Developing an Arts-Based Approach for leading Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs)

In this presentation, we report on the delivery of a professional development programme that we have developed as part of a British Council-funded project entitled, “Developing teachers’ capacities to teach English across modes, media and language boundaries with creative and arts-based resources”. This programme introduces a set of innovations both in its approach, as well as in its content. Throughout this programme, we have trained 36 facilitators and 18 creative artists to work across 3 DOETS (Bac Ninh, Quang Ninh and Ninh Thuan) with primary and lower secondary teachers to develop innovative practices for the teaching and learning of English. The training programme has supported facilitators and artists to develop capacities to engage teachers in creative pedagogies and to work across different areas of expertise (e.g., ELT, cultural and arts-based practices). Unlike other workshop-style professional development opportunities, our programme prepares creative artists and ELT specialists to work collaboratively with Teacher Activity Groups which are are based on peer support, creativity and co-creation. In our presentation, we introduce the multiple innovations of our approach, as well as the challenges we have encountered.