Professional growth of an english teacher
Answers
Professional development: teacher development and confidence
I am a teacher of college and I want to know how one teacher can enhance her or his confidence in this field and how to build the best teaching ability of teaching.
Gaining confidence in their teaching skills and developing their teaching ability in general are not just the concern of teachers who are new to the profession, but also of experienced teachers when they meet new challenges which seem to threaten their long-standing values and beliefs about learning and teaching, especially if these may imply changes to their teaching practices. Just think of how many times you have asked yourself the following questions when you have had to face a new task: “Can I do that?” “Will I be able to do it well?” After a while you may find yourself asking: “How can I do better?”
Confidence, teaching ability and teacher development
In my opinion, gaining self-confidence and developing your teaching ability are closely related, and working on either concern leads to improvement on the other. The more you develop your teaching ability, the more confident you will become in your teaching. In the same way, the more confident you become in your teaching skills, the better prepared you are to move on to “the next level”, i.e. deepen your understanding of learning and teaching, find out about the latest learning and teaching theories, and try out new teaching practices, thus developing your teaching ability. In other words, answering one of the questions may help us to answer the other question as well.
But where do the answers to Mariam’s questions lie? It seems to me that finding ways to gain confidence in what you do and improve your teaching skills are different aspects of the same concern, i.e. how can we develop as a professional teacher? Underhill (1986:1) describes teacher development as the process of becoming “the best kind of teacher that I personally can be.” Rossner (1992:4) argues that “teacher development is not just to do with language or even teaching: it’s also about language development, counseling skills, assertiveness training, confidence-building (my italics), computing, meditation, cultural broadening – almost anything, in fact.” Both descriptions of teacher development seem to take account of Mariam’s concerns. Therefore, in order to answer Mariam’s questions we can perhaps look into the theory of “teacher development”.
Teacher development and a model of teaching
Freeman (1989:37) regards teacher development and teacher training as the two main teacher education strategies. In order to distinguish between them he proposes a model of teaching which characterizes it as “a decision-making process based on the categories of knowledge, skills, attitude, and awareness” (ibid:27). Whereas teacher training addresses the more “trainable” aspects of teaching based on knowledge and skills, teacher development is concerned with generating change with regard to the more complex constituents of teaching, i.e. awareness and attitude.
I believe Freeman’s model of teaching can help us to impose some order on the wide range of options which are available for teachers aiming to gain confidence in their teaching and develop their teaching ability in general. In the sections that follow I make reference to each of the aforementioned constituents of teaching in turn and discuss what teachers can do in each of these respects in order to develop professionally. These are not exhaustive lists and readers will very likely have their own ideas to add to them.
Self-confidence, teaching ability and KNOWLEDGE
As far as knowledge is concerned there seem to be different ways in which teachers can develop confidence and improve their general teaching ability:
The subject matter – Above all, teachers should aim to develop their knowledge of the subject matter they teach. If this is English, teachers can study the language to further their understanding of how it works, they can enroll in language development courses, and they can seek opportunities to practise and develop their ability to listen to, read, speak and write in English, for example, by not missing the opportunities they have to interact orally with native speakers, subscribing to EFL/ESL magazines, and participating in synchronic or asynchronic discussions on the Web. (Ed - such as the onestopenglish forum)