ARMS induction workshop: Day 1

Day 1 Reflection ( 11 May 2019)

We all the mentors across India are greatly privileged and honoured to get selected in ARMS project as mentors. ARMS is action research mentoring scheme which supports teacher educators and academics to help a group teachers to do classroom based action research resulting in their own empowerment as well as improvement of their learners in the perspective of teaching and learning of English language.  

I'm very much delighted to be part of this project where I'll work as co-mentor with Nisar. I want to thank from bottom of my heart to British council, especially Jamima Hughes for giving us such a wonderful, knowledgeable opportunity to learn, grow and transform along with the cohort of mentors. I'd also like to thank my two friends, Swapna Yadav and Sandip Shelval, who encouraged me and Nisar to apply for ARMS.

11 May,  was the first day of induction meeting which was held in the magnetic hall 'Strategy' in Vivanta hotel by Taj (Hyderabad).

Before starting the workshop we had delicious lunch. Then, we headed to Strategy hall.  

We had been given 2 copies of agreement where we signed and returned one copy. There are 12-13 mentors from Telangana, Gujrat,West Bengal, Delhi, Chennai and Maharashtra.

As I had expected earlier to know the principles and guidelines of this project, this was introduced by Jamima in her introductory session.

 We came to know our role as ARMS mentors which is to work with a group of teacher researchers or mentees over the course of 12 months. 

We need to work according to objectives.

  objectives:

1. To support a group of teachers over a year helping them to conduct their action research
2. To deliver a series of workshops, activities, and meetings  with them
3. To attend 3 face to face workshops: an induction, a mid-point workshop, and Mela
4. To attend monthly meetings/webinars/counselling sessions with ARMS coordinators

We also need to submit quarterly reports to BC on activities, future actions and expenditure.

   This project will help us

1. To strengthen our mentoring and research skills
2. To establish professional relationship
3. Communicate experience in mela
4. To gain experience in project management

We'll be supported by ARMS coordinators through monthly webinars, a platform of digital community of practice focussing on discussion of research, asking questions and information regarding project,etc. Super mentors will also conduct 1-2-1 access for professional conversation chat quarterly.

In this project Mr Ravi and  Santosh will work as our mentors.

 After the presentation of  Jamima, Mr Ravi conducted a session on GTKY.

We introduced our experience, expectation and elaborated a quote which was given to everybody.

All the quotes were related to mentoring skills.

Mentoring teachers vs mentoring teacher researchers

In this session my takeaways are:

1. Need to listen well
2. Understand the mentoring situation
3. Scaffolding 
4. Building on teachers responses
5. Helping them to develop their reflective practice or help them reflect deeply and critically
6. Overall our goal of mentoring is   Empowering them to become autonomous, independent so that they can explore their own issues, find solutions, take responsibility of their own cpd, come up with conclusions, interpret the findings, etc.
7. Mentoring skills are not innate, these skills need to be developed (if you are parents, you mentor your kids, it means you love and care them, but this does not mean mentoring despite loving and caring are part of mentoring. So you should not mentor anyone mechanically.)

Teacher research vs academic research 

(by Santosh)

Academic research is:

1. It is formal
2. It follows strict guidelines and norms
3. Use of discipline-specific vocabulary
4. Meant for only other academic researchers
5. Requires training in research methodology
6. Needs to have well defined problem
7. Reference to an existing body of research related to same problem ( review of literature)
8. It is shared through presentations and articles
9. Maintaining objectivity is extremely important
10. Generally carried out by faculty members at universities and research institutes
11. Driven by theories
12. Replicable and doeble
13. Clearly defined variables 
14. Valid and verifiable

(Valid: if you want to assess speaking skill, you shouldn't assess writing.if it has been done, the research is not valid)

Teresa's story about "why teachers should do research."

 I truly liked a story of Teresa.

She was asked by her academic manager to implement classical music in her classes to increase learners concentration and engagement, but she tried and found no results at the beginning.

Later her colleagues and she decided to play classical music and other kinds of music, too.

 She prepared a series of tasks and also different kinds of music. She gave tasks to her learners and played music while they were doing their tasks. She noted  everything. She asked questions to them, interviewed them to point out the change.  

 After having evidences, she analysed and came up with that her learners concentrated  and learned more while listening to classical music.They felt relaxed and helped to think even in silence. On the contrary popular music made them agitated.

  Thus Teresa says finally. " I didn't do what I was told, because I researched it and found answers of my own."

 From this story one can understand that you should not follow what others say or you should not accept anything blindly. You have to find your answers of your own. This is tgt core part of classroom based action research.

Teachers should do action research to get their answers. They must explore themselves. They must try, keep notes, change the strategy, collect the evidences, use tools like questionnaire, they should interview stakeholders to get first hand information, analyse the data and finally come to conclusion.

This is the way one should do classroom based research.

Learn, unlearn and relearn

Santosh sir rightly pointed out:

Action research is really a process of 

Learning, unlearning and relearning.

  I also learnt today following things:

1. Mentoring is gaining by learning by doing. It's a practical experience.
2. A mentor should be a critical friend.A friend who analyses your strengths and weaknesses is called critical friend. A mentor should develop himself like a critical friend.
3. Mentoring is not a task of 12 months. It will continue and it should promote action research.
4. Mentoring is a way of loving and caring like parents do for their kids.
5. Mentoring is not about mentors, it's about mentees.
6. Mentoring is a combination of natural abilities and skilled abilities.

In the whole day all the mentors shared their views. It was really learning by sharing journey.

We got very insightful experience on the first day in strategy hall of Vivanta hotel.

Hopefully, this will certainly strengthen all of us and develop us as successful mentors.

Thanks.

Regards
Ashok Chavan
State Academic Resource Person
DIECPD, Nashik
Twitter handle: @ashok30chavan