Teachers--who needs them?

Abstract

This purpose of this paper is to invite language teachers to look at their teaching practices, and to investigate whether they are promoting or hindering the process of learning. When we consider the importance of affect in the classroom, and the ways in which affective barriers to learning are set up, it becomes apparent that the classroom educator needs to be proficient in establishing a positive and productive learning environment, as well as being a "learning expert", empowering students in terms of self-direction, self-assessment, learner training, and self-access skills. Teachers thus have a very active role to play in learning, but this role is one of facilitator, counselor of autonomous learning, and visiting consultant in the language workshop.

1. Introduction

This paper poses the question of whether the presence of a teacher in the language classroom has a positive influence on the learning process that goes on there: "What do students learn from the teacher that they cannot learn by themselves?" It is argued that, having dropped the dubious "modeler of correct language" and "transmitter of desirable information" concepts, the language teacher has a responsibility to construct and maintain a holistic, humanistic learning environment (a life-skills workshop), in which he/she is a consultant, encouraging and empowering students to grow into responsible, creative, and critical-thinking adult members of society.

2. Then and now

When investigating the effect of second language instruction, some twenty years ago, Long (1983) concluded that the presence of a teacher in the classroom made a slight difference in terms of grammatical accuracy on the part of the students--not a huge endorsement for teachers or teaching methodologies at that time! Since then, theory and research have progressed in a number of fields (e.g. affect, alternative assessment, autonomy, learner training, the process syllabus), such that the learner-centered classroom (cf. Tudor, 1996) is now a sine qua non in TEFL literature. Roles of teachers and students have thus changed radically since 1983, and the contemporary learning environment has little place for the view of the teacher as dispenser-of-information, or the student as an empty vessel into which that information can be poured. In this sense, "teacher" ("One that teaches; especially: one whose occupation is to instruct", Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary) is an outmoded concept, and the passive student a thing of the past. Instead, humanistic and holistic principles, which have been at the foundation of education since its inception, have combined with recent research to redefine the teacher's role as counselor and learning resource.

3. Educational principles

Putting aside perceived impracticalities and administrative restrictions, most teachers, when asked about their role in society (and in the classroom), would agree with the following quotes:

   The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves
   throughout their lives. Robert Hutch
   The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. Mark Van Doren
   The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without
   his teacher. Elbert Hubbard (quotes from Escotet international Link)

Why is it, then, that the language classroom so very often negates such ideas? Are the practicalities of teaching really incompatible with generally-espoused educational concepts, or is it that unreflective teacher-control and propositional syllabi (Breen, 1987) are to blame? It is public domain that learning is not linear, that students have their own learning agendas and do not learn what the teacher teaches (Allwright, 1984), and that the logistics of what gets learned in a lesson cannot be predicted (Allwright, 2000, p. 13). Yet observation of many so-called "communicative" classes often reveals learning environments that are surprisingly autocratic. If the teacher is not holding forth at the front of the room for the majority of the lesson, asking static, one-way language-as-code questions specifically designed to prevent meaningful interaction, then he/she will be dispensing commands reminiscent, in the assumptions underlying them, of a Sergeant Major at a Boot-Camp:

Listen to me I need to direct all of you now, so that you can learn how to do without my directions later. I have decided what you all need to learn and how you should learn it, and I have judged that everyone must learn the same thing at the same time, so you need to understand what I want you to do.

Today we will learn I will teach an aspect of linguistic code, and probably give you a test on it as well, even though knowledge of the elements of a language in fact counts for nothing unless the user is able to combine them in new and appropriate ways to meet the linguistic demands of the situation in which he/she wishes to use the language.

Follow my instructions I know that I am repeating what is written in your textbook, but I can't trust you to understand by yourselves.

Begin I have stopped talking for a while, so please interact now.

Stop what you are doing and listen to me I have something to tell you which is more important than task-completion or individual discovery, and must be transmitted to everyone at the same time.

One must ask where "the art of assisting discovery" (see quote above) is to be found in such a classroom. How can this be termed "communicative" or "learner-centered", when the teacher is defining, controlling and dispensing value judgments on what is learned by whom, when, and in what manner? What valuable learning experiences are students gaining from such treatment? Where is negotiation of meaning, social interaction, promotion of self-confidence and esteem, learner autonomy and learner-training?

4. Where are they now?

Before considering alternatives to traditional roles and practices, it is instructional to think back to our own university, high school, middle school, and elementary school times:

-- What images come to mind?

-- Can we identify any learning experiences?

-- How did we feel about the language lessons?

-- What memories do we have of our teachers?

-- What did our teachers give us that we still remember?

-- How effective were their strategies?

-- Do learning experiences stick in the memory, or the people who catalyze them?

-- What influence did our teachers have on our learning and on the life for which they were preparing us?

What, then, are the enduring memories of our school times? Was there a flash of light when we met e=[mc.sup.2]? Did the walls collapse around us when we found that [a.sup.2] = [b.sup.2] + [c.sup.2] in an isosceles triangle? How about when we heard Beethoven or read D.H. Lawrence for the first time? Were we guided through a wonderland of higher-order concepts that we couldn't have learnt simply by staying at home and observing people in their workplaces, or by going to the library and reading the relevant books? Can we really say "This person taught me all I know about geometry" or "This teacher taught me about my social responsibilities"? Do we remember the insightful practitioner who revealed everything about reflexive verbs, or are our memories more about positive emotional and affective modeling?

5. An alternative vision

Returning once more to the reflective mode, let us imagine the teacher as a consultant, a guest in the learning environment, surrounded by groups of students working on meaningful learning projects that they have devised in consultation with their expert guest. Assessment is also self-devised, providing information about students' learning achievements. Maybe the class is working on a newspaper, or a drama, accessing the teacher as an academic and linguistic resource. In this learning environment, the tables have finally been turned. Content is meaningful, students are active, assessment has its true role (cheating is not an option), error-correction happens on demand (often in a group context--peer-correction), and students study what they see as valuable.

Such a vision is most often criticized for reasons of "impracticality". After all, it is all very well to advocate mutual respect and unconditional trust, and to remonstrate with teachers to give up their autocracy, but how is this to be achieved in reality? A good starting point in this respect lies in the ten basic propositions "crucial for language

teachers", proposed by Williams & Burden (1997):

1. There is a difference between learning and education.

2. Learners learn what is meaningful to them.

3. Learners learn in ways that are meaningful to them.

4. Learners learn better if they feel in control of what they are learning.

5. Learning is closely linked to how people feel about themselves.

6. Learning takes place in a social context through interactions with other people.

7. What teachers do in the classroom will reflect their own beliefs and attitudes.

8. There is a significant role for the teacher as mediator in the language classroom.

9. Learning tasks represent an interface between teachers and learners.

10. Learning is influenced by the situation in which it occurs. (Williams & Burden, 1997, p. 204)

If we take these statements as our creed, then it is evident that the teacher-centred classroom must not persist, whatever the administrative constraints on student-centred learning. If we also accept research findings that autonomy is desirable, that students possess individual learning beliefs and perceptions that drive learning, and that the "effect of affect" (Scovel, 1978) is more important than cognitive learning, then teacher-reflection on lesson-content and learning achievement must focus on new parameters. Instead of asking "What did I teach today?" or "What did the students learn today?", teachers must ask searching questions about their teaching approach and the principles underlying it:

1. Am I promoting holistic education?

2. Am I giving my students learning skills and life-skills that will enable them to become responsible members of society?

3. Do my lessons consist of discrete sentences, yes/no and wh-questions, articles, prepositions, conditionals, and relative clauses, plus inductively or deductively presented pedagogic "grammar points", with structures generally presented one at a time (occasionally in contrasting pairs)?

4. Do I use structurally and lexically graded dialogues or reading passages (Widdowson, 1978; Ventola, 1987)?

5. Do I model usage, rather than use (Widdowson, 1978), mixing different functions of language which happen to be encoded using the same form?

6. Do I try to teach the whole grammatical system, though few learners need it all?

7. Do I recognize that learners do not acquire structures in isolation but as parts of complex mappings of form-function relationships?

8. Do I use instructional sequences which do not reflect acquisition sequences (Pienemann, 1987)?

9. Do I understand, for beginners, at least, "the inadequacy of full native-like target structures as a unit of analysis in syllabus design"? (Long & Crookes, 1993, p. 15).

6. Practical solutions

6.1 Portfolios

Alternative assessment methods (learner journals, peer- and self-assessment, portfolios, learner-conversations, teacher-learner interviews) offer the language teacher a means of promoting autonomous, holistic and responsible learning, and have the added advantage that they can supplement conventional curricula. Portfolios satisfy and arise from contemporary learning theories, acting as agents of behavioral change, being concerned with personal meanings and ideas, being cooperative and collaborative experiences, growing over time, reflecting the personal nature of learning, and allowing the learner to present his/her own formative learning experiences. There is both process and product in this exploration of learning and assessment, and consequently infinite scope for development of ideas in the direction of self-directed project work. By containing examples of work in progress, formal products, and "ratings or other evidence of student knowledge relative to specific objectives or purposes" (Valencia, 1990), portfolios can reflect the current status of the learner's educational journey.

6.2 Projects

Project-based syllabi exemplify process and task-based ideas by being "collaborative, avoiding competition, and lending themselves to analysis of global goals into subcomponents which are then delegated to sub-groups, who take responsibility for completing them" (Skehan, 1998, p. 273). They have a strong process dimension, but they are also notable for the product which emerges from the process e.g. oral presentation, drama, written report. It is seen as part of the process continuum a means rather than an end, useful for the feedback and therefore opportunities for assessment which it gives to the learners concerning their progress, as well as functioning as a "sort of public record of the project, of which the participants have ownership, and which will give the project some durability" (Skehan, 1998, p. 273).

6.3 Serf- and peer-assessment

Peer-assessment requires students to assess each other individually and in groups, and the results are used by teachers and students for reflection and further goal-setting. The projected benefits of peer-assessment for students are that cooperative experience of, and involvement in the evaluation process helps students develop affectively and ethically as well as cognitively, and raises their awareness of the learning process, thus enabling them to learn more effectively. Dickinson (1987) offers three justifications for self- (and peer-) assessment:

i. assessment leading towards evaluation is an important educational objective in its own right. Training learners in this is beneficial to learning;

ii. self-assessment is a necessary part of self-determination;

iii. self-assessment is one way of alleviating the assessment burden on the teacher.

By encouraging individual reflection, self- (and peer-) assessment "can begin to make students see their learning in personal terms [and] can help learners get better marks." (Harris, 1997, p. 13; Hill, 1994, p. 214; Miller & Ng, 1996, p. 134). Assinder (1991, pp. 218-28) reports increased motivation, participation, real communication, in-depth understanding, commitment, confidence, meaningful practice and accuracy when students prepare and deliver learning tasks for each other, and Haughton & Dickinson (1989) (cited in Miller & Ng, 1996, p. 135) found "a relatively high level of agreement between the peer assessments and the marks given by the lecturers" in their study of a collaborative post-writing assessment (cf. Fok, 1981).

7. Conclusion

An Israeli folktale tells of a party to which various members of the community were invited. It being normal for guests to provide wine, everybody took along their wine bottles and emptied them into the general vat of wine for consumption that night. However, people had also decided individually that it would not be noticed if their own wine bottle contained water. The result was a vat full of water (Taylor, 2000, p. 119). Language teachers, as educators, must ask to what extent they are taking water, labeled as wine, to the classroom. If we believe in humanistic practices, then we must model them in everything that we do (and do not do) in the classroom, and the learning environments over which we preside must change. If we subscribe to the view of the learner as agent of his/her own learning, then it is our responsibility to provide a learning environment full of learning affordances (Van Lier, 2000, p. 252), and to assume the role of "language resource" in a learning-for-life workshop. If, on the other hand, we continue to stick to pedagogically unsound, historically ineffective, administratively convenient practices, then it can truly be said that the classroom is a better place without such teacher-figures:

References

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Andrew E. Finch, Kyungpook National University, Republic of Korea

Andrew Finch, Ph.D., is associate professor of English Education. Andrew was born in Wales and educated in England, where he had various middle school teaching positions before going to Korea to learn Baduk.