Teachers in pyjamas
05/22/2008
The advantages of learning by distance have long been recognised by students, but now new research among the people providing the training reveals that they too benefit from the flexibility and freedom.
Trainers imparting knowledge and skills to their students dressed only in their pyjamas is one of the more surprising images to emerge from a recent survey of distance education courses for English language teachers.
The research has been carried out by two academics from the department of linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney. David Hall and John Knox have more than 20 years of experience in delivering distance English language teacher training between them and have been closely involved with the rapid expansion of this sector over the past decade. But when they started to gather together existing research into "language teacher education by distance" (LTED) they realised that it was at best fragmentary. So they decided to put that right by conducting what is the first comprehensive survey's of LTED institutions and the experience of instructors delivering training by distance.
Two key factors have fuelled the growth of LTED: the steady increase in demand for English language skills and the revolution in online communication that has provided faster and cheaper ways to deliver training. According to Hall and Knox, research carried out in the early 1990s revealed that there were just 23 providers of LTED globally, but by 2007, when the pair concluded their survey, there were more than 120 providers with enrolments possibly in the tens of thousands.
But one of Hall and Knox's key findings is that understanding of distance learning administration has not always kept pace with the sector's rapid growth, in particular among institutions that are predominantly "face-to-face" providers.
"Our impression is that institutions, unless they are dedicated distance or open-learning institutions, have little understanding of the needs of staff and students involved in distance learning," they say.
Their research starts to throw new light on what it is like to be a teacher trainer in the distance sector and this is where the teacher in pyjamas comes in. Distance training can be as flexible for the trainer as it is for their students and advantages such as working from home (and not getting dressed if you don't want to) and outside normal working hours are cited by many trainers who took part in the survey.
Hall and Knox also note that many trainers value working with students who are living and working in different situations and contexts around the world. "These are probably more important in the language education field than other fields," they point out.
"In LTED, teacher-educators as well as teachers are often mobile or transient and therefore appreciate flexibility. They are also teaching language teachers who are working in a wide variety of contexts, so the peer-to-peer resource in distance programmes can be very useful for teacher educators to draw on."
However, a significant number of trainers say they still find the distance mode a barrier to getting to know their students. The other disadvantages cited by trainers include often heavy workloads being unappreciated by the institutions that employ them and isolation from colleagues.
"Externally located trainers do have greater problems with isolation," say Hall and Knox. "They often have little access to professional development, to the facilities of the institution and in general to the collegiality of a teaching department. "There is also the question of their status as employees – anecdotally it seems that many are casualised, but we have no data on this," they add.
Hall and Knox have yet to publish the full findings from their research, but they have a clear sense of the qualities that distance teacher education demands from trainers and students. "To be a student you need excellent time management, personal discipline and independence," they say.
"To be a teacher you need these plus the ability to be both diplomatic and reassuring. You also need to be able to manage emails and resist demands to be available 24/7." Pyjamas are not essential.