Types of teacher support groups

Teacher support groups can be formed in different ways (Birchak et al.,

1998; Kirk & Walter, 1981), some of which are outlined in this section.
Topic-based groups
A group is formed to discuss a specific topic of interest, such as teaching
intermediate ESL writing, teaching young learners, carrying out action re-
search, or the group might be a response to a current issue or concern in
education such as the standards movements. The latter kind of group may
meet for a relatively short time once the issue has been explored and debated.
School-based groups
School-based groups are composed of different kinds of educators from
within a school, such as teachers, teaching assistants, librarians, multimedia
lab technicians, and supervisors, and focus on concerns in which they all
have a common interest. For example, the group may seek to discuss a
quality assurance policy and quality assurance procedures for their school
and then move on to other issues that affect the whole school.
Job-alike groups
A group can be set up according to membership principles (e.g., composition
teachers, coordinators, teachers of young children) and the group meets to
discuss issues related to the specific type of teaching that they do Reading groups
Reading groups can be set up to read and discuss professional books and
articles and to gain insights that can be applied in the group members’ own
classrooms.Writing groups
A group can focus on preparing articles for teachers’ magazines and pro-
fessional publications.
Research groups
Research groups consist of teachers who are researching topics of mutual
interest such as the action research example just discussed. The group de-
cides on an issue to investigate, collects data on the issue, and meets regularly
to share and discuss findings.Virtual groups
Virtual groups consist of a group of language teachers who communicate
and “interact” on the Internet, such as TESL-L, a discussion group for
English as a second language or foreign language teachers.
Teacher networks
Two types of groups can exist within what are sometimes called teacher net-
works: peer groups within a school and teacher groups at the district level.
Peer networking can also operate outside the school and within a school
district and the latter can be linked to the former group. For example, a
group of teachers interested in grammar can come together within a school
to decide the best ways to introduce more communicative grammar activ-
ities into the curriculum. This group can then link up with other similar
groups in a school district to compare what they have done on this topic
and determine if they have any resource persons available to advise each
other. Examples of teacher study groups
I. Teacher support group: EFL
A language teacher support group (for a full discussion, see Farrell, 1999)
was formed in Seoul, South Korea. The following is an outline of what
happened.
REASONS FOR FORMING THE GROUP
All of the four group members were (separately) on the lookout for a group in
which they could find answers to various questions they had about teaching
English language in Korea. Each member volunteered to come together as a
group to talk about their work. However, one of the teachers was somewhat
hesitant about the whole process of reflection. She said:
At first, I hesitated to join the group because of my tight schedule. But then I felt
the need to take part, talk about our classes, and find out what was happening in
them. I couldn’t resist pushing myself into it.
GROUP MEMBERS
Group members consisted of a group facilitator, Tom, who initiated the
group, and three other language teachers. Gender was split (two females and
two males), as was ethnic background (two Asians and two Caucasians).
The two female Asian teachers had 5 years of teaching experience, while
the two Caucasian teachers had more than 10 years experience in teaching
EFL. Two of the participants were teaching full-time at a university in
Seoul, another was teaching part-time at a university in Seoul, and the other
was teaching an English class at a private company in Seoul.
GROUP GOALS
The teacher support group came together in order to become more confident
and reflective teachers. Initial goals were general in nature: to reflect on
teaching, to discuss theory, and to observe each other teach.
GROUP ACTIVITIES
The teacher support group planned three different types of activities: group
discussions, classroom observations, and writing journals about teaching.
The four participants met together as a group once a week for 12 weeks to
discuss their teaching. Each group meeting lasted for 3 hours. Tom led the discussions for
the first few meetings about issues that he and other mem-
bers considered important from classes they had taught during the previous
week(s). However, as the group began to develop, the group members took
turns leading the discussions about many diverse topics. The subjects the
group talked about included life experiences, inability to deal with large
classes, students’ responses to questions in class, handling uninvolved stu-
dents, material for conversation classes, giving feedback and the concept of
what it is to be a teacher, encouraging students to work in groups, giving
clear instructions, keeping questions open-ended, and writing directions on
the chalkboard.
PROBLEMS
Although all group members said that they found the group meetings very
supportive, some problems were encountered along the way. One problem
concerned the lack of clearly defined goals for each meeting. Because the
goals of each meeting were not specifically spelled out from the very begin-
ning, some of the participants felt they had been unsure of the direction of the
whole reflective process. This coincided with the different phases the group
seemed to go through: the first phase, the “getting to know you phase,” which
lasted for about five meetings, and “the reflective phase,” which continued
for the remaining seven meetings. During the first phase, group members
found it difficult to say anything about their teaching because they were still
trying to establish trust: trust about what to reveal in public to other group
members and trust about what the members might do with this knowledge.
Additionally, even though all four agreed to write journals and observe each
other teaching at the beginning of the reflective process, individual mem-
bers interpreted these activities differently. For example, the group decided
not to observe each other’s classes and asked Tom, the facilitator, to ob-
serve and tape the classes alone. Eventually, one teacher decided to stop
having her class observed for unexplained reasons. This same teacher also
stopped writing her journal. The teacher said she that she was not comfort-
able being observed while teaching and that she did not want to write about
teaching.
EVALUATING THE SUPPORT GROUP
Even though the group experienced some problems, all members found the
experience worthwhile. They believe the group empowered them and made
them better, if not more insightful, teachers and that other people working in such groups
can receive the same benefits. For example, one member
really enjoyed the group discussions:
The group members were great. I was especially fascinated by their attitude to-
ward and enthusiasm about teaching. They didn’t mind revealing how they think,
prepare, and teach, and they accepted the differences between themselves and
myself.
Another group member found that the group experience was a high point
in his ESL teaching career. This was his first time he had experienced such
reflections on his teaching:
I had never had the chance to talk about [teaching] . . . these conversations [which
were about what had happened in the class but not exclusively so] became extremely
important and exciting for me.