Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 6; October 1999
Andrew Wright reacts to Paul Davis' article on Teacher Development in HLT Vol 1 Issue 1.
Dear Editor,
I am troubled by Paul Davis' distinction between teacher training and teacher development. 'I am troubled' is a very English way of launching an attack! In this case, I mean what I say, 'I am troubled'. I want to describe my troubled state and see if anyone can help me to think more clearly.
Anybody who has to deal with troubled people knows how messy they are and how patient one has to be. Please don't read on if you can't cope!
First of all…
It is important for me that people develop:
their awareness of their power to respond to the complexity of life around them.
their belief that they can achieve something worthwhile
their determination to do it
their knowledge and skill with which to bring these things about.
And I would like to help people to do this.
I guess that Paul Davis might share those aims.
In which case aren't I an enabler in teacher development? But if Paul popped into sessions which I do with teachers I imagine he would classify me as a teacher trainer whether I share the above aims with him or not.
I imagine he would because I spend a lot of my time in workshops giving examples, asking the teachers to try them out and describing my own beliefs about the principles underlying them.
I am never employed to work with teachers for more than a day, often less. My feeling is that I should see that day as part of the teachers' preceding days and postceding days. From the preceding days the teachers bring with them a variety of perceived needs and experiences. If I can 'tune in' to these needs and experiences then my workshop will be regarded approvingly by the participants. During the postceding days I hope they will try out the activities I have given them and apply their experience and perceptions to the experience. I hope that the development takes place over the weeks following the course rather than only during the course.
By giving out a lot of examples I hope:
to give the teacher something he/she can actually do when back in the hurley burley of daily life
that the teacher and students will have a very positive experience of the activities and feel encouraged to have more
that the teacher will not regard them as sacrosanct but will adapt them
that the teacher and students will move from adaptation to the invention of new activities.
that the attitude and skill developed by the above experiences will grow into an increasingly critical awareness of what is happening in the language course so that radical changes can be conceived.
In short my judgement is that one or two day teacher development workshops are often well spent when the workshop leader gives out a lot of activities which can be used on Monday.
If I were to work on longer courses with teachers I am sure that Paul could pop in and find me behaving much more obviously like a person aiming at teacher development. I am sure that I would speak less and listen more.
Is one judged by one's means or by the one's aim?
But I am troubled because I am left with the nagging doubt that perhaps I am a 'teller' rather than an 'enabler” and have just devised this argument to claim a bit of the moral high ground.
No! (I say to myself) Even if sometimes you are a teller you have nevertheless spent your lifetime trying to 'enable' through helping people to struggle with whole experience rather than merely think about my selection of it.
As a lecturer for fifteen years in an Art and Design faculty (now the Metropolitan University of Manchester) my students chose real life situations where they had to try to deal with everything and my 'telling' was largely what they demanded to hear in order for them to do the job as they wanted to do it.
In my basic drawing workshops for language teachers I always begin with what seems to be a silly test. I ask the teachers to decide which is the bigger of two angles and which is the longer of two lines. All the teachers achieve this. I then go on to help them to see how this ability they have can be used to represent a great variety of things they might want to draw.
This is true…
Interesting though…
In the last paragraph I have written the phrase 'help them to see how this ability…'. What I first wrote was, 'show them'.
On the other hand…
Paul Davis wrote a long and interesting article and told the readers what he thought.
So maybe it is OK to be a teller sometimes?
Paul's penultimate thought in his article is, 'Possibly some areas are best left to trainers and some to development groups.'
Paul's last thought is, 'It would be helpful to draw a clear distinction between what training and what development is.' So Paul is not clear either…but is he troubled about it like me?
