UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE LA SANTÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN FACULTAD DE EDUCACIÓN

PEDAGOGÍA EN EDUCACIÓN MEDIA EN INGLÉS

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Reaction Paper

Course: English Methodology Professor: Roxana Correa

Student’s name: Gary Torres

November, 2013

Summary

Pettis (2002) reflects about the importance of our professional competence as

teachers. For her, this personal process of development is crucial if teachers consider

themselves change agents or bridges to society. She states that teachers, like students, are in a

continuous process of learning. This is extremely positive since it involves the development of

their professional competences for a better quality of teaching. She also introduces the

relevant term communicative competence relying on Tedick and Walker (1994), who defined

this term as the ability to communicate and understand messages across linguistic and cultural

boundaries. Equally important are principles, knowledge and skills, which are essential in order

to be professionally effective at teaching. However, there must be a balance between these

concepts because they are constantly changing. For instance, to be knowledgeable and

principled without the necessary skills or having those skills without the accurate level of

knowledge can be limiting in their effectiveness.

Although many teachers support this idea, some others contradict this by saying that

teachers should limit their knowledge and skills in order to teach what they are expected to

teach. These opposite ideas make Pettis wonder about how competent these teachers are in

order to teach contents in real contexts and also in new and accurate ways. Students usually

need clarifications which imply the teacher having certain skills and linguistic knowledge. In

these cases, feedback from other teacher peers, courses and workshops are beneficial not only

for improvements in their lessons but also a good opportunity to learn and develop.

The importance and implications of research in our own classrooms according to

Taylor (2002) are very useful when teachers want to know how students work in certain

situations during the lessons. For instance, if students learn better in small groups or guided

strictly by the teacher. She states that students tend to adopt roles when performing specific

tasks, specially in group work which does not include the teacher leading the class. She also

notices that some activities get students to talk but others do not. In her case, facts like those

previously explained are the ones which promote the type of research she conducts.

Taylor (2002) mentions the importance of learning from colleagues when conducting

research, which means talking about problems or ideas that the teacher has on mind at the

moment of investigating a classroom, either by mentioning this in meetings devoted to

curriculum and methodology or by talking directly with other teachers. In addition to this, she

suggests reading other studies about what other researchers have found out and how other

people have taken the process of investigating the same kind of problems you are facing in

your research. In this case, Taylor’s background reading suggested that group work for English

lessons actually worked. She collected information from two activities, one teacher-fronted

and one small-group for comparing students’ roles. With some predictions in mind, Taylor

(2002) found out that students who contribute actively in teacher-fronted group usually take

the leader role in group work oriented mainly by the task itself.

Ur (2002) sets general terms such as teacher development, teacher education and

teacher learners in order to clarify the information she provides in her ideas. However, the

main purpose of her studies is to clarify the differences between a professional and an

amateur in educational settings. On one hand, being a professional implies having the

necessary skills and knowledge about the subject being taught, in order to competitively teach

what the lay population is lacking. On the other hand, being an amateur basically means to do

these sorts of things only for fun. Ur also differentiates the term professional with other

concepts such as technician and academic. These can be differentiated in the way that

technicians usually become more skillful by using a certain skills for performing a specific act,

while professionals need not only acquiring the skills but also take courses of action based on

knowledge. Moreover, academics are more limited since they are considered agents to

improve personal ways of thinking, while professionals go beyond this and are considered

agents who have to do with real world change.

This author provides information about the duty that a professional English teacher

must follow. Which include being part of a community, being committed to teaching, being an

autonomous and helpful trainer of new teachers, being a constant learner and a publisher of

new strategies, ideas and techniques.

Brown (2001) emphasises the idea of continuing studying, he provides a list of goals

that a teacher should accomplish in order to become competent. He also defines peak

performers, which are basically people who have the ability to reach their maximum potential

through a series of steps including setting realistic goals with learners, setting priorities, taking

risks and knowing how to manage effectively the stress provoked by teaching. In the same

way, Brown (2001) defines what a good language teacher is. This concept has a strong relation

with being competent, the use of critical thinking, the love for the English language, cultural

adaptability and professional citizenship. Classroom observation is also mentioned; in a way

that teacher should help observing each other’s lessons to get feedback about their strengths

and weaknesses at the moment of teaching.

Research in the classroom is also an issue Brown (2002) promotes since it is useful for

developing or modifying new approaches and techniques in order to become competent. He

deepens on the critical pedagogy concept which means to be critic at setting activities related

to controversial issues, for instance non-violence, human rights, gender equality, health issues

and many others. Brown (2002) states that English teachers, as the authority in the classroom,

must be considered an agent of change because of their professional commitment of helping

people to communicate with each other.

Hayes (2000) focus goes through the path of innovation programs to teach English

effectively. He mentions Cascade, which is a method recently used in Sri Lanka which to

attempt to produce large-scale changes at the classroom level in teacher performance. It is

called that way because of the effect it provokes when it is put into practice. This innovation

model has a big number of theoretical advantages which make it attractive for people aiming

to change ways of teaching English. It works by training people in extra time by teachers with a

higher level of language knowledge and what is more remarkable, it does not require long

periods out of service since it employs already existing staff as co-trainers. However, Hayes

(2000) recommends to use this model as an experiential method instead of using it as

transmissive one because if the model is not well implemented it can cause disadvantages

such as content variations found as the cascade goes down.

The application of this method in Sri Lanka resulted in the following reflections on the

primary English language project. As expected, the success of the model tends to rely a lot on

the level of engagement of the teachers involved in the project, who needed to straightly

follow the given principles to obtain expected results. Regarding the national curriculum, it

was essential to accomplish and stick to the program which highlighted clearly their trainees’

objectives as English teaching is concerned.

Evaluation

Pettis’ reflections about the professional responsibility that teachers have in order to

be effective at teaching are potentially acceptable from my point of view. Firstly, I totally agree

with the idea that teacher should have a balance between principles, knowledge and skills

since they rely on the other in many ways. Even though this is commonly seen in my country, I

believe teachers can hardly teach grammar if they do not have the necessary grammar

knowledge and they cannot teach grammar without the suitable skills. Knowing English is not

enough knowledge for teaching English since it implies other elements such as pedagogical

skills and teaching strategies. Secondly, I believe it is globally know that the way certain

contents are taught changes as time passes. For instance, teachers who use the same

approach to teach certain contents every year tend to become obsolete. That is why teachers

need to be constantly learning, either updating their knowledge and skills for teaching, or

getting information about new learning styles and new activities in order to promote students’

English communicative competence. In addition to this, teachers need to make the content

meaningful for students and at the same time students need to understand in which context

the content is useful, otherwise learners are going to learn only for the evaluation (studying for

a mark). This fact applies not only for English subjects but for others such as History and Math

too.

Thirdly, students usually have doubts or specific questions that teachers without the

necessary professional competence do not know how to answer. Moreover, there are many

primary teachers nowadays who teach a certain subject without having studied pedagogy. This

fact does not necessary mean that they are bad teachers but if we want to efficiently teach

something it is essential to have not only the knowledge about the subject but also the

pedagogical knowledge that only studying a major can provide.

There is always new material being published that can be useful for us, as future

teachers. Complacency in teachers should not be part of our duty as teachers and most

importantly, it is our responsibility to take the wide variety of opportunities that we have for

increasing our knowledge in order to continuously develop our professional competences.

In my opinion, research in our own classroom is important if we want to make

reflections about the way we are teaching or in the way students are learning in certain given

situations. I believe the study of the roles that students take when performing a task, as done

by Taylor (2002), is meaningful and remarkable since it happens in every classroom, one

student in a group tends to be the leader. On one hand the learner who guides the group

work, which is most of the times the one having more knowledge on the subject. On the other

hand the learner which hardly speaks in the task, which tends to have more insecurities for

participating. Having the opportunity to know which learner is which during the activity is not

only a significant element in the research but also useful information for future lessons.

However, conducting research implies other elements that can benefit our background

knowledge on the topic of the research. I think that colleagues help is essential since they can

collaborate in the classroom studies by providing and sharing opinions, giving feedback, and

exchanging points of view. Nowadays schools in my country have scheduled regular meetings

with the purpose of making comments and giving opinions about the way some contents are

being taught and how students are responding to these. This would be a perfect instance for

discussing the issues related to the research, which is more interactive than simply reading a

book or a journal on the topic of your research. Other teachers can have the missing element

of your studies for the research; they can explain certain concepts that you were unable to

understand or they can simply help you with the research itself, either with collecting or

analyzing information process.

Since this research is mainly about the way students work, I consider this beneficial for

the process of teaching. Taylor obtained information about their students and she is probably

going to apply that information in order to know how to teach and in which ways it becomes

effective. For example, if I know learners work better in groups I will try to promote group

work in my lessons so they feel comfortable and safe enough to participate in the activities.

This fact is prominent since students’ performance in activities depends a lot on the feelings

they have towards the activity and also on the previous knowledge they are supposed to

manage.

In my opinion, Ur (2002) has valid ideas about professionalism in the area of teaching

English basically because it includes issues that I have noticed during my life as a student and

also as a pre-service teacher. Her comparison with other terms is remarkable since nowadays

there are a lot of teachers with serious pedagogical and knowledge deficits. Despite this fact I

still consider that there are many teachers which do not fit in the category of professional that

I still consider good teachers, either because of their way of teaching or their good relationship

with students, which is also an important element for being successful. In addition to this,

being an amateur is undoubtedly positive because, during my high school education, I could

see some teachers with a bad attitude towards the subjects they were teaching, which led

students to think that those teachers did not really like what they were doing. This facts were

extremely discouraging, learners usually lost interest in the subject, which resulted in bad

marks at the end of the semester. Normally, the lack of these teachers is what others have.

Thus, I believe that a competent teacher is a person involving a mixture of professional and

amateur features. These ideas straightly agree with Pettis’ ideas of balance in the features of a

competent teacher.

Regarding the concepts of technicians and academics being compared to professionals,

I think there are many limitations on technicians and academics that a professional does not

have. Becoming skillful is an important process that every teacher should face; however, it is

not the only one. Teachers should be constantly studying, training and testing themselves for

the updating strategies and techniques of teaching, as Pettis (2002) also mentions. Therefore,

there should not be any limitation for teachers since we are seen as people which encourage

students to make a change in the world.

I totally agree with the idea of Brown (2001) promoting the constant process of

studying and most importantly, this is also highlighted by Ur (2002). If we want to be successful

in our career as English teachers, we must ensure that we are updated in terms of teaching

strategies and techniques. Teaching the same content and using the same type of activities

and tasks over and over again becomes ineffective and obsolete as time passes. That is why I

believe the best option for constantly improving our skills is to be immersed in constant

learning and to set long or short-term goals for accomplishing. Brown (2002) restates the

concepts of being competent and the love for the English language, which implies

professionalism and doing certain things just for the love of it. These issues can be linked to Ur

(2002) ideas about amateur teachers, who teach only because they like to teach without

having any knowledge of it.

Collaborative teaching in terms of helping teacher in their process of development is

an issue which I agree with. As explained before, teachers should be constantly learning and

improving, and in my point of view, this would not be possible without the meaningful opinion

and feedback that only a colleague can provide. If we want to be agents of change, as Brown

(2001) mentioned, we should not be working by ourselves but together with other teachers in

order to equally improve. It does not matter if you are an experienced or a beginner, there is

always certain issues to improve, regarding our lessons, strategy and technique we use for

teaching, and the relation with students.

What I found most interesting from Brown’s ideas was his statement of us being not

only simply teachers of English, but agents for change in a world which is demanding a lot of

big changes. I believe, in my country, the duty of a teacher has been extremely underrated and

this is obviously a drawback since we cannot make people know the big responsibility existing

behind teaching. This fact applies not only to English but also to the other subjects students

face during their education process.

The initiative proposed by Hayes (2000) is, in my opinion, something noteworthy. On

one hand, such project in Sri Lanka shows the type concern that some people have about

English language and what implies to teach it. This is something positive since there are many

countries which need these kinds of initiatives for improving the ways of teaching in order to

reach educational success. Its advantages in terms of cost and use of human resources become

some of its most groundbreaking features if it is applied correctly.

On the other hand, I believe cascade training works only in certain places. In this case,

Sri Lanka, which is a country with limited resources in terms of education. It depends a lot on

the level of engagement of the participants so it does not seem to be reliable and objective. In

addition to this, it seems that short-scale innovations would not be possible by the

implementation of this model. Unfortunately, when using this method with the cascade going

down, the content being taught tends to disappear. This happens since it is affected by certain

elements, for instance the teacher’s point of view which can vary depending on the stages of

the cascade, the development of the ideas, the deviation of the main aim of the learning

process which happens frequently when the principles are not followed carefully, the addition

and reduction of the content by teachers and many others. Consequently, there is not a

positive balance between the advantages and disadvantages. From my point of view, there

were too many conditions to follow on this project and most of them were not clear enough,

which left the benefits and advantages overshadowed by principles to follow strictly.

References

Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy

(2nd ed.). Pearson Education.

Hayes, D. (2000). Cascade training and teachers' professional development.ELT journal, 54(2),

135-145.

Pettis, J. (2002). Developing our professional competence: Some reflections.Methodology in

language teaching: An anthology of current practice, 393-396.

Richards, J. C., & Renandya, W. A. (Eds.). (2002). Methodology in language teaching: An

anthology of current practice. Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, E. (2002). Research in your own Classroom. Methodology in language teaching, 397-

403.

Walker, C. L., & Tedick, D. J. (1994). Creating a culture of reform and reflection: Making

changes in teacher education. Teaching Education, 6(2), 81-95.