Teacher Education

As far as I know, in order to become a teacher, a person needs some kind of formal education all over the world. In order to become an EFL or ESL teacher, one needs to complete a 3-4 year BA in Teacher Education or a 100-120 hour TEFL certificate course such as a CELTA or TESOL on top of a BA that could be in a different field. We call this pre-service teacher education and teachers-to- be receive the bare minimum of the knowledge and skills to become an English teacher.

I think, Wallace’s (1991) description of the Craft Model in teacher training fits this stage of teacher education very well. The trainee is in the middle receiving knowledge; pretty much passive intake goes on.

 

Figure 1: Trainee’s role based on Wallace’s (1991) Craft Model (Ur, 1997)

During Teacher Education (TE) Future teachers take basic methodology, lesson planning, language terminology and teaching techniques as well as some micro teaching opportunities with some peer observation. They read books by the ELT gurus such as Scott Thornbury and Jeremy Harmer.

According to Wallace’s Applied Science Model, teachers in the first years of their teaching career are busy with applying what they have learned from the literature and their trainers. (Figure 2) This may give little or no scope to teacher’s own creativity and inventions.

 

What about observation during TE? Most of the renowned TEFL courses offer a number of guidedobservations during these courses, others neglect this component which is a real problem.  I think observing other teachers or even teachers-to-be is one of the most useful things for a teacher.

And at the end of the TE period, future teachers are certified and are ready to take their first “real” classes and….

 

Teacher Development

The real story starts when they encounter their first group of 40-48 pairs of eyes looking at them 🙂 :), there are in-service teachers who never have further voluntary or compulsory training in teaching but this number should be either really rare mainly due to lack of finances or these teachers are either lucky to be equipped with a godsend talent or totally unaware of what to do to improve their teaching skills.  

The majority of the English teachers feel the need of further in-service training and continue their professional development by voluntary courses or they are offered compulsory training by the institutions they work for. Naturally, neither the Craft Model nor the Applied Science Model alone makes them competent ELT teachers. What does then??? This will be the next blog post.

Reference

Ur, P. (1997). Teacher Training and Teacher Development: A Useful Dichotomy? JALT Publications, The Language Teacher Online, 19 October 1997

Wallace, M.J. (1991). Training foreign language teachers: A reflective approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.