Self evaluative analysis as an adult learner and adult trainer

Context

I was exposed to an andragogy self evaluation online tool when I was doing my masters over 10 years ago. This started as a research and was led by an adult education researcher-academic Professor Daniel Pratt. I met him when I took a module on community of practice in adult learning setting. Daniel is a humourous, grandfatherly figure and his lessons were very interactive and engaging. Daniel is familiar with Singapore, despite being a Canadian. He had done extensive consultation work to Higer Education sector in Singapore, especially in the structure of polytechnic education. And very importantly, he likes curry fishhead a lot! {I am saying this being 70% serious and 30% tongue-in-cheek, since our hawker food has UNESCO World Heritage (intangible) status}.

At the end of the module he decided to ask us to use that online to evaluate his teaching. The tool is Teaching Perspective Inventory (TPI). It can easily be found online and by now, the recurring funding it has been given has allowed for about 30 years of data collection and analysis. In the study, they collected data from coaches, trainer and mentors from a range of professions, from medical to dental, to HR, to administrative work. They found many recurring parallels in adult teaching approaches. 

I got curious after sending in my TPI evaluation of Daniel. So I did a self evaluation too. And as I read the data (exported in column graph), I started to see many footprints and traces of my teaching approach as a pedagogue. I started to look back to find the same traces in my former teachers (school teachers, aunts, uncles and parents). 

When unconscious incompetence surfaced as conscious competence

I read the 5 perspectives analyses and then recalled the years of my teachings and the vivid memories of the challenges I have faced in reaching the students. Then I also recall a Keynote Address by Prof Debra Ball (University of Michigan) back in 2007 or 2009, when she came to Singapore for the bi-annual conference at National Institute of Education (NIE) as a Keynote Speaker. I distinctly recalled she said that many math teachers enter the classroom (consciously or subconsciously) expect students to meet them in learning frequency at the teacher's level, when instead the teacher should seek out the level of the student and meet them where they are. This pedagogical stance subsequently is called student readiness and it is now widely referenced in literature on Differentiated Learning. 

Subsequently I started using this evaluation tool as a self-assessment and self-regulatory practice as a pedagogue. I used it to check on my pedagogical blind spots - areas where I was not meeting my students' readiness (their learning frequency, what helps them connect with the knowledge). I collected student learning data and feedback as diagnostic data for my self evaluation and analysis. I have found it really helpful to do incisive and insightful critical reflection. I now look at my approach to teaching and comparatively look back 15-25 years back, they are so different! How I had approached teaching has almost become unrecognizable and strange now. So I have moved myself from being unconsciously incompetent (in terms of versatility in pedagogy) to conscious incompetence, and constantly developing on conscious competence 

Recently I shared this learning journey with a friend who is not in the education profession but in the corporate sector but has to play a coaching role to junior executives. She articulated her frustration in not being able to get the junior executives up their analytical competency. So I asked her to try the TPI online tool. Knowing my friend, I had a picture in my mind on what would be her scores for 2 of the 5 perspectives as dominant ones. When she shared with me her scores, I thought 'BINGO'!

So I gave her a brief analysis on some of the possible causes of gaps between her as the coach and the junior executives as adult learners. I asked her to trace back her own coaching traits to that of the 'teachers' in her formative years. She found the sources of influence! She started to analyse the possible learning profiles of her target 'trainees', and saw glimpses of light into the types and causes of the communication gaps! It was funny when she said now she has moved from being unconscious incompetent (in coaching) to conscious incompetence and has started working rigorously towards conscious competence!       

Endnote:

Unconscious incompetence - can be rephrased as 'I don't know what I don't know'

Conscious incompetence - is 'I know what I don't know'

Conscious competence - is 'I know what I know and how I learn to know'

Unconscious competence - is 'I don't know what I know and forgot how I learnt to know and how I overcome obstacles in learning to know' - This is not a good state to be in for anyone who plays a teaching or coaching role because the knowledge structure in such a person is highly complex and layered yet they are so well mingled that they become deep inaccessible tacit knowledge and often becomes intimidating to novice learners

The best teacher-learner premise to allow for very productive learning is when the teacher is at the state of Conscious competence while the learner has reached the Conscious incompetence state. This is the stage when a lot of constructive and productive teaching-learning can happen (Because then the teacher will know what questions to ask the learner as diagnostic assessment and the learner knows what questions to ask to clarify knowledge and self assess!)

My first experience in teacher education at UNESCO Asia Pacific Bureau

When I started at UNESCO Asia-Pacific Bureau (Bangkok Office), my main project was on Gender Equality in Teacher Education. What Gender Equality? The more daunting thing was that in the TOR arrangements for this staff secondment, the staff (happened to be me), is called the ‘Expert’.
So somehow I became a ‘gender equality expert’. For a Singaporean, I know well that gender equality is not a commonly discussed topic in the public domain. There is no suppression of open discussion on this, it is just not a popular topic for the everyday layperson at lunch or dinner time. I had to very rapidly familiarize myself with terminologies like gender equality, gender responsiveness, and other related UN defined terms like parity, equity, etc. Well, that did generate some anxiety for this new ‘expert’....(what expert again? Oh well). I am glad my official designation was Associate Programme Specialist, that sounds less daunting!

This whole pilot project had 3 phases and when I started work in Bangkok Office, I was plunged straight into the middle of phase 1, a research study on current status of gender responsiveness in teacher education in 5 member states (Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan). The research study comprised of 6 data collection tools (a mixed of qualitative and quantitative methods, all translated into the respective countries’ national languages). One of the biggest challenge was to help each country’s designated national expert, education ministry officials and participating teacher education faculty members to make sense of the research tools, and how to analyse and interpret data and reporting. 

The support work took me to the 5 countries to come face-to-face with the research team, ministry officials and teacher educators. I had to constantly remind myself that my professional identity was no longer a Singaporean education officer but a representative of the Section for Educational Innovation and Skills Development (EISD), UNESCO Bangkok Office. I had to remember all the key policy goals, policy actions and definitions in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4, or commonly called EDUCATION 2030 - Goal 4c (Teacher Education). For someone who was never good with memorising text, this was daunting! (Well I couldn’t memorise well enough to earn a good grade for my O level literature when I was way younger..so with age and the need for reading glasses, this was tougher!). The sessions with the respective country teams were not mere presentation of the PPT but the very long Q&A segment. Despite the daunting challenge, a very valuable learning I got from these in-country support training sessions were that the same tools were interpreted very differently. It almost became impossible to preempt the type of clarification questions the teams would ask from country to country. This learning and insight became very useful when I subsequently taught curriculum and assessment design in NIE to pre- and in-service teachers. I see parallels, where a syllabus document can be interpreted in different ways by art teachers in schools. The same assessment rubrics, because of the way the text are phrased, can open up for diverse interpretation too. I shall share 2 priceless new insight and learning I got in 2 countries, namely Uzbekistan and Myanmar.

Gender Equality Study National Training in Tashkent, Uzbekistan
After some prolonged chaotic and unruly queuing situation for Uzbekistan Airways check-in counters at the Suvarnabhumi Airport, we (my UNESCO Bangkok colleague and myself) finally arrived in Tashkent, the capital city, at about -4 degrees C in early February. We had breakfast at the hotel before meeting the programme officers at UNESCO Tashkent Office (...and that's when I first ate horse sausage...without knowing it)!

Pre-Training Meeting
The first day was great productivity! We had a good working discussion amongst the UNESCO officers on how the whole training will proceed and we clarified various terms of reference. The UNESCO Tashkent national officers Mr. Bakhtiyor Namazov and Mr. Abdul Ghani were wonderful to work with and they were great help for us, total strangers in a Central Asian republic!

The next day we met the 3 Uzbek Team leaders (the Research Steering Team), comprising a high ranking Uzbek MOE official, an education research and training expert and a teacher educator. We had to rely on Bakhtiyor and Abdul Ghani to be our interpreters. The 3 experts (with their note-taker) asked important questions and we were able to clarify any doubts, so that they could return to office the same day to fine-tune their preparation for the training the next day.

Training of Teacher Educators as Research Working Team
The Training session was opened by the Deputy Minister and UNESCO Tashkent Office Chief. I shall jump straight to the Q&A segment (the most nerve-wrecking part). 

Myself (left), the very skilled interpreter from culture ministry, Mrs Hinds from UNESCO Bangkok, and one of the teacher educators.

The participants were predominantly males. Many of them had grim expressions (well I discovered that when my colleague and I stood up to face them for Q&A)! A few very blunt questions and comments came our way (despite with a very skilled interpreter, the questions and comments were very pointed)
'Gender Equality is a western idea. We are not the west. We are traditional. How is this relevant?' 
'Men are always stronger? Women cannot do the same farm work as men' 
(Note: Uzbekistan is also a Muslim republic after separating from the former Soviet Union (now Russian Federation. Uzbekistan is essentially an agrarian economy)

Ok, we tried everything. We started by explaining to them that it is not about feminism, and not about women taking power. It is about giving due opportunity without the biased consideration and restriction of gender. I also quoted the then recent example of Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematician who was the only woman ever to win a Fields Medal, the most prestigious honor in mathematics. The same grim faces remained.. very stern, unconvinced. The approximately 10 seconds silence seemed to last FOREVER. 

Then an idea came to my mind. I must thank the fact that I was born and raised in a multi-racial and multi-religion country. The awareness of a traditional family hierarchy structure has helped me very quickly find a common point that I believed could connect with the unconvinced and increasingly disengaged participants. I needed to quickly posit ourselves as 'we are with you, NOT we know better than you'. So I quickly brought up 2 points. I wanted to appeal to their AFFECT rather than COGNITIVE domain:
1) If the one denied an opportunity because of gender is your family 
2) Gender equality means meaningful partnership for the good, even in domestic situation

1) If the one denied an opportunity because of gender is your family   
I asked the participants 3 questions (I believe pertinent questions can provoke deep thoughts):
How many of you have a daughter or a niece? 
Imagine this, if one day your daughter came home and told you that she topped the mathematics scores in the school but she was not sent to the national mathematics competition and a boy with a second placing in the school was sent instead. 
How would you feel? What would you have wanted the school to do?
There was silence, and several male participants looked away from my eyes (Many were staring hard at me earlier). I believe something has sunk in, and I did not need any response!
2) Gender equality means meaningful partnership for the good, even in domestic situation
Then I went on to explain that no one ever denied that men are stronger physically (leveraging on one of the contesting point raised earlier), and that women cannot replace men in the farm. But since the children are at home with the mother or grandmaother, then the female must be in charge at home while the men are out in the fields (leveraging on my understanding of Old Testament female role models). They are the 'co-leaders' in a family. And I explained that 'co-leader' means 'equal role models'. The women in the homes must role model values and they are the ones essentially build values in the children so they are also a kind of leader - moral leader. 
Several male participants nodded their heads.

I believe we finally struck a chord with them. Then I decided to lighten the mood by making a joke: "When it comes to gender equality, 1 thing is always true. Smoking does the same harm to both males and females". The minority female participants giggled! Ok, I had to stop right there before I ruin the situation by offending the male smokers further!

What really encouraged us was that several of the male participants came forward when the session ended for lunch, and 2 of them thanked us for the explanation, saying that it has helped them understand better. I must admit that when the 2 of them wanted to speak with us through the interpreter, I was a bit nervous. I could only breathe normally when they showed their appreciation of the clarification! And they wanted a photo with us! Thank God they did not keep their grim faces!
After all, equality is really about building bridges that did not exist before, and that bridge-building begins with understanding =)

Gender Equality Study National Training in Yangon, Myanmar
In the training in Yangon, we did not meet with resistance. What really was heartening was that all the participants were so engaged! I had to tell myself off for having a biased notion that Myanmar teacher educators are not open-minded. Perhaps the previous experience had tainted my lens. But I am so thankful that the Myanmar participants really humbled me!

They were extremely serious, super meticulous, and would leave no stone un-turned! When they first emailed us their proposed training programme, we were shocked that they proposed a 5-day training rather than the 2- or 3-day training proposed by the other countries. When I was there, I understood why it needed 5 days! They verified almost every detail in the research tools to ensure that they had the necessary clarity to do their data collection and analysis well. Lunch time was 1 hour but they all returned to the training room after 40 minutes. The UNESCO Yangon Office officers and myself had to gobble our lunch to rush back to the room! The training was supposed to end at 5 each day. They were still asking questions and presenting at 4:55PM! For a couple of the 5 days we had gone over time. No one was looking at their watches, many did not have their phones on the table, and no one showed impatience!

I must say I have the utmost respect for the Myanmar teacher educators. They were sincere, eager to participate and learn and really took the research seriously. In the end, when Yangon Office sent the draft report to us for review, it was the most detailed one! Kudos to Myanmar teacher educators! There is much to learn from the spirit of these educators! Their passion and professionalism is impeccable.

The project when on into Phase 2 and we had more meetings and trainings, in Bangkok, Hanoi and Shanghai. I have included links of 2 of the subsequent meetings:
https://bangkok.unesco.org/content/regional-meeting-gender-assessment-teacher-education-asia
https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-gender-assessment-platform-teacher-education-discussed-asia-pacific-partners-1

It's a whole new ball game in adult education!

Sorting Out Nerves at the Starting Block

When I started the stint as a Teaching Fellow, I am considered a veteran teacher in the discipline of visual art and art education. But I am entering a whole new terrain altogether. I may have done a number of workshops and sharing for art teachers, but I recognized this would need a whole new GPS system to track the effectiveness of my work and even my own learning as I teach.

The prospective students - the target participants - are not secondary school teenagers but adults. The age range varies greatly, from the very young diploma students with the average age of 21 years to the in-service age range that can stretch to 50 years and more. I may be teaching the same core modules, but considering the sheer age range, it is a real challenge just to pitch the teaching. The participants' prior experience in education, intellectual and pedagogical dispositions and their affective readiness to plunge into a full-time course are all variables that will impact on the desired learning outcome.

Despite having a body of knowledge in curriculum and assessment in art, I am acutely aware that I will stumble along the way, and the best I could do is to aggressively activate my in-class observation as a trainer/lecturer to sift out real diagnostic data, that include articulated (verbal and/or written) and implied feedback from the participants. Did that make me a little anxious? It is a rhetorical question and the answer is a certain 'YES'!

I did ask myself if the saying 'people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care' would apply to adult learners. My cognitive stance would say 'NO', this notion need not apply to adults. After all, they are no longer teenagers and should have greater social, cognitive and emotional resilience. But my affective consciousness did not concur and I needed some frames of thinking to substantiate the nagging and nudging from my affective consciousness. Revisiting Myers-Briggs Personality Types and the now popular psychological theory of Growth (Incremental) and Fixed (Entity) mindset (Dweck et. al.) helped gave me some concrete points to ponder and deliberate. If we consider Mindset as a wide spectrum, then the real challenge comes when I consider the fact that each individual participant sits on a different point on the sliding scale of Growth VS Fixed orientation. It is daunting but at the same time, the challenge posed an immensely enticing opportunity!

It is a new ball game, no doubt. But I relish plunging into learning all over again!