What and How to Do Everything Related to Presenting at International Conferences (A guide for secondary school teachers with a plan for MS Teams workshops). Stojan Jovan Rendevski
having a mentor, you have just started collaborating in a team.
1.3. Teamwork
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress,
and working together is success.”Henry Ford
Don’t forget that your research and presentation requires English proofing and editing, maybe statistical data analysis, validation of your research findings by other teachers relaying on trusted literature and references, maybe video presentation design, the school’s management to give you access to some administrative or students’ personal data, looking for finances to cover small costs of the research and conference registration, or could be some fieldwork at other premises different from your school, and many other prerequisites. What is the solution to all of that? Yes, you are right – teamwork. One teacher has said: “Teamwork is in the essence of being a teacher. I am managing one hundred students in six different teams. I can put in a team my Principle, Head of Department, Head of a funding body, two of my colleagues, and the librarian. Piece of cake!” Nonetheless, she screamed after: “But, why I should do research and present at a conference?”
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
in “Hamlet”, William Shakespeare, 1603
2. Why to present on a conference?
The so-called Shakespearean dilemma on “to do it or not to do it for a conference” is very congruent with teacher’s self-asking a question – “Should I work and prepare a presentation for an international conference?” The answer is – yes, teachers should, because the benefits are manifolds and that pursuit in which one would be investing time and efforts repays in many ways soon or later. Let’s clear-out the Shakespearian dilemma about to do a conference presentation or not.
Presenting on an international conference has many benefits. Most common can be listed without giving the primary position to any.
a)Your personal affirmation and career progress.
Having a line in your Curriculum Vitae or your personal portfolio in the school about presentation given at an international conference always brings positive evaluation from the management. Knowing that a teacher participated in a conference means that the career is on a solid route to progress. Greetings from the school colleagues, as well as foreign participants on your work and presentation, means social affirmation to which we aim for our well-being.
b)Your professional development and of others.
Teachers know many programs for professional growth. One of such is when a teacher presents on an international conference and gives a seminar to the colleagues in the school on what he/she has presented and also, what was interesting from some of the other presentations you have visited – new trends, new methodologies, new technologies, and many other topics.
c)Financial reward.
It is always good to talk about money. Many schools have financial incentives for rewarding teachers that present at international conferences. A ten percent increase of your salary in the next six months sounds good, doesn’t it? Or maybe, a bonus at the end of the year, or paid small vacation as part of some training program. Even if there is no direct salary increase seen on the teacher’s payslip, it is enough school to cover the costs of the research and conference registration. That is how your career progress and personal development can be supported financially.
d)Widening your personal professional network.
Imagine you become a friend and you are collegiate to 75 % of the teachers in your region and wider, you have the Principle and the Head of Department giving you on-time feedback on your work and progress, and you want to use for the very first time some new technology in the classroom. The benefit of having a wide personal professional network is huge. Contact the people from the network and some will serve you. It requires only a call or a post in the network and nothing else. During conferences you meet a lot of people and depending on your social and interpersonal skills you may attract them into your personal network.
e)Constant improving and striving for quality in teaching.
Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”. Excellence in teaching can be achieved only by constant self-improving and striving for quality. One form how to do this, except everyday good teaching we give in the classrooms, is to do educational research and present at a conference and this to become a habit. End of story.
f)Giving a positive public presentation of your school.
A school that has staff presenting on conferences, by definition, should be a good school. It is always striving for quality and is bringing to the school the never-ending changes in ociety and education. Would you like to send your kid to such a school?
g)Showing to the students how the research work. Today’s economies are evidence-based and are grounded in getting and sharing knowledge. Getting knowledge means to do research. Evidence need to be verified by research. Our students are our future workforce and management power. Showing them at the early age of their development the importance of research and how it works, can reflect later in life.
Clarifying why teachers should present at an international conference, leads us to the question “What to present?” Many teachers think it is very difficult to prepare a good presentation that summarizes some research they must conduct. They are right to a certain extent. However, life is saying the following. First, you don’t have to be a scientist with a Ph.D. degree in order to be able to plan and conduct research. Second, an idea for conference research can be so small to work on that for someone might look ridiculous and insignificant, which is not. For example, the theme of “The influence of the class time schedule on the overall students’ performance in physics lab work”. The research is not supposed to look like a Ph.D. thesis! Yes, it must have the structure of a research work consisted of: i) a problem noticed; ii) research aims and objectives; iii) justification of the theme; iv) research methods and instruments (questionnaires, case study reports, etc.); v) data (information obtained), analysis and conclusions; v) literature review; v) references. This concept is not difficult for the teacher to implement. Every day we ask our students to do the same when they work in a lab or write an essay. The only difference is that the teacher’s conference research is more specific and usually never done before in the same way by others. Pablo Picasso had said: “I have the idea in my head, but I am still afraid of the blank canvas I am looking at. Once I put the first brush, it goes after like an unstoppable river”. Here, we talk about the research transformation from the plan in the teacher’s head to reality. Once you start realizing it, will come to the end and that is for sure. One teacher has said: “I just put the title of the research on paper while sitting in my cabinet at the school and I already see myself standing and presenting on an international conference in front of 150 people. Awesome”. These guidelines you are reading can help you with how to do a research and present after at an international conference.
Maybe you know how simple teacher research works, but what to present on the conference? How to get the idea? Here comes our next question.
“Nobody’s perfect.”
final scene, “Some Like It Hot”, directed by Billy Wilder, 1959
3. What to present?
First, take that nobody is perfect, including you and hundreds of participants at the conference you want to present. Take that again – Nobody is perfect.
How one can come to the research mentioned in the previous chapter entitled as: “The influence of the class time schedule on the overall students’ performance in physics lab work”. We will see below how this research idea can be generated, research developed very easy and relatively fast, and results presented on a conference.
Thursday, 05.12.xx, 3:15pm. The teacher is going through current students’ grades on labs and suddenly she realizes that when her classes are first at the morning at 8am and students are doing labs, they always get a little bit lower grades than expected. She remembers that students were not focused well, their required motoring skills weren’t in good use, their