Layered
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
training
Adrian Tennant has three solutions
for a perennial problem.
M
ost teachers have faced
mixed-ability, or multi-
level classes at some time
in their teaching life. In
fact, if we think about it, every class that
contains more than one student is going
to be mixed-ability because no two
students can be identical in every facet
of language learning. Many teachers I
meet around the world seem to think it’s
a problem that is unique to their context,
but the reality is … well, it just is. I’ve
also had teachers say to me: ‘You’re
lucky because, as a trainer, you don’t have
mixed-ability groups.’ However, this is
very far from the case.
Multiple profiles
Here’s a brief profile of a typical group
of participants I might have on an
in-service teacher training course:
1 head teacher
2 teachers retiring next year with 30
years’ experience
1 teacher who has an MA from a UK
university
3 teachers who have been to the UK
for a month on training courses
2 teachers who have a local Master’s
qualification
8 teachers with between ten and 15
years’ experience
10 teachers who have between five and
ten years’ experience
12 teachers who have between one and
five years’ experience
3 teachers who have just qualified from
teacher training college or university,
but have yet to teach
In fact, in some ways this is quite a
lucky group, as it doesn’t seem to
contain anyone who is teaching but
hasn’t had some pre-service teacher
training (although it is possible that
people with experience may not have
had training before they entered the
classroom). However, at first glance, this
group certainly looks to be mixed-ability
– and that’s before we go any deeper
than a simple one-line synopsis of the
number of years’ teaching experience
and a little on qualifications.
Multiple realities
Of course, most teacher trainers will tell
you that how long you’ve been teaching
is hardly a yardstick for measuring
anything with – apart from how long
you’ve been teaching. It certainly doesn’t
equate with being a good teacher. We
have three teachers in this group who
have been to the UK for a month on
training courses. However, we don’t
know anything about the following
things:
where the courses were
how many hours a day/week they were
what the content was
whether the teacher understood the
content
whether the teacher found the course
useful
• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 98 May 2015 •
whether the teacher took anything
away with them and applied it to
their teaching
and so on …
One thing that I’ve noticed more and
more frequently is that many of the
young teachers coming fresh out of
college have read more articles on
teaching and have a far better
knowledge of the latest methodology
than some of their older colleagues. This
might mean they lack some of the skills
that the teachers who have worked in a
classroom have acquired, but it also
means that they are often more receptive
to the training and find it easier to relate
to the ideas on the course.
Three solutions
So, the reality of teacher training is that
it is as multi-levelled as any classroom.
The complexities of a group, their
backgrounds, needs, abilities and
expectations are almost overwhelming.
So how do teacher trainers cope? Well,
in my experience, there are three
techniques that trainers employ to help
them through the maze.
1 Listen to your participants
I begin most of my training courses by
getting the participants to complete a
‘suitcase’, in an idea adapted from one
by Tony Wright and Rod Bolitho. The
reasoning is that learning is a journey
– a journey from one place to another.
When people go on a journey, they take
some baggage with them. On a journey
of learning, this includes their previous
experiences, whether as learners or as
teachers, their expectations of the
training and often questions, worries
and concerns about the course.
Therefore, it is very useful at the start to
find out what this baggage is and listen
to what the participants are bringing
with them to the training.
The participants create their suitcase
by dividing a piece of paper into four
quarters. In the top-left corner, they
write about the experience they have had
which they think is relevant to the
training course. In the bottom-left, they
put their expectations about the course.
In the top-right, they put any questions,
worries or concerns about the course.
They leave the bottom-right corner blank
to be filled in at the end of the course.
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 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Layered
training
My experience My worries
and concerns
My expectations
I give the participants enough time to
think and to write in their ideas, and then
ask them to display their suitcases on the
wall, so I can read what their expectations
and concerns are and so they can all read
each other’s suitcases. I tell them that as the
course progresses, I want them to revisit
their suitcases and add, cross out or change
things as their expectations, questions,
concerns, etc alter or are answered.
2 Engage in dialogue
The main idea of listening is so that you,
the trainer, get to understand the
complexities of your participants. This
may involve listening to the things they
say, but it applies equally to things they
write, the way they react, their body
language, even the things they don’t say.
All these give you clues as to what is
going on beneath the surface of each
participant. Dialogue is, in many ways, a
natural extension of listening. Once you
think you have found something out
about a participant, or a group of
participants, then engaging in a dialogue
to explore it is vitally important.
3 Use multi-layered activities
To explain this technique, I first need to
talk about the theory/rationale behind
it, before giving an example.
When I train a group of teachers, I
usually find that they fall into a number
of categories (these are rather crude in
some respects as it’s quite possible for a
teacher to fall into more than one of
these at different points during a course):
1 Understands the underlying concepts
and will be able to apply them to their
52 • Issue 98 May 2015 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
teaching, and even develop their own
materials and activities.
2 Understands the underlying concepts
and will be able to apply them to their
teaching, but can’t develop their own
materials and activities yet.
3 Understands some of the concepts,
but not all, and can apply these to
their teaching.
4 Doesn’t understand the underlying
concepts, but can still apply the things
they learnt as they can copy or mimic
(they don’t really understand why they
are doing things, just that this is what
the training included).
5 Isn’t ready yet to apply things from the
course in their teaching, but had fun!
It would be naive to expect everyone to
leave with the same understanding of
the course content, and this is something
that needs to be understood from the
start. Multi-layered activities are a way
of making sure that everyone takes
something away with them. So, what
exactly does a multi-layered activity
look like?
A sample activity
Let’s say you’ve decided to use a running
dictation. However, you’ve decided to
add a twist to the standard version by
using two stories and cutting them up
into sentences, which are then jumbled.
You divide the participants into pairs and
get one trainee to sit down and listen and
write, while the other comes to the front,
reads the texts, returns and dictates them
sentence by sentence to their partner.
Once all the sentences have been written
down, the two participants sit together
and try to reconstruct the two stories.
However, you haven’t informed them
that there are two stories, so they have to
work this out for themselves.
As you can see, this is a fairly
standard classroom activity with a slight
twist. Remember, this is a teacher
training scenario so the aim is to provide
the participants with activities they can
use in their classes.
All the activities you use should also
be underpinned by methodological
principles. Even if you discuss the
methodology, you will find that each
participant will leave with a different
understanding of the activity. A few will
understand the underlying concepts and
will be able to apply them to their
teaching and even develop their own
materials and activities; some will
understand the concepts but not be
ready to develop their own activities, etc.
In other words, it’s the output and not
the input that defines layered training.
With any mixed-ability or multi-level
group, it is impossible to provide lots of
activities at different levels. Sure, you can
try to cater for different levels by having
an easy, standard and difficult version of
an activity (eg for a gap-fill you might
provide an easy version with the missing
words in a box, while the harder version
simply has the gaps), but this does
demand a lot from teachers, both in
terms of preparation and classroom
management. Even then, there are still
going to be students who find the activity
they are doing too easy or too difficult.
In a training context, providing such
support could be counter-productive.
The issue is not whether the participants
can complete a task, but what they will
do with it afterwards. Materials should
be chosen based on their suitability for
the context, rather than trying to cater
for differing abilities of the participants.
Layered training is about looking at
output and thinking about how the
different participants are going to apply
what they learn. It’s also about changing
our ideas of what the outcomes are going
to be and what we mean by successful
training. If you expect everyone to
understand an activity or methodological
point, you are likely to be disappointed
and frustrated – and so are some of the
participants. Layered training is about
setting a range of differing outcomes so
that everyone participating takes
something away with them.
Wright, T and Bolitho, R Trainer
Development Lulu Enterprises 2007
Adrian Tennant is a
freelance teacher trainer,
writer and consultant
with over 25 years’
experience in ELT. He has
written materials for a
variety of publishers and
run training courses and
workshops in over 35
countries. His interests
include swimming,
Icelandic crime books
and cooking.
adrian.tennant@ntlworld.com