Exploring our teaching

EI-320 ANÁLISIS DE LA PRÁCTICA DE LA ENSEÑANZA DEL INGLÉS

FIRST ASSIGNMENT

According to Gebhard and Oprandy, teaching exploration is the opportunity that

every teacher has to analyze, think, understand, and discovery the process of

teaching even though they have years of experience. Teachers can explore and

discovery things, about their teaching that has been hidden for years, and they

never realize whether something is wrong or good for their own teaching until

we pay conscious attention.

Gebhard and Oprandy points out that to be aware about our teaching is the

most important thing of our role of exploration teaching. Be capable of discover

and rediscovery, in our teaching, beliefs and practice that can be analyzing

through our self-observation. At this point, I am sure that nobody can be the

best observer of our own teaching practice that ourselves.

“Taking the responsibility for our own teaching” is the first assumption that, in

summary, is the desire that each teacher must have in order to explore

the teaching practice; this desire should be inside each teacher. We have to be

conscious about our role as a teacher and show interest in the whole actions

that are applied in the classroom.

We need help for other. We can explore ourselves but it can be a richer

experience if we consult our colleges both can explore and understand our

teaching in order to have different perspectives. In computer programming,

there is a methodology to write language code that consists in review the code

by two programmers in order to reduce the number of errors produce in the

program.

There is not an effective technique or method for teaching English, all of them

are proposals and there is no a best or bad way to teach. Teachers can try out

different ways, and they have the right to be wrong so prescription more than

help teachers, can truncate the possibility to find out better ways to teach, can

cause confusion and obstructs the way the teacher wants to teach. Prescription

can reduce the desire to be better but description can be helpful. Description in

the other hand, help the teacher to portray what is happening in the classroom

and can provide a detail picture. With a description, teacher can analyze in

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detail what is going on the classroom in terms of teaching and interaction. I

think that descriptive exploration is helpful, when is providing by a second

person. Sometimes when we observe teaching to ourselves, we are not

objectives, and for this reason, we need other teachers.

Description in contrast with prescription has more value if this action is practiced

in both, a collaborative and individual way but with nonjudgmental stance.

When we observe other teachers or ourselves, we should be impartial, and just

think in what happen in the classroom without judging a positive or negative

way.  Gallwey as cited in Gebhard and Oprandy pointed out, when there are no

judgments in the exploration process, the awareness about what is going on the

classroom, is more objective. When we see a person who is wearing dark

clothing and extravagant haircut, we automatically think that this guy is a bad

person because we judge according to the information we have and probably

that person is not at all. We are judging without having enough information.

These feelings are the same in the exploration process, and we have to avoid it

because our feelings interfere with the description or the prescription

exploration.

During a job interview, the prospect employee is talking about a specific

situation that happens in last jobs and the interviewer does not show body

movements because it can be interpreted as acceptation, for example shake

the head in signal of “yes”. The prospect employee can be interpreting that as

he or she is going to be hire. It is the same in the exploration teaching. We have

to pay attention in the use of the body language, expression and words. Every

teacher can be interpreted in their own understanding. Words such as

encouragement, clear, atmosphere, enthusiasm, and interested, as the author

says, has different meanings from each teacher to another, and this can

provoke a misunderstanding communication between them, so we have to pay

close attention to the language body and behavior.

According to Gebhard and Oprandy, there are four possibilities to be conscious

in our teaching practice through exploration but not necessarily they are the

unique. We have to try other routes. Taking responsibility to our own teaching

and carry out to be aware about the exploration process through problem

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solving because we, as a teachers, should be discovery what is going on in our

classroom and try to solve all the problems we have and to be conscious about

the multiple troubles that affect our teaching and of course the students'

problems.

Fanselow as cited in Gebhard and Oprandy pointed out, we should try the

opposite we usually do in our classroom just for fun. The idea is to adapt

random teaching behaviors and put on practice that behavior. I think this idea of

playing with behaviors can result fun because the students are going to be

active in the class, and they are going to guess what is going to happen next in

an unpredictable participation.

Jimenez-Aries argued that teachers very often do not do what they believe, for

example, in his master’s thesis analyze the behavior that two teacher did in their

teaching. One of them who said that is not very important oral error treatments,

although she always corrected error as they happen in her class. On the other

hand, another teacher said that to correction of errors should be treated when

they occur. In this point, I think that we as a teacher should be doing what we

think, do other things is contradictory. I remember that when I started to teach, I

said to my students that the punctuality in class was very important but many of

the times I failed in the schedule. I learnt this until a student told me my

incongruence.

Fanselow stated that we can construct our own knowledge about teaching by

observing teachers, students, and ourselves. The process of observation our

teaching includes describing, analyzing, and interpreting what we observe in

the classroom and can contribute to gain awareness about our teaching.

Observation can be done by taping, transcribing and analyzing our interaction in

the classroom, detecting patterns or rules every teacher has.  Another way to

exploring our teaching is by action research, and it consists to work

systematically on the classroom’s problems by creating an action plan that

solves these issues in a collaborative effort. This type of teacher research is not

considered as an exploration. It is a method to solve problems with the

collaboration of students, teachers and administrator.

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I did not hear this method before but in my school, we have academic meeting

every month, and we try to identify issues about the students such

as behaviors, grades, absents, desertion and so on. We find out what are the

possible causes, and we offer a solution about the specific problems. We take

notes and in the next meeting, we evaluate the results. If we do not get good

results, we change the strategy. I think this a way seems to the action research.

In conclusion, I think that any teacher has faced an amount number of problems

in their classroom, and it can be produced by several factors, negative students,

low averages, absents, parents claim, administrative process and so on. All of

them finally are issues that affect directly our teaching in the classroom and in

consequence we are not enough efficient in this activity. We can realize that we

should solve all of these troubles in order to gain understanding of teaching and

learning within the classroom. If we take responsibility of our own teaching

practice, we can take awareness about our responsibility in the classroom, and

this can be done by exploring our teaching in a nonjudgmental way.

REFERENCESGebhard, J., & Oprandy, R. (1999). Language teaching awareness. A guide to

eploring beliefs and practices. Cambridge.

Richards, J., & Lockhart, C. (1994). Reflective teaching in second language classrooms. Cambridge.

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