Roles reflecting a personal view of teaching

The way teachers teach is often a personal interpretation of what they think works best in a given situation. For many teachers, a teaching approach is something uniquely personal, which they develop through experience and apply in different ways according to the demands of specific situations. Teachers create their own roles within the classroom based on their theories of teaching and learning and the kind of classroom interaction they believe best supports these theories.

Teachers see their roles in different ways. These may not necessarily be those as assigned to them by their institution or linked to a particular method of teaching. Teachers may select such roles for themselves as:

- planner (who sees planning and structuring learning activities as fundamental to success in learning and teaching);

- manager (who organises and manages the classroom environment and classroom behaviour in a way that will maximise learning);

- quality controller (who maintains the quality of language use in the classroom, reinforcing correct language use and discouraging incorrect use);

- group organiser (who develops an environment in which students work co-operatively on group tasks);

- facilitator (who helps students discover their own ways of learning and work independently);

- motivator (who seeks to improve students’ confidence and interest in learning and to build a classroom climate that will motivate students);

- empowerer (who tries to take as little control or direction over the lesson as possible and lets the students make decisions about what they want to learn and how they want to learn it);

- team member (who constitutes a team together with all the students in the class and interacts like a member of a team).

These roles often overlap. Furthermore, teachers cannot be all things to all people, and the teacher’s role may change during the lesson. E.g., in the opening phases of a lesson where the teacher is modelling new language patterns, the teacher may be particularly concerned with planning and quality control. At a later stage of the lesson where students are working independently, the teacher’s role may be that of a facilitator. The way teachers interpret their roles leads to differences in the way they approach their teaching. It leads to differences in how teachers understand the dynamics of an effective lesson and consequently different patterns of classroom behaviour and classroom interaction. Teachers’ personal view of their role in the classroom thus influences how they respond to the following dimensions of teaching.

- Classroom management and organisation: the way of establishing classroom routines, procedures and rules; the kinds of seating arrangements teachers use.

- Teacher control: the way of maintaining an acceptable level of performance in the classroom.

- Curriculum, content and planning: approach to lesson planning, lesson organisation and structure.

- Instructional strategies: the type of teaching approach and classroom activities teachers prefer.

- Motivational techniques: the strategies teachers use to create classroom climate and motivation.

- Assessment philosophy: the type of assessment procedures teachers use.

A teacher’s style of teaching may thus be thought of as resulting from how the teacher interprets his role in the classroom, which is linked to the teacher’s belief system.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-13