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Title
What role should teachers play?'
Presenter
Moza Al-Maliki
Rustaq College of Applied Sciences
Oman
Abstract
The chapter which I have read, Conceptualizing Teaching Acts, brought me to get in touch with which role I as a teacher should play. This chapter presents three metaphoric roles but which one should I administered in the classroom?
The first role is passive technicians. The teacher acts as a transmission of a content knowledge which are provided for them in a golden plate. Some teachers enjoy this role as they only conceive and construct knowledge in order to transmit it for students. However, other teachers consider this role as only a transmitter without any kind of lived activities. Unfortunately, a moment's reflection upon my experience as a teacher, I have noticed that I am almost confined to the textbook as a slave. I have no role rather than transferring what is in the textbook word by word. So there is no kind of challenge or excitement inside the classroom.
The second role is reflective practitioners. It means a teacher who reflects upon the framework of his teaching namely his material design, plan, procedures and instructions in the classroom. His reflection should come before and after the lesson which is called reflection on action in a harmony with a reflection in the lesson which is named reflection in action. In so doing, the teacher will solve any obstacles students might face, be a ware of the ethics being learned, be open-minded to the surrounding community, adapt and improvise the materials design to suit his learners' needs and take accountability for a decision he might make regarding teaching. Frankly speaking I think this role is the most suitable one for teachers. Reflecting upon teaching and how to improve it next time plus bearing in mind learners' needs will ascend teachers from passive technicians.
The last role is transformative intellectuals. Since the primary concern of a teacher as Cuban (1989, p.20) suggests ''should be the depth of critical thinking rather than the breadth of content knowledge''. So I think transformative intellectual requires much awareness of the surroundings for both students and teachers. Teachers should be aware of the social context and capable of implementing that context through problem-solving activities with the cooperation of other teachers, students and the like.
In a nutshell, personally, I will implement the second role since reflective practitioners is more practical, suitable and applicable in the classroom besides it has a positive long effect for teachers and students.
Keywords:- three metaphoric roles, passive technicians, reflective practitioners,
transformative intellectuals
References
Kumaravadelu, B. (2002) Conceptualizing teaching acts. Beyond Method:
Macrostrategies for Language teaching (pp.1-22). New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Bio
Moza Al-Malki is currently lecturing at Rustaq College of Applied Sciences in Oman. She received a bachelor's degree of English from the college of Education at Sultan Qaboos university-Oman in 2005. The following year she completed her Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics at University of Queensland in Australia. During the academic years 2007-2008 and 2008-2009, she gained considerable teaching experience at Rustaq College. She successfully taught a number of diverse courses such as: Communicative Language Teaching Development, Readings in Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, Morphology and Lexical semantics, Syntax and Structural semantics, Phonetics and Phonology, Report writing and introduction to Linguistics.
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