Teacher Identity: Putting the Human Centre Stage

Mark Almond, UK

Mark Almond is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Language Studies at Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK where he directs and teaches on various pre- and in-service ELT-related programmes. His main areas of interest are in the use of drama in the language classroom and performance skills for effective and affective teaching. His book, 'Teaching English with Drama', was published in November 2005 by Keyways Publishing. In addition to his work at Christ Church, Mark speaks and delivers workshops on his areas of interest at conferences and educational institutions around the world. E-mail: mark.almond@canterbury.ac.uk
homepage:
www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-humanities/english-language-studies/Staff/mark-almond/

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Introduction
Rationale for investigating teacher identity and performing arts skills in ELT
Background to the research
Putting the ‘H-U-M-A-N’ into ‘being’ a teacher
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The inspiration for this enquiry into teacher identity was the realisation that most of the hundreds of English language teachers I have worked with over the years received little or no instruction in their initial training in interpersonal skills: skills that connect us with learners on a human, emotional level. Much has been written on the importance of affect (Krashen, 1981; Arnold, 1999; Dornyei, 2009; Williams and Burden, 1997) but little demonstrates the practical application to the classroom. It has been presumed teachers would instinctively be able to connect with their learners on a socio-psychological level but this seems to be a naïve viewpoint. Teacher training programmes have overemphasised the ‘what to do’ rather than the ‘how to be’, which is the primary focus of this article, drawing on research on the parallels between acting and teaching to engage learners in a whole-person and multisensory way while still maintaining a genuine teacher self

Rationale for investigating teacher identity and performing arts skills in ELT

In the research reported here, it is widely believed that if as teachers we are aiming to create a safe, non-threatening environment with low anxiety, productive classroom dynamics and enjoyment so that natural, meaningful learning and authentic communication can take place and students remain engaged and motivated, there are certain interpersonal and performance-related skills that might help us create a working space that more resembles a social out-of-class occasion rather than a formal classroom setting.

To this end, Stenhouse advocated teachers’ continuous reflective enquiry into their own work in order that they might consciously become effective and affective ‘artists’ in the classroom: “A teacher lays the foundation of his capacity for research by developing self-monitoring strategies … through self-monitoring, the teacher becomes a conscious artist. Through conscious art, he is able to use himself as an instrument of his research” (Stenhouse, 1985:15-16). His concept of teaching as an art is underpinned by the notion that the teacher is a researcher who questions, probes and analyses his/her own performance in the classroom and is subsequently willing to revise it (ibid: 96-7). Essentially, Stenhouse’s approach was rooted in the focus of the teacher’s ability to convey knowledge through meaningful, personalized and memorable social interaction with students in the classroom.

Pennington (2002:5) supports this when she states that: “Teaching and teacher identity are socially embedded … teaching is a socially constructed activity that requires the interpretation and negotiation of meanings embedded within the context of the classroom”. However, she differentiates between ‘teacher-as-artist’ – a performance-based conception of teacher identity – and ‘teacher-as-scholar’ – a knowledge-centred conception and claims that teacher training courses rarely get the balance between these two concepts right.

There are also many educators within ELT who view teaching as a performing art (Harmer, 1995; Crouch, 1989; Morgan, 2004; Lutzker, 2007) and an even greater number of educators outside of ELT (Tauber and Mester, 1994; Griggs, 2001; Sarason, 1999; Eisner, 1985; Dewey, 1934; Stenhouse, 1985). Harmer, for instance, says he was constantly fed the ‘teacher as actor’ metaphor when he interviewed teachers and asked them what they did and concluded that “a teacher’s presence and performing ability are critical” (Harmer, 1995:344).

Tauber and Mester (1994:33) underline how physical expressiveness, while crucial to increase motivation, must be kept natural as most students easily detect and react negatively to any kind of falseness:

“A teacher’s physical expressiveness positively impacts the students’ affective domain … the more expressive teachers are (within reasonable bounds of moderation) the better they are liked by their students. Thus, the students are more motivated to learn … so teachers like actors should act with a moderate level of animation”.

It seems to be generally agreed that any classroom situation can be viewed as a social situation or event and as such, the stakeholders within it should obey the usual social rules that nurture and develop relationships and facilitate natural communication – showing respect, empathy, offering acceptance of ideas, allowing space and time to process and respond to information and recognizing that all participants, including the teacher, are individuals with their own set of values, beliefs and learning styles and that certain performance-related skills could naturally facilitate this (Almond, 2007).

Background to the research: Constructing Teacher Identity Through Performance Skills – Is this the best way?

Making it real Little space here is needed to explain the rationale for making all of the classroom work we do a reflection of real-world communication. With any communicative approach, being inside an English language classroom should be an authentic experience where meaningful inter-communication can occur naturally and where all participants including the teacher interact in a human way because there is little doubt that we learn best when we can relate the content to ourselves and our lives or we can see a relevance to it or at the very least, we have a personal interest in it. In psychology, it is claimed that in order to create an effective learning environment, all participants need respect and empathy towards each other and what Carl Rogers terms ‘authenticity’ – in other words being yourself without hiding behind job titles, roles or masks. This point is particularly salient when considering issues of discipline. This line of enquiry led me to the current research which is attempting to collect the beliefs and views of in-service teachers from a range of educational settings around the world in order to answer a set of questions, which are detailed below.

Background to the research and the respondents

My interest in this area evolved from my extensive use of drama techniques with English language learners to help them become more confident, creative, expressive and spontaneous in their spoken English. My approach to using drama in the language classroom has always been more closely related to and informed by actor training rather than the piece-meal form found in some ELT books on the subject. Over time, the more I trained both pre- and in-service teachers from a multitude of cultural and educational settings, the more I realised that some of the actor training I was using on language students would be just as relevant for teachers.

Due to the broad range of respondents from a variety of educational settings, at this initial stage in the research, I did not set out to establish the beliefs and practices of teachers from one particular context, gender or length of teaching experience but rather aimed to gather general data that would be of interest to as broad an audience as possible though as the research progresses, it is hoped that patterns emerge amongst certain groups of respondents in order to identify in which context teacher training programmes might need re-evaluating.

Table 1 below sets out the cross-section of in-service English language teachers who have responded to my initial questionnaire so far:

Putting the ‘H-U-M-A-N’ into ‘being’ a teacher

The questionnaire poses 17 questions which ask: how teachers think they are perceived by their students; if teachers have a fixed view of how a teacher should be; if teachers’ sexual orientation or religion impact on their teaching; if teachers’ personal dress codes are important and contribute to their identity and the extent to which they believe technology might be overshadowing teacher/student rapport. There are also questions directly related to teacher identity and interpersonal and performance-related skills in their initial training. Mainly due to constraints of space here but also because certain sections were under-represented (religious groups and non-heterosexual groups), only the findings related to the latter will be reported. The questionnaires were distributed at various ELT international conferences in the UK and abroad that I spoke at on this subject; through word of mouth by email and via my Drama in ELT blog. This is why the respondents represent a broad range of teachers.

Three of the 17 questions are discussed here:

Do you create a separate teacher self and adopt a different persona inside the classroom compared with outside the classroom?

YES 24%, NO 58%, NOT SURE 18%

Teacher 1: “I have a separate teacher self in that I’m always in a good mood when in real life I have ups and downs”
Teacher 2: “I’m much more confident when I’m teaching. When I’m not teaching, I’m quiet and shy”
Teacher 3: “In school, I am much more positive, encouraging and funny than in other situations outside school”
Teacher 4: “Sadly, I’m nowhere near as relaxed, sociable and cheerful as my students probably think I am. However, to an extent, it’s not that I have a separate ‘teacher self’ so much as that I am able to be someone else I’d rather be when I am in the secure position of teacher in my own domain. Sounds awful written down!”
Teacher 5: “I try to be the same person inside and outside the classroom”
Teacher 6: “No, not at all! One of the things I love about teaching is because it allows me to be the person I am for the entirety of my working life. Being me seems to be an advantage in the classroom whereas in most other areas of employment that I tried before becoming a teacher, it was most definitely a hindrance”
Teacher 7: “I am who I am in any life situation. That is it. I am one person. There is only one and that is me”
Teacher 8: “I often feel more ‘myself’ inside the classroom than outside it except among close friends and family”

Some of the respondents recognised the need to modify their out-of-classroom behaviour to achieve particular outcomes and avoid negative experience inside the classroom. A confident teacher with a positive and cheerful countenance will be more effective in establishing a conducive communicative learning environment and maintaining discipline and productive rapports. There are undoubtedly occasions when the teacher does not feel energised or fresh when facing a class but as many can testify, if one does not consciously put on a mask and act with enthusiasm when necessary, there might be consequences that impact adversely on discipline, motivation and learning. According to Goffman’s theatrical metaphor and dramaturgical sociology paradigm (1959), when the teacher is ‘front stage’, s/he has the ability to control how s/he is perceived by students and this sometimes requires the teacher to consciously wear a particular mask. Clearly, occasionally teachers need to behave contrary to how they are feeling but what is imperative is that this “modified” behaviour e.g. with enthusiasm remains true to the way s/he genuinely behaves ‘enthusiastically’.

How much of your teacher training covered interpersonal skills and skills such as creative use of voice, space and movement to enhance classroom dynamics?

NONE 43%, LITTLE 40%, LOTS 17%

Teacher 9: “Not enough in my opinion”
Teacher 10: “Unfortunately, very little attention was devoted to these”
Teacher 11: “I think it should be given much more attention”
Teacher 12: “Interpersonal skills and teacher behaviour were barely mentioned”
Teacher 13: “None! This is one of the serious flaws of teacher training in my country (Portugal). As for interpersonal skills, we are generally supposed to “dig” into that and solve our own problems”.

These statistics are very worrying but perhaps not surprising because not every model of learning theory will work with all learners so often, the teacher is left to devise ways of dealing most appropriately with the teaching context s/he is in and his/her students’ emerging needs. Every comment made in my research expressed the concern though that not sufficient emphasis was put on this crucial aspect of teaching so clearly, there is a demand for some kind of training in these areas. The inability to predict exactly the context and students pre-service teachers will be faced with is no excuse not to offer any training at all which is why the workshops and seminars I run for teachers include training in the following ten areas related to actor training:

1. Breathing and posture, creative use of voice and voice development
2. Developing a teacher presence
3. The place of appropriate humour in the classroom
4. Awareness-raising and appropriate use of gesture and facial expression and their impact on communication
5. Creative and spontaneous use of space and movement in the classroom
6. The positive impact of arousing curiosity and setting up anticipation
7. Improvisation skills
8. The importance of being observant and alert
9. Teaching with energy and freshness
10. Varieties of eye contact and their impact on communication

For practical ideas on how to run a training session on the following areas, please see my article entitled Is Language Teaching Performance Art in The Teacher Trainer, 27 (3) (2013).

To what extent do you agree that in the classroom, teachers are essentially actors?
COMPLETELY AGREE 17%; MOSTLY AGREE 42%; NOT SURE 30%; COMPLETELY DISAGREE 11%

Teacher 14: “Teaching is like being on stage and feeling at ease while the audience watches … presenting things in an engaging manner and entertaining as a tool for motivating students”
Teacher 15: “Even on days when you’re tired or sick, you have to make an effort to create a pleasant atmosphere”
Teacher 16: “Sometimes I feel like I’m working undercover”
Teacher 17: “We have to act and adapt according to the type of audience we have”
Teacher 18: “We use our voice as the instrument of work and we do a lot in order to please the audience and keep it satisfied. We need to disguise our feelings if we’re feeling down. We use our body language to convey our message”
Teacher 21: “A teacher must be an entertainer – to capture the students’ attention and keep it. Must be interesting, funny and provocative. Must be able to make them laugh, wonder and think, most of all think. Must be able to move them and get them to react”
Teacher 22: “As a teacher you need to act as the policeman, as the friend, the loving parent, the strict parent, the expert psychologist, at some stage you improvise, you entertain, you make them laugh, make them cry, you provoke emotions ... and you get off stage”
Teacher 23: “I try to play my role well. I act all the time. I need to create an atmosphere where students like to stay. That atmosphere is the scenery on a stage and the way I play the role is dependent on the co-operation or not of the other actors, the students. I’m always in a situation where I have to improvise, even if I know my role well. Students are always changing their roles and I need to think quickly and make the necessary adjustments”
Teacher 24: I prefer to think that I am inhabited by a range of personalities rather than one, immutable personality. I am a carriage controlled by many different drivers. I am the horse and not the rider. One part of me makes ‘a decision’ one day and another part changes that ‘decision’ at the drop of a hat the very next day. I am not a master of myself. There is a difference, for me, between ‘personality’ and ‘essence’ (a more permanent entity). The latter as yet is largely unknown to me. From my experience personality or transient self is largely determined by outside factors, many dependent upon social interaction. In short, I have only a limited knowledge of ‘myself’ and sometimes doubt whether I exist at all as an independent being. I am aware of an inner fragmentation and a permanent struggle ‘to be able to be’”

Certainly most teachers would find the teacher as entertainer analogy degrading and a gross simplification of what they do but clearly from the above comments, there needs to be some aspect of amusement in a lesson to keep learners engaged. But the comments also highlight the complexity and diversity of what our job actually entails: we play many vital roles that we have to slip in and out of constantly and in order to fulfill them effectively, we have to be conscious of the effect our voices and breathing have; the eye contact and physical positioning we maintain; our gestures, posture and movement; the need to be able to spontaneously change tack as well as the kind and amount of humour that might be appropriate in a given situation so the process of performance preparation seems to be a useful template for some aspects of teacher training i.e. providing trainees with opportunities to role play and simulate a range of teaching scenarios and evaluate the affect of the above features of interpersonal communication and experiment with them. Palmer (1998:24) seems to support this when considering the importance for a teacher of being able to call on particular qualities in a given situation with a particular individual or group of students: “As we learn more about who we are, we can learn techniques that reveal rather than conceal the personhood from which good teaching comes”.

Putting the ‘H-U-M-A-N’ into ‘being’ a teacher
The following is a model that I hope would provide more of an equal balance on initial teacher training programmes between the ‘what to do’ versus the ‘how to be’, related to the ten aspects of actor training above. I am suggesting through this model the requirement that the appropriate affective needs of learners are met for the nuts and bolts of appropriate methodology to be successful. Incorporated into this model are example teacher training activities based on the ten areas of actor training above.

H (humorous)

There are many ways and obvious benefits of incorporating humour into our teaching, not least because it lowers natural anxiety felt by some students in a classroom setting but it also increases motivation and engagement as it helps the teacher and consequently the language be viewed more positively. It can also act as an effective mnemonic. Tauber and Mester (1994) rightly note though that humour should be used in moderation and teachers should avoid making too many self-deprecating remarks or remarks that will lower the self-esteem of the learners just to get a laugh. Clearly we are not referring here to simply telling jokes to students but rather primarily thinking about how gentle humour emerges through events or things students or the teacher say during a lesson e.g. blaming the board pen if the teacher makes a spelling mistake on the whiteboard or a students makes a pronunciation mistake which the teacher points out and explains the humour in (a student of mine once informed the class that her husband was “a liar” when she meant to say “a lawyer”). This skill requires the teacher to be alert and “in the moment”.

U (unexpected) Routine and structure are important to young people in particular but occasionally incorporating an element of surprise in class i.e. setting up anticipation and arousing curiosity, is a very common theatrical device that works equally well in class in order to keep a room of restless, easily-distracted learners engaged. To maintain attention, each stage of a lesson can be revealed one at a time e.g. putting a visual aid or piece of realia that you are going to use later on your desk in full view at the beginning of the lesson; occasionally you might use your voice in an unexpected way such as a shout of surprise or a slow whisper; it might be reconfiguring the classroom layout before students have arrived. This approach engages our students on an emotional level that increases the likelihood of more meaningful interaction and prolonged attention.

M (motivating)

It is no hyperbole to state that being a motivating and inspiring teacher in the classroom can encourage life-long learning. This can be achieved by maximizing the creative use of the natural resources teachers already possess: a voice (pitch, pace, volume, tone, breathing and pausing); the ability to use facial expression and gesture appropriately; movement; posture and a space in which to teach. The use of each of these needs to remain varied and engaging and the teacher needs to continuously reflect and assess the affective impact they have on the learners and their learning. Without the use of the vast array of technology at a teacher’s disposal these days, the above natural resources serve directly to connect with our learners on a human and emotional level and develop appropriate dynamics for any methodology to be effective. Just as they are used in theatre and film to establish relationships between characters, maintain interest, control attention and emotionally engage the audience, they are devices that can be equally effective in the classroom. In a training situation after a demonstration and practice of the basics of good posture, diaphragmatic breathing and projection, teachers can be guided through activities that allow them to explore the full potential of their voices and experiment with pitch, pace, volume and tone whether it be for telling a story, giving instructions or responding to a student’s contribution to the lesson. This can also be linked to the teacher’s presence and how our posture, voice and personal status (self image) can affect the extent to which students are engaged in a lesson. In short, scenarios can be set up for role play and improvisation in a training situation that incorporate these areas which invariably generate lively discussion and debate.

A (active)

Teachers are often instructed to take into consideration the range of emotions and previous recent experiences of one’s learners before a lesson has even begun. This is equally true for teachers in the sense that we are not always in the most appropriate mood to teach. However, an active and energised teacher stands a greater chance of maintaining interest and attention which supports some of the teachers’ comments above related to literally ‘putting on a performance’. Being active though does not necessarily require the teacher to physically move around the room, randomly gesticulating and speaking in an excitable voice, which could in fact have the opposite desired effect. Controlled energy can be conveyed through our voices and movement but also through eye contact and use of the eyes and face to show alertness, expressiveness and care for and interest in our learners. Just as actors have to deliver their lines as though it is the first time their character has uttered the words, a teacher should deliver every lesson with freshness and enthusiasm regardless of how many times s/he has taught a particular language item or skill or used a piece of material. Perhaps viewing each lesson as a journey of continual discovery for the teacher as well as the learners might help achieve this.

N (natural)

The data collected in the current research strongly suggests that many teachers believe their teacher self is an extension of their non-teacher self with features from both emerging in the other. As in life in general, we tend to employ strategies and devices to achieve a desired outcome. This might be altering our voices in class when we notice attention is flagging or injecting humour into a conversation we are having with someone we need to impress. Both are social situations that require the appropriate affective and socio-psychological needs to be met before the desired outcome can be realised. But it is crucial to note that the exaggerated and unnatural use of certain strategies can in all likelihood have a detrimental effect on interaction so the strategies we use need to remain appropriate and relative to our basic self.

Conclusion

If it is generally accepted that the communicative language classroom is a social situation, then the usual social rules should be obeyed: the rules that nurture and develop relationships and facilitate natural communication; show respect and empathy; offer acceptance of ideas; allow space and time to process and respond to questions and information and recognise that students are individuals and it seems thus far in my research that certain performance skills and aspects of an actor’s training can assist in maintaining an environment conducive to learning and practising the language communicatively and authentically. I am convinced that the socio-psychological and affective needs of learners need to be recognised and met and that these needs should be considered before any pedagogical methodology is applied and even before any considerations related to culture and teaching context are made. In other words, students’ affective needs and requirements, which are arguably more or less universal, are the foundation of learning on which issues of methodology, context and culture are built. <.p>

If you would like to participate in this on-going research, please email me at the address below and I will send you a questionnaire.

References

Almond, M 2007. Acting Skills for Language Teachers, IATEFL Voices, Issue 198,

Please check the Drama Techniques for Creative Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Advanced Drama Techniques for Creative Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching English with Drama course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.