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��COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES IN TEACHERS ASSOCIATION A AS A MEANS OF SUPPORTING TEACHERS AND DEVELOPING RESILIENCE IN UKRAINE�

Ukraine, Professional Association of English Language Teachers

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��This project aims to provide support for a virtual group of a formal Teacher Association in higher education domain in Ukraine. It helps to build a trusted non-evaluated space for professional development and peer support within the TA through practising cooperative development framework. Sharing the practices of coping the challenges of teaching English in the wartime will enhance trust and collegiality between teachers of one department and provide the local HE domain with possible solutions.

Ukraine, Professional Association of English Language Teachers

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Why?

Isolation from professional community
Separation with family and country
Lack of support
Continued stress and fatigue

Due to the war in Ukraine all Kharkiv universities switched to on-line teaching. The lecturers forced to leave their hometown looking for a safer location. At the same time, they continued to work. Now most lecturers live in different parts of Europe or Ukraine with their families or on their own. As any other individual who faces hardships and has to deal with them, English teachers desperately need support in these circumstances. Some institutions provide such support, some – not. Unfortunately, in this long-lasting situation of terror, uncertainty and anxiety whatever support is given it will not be enough. I hope that these meetings can become a form of support given to each other in a professional community. Feeling of mutual trust and emotional connection with colleagues across the physical space. Is an important means of building resilience. Sharing professional concerns and/or knowledge unites teachers as one team of professionals and educators what helps build a community of practice where each member is appreciated, and any concern can be spoken up and discussed.

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Who?�

lecturers of the Foreign Languages Department of Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics

https://nure.ua/en/department/foreign-languages-department

https://flang.nure.ua/en

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Where and when?

Once a month from March 2023 to December 2023
Online videoconferencing platform Google Meet

Outline of project stages and timeline:

Stage 1. Online sessions conducted on a monthly basis (February 2023 – July 2023).

Stage 2. Finalization of the project: dissemination of findings, publishing a collection of teacher’s stories (August 2023-December 2023).

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How?

Honesty
Respect
Empathy

Cooperative Development

You can train me and you can educate me, but you can not develop me. I develop.

Julian Edge, 2014

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Tasks:

to conduct the analysis of meetings when practicing cooperative development strategies;

to prepare for publishing the collection of stories of success developed/selected as a result of the analysis.

Objective:

to build a community of practice

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COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES

Online sessions conducted on a monthly basis

Teachers engage in dialogue with other practitioners

Teachers hold the sessions of CD where they discuss their experience and challenges they face

Teachers practice non-judgmental talk acting as a Speaker or Understander

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Analysis of Cooperative Development sessions

Teachers present the results of their analysis to their peers

Teachers use the data to make informed conclusions about CD practice

Teachers develop understanding of principles of Cooperative Development

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COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES

MEANS OF DEVELOPING RESILIENCE

MEANS OF SUPPORTING TEACHERS

Emotional support

Belonging Support

Informational Support

Get connected.
Build strong, positive relationships with colleagues
Make work meaningful
Learn from experience
Be proactive

a) Emotional support: Exploration of the problems and sharing the ways of coping with challenges during a war year of 2023 provides important resources of emotional support. It allows one to give and receive genuine acknowledgement of a teacher's efforts to continue teaching English. In the conditions of the war and separation with family and country the project participants become that audience that will accept and understand, calm fears, and reliably be there.

b) Belonging Support: Even if our participants can’t be in their working environment in person, connecting to the teacher’s group and its routine gives a sense of belonging, of place (university) and of country. On-line community sends the message that “we’re all in this together”. Being in and out of Ukraine, ELF lecturers who join the project will get a sense of connection and responsibility for what we are doing as teachers.

c) Informational Support: Later, in the end of the project, the experience of teaching during the war can be re-written with more positive perspectives. Reflections on what has been learnt in the project will be used as drafts for stories to celebrate this experience and new expertize. A collection of these stories will be available to a broader audience of EFL lecturers what can get good publicity over the educational, institutional, social media reaching EFL lecturers in and outside Ukraine

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Benefits

self-development of communicative skills to enhance resilience and emotional support

networking: project provides space and time where a group of colleagues can become a community of practice and establish a network of contacts.

Benefits for my colleagues can be considered from the perspective of professional development (a) and development of professional network (b).

a) development of communicative skills: participants acquire skills of active listening and supportive non-evaluative discourse during the sessions and after them (while working on analysis of discourse moves made by speakers and listeners). This way of speaking can make a good alternative to conventional teacher’s talk which often employs evaluating, suggesting and criticizing and may lack reflecting, attending, relating, thematising and etc.

b) networking :lecturers meet on-line on a monthly basis as an informal community working on the tasks of the project and building a community of practice when sharing experience, asking for advice, and supporting each other

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Challenges:

when carrying on the project we may face :

Personal circumstances of Ukrainian teachers can deprive their chance to participate
War conflict will spread over the rest of Ukraine
Technical issues due to electricity shortages
Problems with planning and meeting the deadlines due to uncertain situation

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professional connection - Germany, Croatia, England, Estonia, Austria, Bulgaria, three cities of Ukraine
emotional support - sharing feelings and emotions
belonging - “we’re all in this together”. regularity and elements of routine - one Saturday in a month
collegiality - a sense of connection and responsibility for what we all are doing as teachers.

In March 2023, a year after Russia started the full scale invasion in Ukraine , I invited my colleagues from three universities located in the frontline city of Kharkiv to hold regular on-line meetings. Though the meetings were aimed to practise cooperative development techniques, at first the whole concept of CD was new to all the members of these meetings. So we started from the webinar to introduce the framework, the convention within the framework, basic moves for the Understander and language to be used for each move. The webinar presenter talked about their experience of having Cd sessions, its impact on their practices and community where CD was practices, answered the questions and offered some examples of conversational analysis of the CD talk. After this webinar we started our meetings and dove directly into the process, when one of the teachers took the role of a Speaker and others acted as Understanders. All in all since March 2023 we have had 12 meetings during which lecturers acted as the speakers or understanders. There is a Telegram group which helps us to stay in contact with each other and inform about circumstances which may stop from attending the meeting or holding the meeting itself. There is a Google drive storage where the materials on CD, useful resources and presentations, together with the recordings of the meetings are kept. I can say that we developed our routine for these meetings and at the moment it is a quite sustainable community where members help and cooperate with each other.