Review: From Teacher to Trainer – Matthew Ellman and Peter Lucantoni

For the fans of Sponge Chats, you will recognise the two names in the title of this post. I’ve had both Matt and Peter on to talk about their experiences in teacher education, and in both of those Sponge Chats, we spoke about their book From Teacher to Trainer – and I’ve finally found the time to review it! As usual, I’ll do my best to describe the main messages the authors convey, and highlight what I liked/disliked. I’ll also give my opinion on who should read this book and why.

Three-sentence summary

Ellman and Lucantoni’s book From Teacher to Trainer aims to provide the reader with a overview of what teacher training is and what trainers do. It is split into ten amazing chapters, and covers a lot of ground – from identifying how teachers learn, to planning workshops and programmes, and even conducting observations. The friendly and easy-to-read writing style, clear pieces of advice, accompanying appendices, QR code videos, and real trainer stories make From Teacher to Trainer, in my eyes, the new ‘go-to’ for those who have aspirations of being a trainer, or who have just become a trainer (and even experienced trainers will benefit from this well-rounded book).

Three takeaways

Ok, so when reading a book that aims to cover most areas of teacher training, you can bet that there are many takeaways. To give you an idea, I used about ninety post-its to mark what I felt were important takeaways. Of course, I can’t go into detail about all of these, so what I will do is focus on one ‘takeaway’ that is constantly emphasised throughout the book, and then two takeaways that I feel are really important for all teacher trainers.

“One way of looking at the trainer’s role is through what we might call the three P’s of training: the Personal, the Professional and the Practical.”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.21

• The Three Ps: Right from the beginning of the book, we are introduced to the ideas of the three ‘P’s, and they are constantly referred to throughout the remainder of the book, and for good reason – they are important teacher perspectives. Below I have explore these in some detail, although I should mention that throughout the book there are many, many examples of how to use the three ‘P’s, so please don’t think of the ones that I am presenting here as the only options available:
  • The Personal: This refers to teachers’ “existing knowledge, experience, beliefs, assumptions, feelings and personalities” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.21). The authors highlight that for training to be effective, trainers ideally should start from the Personal, although in the cases that we can’t get this data, we should at least not forget it and do our best to bring it into the training room. And if we are mentoring or coaching, the Personal becomes even more important as trainers play an important role in helping teachers make explicit and develop their values, attitudes, beliefs, etc. (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022).
  • The Practical: This refers to “what teachers do in their teaching contexts” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.21) – and as trainers we are aiming to make this as effective as possible. Why? Well, because if teaching is effective, then student leaning occurs (and ideally the ‘best’ learning – although this may mean different things in different contexts). In terms of how we as trainers might work with the Practical, we might decide to focus on or have teachers talk about actual practical techniques and strategies they use in their classrooms. From a mentoring perspective, we can help teachers focus on their individual teaching skills and improving these.
  • The Professional: This relates to how “the body of knowledge provided by research, theory and other practitioners can inform or alter” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.21) our beliefs as teachers, so that we make more informed decisions and can ensure that our teaching is as effective as possible for our context. There are many ways in which we might draw on the Professional – for example, we might raise awareness of a specific teaching theory in a workshop and then encourage teachers to try it out (mixing the Professional with the Practical – ideally there would be some reflection on how it worked and maybe some altering of beliefs, so there is some Personal in there also). The Professional also comes through in feedback sessions, when teachers “learn how we label and talk about classroom events” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.153) – the trainer will most likely use certain metalanguage, and this will then enable the teacher to be able to describe their classroom practices more effectively.

“Anyone who has taken a flight will have heard the words ‘make sure your own mask is fitted before helping others’ in the pre-flight safety presentation. We should adapt the same principle when it comes to professional development: make sure you are in control of your own development as an educator before trying to guide the development of your trainees. That’s where the analogy ends – development should be far more enjoyable than an in-flight emergency!”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.189

• An important aspect of being a trainer is continuing your own development: The authors really highlight the need for trainers to be in charge of their own development – and to continue developing as a trainer and a teacher. This includes being familiar with recent research findings, teaching where possible (the classroom does change over time after all), and working with other trainers to see how others would do similar tasks. In Chapter 10, Ellman and Lucantoni present the four key areas of expertise and list some ideas of how to develop in them – let’s explore some of these:
  • Knowledge: The authors refer to Malderez and Martin’s (2007) areas of teacher knowledge: knowing about (e.g., our knowledge of language, how learning occurs, contextual information, etc.), knowing how (e.g., teaching skills such as monitoring or providing corrective feedback), and knowing to (i.e., being able to improvise in the classroom effectively because of automatised knowledge (from knowing about and how). In essence, trainers need to have a fair amount of experience in the classroom and have these types of teacher knowledge developed to ensure that they have a good understanding “of what their trainees need to learn to operate more effectively” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.192).
    • Developing knowledge: So, I’m sure you can think of many ways in which can develop in the area of ‘knowledge’ – but here are two. One, we can keep teaching if possible, ideally in numerous different contexts. Another is to engage with research through reading and other sources. (e.g., webinars).
  • Understanding: Trainers need to be able to work effectively with teachers’ underlying values, attitudes, beliefs, etc. In essence, this means having a set of techniques and strategies that can be drawn on to help teachers develop and make explicit their values, etc., – but it also means having the necessary soft skills (e.g., active listening, empathy, etc.) to be able to do all this effectively from a social/human perspective.
    • Developing awareness: Speaking with other trainers, especially from other contexts, can be a great way to learn about how teachers normally see the world. It’s also a great way to explore different ways of working with teachers’ values, attitudes and beliefs.
  • Training groups: Trainers need to be proficient at “planning, running and evaluating group training” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.193). This means having an understanding of group dynamics, how to encourage collaboration, etc.
    • Developing in being able to train groups: Ask for feedback! Feedback can come from the teachers you are working with, or from other trainers. One suggestion that I really liked was to use video – watch your sessions back. This is something that I started doing about two years ago, and it is very insightful 🙂
  • Training individuals: Trainers need to be proficient at “mentoring, observation, feedback and assessment practices” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.193) – and all of these revolve around the individual teacher. Here the authors emphasise that simply knowing how to carry out observation (for example) is not enough – we need to be able to engage the appropriate soft skills to ensure the delivery of feedback, etc. is done well.
    • Developing in being able to train individuals: There were many ideas presented here, but one that I would very much like to do is shadow mentoring/feedback conversations. Being able to sit in on a trainer and a teacher in a mentoring session (or post-observation oral feedback session) could be really beneficial, especially if there is time to explore why the trainer asked X questions.

“But ineffective practices, or ideas bluntly applied, can be harder for teachers to notice on their own, and feedback from you, the trainer, then becomes an important factor in improving teaching. Feedback is a critical part of helping teachers attain adaptive expertise, developing their professional knowledge from the levels of knowing about to the levels of knowing how and knowing to.”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.151

• As trainers, one of our main roles centres on providing feedback to teachers – feedback that helps teachers see where they need to improve: Quite a lot of the book is dedicated to dealing with feedback, both spoken and written. The authors mention that whilst it is important to raise awareness of what teachers do well, it is even more important to raise teachers’ awareness of what they are not doing so well, what could be improved, etc. This, as many trainers will attest to, comes with many problems as delivering negative feedback is not a simple endeavour – we need to think about the individual teacher, how much they can take on in that moment, their stage of development (e.g., are they an early-career teacher?), and of course how they are likely to respond. The authors highlight many approaches to ‘feedback’, but one that I thought was really interesting (and actually very useful from a ‘model’ perspective) was their five-stage model for feedback discussions (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.160) (see below). I feel that this model is an excellent model to work from when thinking about feedback sessions – this being said, I do feel that as one gets more experienced as a trainer, extra ‘stages’ will be added in (e.g., perhaps there was a specific observation focus for the observer, and the teacher might be asked to reflect on this).
  • Stage 1 – What happened in the lesson? Here the teacher and trainer establish what occurred in the lesson. There are of course many ways to do this – one way that I like to do it is to ask the teacher to run me through the main stages of the lesson and what they remember. I also bring in my written commentary and ask them to have a read over it and let me know if there is anything they disagree with.
  • Stage 2 – Whether aims were achieved. Here the teacher states what the objectives of the lesson were, and if they were achieved. Interestingly, I don’t always agree with lessons ‘aims’ – at times I prefer success criteria as it can be quite difficult to measure certain aims, both as the teacher and the observer – but this is for another post.
  • Stage 3 – What the teacher might do differently. Here the teacher and trainer conduct a “hypothetical discussion” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.160) centred around what they could have done differently, or in the case that the lesson will be repeated with another group, what they will do differently and why.
  • Stage 4 – How the teacher will follow up on the lesson. This asks the teacher to focus very much on the classroom, the learners and the learning – how do they plan to consolidate learning, follow on from the lesson, etc. This helps teachers see lessons not just as one-off blocks, but rather part of a whole (with each part impacting future parts).
  • Stage 5 – What the teacher has learned. Here the teacher engages in reflection and identifies their main takeaways.

What I liked

To say that I liked this book would be an understatement. It was a brilliant read, and for the audience that it is aimed at, it provides an enormous amount of value. Here are some of the best things about the book in my mind (although I could have included many more!):

“Broadly speaking, we see teacher training as any learning process led by a trainer, while teacher development is a learning process led by the teacher.”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.4

• Clear ‘scope’: The authors clearly state who the book is aimed at, and also provide clear definitions of what they mean by teacher training and teacher development. I think their overview is quite useful as when you move into teacher education, the terminology can be a little overwhelming, especially when you get into the (sometimes not very useful) debates about whether we are engaging in teacher training or teacher development.
• Awesome videos which include diverse perspectives: One of the biggest selling points, in my mind, of this book is the collection of videos that it comes with. Each chapter has at least one QR code that takes the reader to a video – and it’s not only the authors who speak! There are trainers from all over the world (e.g., Scott Thornbury, Bahar Gün, etc.) who are talking about a whole range of topics (e.g., developing as a trainer, providing feedback to teachers who have their back up, etc.) for a range of different contexts (e.g., Europe, Middle East, etc.). I know that I really enjoy reading content, but I also found that these video vignettes really help make clear how certain training elements are actually realised in a real training context, and for trainers that are just starting out this is an invaluable resource.
• Tasks and guiding notes: And, of course, the books comes with plenty of tasks for the reader – and you all know that I love books with tasks. But, to make things even better, the authors have included quite detailed ‘notes’ for each of the tasks, which I think is superb. I’ve completed many a task from books and then thought to myself, “I wonder what the authors would have said” – and so I found these notes really useful.

“All of us spent thousands of hours in classrooms as students before we began to learn how to teach – sometimes referred to as the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie, 1975) – which creates a very powerful sense of what it means to behave as a teacher that can be hard to change.”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.16

• Brings in research on Language Teacher Education in a reader-friendly manner: Whilst the book doesn’t go deep into research around teachers’ or trainers’ cognition, etc., it does bring in ‘snippets’ of research that are presented alongside clear implications. This, in my opinion, is a really reader-friendly way of bringing in research – and for those that want to take it a little further, the authors have included some recommended reading titles at the end of each chapter.

“You’ll see that learning each type of knowledge involves repetition […]. Teachers who are more experienced and further along the path of expertise may find that process more difficult, because revisiting knowing about for any given concept involves noticing new elements of it, and experienced teachers have developed particular ways of looking at classroom activity that might make that harder. Similarly, many teaching routines developed as part of knowing how may have to be ‘unlearned’ in order to refine techniques that my have become automatic.

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.20

• Raises awareness of how to work with more experienced teachers: I remember planning for my first few sessions (and even my first conference), and one of the little devils in my head kept saying things like, “What have you got that they don’t know already?”. Of course, training is not so much about ‘teaching’ teachers, but rather about mediating learning, but those thoughts were still there. The authors have recognised that early-career trainers have these thoughts, and have provided some ideas on how to deal with more experienced teachers. Many of their suggestions centre on being aware of the fact that certain beliefs within teachers might be heavily engrained, and as such reflection and exploring their values, attitudes and beliefs first is probably the best course of action.
• The Three ‘P’s is easy to remember, and offers a lot in terms of planning workshops and training: I think that thinking in terms of the three ‘P’s – the Personal, the Professional and the Practical – is pretty useful, especially when planning workshops and/or programmes. For example, as a general rule, we try to always include a balance of all the three ‘P’s in a workshop or programme.

“We believe that one of the most important roles of second language teacher trainers is to provide a connection between the teaching profession and research into language and education; to act as mediators between theory and practice by making research and theory intelligible and meaningful to teachers.”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.36

• Stresses the trainer-teacher relationship in research findings mediation: This is a big one for me – and something I think is not pushed enough. The authors mention that trainers need to be familiar with research – reading, engaging with it, perhaps even doing their own action research. However, they also mention that it is the trainer’s role to bring research to teachers, although not in its pure form, but rather in a mediated form. It takes quite a bit of work to become comfortable with reading academic articles, not to mention time; many teachers have neither the skills (although these can be taught and practised) or time to engage with research effectively, and so the onus needs to be on those in charge of teacher training and development. There are, of course, many reasons why teachers need to engage with research (e.g., learning about how second language are acquired should be a prerequisite for teaching, in my opinion), but not all research is relevant to teachers at a certain point in time, and so we can bring in snippets of research when the time is right. This is something that I wrote about in the last Reading Room write up.

“[…] we suggest writing two aims for your training sessions, one relating to what trainees will know as a result of the session, and one describing what they will do in their lessons when they go back to them.”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.28

• Provides example session outlines: It was nice to see example session outlines, with aims, etc. included. I think the format they’ve presented for a session plan makes it very easy to see what one needs to think about when putting a session together. Perhaps the most interesting thing for me was how they framed aims, though. They include two sets of aims: What teachers will know and What teachers will do. The first relates to the knowledge that teachers will have developed through the session, whilst the second relates to teachers actual practice – what will teachers be able to do as a result of the session. It may seem like you’re covering the same ground here, but I’ve tried it out and I’ve found it makes clear the type of knowledge or experience one is trying to develop in teachers, whilst at the same time thinking about how teachers will actually use that knowledge as teachers with real learners.

“It’s perfectly normal to feel nervous, especially if you are training your own colleagues. And nerves may well be a sign that you simply want the session to be successful, for the trainees and for yourself, which of course is what everyone wants.”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.71

• Deals with trainer ‘nerves’: I thought the inclusion of some tips for dealing with nerves around training sessions was excellent, especially considered that this book is aimed at those who are new to training. One of the suggestions that authors put forward relates to “the power of vision” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.71) – in essence, they encourage trainers to picture themselves “in the future after achieving, or at the moment of achieving, a personal goal” (Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.71) – the goal here being a successful workshop (or mentoring sessions, etc.).

“[…] the lack of support for early-career trainers inevitably means that come of the training that is being provided is not as effective as it could be. No doubt a more rigorous gateway to training would benefit teachers as well as trainers themselves.”

Ellman & Lucantoni, 2022, p.190

• Identifies that many teacher educators are themselves untrained in Language Teacher Education: This is a very important point, and I was glad it was raised. Within the context of this book, it emphasises why the reader is doing what they are doing -reading about training, and hopefully developing as a trainer. It also provides a strong rationale to continue developing as a trainer ‘once you make it’. On a side point, I think it highlights why the title ‘trainer’ can mean many different things, with some of those who hold that title being much better prepared to acutely engage in training practices than others (perhaps this is something for another post also?).

What I didn’t like

Ok, before I get into this section, I need to preface it by saying that the following points are not really things I didn’t like – If I’m honest, it really is quite hard to fault this book. That being said, these are some things that I think could have been nice additions 🙂

• A course design task would have been a nice addition: Chapter 9 is titled Training courses and programmes, and it provides a wealth of information regarding what courses and programmes might look like and, perhaps more importantly, advice for working on your first course. It also comes with a number of vignettes and a video with some trainers explaining how they design courses in their contexts. I’m being quite picky here, but I think it would have been nice to include a task in which the reader gets to put together a course plan/overview – nothing too detailed, but identifying potential sessions based on a set of described needs. All of the other major training areas have tasks, and it felt strange not having one for this chapter. Having said all of this, I recognise why a new trainer wouldn’t or shouldn’t be planning a new course, but speaking from my own experience, many new trainers are asked to do just that, especially in INSET contexts.
• Observation video and task was for an online lesson – could there have been room for both an online lesson and a more traditional, face-to-face lesson? One of the most useful tasks and set of videos from the book is the observation task. I really do think that trainers need to be conducting more joint observations, and this is actually a really well-done observation – clear video, pre- and post-observation chats included, Peter’s observation notes, etc. The lesson, however, was an online lesson – and I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the principles should be the same, and you’re right! BUT, I feel that there is a lot more that occurs in a face-to-face lesson, and less teacher control can be seen. I think the online lesson was a correct choice because post-pandemic, a lot of teacher education has moved online; however, many INSET courses still have face-to-face observations (in fact, I’d hazard a guess and say the majority of observations are still done in this manner). So, it would have been nice to have a face-to-face observation in addition to the online one. Again, being fairly picky here!

Who should read this book?

• Early-career teacher educators: So the intended audience is early-career teacher educators/trainers – if you are just starting out in teacher education or are thinking about moving into teacher education, this is the book for you. I can’t emphasise enough how well this book is put together, and I wish I’d had it when I started out. There are of course other great books on teacher training out there (I’ve reviewed a few of them myself), but in terms of covering the most ground in a trainer-friendly manner, this book wins by a long way.
• Experienced teacher educators: I wouldn’t call myself a super experienced trainer, but I have been training for around six years now. I’ve worked in a range of different contexts, with teacher groups varying in size and demographics. I’ve conducted I-don’t-know-how-many observations and mentoring sessions, and have planned and implemented numerous teacher training and development courses. All of this and I still learnt a number of things from this book. If for nothing else, it’s a great book to look at how certain concepts can be reframed (e.g., the three ‘P’s).
• Teacher educator mentors: So those involved in training trainers will find this a really useful resource. Assigning chapters to trainee trainers based on their needs or current state in a course would be quite beneficial – especially as the chapters are quite easy to digest and come with plenty of support (e.g., the videos).

Applying to practice

So, before I mentioned that I learnt a few things from this book, and so I’d like to outline how I plan to apply one of these – shadowing – to my practice.

The authors recommend shadowing other trainers in observations and mentoring/coaching sessions, and whilst this has crossed my mind before (mainly with observations), I haven’t actually done it. What I’d like to do is set up a system so that both I and my Managing Director, sit in on each others’ post-observation feedback and coaching sessions – but with an observation task. Two reasons why. One, I think I’d learn a lot from both seeing someone else do ‘it’ and from the feedback that I’d receive. Two, I think that these shadowing moments could help me set up a early-career teacher training observation system!

Now, this sounds fairly straightforward, and in fact it is. but I’d like to design a set of observation tasks for teacher educators, because as a manager I’m in the business of setting up systems that support the Language Teaching Organisation, and I would like to develop certain teachers into trainers. So, first steps are to conduct are few observations of my own, and to have my Managing Director shadow my ‘chats’ as well. From there, we will brainstorm some useful tasks that aid early-career trainers in noticing.

Final notes

Ellman and Lucantoni’s From Teacher to Trainer is a must-read for early-career teacher educators, and definitely one that all trainers should have on their shelves. There are plenty of takeaways, it is written in an easy-to-read manner, and with all the support it comes with, getting this book is a no-brainer if you are looking to move into teacher education. Having had the pleasure to work with both Matt and Peter previously, I already knew that this book was going to be awesome, but actually reading it and seeing for myself how great it is was amazing. But, I know that I’m not the only one out there who has read From Teacher to Trainer, so I’d love to hear all of your thoughts! Let me know what your main takeaways were, and if you agree that this is the ‘go-to’ book for early-career teacher educators 🙂

Book details

Book title: From Teacher to Trainer

Authors: Matthew Ellman and Peter Lucantoni

Pages: 255

ISBN: 9781108827072

References

Ellman, M. & Lucantoni, P. (2022). From Teacher to Trainer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Malderez, A. & Wedell, M. (2007) Teaching teachers: Process and Practices. London: Continuum.