The British Council seminar 0123 "The Management of Introducing ELT to Young Learners"
in York from 17-22 March 2002
(Report submitted by Dana Hurtová, AMATE member)
1. Background
Course description from the booklet
The theme: management of introducing ELT to young learners
Curriculum change
Teacher development and training
Materials development and publications
Assessment and evaluation procedures
Management of transitional changes throughout any new programme
2. Course description
The event director was Ms Annie Hughes, Assistant Director at the EFL Unit, Department of Educational Studies, University of York; other trainers were Coralyn Bradshaw, Maria Jose Lobo, Audrey Mcllvain, Shelagh Rixon and Simon Smith. There were 25 participants from different countries (Bahrain, Bolivia, Colombia, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Pakistan, Serbia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Venezuela) and from different education institutions.
Issues explored: Exploring the field of TEYL
Annie Hughes introduced the topic and revised some facts about TEYL emphasizing the importance of the child's cognitive development. Doing the group survey questionnaires we got familiar with the materials, resources and ways that are used in different countries. She gave us some articles about TEYL written by herself: 'Effective Foreign Language Teaching at the Primary Level'; 'Supporting Independence: teaching English to YL within a three-stage learning journey' and about TT (Wallace: Teacher education: Some current models)
Managing change management
Project management
(What a project is and what the stages in a project cycle are).
Simon Smith presented ideas about project management.
What is a project?
The project as a transformation process.
Stages of a project were explored, we focused on stakeholders analysis.
We were given the article 'Government unveils 10-year language strategy' by Rebecca Smithers from February 12, 2002
Managing curriculum change
(A case study: managing curriculum change in Spain)
Maria Jose Lobo talked about the curriculum change in Spain
Why and when they changed the curriculum
New stages in education according to Reforma
How did Spain change their curriculum
Syllabus design
Teacher training
The Reforma schedule
Reforma and the daily class
It was an interesting talk about a change in Spain. We were given some addresses and the list of useful documents.
Managing change in teacher development
- focus on training issues (Teacher training and teacher development)
Coralyn Bradshaw: We spent time discussing the differences between teacher training and teacher development. Using the case study she did the analysis of the project strength and weaknesses. Using her model we were thinking about a project from our country and made a poster showing all the possible risks
- focus on teachers' interpretation and classroom management
Audrey Mcllvain (teacher trainer, writer and counsellor on young learning issues and stress management) talked about the importance of emotions and empathy when changing things. Using another case study she described the situation at a particular school and we were given some problems to solve in pairs.
Managing change in assessment and evaluation
(Assessment of children progress and achievements and of evaluation of teaching programmes for children)
With Shelagh Rixon we discussed some issues in Assessment and Evaluation - focusing their distinctions and interactions
general issues in assessment
possible processes
the components of an evaluation
in groups a chosen project was evaluated
Managing change:
provision of resources Coralyn Bradshaw lead this session. Through brainstorming we made a list of different resources and then in groups had to ask as many questions about a particular resource. This session was nicely built up and although everyone was tired we produced interesting posters.
As the course was quite short (3.5 days) and with many different issues to be discussed, it was very intensive and sometimes we did not have time to finish the discussions or find out about the others' products. We had to do some written assignment either in groups or individually. Some were presented in the form of posters and displayed in the classroom, each participant prepared some individually and then the copies were made so that each of us received the copies from all the participants. We did not do anything with them in the sessions; they were to be used for our self-studies.
The venue: Hilton York
Everything was perfect-accommodation, meals, and services; classroom equipment.