New Roles for the Teacher in Adult Education

Author(s):

Bjarne Wahlgren(presenting / submitting)Sia Sørensen(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 12 D,

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-11

09:00-10:30

Room:

325.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Aileen Kennedy

Contribution

The paper reports the findings of a research project titled New roles for the teacher - Increased completion through social responsibility. This project has an overall aim of reducing absence and drop-out rates in the Danish general adult educational system by improving the teachers’ competences. This has been pursued in the project through engaging teachers in training aimed at improving their pedagogical competences.

General description: The project was designed as an intervention project. The intervention consisted of development of the socio-pedagogical competencies of the teaching staff at five adult education centres. In the project we define socio-pedagogical competence as the ability to use and integrate knowledge of the students’ precondition in the interplay with the students. Thus it concerns the teachers’ ability to obtain knowledge of the students’ proficiency and social and psychological preconditions and act according to that inside the classroom and outside. The concept encompasses a classroom management perspective and the ability to obtain a positive and stimulating learning environment.

To obtain these competences the teachers participated in a training program. The total training program was accomplished over a period of two years. The total amount of the training time was six to eight days. Approximately twenty teachers from each centre were directly involved and participated in the program. The remaining part of the teachers, which means about eighty teachers at each centre, were involved in the competence development process in different ways based on the principle of knowledge sharing in companies.

The training program and the knowledge sharing activities were planned to provide the total group of teachers with enhanced socio-pedagogical competences. It was assumed that enhanced socio-pedagogical competences would lead to more comprehensive socio-pedagogical activities in the teachers’ teaching activities. It was assumed that teachers' competence development would lead to a changed attitude towards the socio-pedagogical competence; e.g. to a change in behaviour towards the individual student, and to a changed pedagogical behaviour in the classroom. These socio-pedagogical activities were in the end expected to reduce absence and drop-out.

On basis of these assumptions the following research questions were examined: Which competence do teachers develop through participation in the training program and the knowledge sharing activities? Is the competence converted into (new and/or intensified) socio-pedagogical activities?

Method

Methods: The data base for this study includes descriptions of the training programmes, questionnaires aimed at teachers, interviews with teachers, and logs filled out by the teachers. The development of the teachers’ socio-pedagogical competence and the extent of their socio-pedagogical activities were measured through two electronic questionnaires. The first questionnaire was administered just before the beginning of competence development in the project, and the second questionnaire two years later. All teachers employed at the centres (a total of 494 teachers) constituted the total research population and received the questionnaire. In both questionnaires the teachers were asked to consider the extent to which they felt they had sufficient competences in relation to nine types of actions, e.g. ’giving students a word of approval in relation to the actual school performance’, or ‘giving personal feedback to an active student’, or ‘providing a student with personal advice in relation to the study progress’, or ‘talking to a student about his or her private social situation outside the school’. The teachers were also asked to consider to which extend they actually performed these activities. Finally they had to state the relative composition of their own competences as regards to academic competence, didactical competence, and socio-pedagogical competence. Similarly, they were asked to assess how they regarded the ideal proportional distribution of these competencies. Interviews with 16 teachers were completed and most of the teachers were interviewed twice. The respondents were appointed by the management on basis of the level of involvement in the development process. All of the interviewed teachers had attended the training program. Ten teachers produced written logs over a period of eight weeks. One log entry was to be completed each week. The content of the logs were descriptions of social-pedagogical actions, the relation between competence development and actions and the perceived effect of the actions.

Expected Outcomes

Results: The teachers' perceptions of their own socio-pedagogical competence indicated that the teachers all in all felt rather competent from the beginning of the project. Only among 20% to 50% felt that they could improve their competences ‘a little’ or ‘some’ – depending on the actual activity. The activities which most teachers felt that most teachers felt they needed to be better at was ‘talking to a student about his or her private social situation outside the school’ which 30 % of the teachers felt they needed to improve and 56% of the teachers indicated that they had to be better at ‘creating social networks between the students’. It was expected that after having participated in the competence development activities the teachers would feel more able to cope with the socio-pedagogical activities and they would regard themselves more competent. The data show that the teachers’ perception of their own competence-level was improved for the group of teachers which have participated in the training process. The greatest improvement was at ‘talking to a student about his or her private social situation outside the school’ and second to be better at ‘creating social networks between the students’. In accordance with what was expected, we found that after the competence development activities and the increased focus on socio-pedagogical actions at the five institutions the majority of the teachers had intensified their socio-pedagogical actions. Opposite to what was expected, we found that the teachers’ perception of the relative importance of the socio-pedagogical competence compared to the importance of the subject-competence and subject-didactic-competence for the majority of teachers was only slightly (and not significantly) changed after the training program.

References

Antoniou, P., & Kyriakides, L. (2013). A Dynamic Integrated Approach to Teacher Professional Development: Impact and Sustainability of the Effects on Improving Teacher Behaviour and Student Outcomes. In: Teaching and Teacher Education, 29(1), 1-12. Bernhardsson, N. & Lattke, S. (eds.) (2011). Core Competencies of Adult Learning Facilitators in Europe. Findings from a Transnational Delphi Survey Conducted by the Project ”Qualified to Teach”. QF2TEACH, The German Institute for Adult Education (DIE). www.qf2teach.eu Bruce, C. D., Esmonde, I., Ross, J., Dookie, L. & Beatty, R. (2010). The effects of sustained classroom-embedded teacher professional learning on teacher efficacy and related student achievement. In Teaching and Teacher Education, vol. 26 (8), 1598-1608. Dekker-Groen A.M., M.F. van der Schaaf & K.M. Stokking (2013). A teacher competence development programme for supporting students’ reflection skills. In: Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 19 (2), 150-171. Duffield, S., Wagemana, J. & Hodge, A. (2013) Examining how professional development impacted teachers and students of U.S. history courses. In: Journal of Social Studies Research, 37 (2), 85-96. Goldschmidt, P. & Phelps, G. (2010). Does teacher professional development affect content and pedagogical knowledge: How much and for how long? In: Economics of Education Review. 29 (3), 432-439. Larsen, L.L. & Wahlgren, B. (2010). Effects of teacher training. In Egetenmeyer, R. & Nuissl, E. (2010). Teachers and Trainers in Adult and Lifelong Learning – Asian and European Perspectives. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Nuissl, E., Lattke, S. (eds.). (2008). Qualifying adult learning professionals in Europe. Bielefeld: W. Bertelsmann Verlag. Wahlgren, B. (2011). Training of Adult Education Teachers – Experiences from a teacher training programme in cooperative learning. In Cursiv, 2011 (6), 65-82.

Author Information

Bjarne Wahlgren (presenting / submitting)

Aarhus University

Department of Education

Copenhagen NV

Sia Sørensen (presenting)

Aarhus University, Denmark

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