the cégep limoilou`s professional-integration program

Shared Practice
THE CÉGEP LIMOILOU’S
PROFESSIONAL-INTEGRATION PROGRAM
In the spring of 2008, the CÉGEP Limoilou adopted a
professional-integration program for teachers that is
governed by the college’s human-resources management policy (Politique de gestion des ressources humaines),
is intended for new hires involved in regular classroom
instruction, and has a number of objectives:
Knowledge acquisition and consolidation, as well
as the development of the abilities, values, and
attitudes useful in teaching.
•
•
Empowering new teachers to critically examine their
work and get involved in the relevant professionaldevelopment activities.
•
Enhancing the skills and self-confidence needed if
teachers are to properly play their role with students
and make a contribution to the College’s educational
approach and development.
Each term, the academic dean, via the college’s team of
educational advisors, is responsible for organizing activities for teachers with under two years of experience.
From the outset, this team decided how to structure the
program and design activities based on two questions
any new teacher might want answered:
•
What is my role, and how can I carry it out in an
effectively way?
•
How can I ensure that students achieve the results
expected?
Below are the activities and educational strategies implemented to answer these questions.
description of activities
Enrollment in professional-integration program educational
activities is complimentary. These activities, which last three
hours each, were developed and are delivered with various
goals in mind:
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JOCELYNE DUCHESNE
Educational advisor
CÉGEP Limoilou
CAROLINE
-GAUVIN
Educational
-advisor
CÉGEP Limoilou
•
To encourage participants to discuss significant events,
situations, issues, techniques, accomplishments, questions,
and challenges.
•
To identify the questions and factors to be taken into
account regarding the situations discussed.
•
More generally, to broaden participants’ professional
frame of reference.
The strategies used with the various themes/situations concerned varied, in particular, with the number of participants
and the department to which they belonged. In organizing
these activities, we attempted, above all, to allow participants
to play an active role in enhancing, not only their own practices, but also those of their colleagues. Accordingly, many
activities were based on actual case studies, while others were
organized around the personal accounts of both new and
more experienced teachers. In one activity, for example, we
had a new teacher model her course-development and -organization process in front of participants. Over the weeks
preceding this activity, the teacher and educational advisors
in charge met to implement a course-organization procedure. For the activity on students in difficulty (Les étudiants en
difficulté), we decided to have two specialists—a psychologist
and a special-education counsellor—head up discussions on
typical situations and answer participants’ questions.
By and large, these activities, which are aimed at having all
participants think about their practices and explore the kinds
of scenarios they will have to face, provide participants with
the strategies and tools to improve and enhance their practices. During the activity on how to make interesting presentations that encourage student participation (Un exposé qui
suscite l’intérêt et l’engagement des étudiants, c’est possible), for
example, a document describing a number of tried and true
strategies and methods, as well as a table showing how to
structure a class, was given to participants. The latter then had
to organize a class using the aforementioned table, strategies,
and methods.
We feel the formulas selected for the activities—and especially the variety of those activities—resulted in a number
of benefits: they illustrated the wealth of means that can be
implemented to achieve student learning and development.
BRUNO FISET
FRANÇOIS VASSEUR
Educational advisor
CÉGEP Limoilou
proposed activities
year one of professional integration
The activities offered to teachers in their first year of professional integration are centred around the following question:
“What should we be doing?”.
When the program was being developed, the following topics
were selected for exploration: the educational relationship,
syllabus development, student participation, teaching strategies, and course organization. The related questions were
developed as part of the activities described below.
1 The educational relationship
The educational relationship involves three essential components: teachers, students, and knowledge. The work of the
teacher consists primarily in organizing the relationship that
unites these components.
Over the course of this activity, participants are encouraged
to ask themselves different questions.
•
What are the dimensions of each component?
•
What are the role and scope of each component?
•
How are these components related?
3 Motivation and strategies
Teachers are asked to discuss their teaching strategies and
related outcomes. They describe the key characteristics of
strategies that promote student participation and development, and begin a process of personal reflection concerning
the effectiveness and conditions for success of the approaches
they currently use.
The activity lets teachers define what is meant by “teaching
strategy”, and raises a certain number of questions related to
the relationship between the abilities to be developed, the
situations in which students should be able to implement
those abilities, the instructional context, and the choice of
strategies. Below are a few of the questions usually raised:
•
Does the strategy promote the attainment of the
course objective?
•
Does the strategy lead to sustainable learning?
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Does the strategy give meaning to learning and encourage
students to use what they have learned in their thought
processes, action, and behaviour?
•
Does the strategy enable students to draw connections
between prior learning and develop their cognitive, intellectual,
social, methodological, and communication skills?
•
Does the strategy encourage students to take charge of their
learning process?
Deliberations and a discussion on the educational relationship
then follow, in particular by means of the following questions:
•
Why should we get to know our students?
•
What should we be on the lookout for?
•
What techniques should be used?
2 Course planning
4 Course organization
Participants examine the components that are essential to
structuring a course, and consider various avenues for doing
so. Below are a few of the questions asked and explored in regard to the teaching situation:
•
The goal of this activity is to identify and explain the courseplanning process via questions, illustration and experimentation.
•
Planning a course: Why and for whom?
•
What gets planned? Based on what?
•
How can we help our students participate and integrate their
knowledge in an effective, stimulating manner?
Educational advisor
CÉGEP Limoilou
What are the type, orientation, end goal, and challenges of
the course?
- Do students acquire or establish an overview of something?
- Is the primary aim, instead, to ensure mastery of a
conceptual, physical, or social system? Of work methods,
techniques, or instruments?
- Is the ultimate goal relevant, well-founded, and effective
action and conduct?
•
What are the main abilities and capabilities to be developed?
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2 Classroom management
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What is the end goal of the course?
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How should the course be structured so as to ensure that
students achieve these results?
By and large, first-year teachers can, thanks to this type of activity, in addition to holding discussions with colleagues who
are experiencing essentially the same thing, enhance if not
start building a frame of reference for college-level instruction.
The strategies used with the various themes/situations
concerned varied…with the number of participants and
the department to which they belonged.
year two of professional integration
The activities offered to teachers in their second year of professional integration are centred around the following question:
“How can we get students to achieve the results expected?”.
The themes initially selected were: choosing effective educational methods, classroom management, and learning evaluation. Other topics have been added to this list as a result of
the requests of several participants—for example, how to deal
with students in difficulty.
Classroom management is a key dimension of teachers’ professional activities. When courses are being planned, depending on the objective in question, a certain form of organization and learning—as well as a group of related activities
—should be given special preference. The concept of classroom management is already involved at this stage.
As classroom activities are carried out, the establishment and
maintenance of conditions conducive to student development and success often give rise once again to various aspects
of the classroom-management issue: classroom atmosphere
and behaviour, cooperation and relationships, and management itself.
This activity gives participants a chance to examine classroomlife contexts, situations, strategies, and conditions. The main
questions explored are:
•
What is classroom management?
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What classroom-life conditions are conducive to learning?
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What factors most often disrupt learning and teaching activities?
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Which are the causes and which are the effects of those factors?
•
What deliberations should be initiated with respect to
such scenarios?
1 Choosing effective educational methods
While teaching methods are numerous, their use is rarely the
result of a methodical and well-thought-out selection process.
It is therefore useful to identify and classify them, and essential to ask the following general questions:
•
What is an effective teaching method?
•
What are the conditions for the development of effective
teaching methods?
In order to choose the educational methods most likely to
help students reach the objectives of a given course, certain
questions must be asked and answered:
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Do they promote the processing of information by students?
Do they help students draw connections between concepts
already learned, to re-organize information?
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Do they promote collaboration among students?
•
•
3
3 Dealing with students in difficulty
The activity, which illustrates situations of students in difficulty and the challenges faced by teachers as regards support
for learning and achievement, is aimed at encouraging participants to discuss and share experiences in order to determine how to deal with such situations. Participants are asked
to identify symptoms that can be related to behavioural problems, neurologic disorders, and mental-health or learning
problems, and distinguish these from “regular” learning disabilities. The main concerns expressed by teachers can be
summarized as follows:
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How should we deal with students with behavioural problems,
mental-health problems, or learning disabilities?
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How can we differentiate among these problems? What should
we be on the lookout for?
Do they help students overcome challenges?
•
What attitudes should we adopt in and out of class?
Do they allow students to take charge of their own
learning development?
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What support can we provide? To whom should we refer
students, and how?
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Professional Integration and Knowledge Transfer
4 How to make interesting presentations that encourage student participation
This activity examines various methods of preparing and heading up presentations to promote students’ understanding of
the subjects explored, as well as their ability to make use of
those subjects.
•
How should such presentations be structured?
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Under what conditions can lectures be effective?
These questions lead to a series of others that make it possible to explore learning dynamics, phases, and operations,
as well as the factors involved in comprehension and the use
of what is taught. In this context, teaching practices and the
contribution of the following factors can be identified, illustrated, and compared.
•
Questions as to the comprehension and implementation of
subjects taught
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Problem scenarios mentioned at the outset that should
be dealt with at the end of the presentation by means of
course content
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Knowledge organizers and advance organizers that serve as
benchmarks for teachers and students during the presentation
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Explicit teaching
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Discussion
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Modelling of the intellectual or methodological activity
of the individual using the subjects of instruction for the
purposes established
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Feedback
5 Learning evaluation
Learning evaluation involves a number of questions. Together
with participants, we try to answer some of them.
•
What is learning evaluation used for in a competency-based
approach?
•
What should be evaluated? What should we know about
students’ abilities?
•
What means and moments help us assess the results of the
learning process?
•
How should we use the data collected during evaluation
activities and the resulting analyses?
•
How should the students’ final grades be determined?
Some of the previously described activities have also been
offered by departments where the number of new teachers so
warranted. The nursing department, for example, used some
of these modified activities to meet certain specific needs.
…second-year activities promote in-depth deliberations
on the aspects teachers should take into account. Like first-year activities, which focus on enhancing the frame
of reference governing teaching practices, second-year activities promote in-depth deliberations on the aspects teachers
should take into account.
a few comments in lieu of a post-mortem
The activities that took place during the week without courses
or evaluations, in both the fall and winter sessions, were generally more popular, just like those of the winter term (at the
end of May). We should note in passing that the activities
involved in classroom management, as well as those related
to learning evaluation, attracted the most participants. For
most of the activities available since the fall session of 2008,
the number of participants has varied between 12 and 17, with
the most popular attracting between 20 and 30 participants.
The professional-integration program and its activities have, in
our opinion, contributed to the development of participants’
professional identity, helping many enhance their knowledge
and rapidly develop courses, learning and evaluation tools,
as well as teaching approaches that have become examples
for their colleagues, even the most experienced. Some are now
in charge of instructional development for their departments,
and play a key role in the collective examination and development of practices, whether in the area of learning evaluation,
educational relationships, or classroom management.
Although we have not conducted a formal and complete evaluation of the program since it was launched in the fall of 2008,
participants are asked to provide a written rating of each activity. The comments received indicate that the activities have
promoted the sharing and establishment of bonds among
teachers with common interests. Several participants also said
they enjoyed discussing the problems they encountered as
they set out in their career. Breaking down feelings of isolation often experienced during integration is a decisive factor
in becoming a professional.
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Jocelyne Duchesne has been an educational advisor at the CÉGEP
Limoilou since 2007, where she works in curriculum management
and development and is responsible for new teachers’ professional
integration. She had previously taught at the Centre de formation
et de consultation en métiers d’art for a number of years, and also
acted as educational advisor at that institution from 2005 to 2007.
[email protected]
Caroline GAUVIN has been an educational advisor at the CÉGEP
Limoilou since 2010, where she works in curriculum management and
development and is responsible for staff professional development.
Early on in her career, she worked for a few years with clients with
learning disabilities, and then taught early-childhood classroom and
special-education techniques at the CÉGEP de Gaspé between 2005
and 2010.
[email protected]
Bruno FISET has been an educational advisor at the CÉGEP Limoilou
since 2008, where he contributes regularly to the development and
activities of the professional-integration program. He taught literature
between 1986 and 2002 at the CÉGEP de Baie-Comeau, the CÉGEP
Garneau, and the Campus Notre-Dame-de-Foy. He also acted as a
research officer, from 2003 to 2008, with the Commission d’évaluation
de l’enseignement collégial.
[email protected]
François VASSEUR has been an educational advisor for 20 years.
He assists teachers in their collective and individual efforts involved
in program establishment, implementation, and evaluation; course
design and development; and the creation of learning activities, systems, plans, and evaluation instruments. He has spent most of the
past ten years at the CÉGEP Limoilou.
[email protected]
Both the English- and French-language versions of this
article have been published on the AQPC website with the
financial support of the Quebec-Canada Entente for
Minority Language Education.
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