Peer Mentor Group for Professional Development Guangdong University of Technology Chen Xiaoru cxrstella@126.com

The needs for development Overloaded schedules (12 to 18 hours per week) Long traveling to school (about 1 hour) Isolation characteristics Lack of systematic training programs tailored to the needs of in-service teachers

The time constraints placed on teachers by their schedules, the lack of organizational support, and the lack of chance among co-teachers often block avenues for professional growth of in-service English teachers.

Peer mentor group is a project designed as a consciousness-raising exercise to encourage teachers to articulate their concerns, to reflect on their teaching, to get some assistance from their colleagues and to identify areas where they want to improve. (Edge, 2004)

Outline of this paper Group organization Theoretical framework Evaluation of peer mentor group as teacher development Implications for teacher’s professional growth

Group organization 1. purpose 2. roles of group member 3. the presenter 4. the facilitator 5. the observer 6. the secretary 7. the format

Theoretical framework Learning community (Johnson & Golombek, 2002) Articulation (Taylor, 1985) Mentoring (Nunan, 2004) Peer coaching (Joyce & Shower, 1996)

“Learning community” Each member of the group has something to contribute and something to learn from every other member. Each can grow individually, so as the group. The power of learning teams has been repeatedly demonstrated in literature. (Manning, 1996)

Articulation Articulations are not simply description. They are attempts to formulate what is initially inchoate, or confused, or badly formulated. But this kind of formulation does not leave its object unchanged. It is to shape our sense of what we desire or what we hold important in a certain way. (Taylor, 1985)

Mentoring “Mentoring is to help expand teachers’ knowledge, acquaint them with specific curricula, expose them to new ideas and strategies, and provide a context for further learning.” (Bartell, 2005, P61)

Peer coaching Peer coaching is cyclical process in which teams of peers study the rationale of the new skills, see them demonstrated, practice them, and learn to provide feedback to one another as they experiment with the skills. (Joyce & Shower, 1996)

Evaluation Reflective development “experience alone is insufficient for professional growth, and that experience coupled with reflection is a much more powerful impetus for development”. (Richards & Nunan, 1990)

Reflective development “… we have to move away from the ‘how to’ questions, which have limited utilitarian value, to the ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions, which regard instructional and managerial techniques not as ends in themselves but as part of broader educational purposes.” (Barlett, 1990)

Evaluation Group success The benefits in shaping group identity, support, and communication are already tangible, and there’s unanimous feeling that this experimentation with our way of mentoring to one another is a valuable addition to existing professional training.

Implications Enables teachers to describe the complexities of their practice in a supportive and non-judgmental environment; Enables teachers to reflect the struggles, tensions, triumphs, and rewards of their lives as teachers;

Implications Reflects a dynamic interplay between collaboration, reflection, dialogue with others, feedback from colleagues and the implementation of alternative teaching practice;

Those teachers who have access to teacher networks, enriched professional roles, and collegial work feel more efficacious in gaining the knowledge they need to meet the needs of their students. Teacher should be provided with opportunities to interact and have conversations around teaching theories, personal concerns and challenges. (Darling-Hammond, 1996)

Thank you!