Teachers Against Methodology
Simon Andrewes, Spain
Simon Andrewes is a semi-freelance, semi-retired, semi-unemployed English teacher based in Granada, Spain, where he also leads cultural tours related to the life, times and work of the poet-playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. E-mail: simon@granadalabella.info
Menu
Introduction
Teachers
Methodologists
The Gulf Between Them
Filters
The Teacher-Researcher
Unfortunately
References
In an article "Fighting the filters" in English Teaching professional 49 (March 2007), Mario Rinvolucri tentatively suggested that over the past 25 years very few of the teaching techniques proposed by methodologists had found their way into the mainstream of ELT practice. He went on to argue that the reason for this resistance to new techniques could be found in a system of filters that helped make teachers "immune" to new ideas so that it may take "aeons" for "patently good ideas" to be adopted. Furthermore, Mario strongly suggested that these defensive filters tended to be made up of syllogisms, flawed reasoning, and irrational negative beliefs, only conceding a certain validity to the cultural filter, to which he recommended methodologists pay special attention.
My own observations support Mario's thesis about teacher resistance to methodologists' innovatory endeavours. Over the same time span that Mario is talking about (25 years) I have noticed an at times fierce hostility in fellow teachers towards methodology. My subjective personal impressions are backed up, to mention just one example, by the authority of Professor B. Kumaravadevilu of the San José State University in California who has argued that the failure of a succession of methods to shape teaching practice in a constant way has nurtured "antimethod sentiment among teachers".
Nevertheless, my view is that the teachers' reluctance to take on the methodologists patently good ideas needs a different explanation than that given by Mario and that teachers' filters are less irrational than may at first sight appear.
Mario himself goes some way towards explaining the mistrust the teacher has for the methodologist when he draws a picture of the conservative teacher in his/her static and stuffy classroom, showing resistance to any form of change. Facing the daily challenge the classroom presents them with, teachers want something tried and tested and ready to hand. A teacher is not fond of experiments, which may backfire. Over the years, they build up a repertoire of practical and effective activities and techniques and as long as these are seen to work, teachers are reluctant to replace them. The protective set of filters that teachers acquire to ward off innovatory methods and thus frustrate the good intentions of the methodologists are really just a part of the trying and testing of new activities or techniques before letting them pass into their repertoire. It is not surprising that teachers show little enthusiasm for the latest trends in English teaching methodology – which often come from an avantgarde teaching practice which is fairly restricted socially and geographically to EFL classes in English speaking countries or similar western style cultures and to teachers who have been trained in the classical communicative ELT methodology.
Methodologists, on the other hand, have to be dynamic, always seeking new ways of teaching so as to bring lessons to life and engage students, and to attract their paymasters, mostly syllabus designers and test book publishers. They do not feel the constraints of everyday school life and have, as Mario says, opened the windows of stuffy classrooms to explore "feeder" - read "greener" – fields, such as NLP, psychodrama, and so on. In their work they are always under pressure to produce something new. Contrary to the teacher, the methodologist owes his/her livelihood to constantly revolutionising teaching ideas, discovering something that has not been tried before. If a methodologist does not come up with a new activity or new technique, he/she has nothing to sell. What use is a methodologist who says: "OK, carry on as before"? So methodologists are obliged to spend their lives "pushing" – Mario himself uses this word – their innovative wares. They have to "push" them because there is no ready demand for them.
In the above cited article Mario emphasises the fact that there is a wide gulf between the great majority of the 5-6 million English language teachers in the world and the small group of vociferous avant-garde methodologists.
Teachers' mistrust of and resentment towards methodology are clearly a consequence of this gulf between practice and theory. Teachers resent the freedom of the methodologists who have escaped the everyday challenge of the stuffy classroom. They envy them their freedom to explore greener, more varied and potentially more interesting fields, not having to cope with the daily burden of getting a lesson together for the next morning. Methodologists aren't faced every day with school weariness or disruptive behaviour, on the one hand, or bureaucratic prescriptions and restrictions, on the other. In short, the teacher's and the methodologist's aims and interests are simply at odds. Teachers are suspicious of the ideas that such a different set of circumstances engenders, and it could hardly be otherwise. Teachers doubt from the outset that such ideas, however patently good they may be, will be easily applicable in the closed-in classroom environment of their daily routine.
Whereas Mario's cited article is clearly aligned with the point of view of the methodologists, whose aims and interests he shares, this one equally clearly takes the part of the oft maligned and long suffering teacher.
To illustrate how the gulf of difference between these two points of view affects the teacher's filtering mechanism, let us take up the examples that Mario cites of two activities that have actually broken through the general resistance to innovation among teachers in the last quarter of a century: the Find Someone Who…activity and the Running Dictation. Over the years, says Mario, they have "cajoled their way" through the immune system filters of many teachers. And Mario - through his active pushing and engaged propagation - has played not an inconsiderable part in making this happen.
The Running Dictation cajoled its way through my immune system filters long ago because it is a great activity. Enjoyable at least, usually engaging and motivating, it is possibly an effective reading-speaking-listening-writing exercise. In fact, I needed no cajoling. I took it to my heart without reservation from the very start. Yet I would venture to say that, beyond teachers trained in the classical ELT methodology, the activity has not extended very far. Few state school teachers that I have talked to in Spain know of its existence, let alone practice it.
I have, on the other hand, never warmed to Find Someone Who…. It has never been able to break through my "I don't like it so my students won't" or my "I couldn't do that with my class" filters. Is my rejection syllogistic or irrationally negative? I would say not. Over time, I have found the activity impracticable and inappropriate for the generally uniform experience of most members of most of my classes, who very often know each other inside out anyway. The findings are predictable and I have never been able to make the activity work well. Fellow teachers have suggested to me various ways to get round this, but in the end I have dropped it from my repertoire because it seems more trouble than it is worth.
Another reason for my rejection of this activity, admittedly, is a certain adversion I have to milling activities in general. Whatever my ulterior motive, I have in the meantime built up a professional belief filter that says if a teacher is not convinced by an activity type or technique, he/she or I will not be able to convince the students of its value. If I am not enjoying myself, it is less likely that my students are. Better look round for something else. No cajoling will now induce me to give Find Someone Who… another try.
My own different reaction to these two activities, both "patently good ideas" sheds a little light on the gulf of difference between the teacher and the methodologist. It raises the question: can an activity still be a patently good idea if the teacher, perhaps because of his/her shortcomings, cannot cope with it? Anyway, no idea, however patently good it may be, can be universally applicable.
If an activity or technique cannot cajole its way through the teacher's personal or cultural filters, could this not mean that the methodologist has not fully thought through his/her idea, taken the teacher's classroom situation fully into account? The teacher's personal anti-innovation filters are not only made up of syllogisms, flawed reasoning, and irrational negative beliefs, as Mario seems to suggest. My filtering out of Find Somebody Who… came about because I could not make it work after several attempts.
Admittedly, my own point of view as a teacher must be wildly subjective in the way Mario argues, seeing as I am only one of 5-6 million English teachers yet have little direct experience of classes outside my own. But, is the methodologist in a better position to draw a picture of the learners his/her new activity is devised for? I only have a view of my own class, it is true, but it has been over time and in depth, whereas the methodologist has seen many classes, but with less involvement, at a distance, as it were. I would not dare suggest whose view is more objective, more valid.
When the methodologist devises a new activity, he/she tries to think him/herself into the teacher's position. But in the end the gulf is too wide. Even if the methodologist has recent experience of the classroom, he/she no longer shares the teacher's aims and interests. The essence of the methodologist's is to innovate, to change the way things are done. The teacher's are to preserve what works and filter out possible upsets.
Is there an alternative to the teacher-methodologist dichotomy? Another world is possible: that of the teacher-researcher.
I am thinking in terms of the critical pedagogy that argues that specific learning and teaching circumstances are necessarily unique and unpredictable. There are so many unknown determiners that go into the make up of a particular classroom situation that it is impossible to devise all-embracing activities or techniques that are "patently good ideas" in all circumstances. The mere limitations of a methodologist's cultural knowledge and awareness – their adherence to the classical EFL communicative methodology, for example - mean this is almost inevitably so in most parts of the world. It is quite impossible for a methodologist to be fully sensitive to every particular group of teachers teaching a particular group of learners pursuing a particular set of goals within a particular institutional context embedded in a particular sociocultural milieu at a particular time.
Because of unpredictable factors such as the great variety of cultural contexts around the world, the wide range of societal needs, contrasting political exigencies, differing economic imperatives, and varying degrees of institutional constraints, the previously cited Professor Kumaravadevilu came to the conclusion that the practice of teaching defies classification. This being so, the teacher must be his/her own methodologist, "theorising what they practice and practicing what they theorise" through a painstaking and ongoing process of self-observation, self-analysis, and self-evaluation. Through this process the Professor expects teachers to be able to generate their own personal context-specific pedagogy.
Unfortunately, such a painstaking process would require around the world a level of investment in terms of time and money that is unlikely to be forthcoming. English being taught as a link in a sort of information/instruction transmission belt for the benefit of the masters of global industry and commerce, the overriding exigency is not self-fulfilment or the empowerment of teachers and students, but cost efficiency. The division of labour between teachers and methodologists serves this purpose satisfactorily well. As long as it does, teachers will continue to perform within the restrictions and constraints of their stuffy classrooms and the methodologists will continue to rack their brains for a new idea, to be produced out of the hat, as it were, to prove their value to their paymasters. The teacher as teacher-researcher would only be an expensive distraction from the real and immediate business of teaching and learning English.
So, ultimately I resign myself to the status quo and try to make the best of it. But a little part of me rages against the fact that teachers are denied the resources to be in full control of their own teaching and to develop a methodology that is minted on their own teaching situation. Now and again, this little part of me needs to be aired.
Rinvolucri, M. 2007. "Fighting the filters." English Teaching professional 49 (March).
Kumaravadivelu, B. 2003. Beyond Methods. Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. Yale University Press.
Andrewes, S. 2003/4. Review of B Kumaravadevilu's book in GRETA. Revista para profesores de Inglés. Vol 11 nº 2, pp 83-7.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the English for Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
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