies and experience need to be tapped on through platform for conversation.
Improvement:
In 2018, the PD format is changed to provide opportunities for group conversation. The PD team worked with the Senior Teachers Guild (STG) to use this group conversation format as a means to learn collaboratively about pedagogical practices and at the same time we introduce and adopt the Singapore Teaching Practice (STP) for the conversation. Each group is led by a Senior Teacher, so that the ST can facilitate and at the same time mentor the group in improving the pedagogical practices. This idea has been implemented and we had 4 conversation sessions in Semester 1. Some positive feedback from the staff was the format helped to engage them in the discussion about real issues in the classrooms, however there were challenges as well to build up the momentum as the time for conversation is limited (only 30 min per session) so made it a bit difficult to go deep. This format will be continued to be explored by PD team for future implementation, where the group PD conversation could lead to teachers working collaboratively to tackle specific aspect in Teaching and Learning and adopt Lesson Study to improve the practices together.
Current Situation:
Prior to 2018, Professional Development (PD) session was conducted bi-weekly (every Wed morning) and most of the time the format followed a presentation style. It means that there was a speaker who gave talk and the rest was mainly listening. While this format is informative and allowed learning to take place by listening to what the speaker (who are our teachers as well) shared, there was very little time to have the staff engage in the conversation to deliberate how what they learned can be applied in their classrooms and if the staff had different ways of achieving the same objectives. We felt that the richness of our staff's strategies and experience need to be tapped on through platform for conversation.
Improvement:
In 2018, the PD format is changed to provide opportunities for group conversation. The PD team worked with the Senior Teachers Guild (STG) to use this group conversation format as a means to learn collaboratively about pedagogical practices and at the same time we introduce and adopt the Singapore Teaching Practice (STP) for the conversation. Each group is led by a Senior Teacher, so that the ST can facilitate and at the same time mentor the group in improving the pedagogical practices. This idea has been implemented and we had 4 conversation sessions in Semester 1. Some positive feedback from the staff was the format helped to engage them in the discussion about real issues in the classrooms, however there were challenges as well to build up the momentum as the time for conversation is limited (only 30 min per session) so made it a bit difficult to go deep. This format will be continued to be explored by PD team for future implementation, where the group PD conversation could lead to teachers working collaboratively to tackle specific aspect in Teaching and Learning and adopt Lesson Study to improve the practices together.
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