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Adult teacher training
John Daines and Brian Graham, University of Nottingham
The Russell Report[1] stated that ‘appropriate training specifically for work in adult education is essential for all full-time and as many as possible part-time staff!’ A decade later, the argument still needs to be made, for it remains too often assumed that expertise in a subject is sufficient qualification to teach in adult and higher education. Progress has been made in the last five years however, at least in public sector adult education. Publication of the second ACSTT (FE) Report[2] did much to promote adult teacher training activity so that by 1981, many Local Authorities had some form of provision for part-time staff.
In 1980, the DES invited research proposals for the evaluation of adult tutor training. Little was known on the views of those who provided training and those who taught on such courses or what the expectations and experiences of trainee teachers were and the effects which training had upon them. The University of Nottingham Department of Adult Education was commissioned to undertake the overall evaluation and the project was run from June 1980 to February 1982 in association with the NIAE.
This paper sets out some of the main research findings and their implications for the training of the teachers of adults.
The research focused upon the training of the part-time teachers of adults in non-vocational subjects and in particular within the Local Authority sector. We set out to provide a statistical picture of trainers, trainee teachers, trained and untrained teachers. More importantly we proposed to give an account of the variety of training provision and to examine the attitudes and opinions to training and teaching of all those concerned. We had an original intention to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of training by means of Cost Benefit Analysis, but in the event this was prevented by problems of data collection[3]. The major investigation made was of the training scheme current in the four counties of the East Midlands during a survey period September 1980 to March 1981.
Our guiding concept throughout was that training is about change, the process of training is how these changes are brought about and the outcomes or benefits of such training. We attempted to uncover and illuminate those facets of training which trainee teachers (and subsequently their adult students) respond to and interact with. Some answers were sought to questions about policy and provision of adult education teacher training, the training course curriculum, as well as information about organisation and benefits. LEA senior adult education officers and course trainers were interviewed; trainee teachers and class teachers were asked about their training expectations, their motivations for teaching and undertaking training, and the benefits/effects which they thought accrued from training. The views of the Responsible Bodies, the City and Guilds of London Institute and the East Midlands Regional Advisory Council were sought and subject specialist training agencies were invited to submit written evidence.
The local authorities
Local Authority adult education is organised differently in each of the four counties: in one it is based upon Further Education Colleges, in the others it is provided through a network of Adult Education Centres grouped under ‘tutors’ or ‘organisers’. The training scheme employed is a three stage hierarchical one reflecting the guidelines set out in the Second Report of the Advisory Committee on the Supply and Training of Adult Education and Part-time Further Education Teachers[4]. Stage 1 is a course of 36-40 hours; Stage 2 of about 100 hours is offered in three of the four counties in combination with the City & Guilds of London Institute’s Course 730 for FE Teachers. Stage 3 is a rather longer undertaking of 400-500 hours and is validated by the appropriate University, Nottingham or Leicester. The pattern of national provision shows that with the exception of the North West Region, it has been predominantly the more eastern regions which have developed and offered such training schemes. The East Midlands has been a major pioneer in developing adult education teacher training and its thinking and provision at the time of ACSTT II consultations had a marked influence upon the Report’s recommendations and guidelines. The crucial factor which emerged from a consideration of the development of East Midland RAC training scheme is the way it has grown organically, beginning with the development of resources to ensure quality of provision of one stage before establishment of the next stage with a parallel development of assessment and moderation. A unique feature of the whole initiative has been the co-operation of the LEAs, universities and later the polytechnics and common commitment, philosophy and mutual respect of all concerned working together to worthwhile ends.
Training was consistently perceived by our respondents from the Local Authorities as being of major benefit to teachers of adults and through them of benefit to adult students. The LEA ‘providers’ of training spoke of increased quality of teachers and training, and of improvements to the service. Others spoke of more tangible effects and whilst change is not easy to measure, it was clear that teachers had changed. There was evidence of increased confidence in teaching and ways of working in the classroom, growing awareness of the needs of adults as learners coupled with an increased sensitivity to their learning difficulties. Further, teachers become more aware of the importance of different teaching approaches and methods as a result of training and they were more likely to appreciate their role within the provision and purpose of adult education. Teachers do not all benefit in the same way nor can it be expected that there will be sudden fundamental changes in teachers’ behaviour. Major behavioural modifications will appear over time as a synthesis of training further teaching experience and subsequent professional support. However, it is significant that awareness of adults as learners as well as increased self-confidence came consistently high in the order of benefits stated by trainers, teachers and trainees.
The training courses were practically all staffed by professional and committed staff. They were full-time adult educators with backgrounds of substantial involvement in adult education and experience as teachers of adults. There was a positive relationship between effective courses and the ability of trainers to apply key training principles derived from their own practical adult education experience. Examples of the more significant of these are the use of informal, co-operative methods allowing maximum trainee participation, a range of teaching approaches coupled with an emphasis upon student learning rather than teacher performance and a constant interplay between theory and practice. Opportunities for practical teaching in order that trainers might put into practice what they had learnt were also of fundamental importance and so was the promotion of a mutually supportive group made up of teachers from different backgrounds and subject experience. Trainers were aware that a training course should be a model based upon sound adult education practice and that they should themselves be seen to practice what they preach. Many attempted to apply this model though there was a lack of perception at least on the part of some of the full extent that trainee teachers observed, evaluated and critically analysed their performances as models of adult teaching. Whilst the differences between trainers' awareness of the importance of process may have been one of degree, there were some shortcomings in the training courses we studied. Rather little time appears to have been given to ‘subject’ objectives, even though the Regional Advisory Council’s training guidelines assume that training should assist critical and imaginative thinking about the teaching subject and the skills required to realise its full potential within the classroom. There were overall rather ambiguous attitudes towards aims and objectives, conceptual analysis of adult teaching and criteria of professional competence. There were rather few visits to adult classes and a lack of detailed monitoring and assessment of ‘supervised teaching practice’. Trainers gave rather low levels of constructive feedback and many training courses seem to have employed rather uncertain methods of evaluation.
It should not be thought that these shortcomings were universal though they did appear to a greater or lesser extent in many. One central issue that was raised throughout our discussions was the singular lack of counselling and support available to part-time teachers beyond formal training courses. It is clear that Centre Heads and other such staff with organisational responsibility are not being enabled to carry out this vital aspect of their job. It was suggested that they should not only be much more directly involved in training but given training themselves to provide the necessary staff development. Teachers need encouragement and support to continue the development of skills after formal training ends: Centre Heads have a prime role in this crucial process.
The vast majority of trained adult teachers spoke of the necessity and desirability of adult education training. Some of their untrained colleagues believed that much non-vocational work was ‘the transmission of skills’ and therefore, training was less necessary if you know your subject. Very few, however, were opposed to training per se though trained school teachers did speak of its irrelevance to some of their needs. The evidence, particularly that derived from teachers, suggested quite strongly that a training scheme should not assume that all teachers should be trained in the same way regardless of their background and experience.
The evidence provided by trainee teachers who were either just finishing or halfway through a two year course was on the whole very positive towards training. They appeared quite satisfied with their training courses and they reported increased understanding and more effective practice as a result. Practically all enjoyed their course and many had developed deep respect and liking for their trainers to an extent that they appeared unwilling to level any serious criticism at them. They were encouraged to participate fully in discussion and in teacher/learning activities such as micro-teaching, simulations, etc. They did not, however, participate in the determination of course aims and objectives and although they were usually able to make suggestions - they did not seem to be involved in course management either. The informal, friendly atmosphere of most courses undoubtedly contributed to the growth of confidence and reassurance so often noted by trainees. The discovery that other teachers experienced similar problems and difficulties was for many a revelation; the self-supportive function of the training group allowed the exploration of these very real concerns. Trainees did not retreat into cosiness however: they recognised the part played by assessment and feedback in the development of their teaching and learning skills. They expected and wanted constructive criticism of all that they did from those they recognised as experts, the trainers. They wanted objective evaluation, confirmation or otherwise of their approach to the task in hand along with opportunities to discuss and modify what they had attempted. It is presumed that they would argue that they need a yardstick of objective criticism in order to develop the skill of self-evaluation.
The Responsible Bodies
Though the major concern of the project was with local authority training activities, two university extra-mural departments and one WEA district within the region were together employing over 600 part-time teachers and were therefore assumed to have an interest in training. No direct attempt was made to evaluate their training activities. Rather, a senior member of each organisation was interviewed to obtain an overview of their policy and attitudes towards tutor training and an account of their training provision.
From the outset it became apparent that none of these three bodies had a clearly formulated training policy for part-time tutors. One was working towards a much more coherent policy, another was rather vague about its intentions whilst the third had tried and failed to introduce a structured scheme:
We had a quite comprehensive scheme worked out, a sequential scheme starting off with a briefing conference, moving through to a more formal bit of training, then for those who wished it a more extended piece of training. Roughly analogous to Stage 1, 2, 3 in the LEA scheme, and culminating for those who want it in the Certificate in Adult Teaching. But because of the opposition to it, both explicit and implicit (by that, I mean some staff just don’t co-operate) - the whole thing has vanished into limbo.
This highlights one of the dilemmas faced by Responsible Bodies. The majority of their full-time staff appear to be willing to provide support for part-time staff on a one-to-one basis, yet they seem cautious and hesitant about establishing their own formal courses for adult teacher training:
Full-time members of staff would be giving quite a lot of help and support, informally ... seeing new teachers, talking about what was required, advising on production of a syllabus, talking about some of the problems of teaching adults, also visiting them and in some instances, offering them an opportunity to visit their own classes.
Other examples of support included pre-sessional meetings for new tutors, occasional meetings for certain subject tutors and workshop courses (12 hours) concerned with highly practical aspects of teaching and working with adults making use of closed circuit television. However, none of the Responsible Bodies in our survey provided or participated in longer courses, even to Stage 1 level.
Why this training should be limited to an informal, ad hoc and individual approach is not easy to determine, but it would seem to be the consequence of a number of inter-related factors, not least the attitudes of full-time staff and the way in which Responsible Bodies organise themselves and allocate their responsibilities. The scattered location of their classes does not lend itself to ease of bringing part-time teachers together. Moreover, it is apparent from our study of LEA part-time staff, that teachers of academic subjects who already possess paper qualifications have a tendency to resist training. Only one organisation explicitly expects all its full-time staff to take responsibility for helping part-time tutors:
That’s part of our job-contract, to help and support part-time tutors. It is loosely worded, but it is there ... it is expected that we will undertake, help, support and give guidance.
This clearly pays dividends for in the same organisation a group of full-time staff have established a working group called ‘Part-time Tutor Training and Assessment’. So far they have produced a handbook for part-time tutors and are currently trying to work out a set of guidelines to help the full-time staff in the initial evaluation of part-time staff. The handbook is an indication of an effort made to convey some principles of adult teaching to tutors who do not have regular contact with the full-time staff. The other two bodies have not gone so far in specifying their expectations. Instead, there is a much more general expectation that the appropriate staff should be involved, which in practice means that the work is done by those who believe in it and are willing to take it on. This whole problem is also compounded by the lack of formal organisational structures for deciding upon and implementing training policy:
We have no central control of this, we don’t have a pattern, we don’t have a system and we don’t have a committee which organises things. We have a staff tutor in subject X and if he has only 4, 5 or 6 tutors working for him in this subject area, then it is up to him to decide whether informal chats on occasional class visits are the way of doing it, or whether in fact, if he has got 20 part-timers, he might be keen to run a seminar on an occasional basis. It is left to individual tutors to decide what they wish to do and what initiative they want to take.
Within each body, attitudes of individual members of staff vary tremendously between those who firmly believe in the value of providing opportunities for tutors to learn about teaching and those who don’t:
Here we have a wide variety of opinions, one extreme reckons that we could set up a system that would apply to all part-time tutors. At the other extreme is somebody who believes there is nothing in this and what you do is to appoint tutors and let them develop their own style and technique. And if it doesn’t work, sack him. So there is a continuum of views; everybody is at a different point.
It is interesting to note here that an analysis of the interviews with members of the Responsible Body staff revealed that their arguments against university and WEA provision of training for their part-time tutors were much stronger and clearer than were the arguments in favour. The latter were virtually non-existent. Consequently a more defensive stance is adopted in order to rationalise the lack of impetus in their provision. The following comment is an example of a commonly held view amongst Responsible Body staff: