Читать книгу The Art of Foreign Language Teaching - Peter Lutzker - Страница 24

The most significant contribution to the concept of teaching as an art to come out of Great Britain is connected to the influential work and writings of Lawrence Stenhouse (1926–1982). Stenhouse’s name and work are inextricably tied to the idea of the ‘teacher as researcher’ or, ‘action research’ which he pioneered in England. His concept had a twofold basis: first, he proposed that it was through consciously monitoring and researching their own work that teachers could become conscious artists:

A teacher lays the foundation of his capacity for research by developing self-monitoring strategies. The effect is not unlike that of making the transition from amateur to professional actor. Through self-monitoring the teacher becomes a conscious artist. Through conscious art he is able to use himself as an instrument of his research.96

Secondly, he argued that it was research conducted by teachers that would lead to the most significant improvements in teaching and curricula:

The assertion is that the improvement of teaching rests upon the development of the art of the teacher and not through the teacher’s adoption of uniform procedures selected from competing alternatives.97

Stenhouse’s concept of the ‘teacher as researcher’ hinges on the teacher’s adopting the attitude of the researcher, testing hypotheses in action, recognizing the provisional nature of results and continually willing to revise them. For him, this is an essential aspect of what constitutes artistry in teaching:

…for the most part neither teachers nor pupils recognize teaching as an art. Hence teachers do not see their own development as key to the situation in the same way as actors or sculptors or musicians do. And pupils do not understand – nor do teachers generally share the understanding with them – the significance of experiment in the classroom and their role in it.98

In the development of this attitude and in learning to adopt such methods, a teacher makes crucial steps in attaining artistry. Stenhouse considers this to be vital for the teacher’s self-development. The process through which this occurs evidences significant parallels to the learning and practice of any form of art:

I am claiming that the expression of educational ideas in curricular form provides a medium for the development – and if necessary the autonomous self-development – of the teacher as artist. To say that teaching is an art does not imply that teachers are born, not made. On the contrary artists learn and work extraordinarily hard at it. But they learn through the critical practice of their art. Idea and action are fused in practice. (…) Thus in art ideas are tested in form by practice. Exploration and interpretation lead to revision and adjustment of idea and of practice. If my words are inadequate, look at the sketchbook of a good artist, a play in rehearsal, a jazz quartet working together. That I am arguing, is what good teaching is like. It is not like routine engineering or routine management.99

It is in the fundamental connection which Stenhouse sees between the teacher’s development as an artist and the further development of educational curricula, that his standpoint has its most wide-ranging implications for the entire field of education. In this context, a substantially different view of in-service training is advanced:

My position is that in-service development must be the development of the teacher as artist. That means the development of understanding expressed in performance: understanding of the nature of knowledge expressed in the art form of teaching and learning. No skills unless they enhance understanding, no curriculum study unless it enhances understanding, no courses of study unless they enhance understanding, no assessment unless it enhances understanding. What I am advocating is so radical that I may not be communicating it. Let me sharpen the message in the area of curriculum: I am saying that the purpose of any curriculum change, any curriculum research, any curriculum development is the enhancement of the art of teaching, of understanding expressed as performance.100

The underlying motive going through all his works is his vision of teaching conducted in the spirit of inquiry. All worthwhile developments in curriculum and theory hinge on the teacher’s willingness to engage in this process and to offer the fruits of his research to others for further testing and evaluation. In this respect, curriculum is considered as a hypothesis to be tested in the classroom. For him, the teacher’s acceptance of responsibility for curriculum development and her learning of the requisite research skills, are predicated on her own desires to institute fundamental changes:

As a starting-point teachers must want change, rather than others wanting to change them. That means that the option of professional development leading towards professional satisfaction of a kind that brings an enhancement of self must be made clear and open to teachers.

Teachers have been taught that teaching is instrumental but improving education is not about improving teaching as a delivery system. Crucial is the desire of the artist to improve his art. This art is what the experienced teacher brings to in-service development. Good in-service education recognizes and strengthens the power and primacy of that art. It offers curricula to teachers as music in-service offers Beethoven or Stravinsky to musicians – to further the art. In-service is linked to change because art is about change and only develops in change.101

Specific qualities required in the art of teaching are seen in the conveying of knowledge through meaningful interaction with pupils in the classroom.

This act involves the entire being of the teacher in the same way that other arts fully involve their practitioners:

The character of the art of teaching is to represent to learners through social interaction with them meanings about knowledge. The succession of experiences we provide for them and within the framework of those experiences the nuances of our questions, our judgements of their work, our tutorial advice, even the very gestures and postures of our bodies, are expressive of those meanings, sometimes explicitly, sometimes as elements in what has come to be called a ‘hidden curriculum’ (Jackson, 1968) Teaching represents knowledge to people rather as theatre represents life.102

In the end, Stenhouse is also very concerned to stress that his vision of artistic teaching is not fully realized in the teacher’s having finally learned to convey knowledge in an artistic manner. The inner attitude of the teacher as artist is for him the key to her being able to perpetually develop her artistry. This attitude is based on an acceptance of one’s limitations and the continual desire to overcome them:

Teachers must be educated to develop their art, not to master it, for the claim to mastery merely signals the abandoning of aspiration. Teaching is not to be regarded as a static accomplishment like riding a bicycle or keeping a ledger; it is, like all arts of high ambition, a strategy in the face of an impossible task.103