Silvana has worked in English language teaching for over 25 years.
She holds an MA in Teacher Education, is PGCE and Delta qualified and has trained teachers all over the world.
Silvana is the Academic Director of Studies for Bell Teacher Academy and has previously worked as Course Director for the Bell Online Delta. She writes teacher training materials for the Bell Delta and Cambridge English Teacher and is a regular speaker at international industry conferences, such as IATEFL UK, an industry-leading teaching conference.
Collaborative approaches for teacher learning and innovation
For some time different research studies on how teachers learn have included collaboration between teachers as one of the key ingredients of impactful teacher learning, and collaboration is generally considered integral to all professional development. However, not all forms of collaboration in professional learning and development programmes for teachers are equally effective. In fact, teacher collaboration may lead to effective and ineffective professional development.
Thanks to the best available evidence, we now have a better understanding of the type of teacher collaboration that is a strong component of effective continuing professional development programmes: it is teacher learning activities which involve structured and evidence-rich collaboration with peers. As teachers face challenges and grapple with questions while they try out, refine and embed innovative strategies and approaches that are new to them, collaborative activities of this type offer a safe and supportive environment that enables them to have professional learning conversations that genuinely contribute to improvements in their practice and lead to incremental development.
This talk will introduce what research has to say about effective collaboration and will go on to the explore tried and tested approaches to structured collaboration that lead to context relevant, transferable and impactful professional learning, and which can be implemented in face-to-face, online and hybrid lessons.