Since beginning of March 2014 I am participating
on an online IH (International House) course on Teacher Trainings. Last week
module was on self-reflecting and that is what gave me the impulse to start
writing this blog. One of the module’s topic that has interested me is the role
of the teacher.
I would like to comment on different roles a
teacher takes, basing my opinions on the article of Thomas S.C. Farrel1.
Farrel makes a study extracting data from discussions and reflections of three
experienced ESL teachers in Canada. The results are that teacher role identities
can be grouped in three clusters: i) teacher as Manager, ii) teacher as Acculturator,
and iii) teacher as Professional. Within teacher as Manager he distinguishes Vendor,
Entertainer, Communication controller, Juggler, Motivator, Presenter, and
Arbitrator. Teacher as Acculturator is formed by Socializer, Social Worker, and
Careprovider. Lastly, teacher as Proffesional are Collaborator, Learner and
Knowledgeable.
I found myself these categories really
representative of what a teacher is and which roles he/she takes. Depending on
the situation, on the students, on the school organization, on the contents we
are teaching or simply on the mood of that day we, as teachers, change into
different roles. Most of the times, we play one role without even realising
that we are doing it, therefore I have found this exercise of self-reflection highly
informative.
After reading the article, we were asked to decide
which role/roles we do play more often. I have read my colleagues’ comments and
decided to compare Farrel’s taxonomy with ours. I take as participant a group
of nine experienced language teachers. Here are the results:
|
Category
|
Farrel’s
ocurrences
|
Our
ocurrences
|
Category
|
Farrel’s
ocurrences
|
Our
ocurrences
|
|
Teacher as Manager
|
|
|
Teacher as Acculturator
|
|
|
|
Vendor
|
12
|
-
|
Socializer
|
9
|
2
|
|
Entertainer
|
9
|
4
|
Social Worker
|
8
|
2
|
|
Communication controller
|
6
|
2
|
Careprovider
|
4
|
1
|
|
Juggler
|
5
|
-
|
Teacher as Professional
|
|
|
|
Motivator
|
4
|
5
|
Collaborator
|
14
|
4
|
|
Presenter
|
3
|
1
|
Learner
|
4
|
8
|
|
Arbitrator
|
3
|
1
|
Knowledgeable
|
3
|
2
|
The first thing that surprised me the most was
the fact that none of us identify himself as Vendor, being this category one
with the most occurrences in Farrel study. I can guess that even we all come
from an Institution we do feel free to adapt the teaching method we considered
the best for the learning situation, so we do not have so much pressure on “selling”
a particular teaching method. It surprised me too that none of us identify with
Juggler because when describing ourselves as teachers, before reading the
article, some of us mentioned this multi-task situation. However, there are two
roles that especially took my attention, the teacher as learner and as
collaborator. We all identify ourselves with the first one taking as example
the course we are participating. Nevertheless, only half of us identify with Collaborator,
which astonished me because the course we are participating is on Teacher
training.
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1Farrel,
T. (2011) Exploring the professional role
identities of experienced ESL teachers through reflective practice. System
39, 54-62, Elsevier.
