Professional Development Starts with the Learners
Identifying Needs and Acting on Them
Teachers are constantly encouraged to try new strategies, integrate new technology and attend professional development. But before asking What should I change in my teaching?,there is a more important question: What do my learners need?
Effective teaching begins with evidence of learner need. This does not necessarily require formal testing or complicated data analysis. Teachers already have access to a wealth of information: assessment results, written work, classroom discussions, observations, student questions, participation patterns and the mistakes learners repeatedly make.
Literacy is an important part of this picture, but literacy should not be confused with language proficiency or simply the ability to read and write. A Math teacher once told me that literacy was “the English teachers’ problem”!
UNESCO describes literacy as the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute using written materials in different contexts. It is part of a continuum of learning that enables people to develop their knowledge and potential, achieve their goals and participate fully in society.
Literacy belongs in every classroom.
A student may be able to read the words in a science question but struggle to interpret the information. Another may know a mathematical formula but have difficulty deciding when or how to apply it. Students may understand historical events but struggle to identify cause and effect, distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, or communicate an argument supported by evidence.
These are learner needs.
The important step is to move from noticing a general problem to identifying a specific need.
“Students have poor literacy skills” tells us very little. “Students struggle to identify the main idea in unfamiliar information” gives a teacher something to work with. So does “students can explain their ideas verbally but struggle to organize them in writing” or “students know the content but cannot apply it to unfamiliar problems.”
Once a need has been identified, the teacher can decide how to respond.
This is where professional development becomes meaningful. Instead of learning a new teaching strategy and then looking for somewhere to use it, the process is reversed:
Learner need → Teaching response → Evidence of learning
A teacher might identify difficulty interpreting information and experiment with strategies for breaking down complex texts, diagrams or problems. Another might notice that students rarely contribute to discussions and introduce structured questioning or collaborative learning. A teacher whose students rely heavily on memorization might experiment with activities requiring application, analysis and problem-solving.
The teaching strategy is therefore not the starting point. The learner is.
The next step is equally important: finding out whether the intervention worked. Teachers can return to the same sources of evidence that revealed the original need. Has the quality of students' work improved? Are more students participating? Can learners now interpret unfamiliar information? Can they apply what they have learned in a different context? Are they making fewer of the errors that originally caused concern?
Not every intervention will succeed. That is not a failure of professional learning. It is part of it and should be shared and discussed with colleagues.
Teachers can adjust the strategy, try a different approach, discuss the new results with colleagues and continue gathering evidence. This creates a simple but powerful cycle:
Identify → Respond → Observe → Reflect and share → Adjust
Professional learning then becomes more than attending workshops or collecting new teaching techniques. It becomes an ongoing investigation into student learning, grounded in evidence from the classroom.
That brings us back to the most important question: What do my learners need?
專業發展從學習者開始
辨識需求並採取行動
教師經常被鼓勵嘗試新的教學策略、融入新科技，並參加專業發展活動。但是，在問「我的教學應該改變什麼？」之前，有一個更重要的問題：我的學習者需要什麼？
有效的教學始於學習者需求的證據。這不一定需要正式測驗或複雜的數據分析。教師其實已經擁有豐富的資訊來源：評量結果、書面作業、課堂討論、觀察、學生提出的問題、參與情況，以及學習者反覆出現的錯誤。
素養是其中重要的一環，但素養不應與語言能力混為一談，也不只是讀寫能力。一位數學老師曾經告訴我，素養是「英文老師的問題」！
UNESCO 將素養描述為在不同情境中，運用書面材料進行辨識、理解、詮釋、創造、溝通及計算的能力。素養是持續學習的一部分，使人們能夠發展自己的知識與潛能、實現目標，並充分參與社會。
素養存在於每一間教室。
學生可能能夠讀懂科學題目中的文字，卻難以詮釋其中的資訊。另一名學生可能知道數學公式，卻難以判斷何時或如何應用。學生可能了解歷史事件，卻難以辨識因果關係、區分相關與不相關的資訊，或提出有證據支持的論點。
這些都是學習者的需求。
重要的一步，是從注意到一個普遍性的問題，進一步轉變為辨識出一項具體需求。
「學生的素養能力不足」能告訴我們的其實很少。「學生在接觸不熟悉的資訊時，難以辨識主要概念」則提供了教師可以著手改善的具體方向。同樣地，「學生能夠口頭表達自己的想法，但很難有組織地寫出來」，或「學生知道課程內容，卻無法將所學應用於不熟悉的問題」，都指出了具體的學習需求。
一旦辨識出需求，教師就可以決定如何回應。
這正是專業發展真正具有意義的地方。與其先學習一種新的教學策略，然後再尋找可以使用它的地方，不如將這個過程反過來：
學習者需求 → 教學回應 → 學習成效的證據
教師可能發現學生在詮釋資訊方面有困難，因此嘗試採用不同策略，將複雜的文本、圖表或問題分解處理。另一位教師可能注意到學生很少參與討論，因此導入結構化提問或合作學習。若學生過度依賴背誦，教師則可以嘗試設計需要應用、分析與解決問題的學習活動。
因此，教學策略並不是起點。學習者才是。
接下來的一步同樣重要：確認所採取的教學介入是否有效。教師可以重新檢視最初用來發現學習需求的那些證據來源。學生的作業品質是否有所提升？參與的學生是否增加？學習者現在是否能夠詮釋不熟悉的資訊？他們是否能夠將所學應用於不同的情境？最初令人關注的錯誤是否減少了？
並非每一次教學介入都會成功。這並不代表專業學習失敗，而是專業學習過程的一部分，也應該與同事分享和討論。
教師可以調整策略、嘗試不同的方法、與同事討論新的結果，並繼續蒐集證據。這形成了一個簡單但有力的循環：
辨識 → 回應 → 觀察 → 反思並分享 → 調整
如此一來，專業學習就不再只是參加工作坊或蒐集新的教學技巧，而是成為一個以課堂證據為基礎、持續探究學生學習的過程。
最後，我們又回到最重要的問題：我的學習者需要什麼？
Translated by Chat GPT