Overall evaluation of the third cycle in the reflection assignment

Part of the assessment of the third cycle was asking the participants to write an optional critical reflection (maximum of 250 words) on the whole cycle and its transferability into their classrooms. Assignment comments by the participants show general satisfaction with the programme and its different components. One of the participants’ comments indicate success in creating an impact on teachers’ practices in their classrooms:

I distinctly remember the important issue we discussed as a group regarding the need for reading to become a bigger part of the local culture and how reading needs to be encouraged, especially by parents starting to read to their children from the time they are very young. We also shared how very important that reading for pleasure is an integral part of developing one’s own culture of reading and the mastery of it (increasing both fluency and accuracy). I was also very impressed by all the many different activities we did as a PD (professional development) group in all three sessions. We use[d] a variety of different reading strategies that I have also used with my students, such as skimming and

scanning, reading for main ideas, inferencing, [and] using competition in reading assignments, etc. I also enjoyed when you would line up all of us teachers into two lines and have us compete against each other—highly interactive and fun! All these things made me reflect on my practice, and hopefully I’ll be able to continue to apply the many different issues we discussed in my classroom teaching.

The account above was a summary of the whole cycle. The participant’s use of the personal pronoun ‘we’ and the phrase ‘as a group’ signalled the significance of professional communities in INSET. Participants appreciated sharing best practices and exchanging accounts of classroom impact. It is interesting how the participant linked interactive INSET to reflecting on his practice. In this case, sharing practices could have led some participants to compare these practices and reflect on their own. Another point in the quote above was teachers’ belief that parental support ‘at

home’ is a significant factor in fostering students’ reading culture. Other

participants had similar views on the overall value of the training. Some thought that the training was useful because it ‘provided opportunities for practitioners to discuss lingering problems, dwell on possible solutions, and engage in a

constructive conversation about reading’. Another participant enjoyed the training because of its contextualised input:

I have been teaching reading for at least 15 years…This is one of those reading workshops which I deem as very useful because it touched on the very issues that inform the teaching of reading in Qatar and anywhere else: issues, strategies, and assessment.

The impact of these workshops is evident in the participants’ comments. One participant wrote, ‘I have tried jigsaw reading on several occasions. I think students had the opportunity to learn from each other, negotiate meaning, and be in charge of their own learning’. Another participant also found jigsaw reading an effective activity:

One particular strategy of interest is the ‘Jigsaw Reading’ activity which when modified properly can actually be an integration of ALL the language macro- skills. I have used it in my class, with minor modifications, and I have witnessed students applying the [four] skills in the process.

Another participant complimented the training in the reflective assignment: it provided ‘an opportunity to validate my teaching pedagogy, investigate others’ methodology and reflect on the effectiveness of different technique’. Other participants thought that certain sessions were more enjoyable than others. One of those who liked the first session on reading challenges in Qatar wrote:

I think I have enjoyed talking about the problems that faced teachers in the current context. I also enjoyed discussing corresponding solutions to those problems because it provided me with ways to tackle reading in my classrooms.

For another participant, the most enjoyable was the second workshop on strategies to teach reading. The ICT tools, which were demonstrated in sessions two and three, were appreciated as well:

[T]he creation of an online reading forum can also be used in my future classes because this can be an avenue for increased student engagement with the text through their post-reading insights, and can also be an opportunity for students to raise issues with their colleagues and instructor while helping ensure that students also learn other global skills in IT and in social responsibility.

Education and technology are ‘inseparable’ in the modern world (Jadhav, 2011, p. 64). ICT is viewed to have a transformational power and a potential to enhance the quality of education (Albion et al., 2015; Jarvis, 2014). The quality of teacher education is linked to ‘the extent of ICT integration in teacher education

programmes’ (Bhattacharjee, 2016, p. 1). ICT has become a component of almost every INSET programme nowadays, as either a) a training content or b) an assisting tool (Usun, 2009). This is similar to the ICT’s two main functional roles in

education as a subject of study or an assisting tool. ICT was used in my study mainly as an assisting tool to support INSET delivery, communication and data collection.

Most participants expressed their willingness to attend similar workshops, and they would attend voluntarily. One of the participants mentioned: ‘owing to the success of these workshops, I hope that more of these can be done in the future. All in all, I am thankful for being a part of this workshop from its conception to its completion’.

The participants’ feedback also contained important insights that would definitely inform future workshops on reading:

having workshops related to specific skills like predicting, summarizing, paraphrasing, cultural differences in reading texts, extensive reading, bottom up, and top down processing. I also suggest that there would be a workshop for [teaching] beginner readers

The quote above provided a number of sub-themes within reading that could be handled in future reading INSET. Similarly, the suggestion in the quote to have INSET designed specifically for teachers who have beginner readers was based on the very low reading levels among students in Qatari schools as seen in the

the training required basic student reading skills but teachers from some schools reported beginner ESL literacy among their students.

Another participant wanted an investigation into the effectiveness of the current practices in teaching reading from the students’ perspective:

Even though we discussed a comprehensive range of topics, one thing that could have been included was the students’ take on the effectiveness of reading teachers’ practices in class. This would have included all stakeholders and given a complete picture of the reading teaching-learning scenario.

The quote above demonstrated an important data source to evaluate the effectiveness of reading teachers’ practices, which is often overlooked both in literature and in practice. Student voice has been found to play a role in educational reform (Mitra, 2008), educational sustainability (Pleasance, 2016) and motivation (Toshalis & Nakkula, 2012). However, there is little research about the value of student voice in the effectiveness of reading teachers’ practices. Unfortunately, it was not within the scope of this study to explore the students’ side of the story but this will be one of the possibilities of future follow-up studies.

Regarding the trainer role, the attitudes in the teachers’ comments were positive and encouraging. Several participants wrote ‘keep up the good work’; another

participant wrote, ‘I think the trainer is engaging and fun. I have had the opportunity to use some of the tools he used in the workshops for teaching my classes’. One more commented, ‘I personally like such trainings where there is plenty of room for discussion to stretch the topic through as many approaches and scenarios as

possible’.