Today I am posting the Fourth Hurdle to Flipping Your Class, which is the final one in my series. To review:
- Thinking: Flipping the thinking of educators about how to maximize class time by implementing flipped learning. Read the full post here.
- Technology: Helping educators navigate the technical aspects of Flipped Learning. Read the full post here.
- Time: Time is such a big issue for our overworked teachers. Read the full post here.
Training is the fourth hurdle. Many teachers and schools need professional development in the area of Flipped Learning. In the fall of 2012 the “Speak Up” survey polled teachers and 3% of them stated they had started to flip their classrooms, but 18% wanted to start. 27% of administrators reported that they were interested in starting some sort of a Flipped Learning pilot.
John Diamond from Harvard conducted research about what influences teachers to change their practice. It can be summarized in the following chart. Essentially,teachers change when they hear from other teachers, not from administrators, or even the standards.
Bringing in outside experts is not always the best idea and is often met with skepticism and resistance.
I believe that for the most part, if you want systemic change, you need coaches who can come alongside teachers and provide necessary training. This is especially true with Flipped Learning. It is a new teaching method with a limited number of practitioners and many schools don’t have enough teachers who have flipped their classes.
I believe that a train the trainer model is the best way to address this issue. Get a small group of teachers to flip their classes and then expand the program using the success of your pilot. So, how do you train your trainers? There are several options.
- Bring in a teacher who has successfully flipped his or her classroom, and has been trained to help others do that successfully.
- Send teachers to Flipped Learning workshops or host one at your school or in your district.
- Send teachers to the Flipped Learning Network’s Annual Conference – FlipCon14 – June 22-25, 2014 near Pittsburgh.
- Lead a book study of Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day.
If you are looking for outside help, I have a solution. Aaron Sams and I have re-unified our efforts and have formed a consulting firm in which we are offering quality on-site and virtual training to teachers, administrators, schools, districts, universities, and corporations to meet the demand for training. Our team has conducted countless workshops and presentations about Flipped Learning since 2008, working with a wide variety of groups. Our website is flippedclass.com and we encourage you to go there to learn and to reach out to us for your professional development needs.
So my questions for you today are:
- Do you feel you have adequate in-house trainers to prepare your staff (or you personally) to implement Flipped Learning?
- For those of you who are using Flipped Learning, to what extent did outside experts help you as your flipped your class?
This post first appeared on my blog.
