бичлэгWill Taylor,
/Exeter University UK/
The ‘Outreach’ programme began with some ideas about reflective professional practice. Teachers were invited to think carefully about what they do in their work, and why. As the programme has developed we have looked as aspects of research, in particular small-scale research related to school and classroom practice. Many participating teachers have become enthusiastic about addressing particular issues and problems they find in their own school or in approaches to learning in their subject areas. The programme has discussed and effectively used group work and explored different ways of constructing knowledge. We have considered different ways of producing data and have seen that knowing the kind of questions to ask and recognising that the questions that have actually been answered can be quite different. Understanding this may help us with the often difficult task of analysis. We have used the quotation, ‘Systematic enquiry, made public’, as a clear and simple guide when thinking about our research. *************** In exploring some ideas about the role of the teacher I shall rely on the ideas we have used and developed through the project. I shall also ask, but not always answer, a lot of questions that are relevant to the teacher’s role. These questions will provoke reflection, will incorporate differing viewpoints and may also set patterns for a research agenda. It is not certain that there can ever be definite answers to some of the questions. The intention is to stimulate thought in the expectation that improved practice will result. So, what is the role of the teacher? Any sensible answer to that simple question is likely to be very complicated, for the teacher’s role is multi-faceted. Not only that, but responses will depend upon who is answering the question. Who might reasonably be expected to have opinions about the teacher’s role? Let me suggest a few: Teachers, parents, pupils, school administrators, ministry officials, employers, politicians, teacher educators, publishers, philosophers ………… There may be many more. It is clear enough that certain groups have a more obviously interactive personal professional relationship with teachers than others on this short list. Clearly, pupils, parents and other teachers are personally concerned with the effects of the teacher’s professional activity. We might expect them to exhibit similar attitudes to the role of the teacher, though it is probable that there would be wide differences of emphasis. I have often pointed out that what we do as educators is: ‘Take other people’s children and set out deliberately to change them’. That is a brief account of the function of bringing about learning in young people. For learning is, necessarily, a process of change. When we have learned something new we are no longer the same as before we knew that. It is the process of facilitating learning that lies at the heart of the teacher’s role. That we do this deliberately implies both intention and some sense of the process and its consequences. This is at once philosophical, theoretical, and practical. Philosophically our intention to bring about learning in others is probably rooted in a set of ideas and ideals that presume that to do so is both good for the individuals concerned and for the society that promotes it. Teachers have generally benefited from learning and are thus inclined to wish to help others learn for their own good. Thus teachers are also complicit in the larger state enterprise that is compulsory education and implicitly subscribe to the belief that mass education is for the benefit of society as well as the individuals concerned. There will also be important social and philosophical questions relating to what should be learned and why – that is to say, the curriculum. Theoretically our approach to learning will be affected by study, research, reference to established practice and by changing social and political attitudes. All of these may affect: - content – what is to be learned; - process – how it is to be learned. The interaction between content and process is complex and often controversial. Outcomes are measured, very frequently in terms of recall of content offered to learners. For example, ‘What new knowledge can learners now demonstrate as a result of the teaching/learning process?’ Controversy often arises over process – in at least two ways. Many teachers are concerned that simple memorisation of factual knowledge as information is not sufficient, arguing that understanding is the means by which knowledge becomes a part of the learner, providing the individual with insight through which to manipulate, interpret and modify. Some teachers may vary the teaching and learning process in the classroom in order to engage fully as many pupils as possible. It is well established that different pupils respond to different means of communication of the same essential knowledge. Some prefer listening, some reading, some doing, some discussing, others by example, by collaboration in pairs or in groups or by experiment ….. etc. By using a range of approaches the skilled teacher is able to help pupils construct wider and deeper aspects of knowledge and come to that full ownership that represents understanding and opens the pupils to further progress. It is also important that pupils are conscious of learning, for successful learning is addictive and stimulates the desire and capacity for further learning. It is generally also enjoyable. We motivate our pupils, as we motivate ourselves, most effectively through success, however small the steps. Some teachers would argue, and I count myself among them, that the most important gift we have for our pupils is to teach them how to learn. That is to suggest that they should be encouraged, even instructed, to acquire habits and procedures of mind that will enable them to deal with new knowledge and come to new understandings. These may well be about as yet unseen and unimagined aspects of a world whose social, political and philosophical foundations seem to be in flux. In the lifetimes of those of us who are teachers many changes have taken place, a good proportion of them quite unexpected. The world as a whole is awash with information and knowledge, often as a result of technology that was generally unimaginable a generation ago. Much of that technology, for example cell phones and computers, may be seen as the fruit of coming to understand and utilise previously developing knowledge. Yet the expansion of available knowledge without appropriate procedures for developing understanding may lead to impossible expectations and loss of coherence. Through education, over no more than couple of centuries, popular educational thinking has adopted a view that the acquisition of knowledge leads to individual and societal advantage. As a consequence education has been adapted to reinforce the gathering of knowledge. However, because of the sheer quantity there is a real danger of drowning in tidal waves of information or at least of floundering amid foam of disconnected and incoherent bubbles of knowledge whose links ebb and flow in most elusive ways. It is as if the processes for understanding are overwhelmed by a presumption that knowing alone is good enough and will eventually promote understanding. It may even be that some people in many societies continue to feel that the primary function of education in schools is to stuff minds with as much knowledge as possible in the hope that some will come to inform a maturing understanding of the world as it is necessary and possible to recall it. It has certainly been the case in the past that curricula have been created that reflect views of what should be taught among those who both believe they know best and have the authority to say so In poorly resourced education systems, or in societies in which only a very few educated people have particular knowledge and there are no books, then a very traditional role of the teacher as a fundamental source of knowledge may prevail for different reasons. The teachers’ main motivation may be a desire to share that knowledge with others. The collective wish of such a society may be that the teachers disseminate knowledge that otherwise will not be available, and that schools are the appropriate, perhaps only place in which that can take place. Yet even in such cases there is a pressing need to find ways of understanding that will cope with what is unknown, unfamiliar and, as yet, unimagined. It may be a responsibility for teachers to find procedures that will accommodate the idea of vast knowledge and facilitate generalised means of unlocking or accessing information. Many early schools concentrated on means by which people might learn more. The simple elementary school curriculum objectives of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic were generally presented within an overt context of whatever was the state’s governing religious or philosophical code. They set out to develop basis skills that would enable the individual to pursue knowledge if they had inclination and opportunity. Sadly in many countries opportunities for further study have been limited to children of the well off, though there was usually pressure from parents who themselves had more than elementary levels of education. The curricula we devise, be they traditional, radical or progressive seem only to represent different ideas of what is essential knowledge. Not only that, even if the suggested content is different, and it is often less different than we might expect considering the arguments that take place, there is simply far too much information, and too much knowledge to impart it with any coherence in the time available. We sometimes seem to realise that and begin to talk about introducing pupils to essentially different modes of thinking appropriate to different subjects. For example we suggest that pupils must discover how to think and learn, mathematically, scientifically, artistically, historically …..etc. Unfortunately we generally trap ourselves by concentrating on what content we can list, attempt and measure. Moreover, compulsory curricula are usually justified as containing essential knowledge without which the individual cannot function properly, at the very least as somebody who has been educated. Yet we also use assessments that embody concepts of success and failure. We presume in advance that some of our pupils will fail to come to know and understand ideas and information that we have defined as essential. We establish a compulsory process of learning that deliberately intends that a proportion – often a predetermined proportion – of our pupils will experience failure. In short it could be claimed that we teach failure in subjects that we have stated to be essential. In a short article I wrote for the Module Two booklet I asked a number of fundamental questions. Among them was one that is relevant here. Here is how I put it then. ‘Bearing in mind that everyone has been compelled to attend is it ethical to expect that some will ‘fail’? - Is there an acceptable ‘failure’ rate ? - If so, was that clear at the beginning of the process? - How can it be justified?’ (W.Taylor Outreach Booklet Two 2007, p17) At an individual human level it is difficult to see how such a process may be justified, especially for those pupils for whom school may comprise ten years of daily experience of failure and all the loss of self esteem that entails. At a societal level such a process is clearly wasteful of resources and cruel. For teachers, it would seem to be a denial of our purpose. Most of us, however, have accepted that part of our role is to measure, to sort out our pupils and grade them in order that others may process them further. Yet when we reflect upon our ambitions as teachers we may consider that our most fundamental task is to develop our pupils’ capacities to learn successfully not only what we already know but what we do not know and may not be able to imagine. Once again I find my emphasis falling upon a learning process rather than acquisition of knowledge. I think I would argue that knowledge may more rapidly be acquired if flexible learning strategies have become a part of the learner’s curiosity and openness to experience and ideas. Thus we can see that role of the reflective professional is much more than that of a deliverer of knowledge. The teacher should be an important guiding star from which successive waves of individual stargazers may disperse to explore such galaxies as they choose. It is an enabling role at its humblest, perhaps an inspiring role at its most ambitious. We speak of lifelong learning with approval and as teachers embrace the idea and indulge in a degree of possession, for we like to see ourselves as necessary to that process. Yet it is evident that lifelong learning is what we all do all our lives. It may be useful to organise, codify and measure some of what we learn. Some of us seek after coherence, some after a more spiritual sense of understanding. Western individualism and the scientific rationalism of which we were once so proud were once seen to be at odds with acceptance of the unknowable. We had to know enduring facts, then we had to refine or contest established facts to meet the new insights our questioning habits had discovered. The very simple idea that teachers should develop a range of strategies through which to encourage learning is one practical way in which we may open the minds of our pupils in order that they may come to understand new ideas, processes and knowledge.
