Page 24 - ELG2111 Nov Issue 478

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FEATURE

Building on success

As PRELIM 2 is launched, its project managers Rose Aylett and
Martyn Clarke from NILE tell the Gazette why it was important

to continue the good work of PRELIM 1

RELIM 1 (the Partnered Remote
Language Improvement project)
brought together individuals from
Pa range of different institutions PHOTO BY SHUTTERSTOCK
and organisations, many of whom may
not have had opportunities to work in or
with such different contexts before. One of
the really positive outcomes of the project
was the evolution of supportive professional
communities across international borders,
different schools and practitioners,
and across the traditional ‘teacher
management’ divide.
A key factor in the efficacy of these
Communities of Practice (CoP) was
building space into the project for cohesion
to develop. In a physical teachers’ room,
socialisation, innovation and creative idea
sharing are often the result of unplanned
interactions during breaks. It’s a challenge
to replicate this level of spontaneity online,
but this means designing how ‘virtual
spaces’ will be used for asynchronous and
synchronous interaction is all the more
important. On our UK partner CoP on
Slack, we assigned various channels for
different social purposes. Within different
partnerships, community building was
also worked into course structure through
online ‘getting to know you’ activities,
orientation weeks and the use of social
media groups. fellow professionals at such a challenging for teachers, but perhaps unsurprisingly,
A second and equally important factor time definitely reinforced a collective the expectation of several ETAs and their
in the success of these CoPs was perhaps sense of purpose. course participants – all in-service teachers
the extent to which participants felt – was that on their PRELIM course they
they had a stake in decision-making and would not just improve their knowledge and
driving the community’s overall direction. Because PRELIM use of their subject (English), but also about
We learned that for the best outcomes, how to teach it.
interactions should be community directed courses are bespoke and On some projects, this meant that a
and a ‘bottom-up’ grassroots approach was methodological focus was deliberately
preferable to decision-making dictated by highly contextualised, factored into course content. On others,
project stakeholders or management. Part of it involved a much less structured,
NILE’s role in our Slack CoP was identifying no two projects will look discursive reflection on class activities.
the topics of interest that were trending exactly the same One project reported back that these
among participants and bringing these to the conversations frequently continued on
fore, creating space for them to be explored WhatsApp well beyond the scheduled class
in more depth. time they had been assigned, demonstrating
Another very positive, but unexpected Unlike other projects, where success how much value these teachers were
outcome of PRELIM was several UK partners might be measured according to the number deriving from deconstructing the
reporting a shape-shift in their organisational of course attendees or participants’ language methodology together.
culture, whereby teachers involved in level improvement, the primary objective PRELIM 2 courses will have a similar focus
project delivery were taking on additional of PRELIM has always been developing on improving confidence and so it is likely
responsibilities and a more active role in the English teachers’ confidence. How each many partnerships may choose to incorporate
project management. It’s also important to partnership achieved this through their an element of methodological reflection and
note that the courses were delivered amid course(s) was up for negotiation during the analysis into their course material. However,
what was, for several countries, still the initial planning phase of the project. At the as with the first iteration of the project, this
height of the pandemic (from January to start, we envisaged that this would involve will be negotiated between partners in the
March 2021). Working together to support more of a focus on language development early stages. And because the courses are
24 November 2021