Читать книгу The Art of Foreign Language Teaching - Peter Lutzker - Страница 32

The in-service courses for language teachers which will be examined in this study fall into the general category of teacher development. Although there is a substantial overlap between the terms teacher education, teacher training and teacher development and they are often even used interchangeably, each has a somewhat different meaning and context.

Teacher education is generally understood to refer to the type of education through which one accumulates a basis of subject knowledge, relevant theoretical knowledge, and the practical skills enabling one to become a teaching professional. In the context of pre-service training, this usually includes substantial periods of content-based study, the study of educational and learning theory, as well as student teaching in the classroom in conjunction with a mentoring program. Teacher training is considered to be that level of either pre-service or in-service training which focuses on the specific knowledge and methodology of what is taught and emphasizes classroom skills and techniques.142 It typically focuses on short-term goals.143 Henry Widdowson has formulated a sharp distinction between the two:

In general terms, the distinction between education and training can be formulated in the following way. Training is a process of preparation towards the achievement of a range of outcomes which are specified in advance. This involves the acquisition of goal-oriented behaviour which is more or less formulaic in character and whose capacity for accommodation to novelty is, therefore, very limited. Training, in this view, is directed at providing solutions to a set of predictable problems and sets a premium on unreflecting expertise. (…) Education on the other hand is not predicated on predictability in this way. It provides for situations which cannot be accommodated into preconceived patterns of response but which require a reformulation of ideas and the modification of established formulae. It focuses, therefore, not on the application of ready-made problem-solving techniques but on the critical appraisal of the relationship between problem and solution as a matter of continuing inquiry and of adaptable practice.144

In contrast to both training and education, teacher development focuses on the teacher’s attitudes and the concurrent development of self-awareness, awareness of others and the attainment of a heightened sensitivity in the classroom. It thus emphasizes general growth and is not targeted to a specific task.145 Although there are undoubtedly elements of teacher development in pre-service training, it is more commonly connected to the continued education of teachers after their initial training has been completed, and thus most commonly occurs in the context of in-service work. Teacher development is thus generally designed to encourage growth through building on previous experiences.

In trying to draw relevant distinctions between teacher training and teacher development, Adrian Underhill compares the underlying arguments for taking two different types of in-service courses:

The argument for training in this sense may go like this: ‘I believe that my effectiveness as a teacher depends largely on my pedagogic skills, and my knowledge of the topic I am teaching, and on all the associated methodology. My teaching is only as good as the techniques or materials that I employ, and I improve by learning more about them. I acknowledge that the kind of person I am affects my teaching, but I don’t really see what I can do about this other than by further training and by gaining experience.’

The part of me that argues for development may say things like: ‘I believe that my effectiveness as a teacher depends largely on the way I am in the classroom, on my awareness of myself and my effect on others and on my attitudes towards learners, learning and my own role. I value my facility with pedagogic skills and my knowledge of the topic, but it is the ‘me’ who operates them that primarily influences their effectiveness. I teach only as well as the atmosphere that I engender. I believe that education is change and that I will not be able to educate unless I am also able to change, otherwise my work will come to have a static quality about it that is not good for me or for my students.146

In the rationale that Underhill gives for taking a training course, it becomes evident that some elements which Widdowson and Tedick would ascribe to teacher education are also present in his understanding of teacher training. This plurality in the use and understanding of these terms reflects a general tendency in the literature.

It is evident that the distinctions which have been drawn between these types of programs do not lead to ‘right or wrong’ or ‘either-or’ conclusions. There is clearly a place at both pre-service and in-service levels for each. Moreover, as noted, the borders which are sometimes drawn between these approaches are, in reality, often more fluid than they might first appear. This will also become evident in the context of the empirical study of the clowning courses: as the responses of the participants make clear, even in the context of a clowning course emphasizing teacher development, there are dimensions of experience closely aligned to methodology and teacher knowledge which are concretely referred to in the teachers’ own evaluations of the work. This phenomenon of overlap can be seen as an indication of the problems inherent in attempting to reduce teaching into discrete components, insofar as such attempts may ignore the actual realities of how teachers learn, as well as how they teach.