Women Empowering Women Through Co-Construction of Community of Learners: Reflections on an English Language Specialist Project in Lebanon

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Co-Constructing Spaces for Reimagining Learning in Glocal Partnerships for Teacher Development

Proposal

Research on teacher professional development in the past two decades has consistently called for collegial collaboration in creating professional communities of learning (Lave & Wegner, 1991). When teachers “collectively question ineffective teaching routines, examine new conceptions of teaching and learning, find generative means to acknowledge and respond to difference and conflict, and engage actively in supporting professional growth” (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 917), they become more invested in improving their instructional practices. Teachers who are capable of ethically engaging in intercultural settings, and continuously and systematically inquiring to increase their professional knowledge are the ones who can overcome the systemic challenges (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 2009). With this idea in mind that allowing teachers to work together collaboratively to co-construct knowledge, and promote growth collectively as professionals (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009), this collaborative project between a non-profit Universally Specific Purposes of English and Knowledge (USPEaK) organization in Lebanon and an English language specialist in the U.S. was established. As its name suggests, Women Empowering Women Through Co-Construction of Community of Learners in Lebanon, the negotiations of English language teaching practices and co-developing online modules through collaboration allowed for explorations of teachers’ own identities. As Lebanon is a country characterized by diversity recognizing different ethnic and religious groups, the development of collaborative online English language teaching plays an important role in positioning diversity and difference as an opportunity rather than a problem.
As part of this project, I facilitated a series of workshops with mentor teachers and novice teachers to co-construct visions for English language education in Lebanon over an 8-week period between April and May 2022. The workshops were conceived as one possible way to address some of the aims of the Teaching Women Enhanced English (TWEE) , including promoting English teacher agency, creating a network of practitioners, and having a practical impact on the development of English teacher education by including practitioners in the process of knowledge building. English was used as a vehicle to raise awareness on women’s rights, countering violent extremism, financial literacy, freedom of speech and combating misinformation with 1540 Lebanese women aged 18-45. The primary aim of the workshops was to co-construct modules and collaborations among EFL teachers in different regions of Lebanon in a virtual space. I envisioned the workshops as a community of inquirers in which participants could develop their teaching through learning from and with each other, and that this community might support the building of an English teaching network and thus have value beyond the period of the project.
In this session, I will share my experiences in providing training to teacher leaders and teachers to build trust and community, enhance teamwork spirit, develop online modules using the existing curriculum, introduce a culture of mentorship to the teachers and create rubrics to develop a mentorship program.

Author

• Rabia Hos, University of Rhode Island