Roles, Approaches, andMethods

By Christine Arwakhi & Stephanie White

Chapter 1:ConceptualizingTeaching Acts

• The role of a teacher

• artists, scientists, managers, mentors, counselors

Teachers as Passive Technicians

• Primary goal: promote student comprehension of content knowledge

• theorists construct knowledge and teachers understand and implement them to students

• “so passive, so unchallenging, so boring that teachers often lose their sense of wonder and excitement about learning to teach” (Kinchelo, 1993, p.204).

Teachers as Reflective Practitioners

• Teaching is seen not just as a series of predetermined procedures but as context-sensitive action grounded in intellectual thought

• The difference between techs & reflective practitioners: can bring about their own perspectives related to theories that cannot be matched by expert(theorists) who are far removed from the realities of the classroom

Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals

• This idea is derived mainly from the works of critical pedagogists and through the philosophy of the Brazilian thinker Paulo Freire

• schools and colleges are not simply instructional sites; they are, in fact, “cultural arenas where heterogeneous ideological, discursive, and social forms collide in an unremitting struggle for dominance”

Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals cont.

• What do they do?

• explore problems they themselves have posed about life in and outside of the classroom (inquiry oriented)

• promote student discussion

• promote self-reflection

• familiarize themselves with linguistically and culturally diversity of their student population

Turn to page 16 THINK, PAIR, SHARE

Out of three roles discussed, which role do you believe to be most beneficial to

your students and why?

Professional Theory VS Personal Theory

• Professional Theory: theories that are transmitted to teachers in colleges, universities, etc

• Personal Theory: individual theory unique to each person which is developed by putting professional theories into practice

Teachers Theory of Practice

• 3 levels

• Technical Level: teachers are content with using ideas generated by outside experts

• Practical Level: teachers not only articulate their criteria but also engage in theorizing about the nature of their subjects, students, and learning/teaching process

• Critical or Emancipatory Level: teacher theorizing is concerned with wider ethnical, social, historical, and political issues

Chapter 2Understand Postmethod Pedagogy

• 11 Methods of language learning and teaching:

• audio-lingual method

• communicative method

• community language learning

• direct method

• grammar-translation method

• natural approach

• oral approach

• silent way

• situational language teaching

• suggestopedia

• total physical response

Categorizing Methods• Three categories to classify

methods:• Language-centered methods

• concerned with linguistic forms/grammatical structures, seek to provide opportunities for learners to practice preselected and pre-sequenced structures of linguistics through form-focused exercises (ex. audio- lingual method)

• Learner-centered methods• concerned with language use and learner needs, like

the language centered method it provides opportunities to practice but also communicative functions as well through meaning focused exercises (ex. communicative method)

• Learning-centered methods• concerned with learning processes, provide

opportunities for learners to participate in open ended meaningful interaction through communicative activities or problem solving tasks during the class time (ex. natural approach)

Postmethod Pedagogy

• 3 Parameters of Postmethod Pedagogy:

• Parameter of Particularity • any language pedagogy needs to be relevant and

sensitive to a particular group of teachers teaching a particular group of learners who are trying to attain a specific set of goals within a particular sociocultural atmosphere.

• Parameter of Practicality• entails a teacher generated theory of practice meaning

no theory of practice can be fully useful or useable unless it is generated through practice

• Parameter of Possibility• individual identity, bringing language and cultures in

contact

• Turn to page 37

Postmethod Pedagogy• Macrostrategies of postmethod pedagogy (10

of them):• Maximize learning opportunities: teachers strike a balance between their

role as managers of teaching acts and their role as mediators of learning acts

• Minimize perceptual mismatches: recognition of potential perceptual mismatches between intentions and interpretations of the learner, the teacher, and the teacher educator

• Facilitate negotiated interaction: meaningful learner-learner, learner-teacher interactions

• Promote learner autonomy: helping learners learn how to learn

• Foster language awareness: any attempt to to draw learners’ attention to the formal and functional properties of their L2

• Activate intuitive heuristics: highlights the importance of providing rich textual data to internalize underlying rules governing grammatical usage and communicative use

• Contextualize linguistic input: language usage and use are shaped by linguistic, extralinguistic, situational, and extrasituational contexts

• Integrate language skills: integrate language skills traditionally separated and sequenced as listening, speaking, reading, and writing

• Ensure social relevance: teachers need to be sensitive to the societal, political, economic, and educational environment in which L2 learning and teaching take place

• Raise cultural consciousness: the need to treat learners as cultural informants so they are encouraged to participate in the classroom

The Pedagogic Wheel• Turn to page 41

• the parameters function as the axle that connects and holds the center of the pedagogic wheel

• the macrostrategies function as the spokes that join the pedagogic wheel to its center thereby giving the wheel stability and strength

• the outer rim stands for language learning and language teaching

• these components shape language learning and teaching through individual, institutional, social, and cultural factors

“TESOL methods: Changing Tracks, Challenging Trends”

• 3 Perceptible shifts in language teaching and learning:

• 1. Communicative language teaching to task-based language teaching

• 2. Method based pedagogy to postmethod pedagogy

• 3. Systemic discovery to critical discourse

Why do you think there is a shift in these ideologies for

language teaching and learning?

Works CitedKumaravadivelu, B. Introduction. Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. By Kumaravadivelu. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. N. pag. Print.

TESOL Methods: Changing Tracks, Challenging TrendsB. Kumaravadivelu TESOL Quarterly Vol. 40, No. 1(Mar., 2006), pp. 59-81Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40264511