Multiplication workshops in Facilitation Skills and Peer Coaching

Following the TOT workshop on Facilitation Skills and Peer Coaching organized in Da Nang in the middle of July, the five DOETs have planned to organize multiplication workshops in their respective provinces. During the week from August 22 to August 27, EM team went on M&E trips to two provinces – Thai Nguyen and Quang Ninh. The M&E trips have two purposes - first, to M&E multiplication workshops in Facilitation Skills and Peer Coaching, and second, to observe lessons delivered by teachers who participated in multiplication workshops in ICT 4 ATL to see how ICT is being applied in real lessons. For every topic, Thai Nguyen DOET organizes 13 multiplication sessions for 390 teachers/subject managers/vice principals from Lower Secondary Schools while Quang Ninh DOET organizes 18 similar sessions for 540 participants. This time, the multiplication workshops are to provide teachers/subject managers/vice principals from Lower Secondary Schools with facilitation skills such as questioning skills, feedback skills, active listening skills, observation skills, presentation skills, negotiation skills and the skills in dealing with difficult people. All together, these skills make up the portrait of a good facilitator/teacher and coacher. Besides facilitation skills, the model of peer coaching has also been emphasized during the course of a two-day workshop. In both Quang Ninh and Thai Nguyen, the workshops are highly evaluated for its content and active teaching methods applied by the facilitators (core group members). The well-developed and nicely printed training materials are another factor which is much appreciated by the participants. After the workshops, participants are expected to multiply the topic to their peers during professional teacher meetings which as a rule take place twice a month. As such, the content is expected to reach quite a big number of teachers and educational managers in the five project provinces. Besides the multiplication workshops on Facilitation and Peer Coaching, the lessons observed by the EM local coordinator have demonstrated certain level of the use of ICT in education. Some of the ICT tools provided by VVOB (for example Photostory and Practice and Drills) were used quite frequently in the lessons observed. Nghe An DOET and Quang Ngai DOET will organize 24 and 18 similar multiplication workshops respectively in September while Quang Nam DOET will organize 22 similar workshops from the middle of September to the middle of October. For M&E these workshops, EM team and SP team will jointly go on trips to Nghe An and Quang Ngai in the period of September 13-15 where the two teams and their provincial programme units (PPU) can attend each other activities, promoting cooperation of the partners. Meanwhile, EM assistant will also attend two similar multiplication workshops in Quang Nam on September 16-17.