Reflected on the articles: Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching by Kumaravadivelu and Türkiye'de Öğretmenlik Mesleğinin Dönüşümü: İdealist Öğretmenden Hazırlayıcı Teknisyen Öğretmene by Ahmet Yıldız
Teacher Roles
In
this paper, I will talk about the role that my mentor teacher assumes, my other
teachers do in the past, and currently and of course I am hoping to assume in
my future as a teacher in the school context.
Firstly,
I want to say that I am very happy that eventually I read Kumaravadivelu and
Postmethod Pedagogy since I had always been hearing it from our supervisor since
the very beginning of the fall semester but still I could not read it fully
because I had always lots of things to do, or somehow maybe because it was not
an assignment basically. However, now after I read Kumaravadivelu and its
proposal for education field, ELT field, my perspective to the teaching chanced
a bit again. I must say that the article that Kumaravadivelu wrote and the
other article “Türkiye’de
Öğretmenlik Mesleğinin Dönüşümü: İdealist Öğretmenden Sınava Hazırlayıcı
Teknisyen Öğretmene”
written by Ahmet Yıldız is like a continuum to the readings that we commented
on previous week (banking of education and anti- intellectualism). What I mean
here is that the things I read in the articles written by Kumaravadivelu and
Yıldız are somehow supportive of the things argued in the articles we read last
week.
When
I look at the article which Kumaravadivelu wrote, I see that there are three
roles which a teacher assumes in the teaching context: passive technicians,
reflective practitioners and transformative intellectuals. In this context, passive
technicians are those who are just giving the content, information/knowledge to
the student. Actually, I think that these teachers are the teachers who are
knowingly or maybe unintentionally attending to the group of teachers in
banking of education because these technicians are just trying to deposit the
students with lots of knowledge at the same time without taking humanism
approach in the education into consideration. Coming to reflective teachers,
actually I had been thinking to be a reflective teacher since we read articles
and watched a YouTube short movie about reflective teachers last term because I
learned that reflective teachers always learn from their experiences, from
their students, colleagues and they renew themselves all the time for qualified
education. Still, I find reflective teaching very beneficial but now after I
read Kumaravadivelu, I see that to renew self, to refresh educational
philosophy is not enough for wellbeing of education in this era. Now I think
that a teacher should be both reflective teacher and transformative
intellectual because s/he should both renew/update him/herself and be
sociopolitical conscious and act/teach accordingly. In other words, in today’s
world, it is not enough to be reflective; we must go beyond as teachers. As for
transformative intellectuals, Kumaravadivelu states that teachers must be aware
of the current ideologies and sociopolitical situations which affect the world,
and thereby both the education itself and educationists should try not to be
slave of the current system and resist against to be oppressed. So, as I
stated, I link the article which was written by Kumaravadivelu, Freire, and
Yetkin Işık in this sense.
Coming
to the Postmethod Pedagogy of Kumaravadivelu, actually I should say that before
reading the article, I was confused about the difference between Postmethod and
Eclectic Method. Now, I am much clearer about it thanks to the article. Till I
read the article, I would always say that there is no best method but each and
every teacher must form her/ his eclectic method by internalizing one technique
from one method, one technique from another and so on. Hence, I thought that
this is the best way of teaching. I was thinking the very same thing for years
because since the very beginning of our methodology courses, we learned about
forming our own eclectic method after reading about all the methods, approaches
and techniques in the ELT field. We always thought that since a teacher cannot
apply a method all the time, and a method cannot be an ultimate, best method
that can be ever/ continually applied unquestionably, a teacher must take a
method from one approach, one technique from one method, another from another
method so must form his/her eclectic one accordingly. However, now I see that
this is also an inadequate/ incomplete teaching technique since there is no
criterion underpinning the eclectic method and it is too broad/ vague/
subjective to be a method as Kumaravadivelu says. Now I am also thinking that if
each and every teacher forms an eclectic method which is peculiar to his/her
own, the education area will be so complex and full and most probably there
will be no unity in terms of content, success etc. It is like “her
kafadan ses çıkmak” in
Turkish so from now on, I am thinking that instead of this excessive and
informal variety, it is more convenient to internalize a modern, one size fits
all/ cookie cutter kind of method, which seems to be a postmethod in the most
current way.
Another
thing that I like about post method is that like we read in previous articles
written by Freire and Yetkin Işık, the current education system tries to raise
passive listeners, and of course citizens because of neoliberalism and
capitalism issue. In other words, everybody has its own predetermined role in
the society, upper layer wants this to go on and education helps this cast
system to be kept/continued. In the articles, it is stated that teachers must
be aware of this situation and so should try to raise sociopolitical conscious
individuals in the schools with true education. In the postmethod pedagogy,
this issue is also seen as a problem and in this sense; one major pedagogic
parameter which is possibility is internalized to solve this social problem.
Due to this parameter, a teacher should take the responsibility for student
identity formation and social transformation for educated sociopolitical
conscious society. It seems a bit like utopia but still I think this is a good
aspect which can be added to an educational method since any method cannot be
thought as independent from world’s sociopolitical situation. Besides, coming
to the other parameters in postmethod pedagogy, I should say that I like
particularity, and practicality. I also think that each and every situation is
particularly peculiar to the time, students, teacher and context so postmethod
must be applicable in a particular way; also, since it is highly important to
theorize what is practiced and practice what is theorized in the teaching
context will vanish the gap between theory and practice in ELT field. That’s
why I find the way postmethod informs us about its being an alternative to the
methods generally.
When
I look at the second article of this week, relatively shorter one
Kumaravadivelu article, which is “Türkiye’de Öğretmenlik
Mesleğinin Dönüşümü: İdealist Öğretmenden Sınava Hazırlayıcı Teknisyen
Öğretmene”, I must say that
the article again complain about the same thing: the effect of sociopolitical
issues on the education field. The writer states that teacher figure in Turkey
took shape according to the sociopolitical features of the periods in our
history. Firstly, during the reign of Ottoman Empire, for example, teachers
were like ‘hodjas’ who are responsible for religion education mostly. In the
first years of republic, teachers started to assume the role of modernizer of
the republic and then with military coup they started to assume the role of
progressive and revolutionary teacher. Lastly, as for current years, teachers
of course had to assume the role of passive technicians who are responsible for
preparing the students for the central examination. Talking about this issue, I
think the changing of teacher role according to the time is quite normal but
last role that teacher assumes is quite merciless because the teacher is pushed
to be a passive robots walking in classrooms. When I look at my own high school
teachers, I certainly see those kinds of teachers and remember that how they
fell burnout. So, I absolutely think that teachers should be helped to get rid
of this situation but I do not know how to do it because of the current
educational systems and schooling figure.
So,
all in all, I learned lots of things this week after reading the articles. Now
I see that all the articles are somehow related to the each other regarding of
education/ teacher roles problem. I hope that we teachers can change the world
by resisting against the current slavery system which is imposed by upper
layers of the society with these postmethod pedagogy, and some other things
proven in the field and conscious. Thanks
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