As teachers, we often love to analyze the way our students learn. Some of that same analysis can be fruitfully applied to ourselves as well.
One of my favourite ELTers, David Deubelbeiss, has as his general slogan "When one teaches, two learn." I couldn't agree more.
I'm sure we can all recall (at least to some extent) what it felt like to start out as teachers. One of the strongest impressions is that we are journey(wo)men, and we have so much to learn. In my opinion, the very best teachers out there don't really lose that sensation, irrespective of how much experience or sets of qualifications they earn. If anything, the sensation grows, becoming one of excitement and fascination rather than trepidation.
It has always intrigued me to some extent how much we tend to segregate learning development (for students) from our own teacher development issues. By this I mean that, as teachers, we tend to do a lot of reading and chatting at training sessions about all sorts of things related to learning processes, to better understand our learners, but it can be really interesting to apply (adapting where appropriate) some of these theories to ourselves as "learner" teachers.
Hence the title of this post, which implies that it can be a good idea to take a "gander" at what we imagine to be good or descriptive about our learners (the "goslings"), and then see if it can also teach us something about ourselves (the "gander" also being a parent of goslings!) and what we do as teachers.
Here are just a couple of ideas for you. I've framed them as questions, because I think they're something to explore and think about.
If affective filter (ala Krashen) accurately describes what can prevent uptake of language and effective learning for students, what about us as teachers? Is there a corresponding affective filter for teachers that creates a sort of grill or catchment area and hence prevents smooth flowing teaching ability? If so, what can we do about it?
Continuing with Krashen, what about the monitor? You know, the process whereby language learners use what they have learned to "monitor" their ongoing production of "acquired" language? According to Krashen, there can be over-users of the monitor (those who analyze too much and end up with very hesitant production), under-users of the monitor (those risk-takers gabbling away off to the side of your class without worrying at all whether it is correct or even comprehensible!), and - somewhere between the two - the optimal user who monitors in small doses only when it is really necessary and doesn't often compromise one's ongoing fluency.
Okay, well is there something like this monitor for teachers as well? Do we use our bookish and CELTA-ish or MATESOL-ish gleanings to monitor what we are doing naturally in our teaching (the ability and processes we have already "acquired")? Do teachers themselves have the potential to become over-users, under-users and optimal users of a sort of teaching monitor?
And my final theft from Krashen's chest of goodies (I promise), how about this i+1 theory? You know, "input plus one." If you subscribe to the i+1 theory, you figure that effective language development takes place when we give the learners input they can handle, with just a tad more that is guaranteed to stretch them a little, grope ahead, learn something new within a broader context of comfortable comprehension.
What if we adapted this to become t+1? "Teaching plus one." As in, if we generally stick to teaching processes that we already know and feel comfortable with, but always add a little dash of something that stretches us a little into unknown teaching territory of some sort, could this be an effective recipe for ongoing teaching development?
Krashen's stuff is fun to apply in this way, because I'm of the general opinion that almost all of what Krashen proposes can be generalised and applied to any sort of learning. It's easy. Which is probably why his theories have always been so popular with newer teachers, and why Krashen-bashing has become a favourite pastime of so many professors looking for an easy article to write for a journal and justify another year of tenure. :-)
Let's look at some slightly more challenging concepts then, shall we?
How about this notion of interlanguage? From memory, this was first proposed by some ridiculously insightful bloke named Selinger (I think it was - if I'm wrong then I'm sure someone in one of Rod Ellis' MA programs will be ready to pounce on me with a correction). Basically, interlanguage describes the learner's ongoing "approximation" of the target language they are attempting to learn. It floats somewhere between their awareness of their first language and the perfected form of the target language. Technically, an interlanguage is a language unto itself and in its own right, and there are never two that are exactly the same (just as no two students can ever be exactly the same person). My visual interpretation of it is like a gelatinous bubble, constantly shifting and re-shaping itself as the learner makes new discoveries about the language.
So, do teachers have this as well - a sort of interteaching? A teacher's ongoing approximation of ideal or perfected teaching methodology? The "target form" here is obviously difficult to apply, because of course we haven't yet found a perfect way of teaching with consistently optimal results, and we probably never will! However, perhaps optimal teaching exists somewhere at the periphery of each individual teacher's awareness, or as a golden archway built out of their highest hopes and expectations. Do our teaching approaches and collections of techniques comprise a similar gelatinous, ever metamorphosing bubble that basically approximates what we eventually hope our teaching will become (or in more ominous situations, the teaching approach we have been led to believe is "the" correct or best one)?
Or have those cookies I picked up at that market stall today got additional ingredients in them that nobody bothered to warn me about?
If you would bear with me on this interlanguage and interteaching thread for a moment, we can go from there to the concept of variability. Naturally, students' language production varies in its forms and errors, and this can be described in terms of free variation (apparently more common in beginner learners who haven't acquired many of the target language rules yet) and systematic variation (which is influenced more by changes in the linguistic, psychological or social context).
So do us teachers exhibit variability in our teaching as well? Do we flail around a lot at the beginning, feeling our way and demonstrating a lot of free variation in our teaching techniques? Likewise, can localised changes to our linguistic, pyschological or social context bring on systematic variation in our teaching performance?
Related to these notions of interlanguage and variability, do we as teachers have the potential to plateau (hit a certain level or capacity and get stuck there without further progression for long periods of time - if not permanently) in our teaching approaches and ability - the same way learners do with the language they are learning?
And for that matter, just as learners often exhibit backsliding (appearing to actually regress in their ability with the language), can this happen to teachers as well (with respect to their teaching, I mean)?
I could go on, and the list is actually quite long. You might like to add some of your own feelings or theories about language learning which also become very fruitful grounds for examining teaching ability and development. Comments welcome!
In any case, I personally find it fascinating just how many Second Language Acquisition principles and theories have potential application to our ability and progress as teachers as well. Perhaps this is because learning and teaching are basically two sides of the same coin. Or, perhaps teaching, being a communicative process that depends on language, is naturally susceptible to and influenced by the same factors that naturally govern language acquisition.
If that is true, it might be time to stop examining language learning and language teaching as very separate fields or issues... don't you think?
Or perhaps we should just stick to David Deubelbeiss' original and beautifully accurate message:
When one teaches, two learn.
:-)
Picture at top of post used with permission:
