Reflection and cooperation

Often, our individual initiatives to bring about change in our classrooms involve the collaborative efforts of others around us, such as:

• our students
• colleagues in the same department/school/institution
• colleagues outside our own school/institution
• colleagues with a different area of expertise (e.g. teacher and trainer; teacher and full-time researcher; teacher and manager, etc.)
• colleagues in other disciplines (e.g. foreign language teacher/ mother tongue teacher)
• colleagues in other countries

While cooperation is beneficial in that we may gain data that otherwise we could not access (e.g., What do our students think about a specific problem? What is the case in other classrooms/ schools/countries?), it can also present hardships. Can you think of advantages and potential disadvantages of collaborative classroom research?

Becoming aware of our beliefs

Every teacher and every learner is different. Therefore, teaching is most effective when it relies on two kinds of knowledge: knowledge of the students and self-knowledge (Pennington, 1990). Becoming aware of our (sometimes latent) beliefs about teaching and learning is an essential way of implementing change in our classroom practice. The following activities are meant to develop self-knowledge, by uncovering attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning, about students and about ourselves, as teachers:

Your Experience as a Language Learner is meant to guide you in recalling your experiences as a language learner, and to make you think about the pedagogical value of certain language learning activities. After completing the exercise, you may also think about how your experiences as a learner, in particular the activities you liked or you did not like doing have shaped your classroom practice. Are there any tasks that you liked as a student, and therefore you have included in your practicum? Are there any activities you did not like as a student, but you still use as a teacher? Why?

 

 

Reading and thinking your way through Essential Conditions for a Class leads you to consider what you find essential conditions for a class. While doing the activity, you may find yourself questioning some of your explicit beliefs about classroom conditions. Do you agree with the five “classroom rules” listed? Or do you tend to think in more open ways about classroom management? Or else, you may think that not all is black and white, and you may want to rephrase the five statements into a more positively oriented set of guidelines, which will still involve the need for a basic level of respect and discipline in the classroom as a necessary condition for teaching and learning.

The Ideal Student exercise is helpful in raising awareness of teachers’ biases about individual students and student behaviours:

 

Learning to teach from our own learning experiences

It appears by now that our beliefs about teaching and learning are rooted in our professional and personal experiences. The activities suggested by Pennington (1990) also suggest that examining and questioning our beliefs is part of professional development. This is how we learn to teach from our own experiences as learners.

Read the following narrative to find out not only how Jerry Gebhard finally found a Yoga class that suited his needs as a learner, but also to see how the author explores his learning experiences as tools in his development as a teacher.

Try to identify the personal experiences that helped the author bring about changes in the way he thought about teaching. What personal experiences have helped you to make connections to your teaching?