IATEFL TTEd SIG

Successful delivery skills; fully developed and maintained resource base; teacher quality management; active supervision, assistance, guidance; effective preparation and presentation skills; keeping up to date with new information in the field, promoting it and disseminating it to trainees; effective observation, feedback and evaluation skills; teacher performance management skills; teaching experience at a range of levels and on a range of courses; additional duties as directed; trainer qualification; experience in training and course design; ability to use initiative; ability to work in teams; investigating trainees’ needs and meeting them… These are only some of the skills and abilities teacher trainers and educators need to possess and maintain in their professional life. However, how can a trainer or educator fulfill all these requirements in order to achieve self and institutional satisfaction? What are the drives and opportunities to keep trainers and educators developing?

This year’s TTEd SIG Pre-conference event is organized with the contribution of three distinguished speakers, Rod Bolitho, Margit Szesztay and Franz Mittendorfer. The aim of this event is to raise awareness of what trainers and educators can do in order to develop themselves and create an opportunity to explore what other trainers and educators are doing as learning professionals. We expect that this event, which will involve active participation of the delegates, will help us towards becoming learning teacher trainers and educators, and inspire us with useful ideas and tools for helping teachers or prospective teachers to develop themselves. TTEd SIG PCE is planned as a day of professional development and a certificate of attendance will be provided. We are looking forward to seeing you in our event.

The TTEd SIG PCE is sponsored by Norwich Institute for Language Education (NILE)

OPENING PLENARY
Rod Bolitho
Routes to Professional Development
An interactive talk in which we will look at the different ways in which people become teacher trainers or educators, and then take care of their own continuing professional development. We will explore this whole area through the eyes and experience of those present as well as on the basis of my own insights as a trainer. I will conclude by trying to summarise the discussions and findings from the session so that there is a sense of shared learning within the group.

Rod Bolitho is currently Academic Director of Norwich Institute for Language Education (NILE). He started out teaching English in Germany and has been involved in teacher education and trainer training for over 25 years. He has been consultant to a number of British Council projects since 1989, and is currently involved in Teacher Education reform work in Uzbekistan and Croatia. He has authored many articles and a number of books, including (with Brian Tomlinson) 'Discover English' and (recently, with Tony Wright) 'Trainer Development'

SECOND PLENARY
Margit Szesztay
Trainer Development through Dialogue
I will give a personal account of the way engaging in conversations has triggered development in me, and give people a chance to reflect on the role professional talk has played in their development. We will consider different types of talk including David Bohm's model of exploratory dialogue, which is a good tool for deepening the quality of talk professionals engage in.

Margit Szesztay started out as an English teacher working at various language schools in Hungary. She also taught at a secondary school and at a Foreign Trade College for a few years. For the past 18 years she has been a teacher trainer working mostly with beginner teachers. She loves working with groups.

THIRD PLENARY
Franz Mittendorfer
CEBS - an Austrian case study, or the challenge of being an interface
The ways in which CPD is set up in various educational contexts are largely different, depending on a variety of social, political and cultural parameters.
I will invite participants to join me in looking at an Austrian institution and to examine how, while catering to the professional development needs of teachers, one seems to take on very much of an interface function - between what is established and what is new, between system and individual, between language and content subjects.
The case study will be punctuated by opportunities for participants to respond from their own perspectives to thinking questions/tasks linked to the content.

Franz Mittendorfer is teacher of English, teacher trainer and language consultant to the Department of Vocational Education and Training at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, the Arts and Culture. As Head of the Department of Language Education at the CEBS (Center für berufsbezogene Sprachen, i.e. centre for vocationally oriented language education) he is responsible for maintaining and enhancing the quality of in-service language teacher education and of managing a course portfolio that is based on teacher needs and the challenge of continuous institutional development. He has co-authored the Austrian Language Portfolio for Young Adults, a textbook series and a multi-media program for teachers and learners of languages for professional purposes and he is coordinator of various national projects in the field of language education.