Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 2; March 2000

"Telling teaching Column #2"

Donald Freeman

Seeing for yourself

In my first column (January 2000), I situated the idea of telling teaching and I talked about why I believe it matters in the status and professionalization of teachers. I said that telling teaching involves examining what is going on in your classroom, questioning why it happens as it does, and assessing how your teaching is suiting that learning. These three processes-- examining, questioning or wondering, and assessing-- combine to make public the private world of doing in the classroom. They depend, however, on a basic skill: the ability to see. In this column, I want to unpack what is involved in seeing your own teaching: How do you see-- and can you see-- the work you are central to through different eyes?

Franz Boas was an anthropologist in the 1930's who argued that his contemporaries were approaching the process of studying other cultures backwards. Boas said that they could not understand a group of people, a community, or indeed an entire culture, only by studying it from the outside in. He wrote: "If it is our serious purpose to understand the thoughts of a people, the whole analysis of experience must be based on their concepts, not ours." (1943, p. 314. my italics). This notion of contrasting the concepts of the group or culture with those of the observer contradicted the norm in Boas' day that anthropologists could somehow observe and describe from a entirely neutral stance. It brought into play the idea that observers-- just like participants-- bring their own ideas or 'baggage' to what they see. Thus there is no fully objective stance when one is studying what people do or how they think.

In 1963, linguist Kenneth Pike coined the terms 'emic' and 'etic' to describe the distinction between insider and outsider views of a culture or group. Emic, which comes from phonemic, observation focuses on the distinctions in perception that carry meaning for the participants. 'Understanding the thoughts of a people based on their concepts,' to paraphrase Boas, is an 'emic' undertaking. Etic, which comes from phonetic, focuses on distinctions that can be general perceived across cultures or groups. So, for example, physical differences between men and women is an etic distinction. Differences in gender roles, in what men versus women are expected to do or are seen as capable of doing, is an emic distinction. It is based in what a particular culture finds important.

About ten years ago, I was flying between Anchorage and Ketchikan Alaska. I got to talking with my two seat mates and found I was sitting between a long-time Alaskan, who flew a lot and a newly arrived Korean visitor. Soon after take-off, the pilot made the routine announcements about our cruising altitude, flying time, and so on. The voice was distinctly feminine. After the announcements had finished, my Korean seat mate turned to me and asked, somewhat tentatively, "Is the pilot a lady?" "I'm not sure." I answered, "but it sounds like it." The Alaskan chimed in, "She probably is. Alaskan Airlines has the highest number of female pilots in the business." The Alaskan told us that in Alaska it turns there are actually more airplanes registered than there are automobiles. Many people are pilots and know how to fly, she explained. "Oh." said the Korean, "very strange." The reactions of my three seat mates were interesting: the Korean was 'very surprised'; I was intrigued; and the Alaskan found it unremarkable. Here we had emic and etic in operation. The fact that the pilot was a woman is a etic-- or outsider's-- view. That we each had differing reactions to this fact-- surprise, interest, no response-- was emic. Our reactions surfaced our particular values and cultural backgrounds.

If Boas' statement is true of geographical communities and cultures, it is doubly so in studying the culture of teaching and learning in classrooms and schools. The aspects that non-teachers see, and choose to tell, about teaching are interesting, but they are told from the outside-in. Teachers and students, as insiders, will and do see things differently. Point of view, who sees what, and how it is seen are central issues in telling teaching. What you see depends on who you are and where you stand; put another way, it is difficult to separate doing from seeing. If you are an outsider to the classroom, like a researcher or a supervisor, what you will see is tied up in doing that work. You will look for data or perhaps for evidence of 'good' teaching. If you are a teacher, what you see in your classroom is a function of your role as teacher. Thus a strength of telling teaching is both political and procedural. Politically, it positions teachers, as insiders, to investigate their own workplaces. Procedurally, its strength is also functional: in seeing classrooms emically, from the inside-out, teachers can generate new understandings and knowledge.

In his workshops, Caleb Gattegno, developer of the Silent Way, used to challenge participants sometimes unmercifully. He would say, "You are being lived by your preconceptions!" When I first heard the phrase, I didn't quite understand it. But over time-- and with several hearings-- it began to sink in and to make sense to me. We often see what we think is there; we see emically. We do not question, look for evidence, or challenge our assumed views. This is human, but it is also problematic. It keeps us trapped in the status-quo. In teaching for example, we make decisions about what is easy or difficult, what students can or can't do, about how or how not to do things. These decisions are based on our preconceptions more often than on evidence. Before Gattegno's work in the Silent Way, most teachers would not have thought that their learners could construct the pronunciation of a new language largely out of the sounds they already knew. In that time, we assumed that teacher-led modeling and repetition were the only way to introduce new pronunciation. We were, in fact, lived by that preconception.