Abdellatif Semmoud
University of Tlemcen
Abstract
In the field of teaching, many researchers have noticed and asserted that university teaching and students’ ‟behaviour, in the process of learning, is mainly related to adapted theories of teaching which drive the beliefs and assumptions of these teachers about their own teaching. To get back to the point, these beliefs are shaped to offer insights to teachers and to form their conceptions of teaching across the educational settings. In a like manner, Schommer (1994) thinks that these beliefs vary from naïve to sophisticated. A teacher who holds naïve beliefs generally sees knowledge as simple, clear and specific, and then, the learning ability is innate and fixed and can be directly transmitted to the learners. Contrariwise, the teacher whose beliefs are sophisticated regards knowledge as being complex and uncertain, and can only be gradually fuelled to the learner. As a matter of fact, it is conceived that Algerian university teachers may be ranged among the naïve teachers according to Schommer (1994). The purpose of this paper is then to raise teachers’ awareness about their beliefs on teaching which could be refined and re-enacted only through a professional development if accredited by officials.
Keywords: teachers’ beliefs, tertiary education, professional development, naive and sophisticated beliefs.
Introduction
There is, undoubtedly, recognition among teachers and educationalists that tremendous efforts are to be deployed to raise the teachers’ awareness towards new developmental strategies to ensure better English language teaching. To this view, teachers must divert their attention to the building of a new vision which paves them out of the routinized methods of the teaching/learning process which consists of applying the pooling of ideas and practices suggested by many researchers in the field. Likewise, in this area of pedagogy, teachers should be encouraged to observe value and understand their own experience and to evaluate and integrate relevant external practice and knowledge into their own evolving model of effective teaching and learning.
The Conceptions and Beliefs of University Teachers
Generally, teaching is evaluated by the professional development teachers have been subjected to. It is, in fact, the process that plays an essential role in successful education, in which teachers work under supervision to learn how best to adjust their teaching to the learning needs of their students. Professional development is also considered as a bridge between would be teachers and experienced ones having the same objective which is guiding learners in achieving high standards of learning and development. Quite often, this professional development triggers a flip in attitudes and therefore make it possible for teachers to gain new visions and new beliefs which shape their teaching and launch them in an ongoing quest of quality teaching. To get back to the point, those beliefs are shaped to offer insights to teachers and to form their conceptions of teaching across the educational settings. What is worthy to note, also and in another context, is that those beliefs have an undeniable impact on the judgements of the teacher about the relevance of knowledge in particular situation (Pajares, 1992). To be brief, this necessarily means that there is a relationship between the teacher’s beliefs and their conceptions of teaching. In a like manner, Schommer (1994) thinks that those beliefs vary from naïve to sophisticated. A teacher who holds naïve beliefs generally sees knowledge as simple, clear and specific, and then, the learning ability is innate and fixed and can be directly transmitted to the learners. Contrariwise, the teacher whose beliefs are sophisticated regards knowledge as being complex and uncertain, and can only be gradually fuelled to the learner (Purcel, 2000). As a matter of fact, it is conceived that Algerian university teachers may be ranged among the naïve teachers according to Schommer (1994) and Purcel (2000). Alternatively, Hashweh (1996) in his research on naïve and sophisticated beliefs, found that teachers who had sophisticated views were more likely to undertake the approach of facilitating lectures dispensing; whereas, those who held naïve beliefs viewed utterly teaching as only transmitting knowledge. Both views are, therefore, distinguished in the sense that, the former stands for a learner-centred approach; whereas, the latter, tends to direct their teaching to a teacher-fronted approach. To this specific end, (Varnava-Marouchou, 2007) pointed out that the learner becomes dependant when the teacher thinks he is the only one who knows the subject and accurately transmits it, so this conception is referred to as ‘lecturer-dependant’. A student-centred conception, on the other hand, is one where high-quality learning which is viewed by (Watkins; 1998) as “requiring active construction of meaning and the possibility of conceptual change on the part of the learners” (Watkins, 1998: 20). From this pedagogical alternative, the teacher runs the lecture implicitly by facilitating and encouraging the learner to become responsible for his/her knowledge acquisition. Being that, this conception is referred to as ‘student-dependant’ (Varnava-Marouchou, 2007).
The current State of Professional Development
The needs of educationalists and academic officials throughout the world are to identify the learners’ needs and to improve them, to enhance teaching efficiency, to increase the use of information and communications technologies and to raise awareness of the impact of globalisation on academic life (Nicoll and Harisson, 2003). These needs definitely represent the main objectives the Algerian university officials wish to reach in order to ensure with the academic staff the promotion of quality teaching and perfection in education. Nevertheless, quality teaching requires teachers to change their beliefs on the articulation of their classroom practices and sometimes radically (James, 2005), but this cannot be achieved unless the teacher is in a position to seek a never-ending quest of training or development. In other words, it is imperative for university teachers to learn how to teach before and during teaching (pre-service and in-service training). Henceforth, teacher learning, as a process which has become increasingly important to ensure teachers to be successful in matching their teaching goals with their students’ learning needs, is a necessary condition for student learning. Professional development is also needed for teachers to enable their students to develop proficiency in the target language and understanding of the cultures associated with that language. Regarding this, it is currently believed, that it is no logic to speak about all these in the Algerian university, since teachers have not been subjects of special and official accredited training courses, nor have they been launched in an on-going bottom-up teacher education development, which allows them to improve teaching quality and student learning. Ample evidence, however, is provided by educationalists stating that training can indeed improve various aspects of teaching especially when this is evaluated by the learners themselves. Thus university teachers who received training can, by all means, gain insights and effective strategies to improve their students learning. In this special context, (Trowler and Bamber, 2005) highlighted: “Train higher education teachers to teach, they will do a better job than the untrained ones” (Trowler and Bamber, 2005:80).
This indubitably clears up the idea that on-going development is essential in the teaching field to such an extent that teachers who do not inquire about developing to become real teachers are to possess everything but the potential to teaching effectively. In our department of English, no single teacher has been subject of any training and so are newbies as well as experienced teachers. It is claimed on another ground that all teachers, whether prospective, tenured, experienced or even professionals are liable to make awkward practices, but this awkwardness is hidden away from these teachers because it is involved in a ritual behaviour (Underhill,1985). What goes well in a classroom goes unnoticed and what goes badly goes unnoticed, too. The point is that the perennial situation in which language teaching prevails in our universities due to the absence of training and development in our department, has given rise to non-conformity of the teaching profession. Thereby the problem is that the Algerian officials tend, in their official speeches, to ignore the situation and focus on just one expressed will to ‘improve’. There is increasing evidence with this attendant view that university teachers need emphatically to attend special training courses for their professional growth; otherwise, their teaching will not bring satisfaction and success, and this is what really happens in the department of English of Tlemcen university. In this line of thought (Edge, 2002) cited that:
Teachers teach at their best in different ways. For this reason and out of a sense of professional respect for colleagues whose development will take different paths than my own, and lead to different outcomes, I feel that I need to offer them the same sense of empowerment that I claim for myself: if you are making the kind of commitment to continuing professional growth that I have been talking about, I believe that you deserve respect for your teaching (Edge, 2002:51).
Edge’s quotation urges teachers to be engaged in a professional development since it is crucial and has the power to substantiate the whole process of teaching and learning. What is more important, teachers undertaking the path of development would change their beliefs which in turn would lead to an important expansion of their knowledge and skills, contribute to their growth and enhance their effectiveness with their learners. Henceforth, they become more respected and conscious as inquirers than any other teacher among academics could ever be, and so would grow their teaching.
Teacher Inquiry
Being distinct but not distant from reflection, inquiry is viewed as an academic issue which needs to seek a set of questions. Those ranges mainly from the platform of pedagogical traditions to the approaches put in to be used moving along to syllabuses elaboration. On a further stand, teacher inquiry is supposed to be the capstone that can be used by teachers to alleviate the complexities that happen in the profession. Another perspective of inquiry articulated by Cohen and Manion (1994) consists of isolating an area and asking questions about it. Likewise, teacher inquiry is clearly identified by a teacher’s investigation of a new paradigm of learning that can definitely lead to educational renewal and radical change. To put it another way, when in the state of a newbie, tenured, or mentor teacher, the teacher who recognizes that his professional practice should be problematized, can effectively be committed to simultaneous renewal and reform of the teaching profession and teacher education. Around this thought, Smith and Lyttle cited that “in any classroom where teacher inquiry is occurring, there is quiet kind of educational reform in process radical, but (1993:101). That clears up the fact that any individual engagement in teacher inquiry can be tremendous outlook and contribution to larger educational reform; more importantly, a reformulation of the teaching profession which is usually portrayed as a highly complex, context-specific and interactive activity. To this is linked the critical importance of the differences across classrooms and schools.
Characteristics of Teacher Inquiry.
Teacher inquiry stretches to an infinite number of components or characteristics which make the platform over which change towards curricular reforms can be achieved. All these components need to be articulated by teachers themselves, as being detached members from the administrative staff, by building the structure of the process of teaching as well as of learning. Teachers, with regard to this, should be real agents of change without expecting others to bring for them changes towards which they might behave sceptically and reticently, and in a later stage, their assumptions and perceptions about the changes would turn to downright dismay and so would become their teaching. The characteristics of inquiry teachers must be imbued with may range from:
Engagement and Devotion
It is obviously known that within collaborative inquiry that teachers integrate new approaches to reset new dimensional teaching instructions all along their teaching continuous professional development. This fitting process serves teachers to re-enact their personal knowledge base about what is meant to be a teacher. Thus inquiry constructs an understanding of the classroom encounter where instruction, curriculum, and students actions intersect (Moore 2004 ).
In confined terms, teacher inquiry when collaboratively articulated, teachers accordingly inquire about their students’ learning and engagement. Common sense seems to highlight that collaborative is learning that can provide new insights unavailable in inquiry processes that are done individually.
Subsequently, one of the most crucial objectives of inquiry is that any instructional methodology must thoroughly meet the needs of learners, acquainting them with rich personally relevant learning. Worthier can it be, an inquiry is the cornerstone of the learning process where the students learning grows gradually close-knit to this process and gets embodied in a never-ending quest of generating new knowledge and insights that may have both immediate and longer-term consequences for teaching and learning.
Reflection and Repetition
Reflection is important and critical to good teaching. It, in this regard, happens many times, that teachers make decisions to change their classroom practices. With this intention, they reflect on their learners’ engagement and learning resulting from their past decisions (Schon 1983). On the other side, the fact reflection, which is considered as a major component of inquiry, cycles back within this process; it grows more and more powerful and offers the opportunity to teachers to progress in thinking. Also within iterative, collaborative inquiry, teachers can identify frequently emerging themes, questions, reason and probe ideas in order to push thinking of the group further. Such, iterative reflective work is facilitated by regular and consistent analysis of what is being learned and how.
Investigation and Adaptation
It is fully understood that among the questions that teachers pose every now and then, are those which require an on-going adaptation of the pedagogical approaches, and a fairly balanced reformulation of their teaching practices, through regular data collection, in response to their work in the classroom. These collected classroom data enhance teachers to investigate new engaging and relevant questions that are mainly grounded on how learners receipt, at best, the capacities to reach proficiency in knowledge acquisition. By the same token, inquiry is emphatically called as a concept in which teachers engage in what others have discovered about a giving teaching area. (Coburn & Stein, 2010). In this vein, Harste (2001) cited that “Education as inquiry provides an opportunity to explore collaboratively topics of personal and social interest using the perspectives offered by others as well as various knowledge domains.” Harste (2001:47)
Inquiry versus Reflection
Reflection is known to be, for many researchers in the area, as an in-ward-looking form of inquiry. It is not intentional as inquiry could ever be. It is important and critical to good teaching (Zeichner& Liston 1996). It is also a key component of teacher inquiry. Nonetheless, teacher inquiry is different from reflection in time and pace in and on practice. Teacher inquiry is a fronted approach to the professional growth of teachers because its process requires teachers questioning the goals of their teaching, systematically studying their own practices, and ultimately changing these practices. This reveals a reversed image of traditional professional development for teachers which focuses on the knowledge of a top-down instructional methodology being shared with groups of teachers, which in turn, when disseminated never brings about classroom changes as inquiry does.
To get back to the point, it is quite significant to distinguish reflection from inquiry by pointing out to the fact that reflection seldom occurs intentionally in the busy complex process of teaching. In other words, teachers while reflecting on their practices, many of them do that in an unplanned way and in different settings that could be held inside or outside the university walls, either individually or collaboratively. This is just to raise the fact that reflection is consciously planned; thereby, only very few teachers think of making it neat and cautious the way it should ever be. Conversely, teacher inquiry invites intentional, planned reflection based upon problem posing of the variables the teaching complexities embody. Regarding this statement, when teachers launch themselves in inquiry, their thoughts and assumptions about teaching are made public for discussion, sharing, debating and academic conversation. Such a rising of inquiry is commonly identified, by some experts, as a teacher research.
Teachers as Researchers
Teacher research was cleared up by Lori Brown as “a method of gaining insight from hindsight. It is a way of formalizing the questioning and reflecting we, as teachers, engage in every day in an attempt to improve student learning” (Lori Brown 1999). Similarly, Cochran Smith & Lytle went on citing that “Teacher research is systematic, intentional inquiry by teachers about their own school and classroom work” (Cochran Smith & Lytle, 1993: 24). All along their career as teachers inquire about their practices and need to alter from them what is awkward and badly designed, they first need to embark in such an inquiry holding it by a positive attitude which lays its basis on its principles. Ultimately, it is further agreed that the second paradigm is a worthwhile critical reflection on and in the teacher’s own teaching practices laying a special emphasis on the most important exploratory tasks namely and mainly, and most definitely, peer observation which is considered as a change-based procedure and thought-provoking activity.
Teachers as Inquirers in the Algerian University
In a narrowed scope, teacher inquiry is identified as being public, intentional and systematic. It is said to be public because it could happen in a more or less collaborative way where teachers meet and discuss their wonderings on their pedagogical practices. Such are the results of collecting data from their classes, from which they gain insights. In this line of thought, (Patricia Stiles, 1999) cites that: “A teacher inquirer is someone who searches for questions as well as answers. I am learning that saying, “I don’t know” is not an admittance to failure, but a precursor of positive change. I have become comfortable with the expressions: “I wonder…”, “I think…,” and “what if…?” (Patricia Stiles 1999).
Teachers, whose classroom role is to generate knowledge, usually stand as researchers. It is generally, in educational settings, a tradition that focuses on the concerns of teachers, along with their pedagogical growth, helps them to be engaged in designing, data collecting and interpreting these data around their questions. Hereby, Donald Schon (1987) portrays teacher professional practice as a cognitive process of posing and exploring problems and dilemmas identified by the teachers themselves. Hence, those teachers who participate in such a process are emphatically those who get involved in the area of research action and become capable of re-examining and generating their professional growth and who are pro-active rather than reactive. In down to earth terms, all those assignments and principles of inquiry have never been reflected in the Algerian university and more particularly in the department of English of Tlemcen University. What admittedly constitutes an asserted failure is that teachers rarely inquire about the goals of their teaching and neither do they intentionally proclaim a re-enactment of the content of the syllabuses. This is to assert also and solely that, in the present state of knowledge, university teachers in our Department do not make clear and probe further their wonderings, do not reformulate and modify their questions and do not enlighten their perceptions and their conceptions of teaching, though it is widely known among the whole academic staff that inquiry is a powerful and dynamic stimulus which has the potential to transform the educational profession as well as the teacher’s research. It is claimed therefore that inquiry is not compulsory and neither consciously nor tacitly articulated by academics in some Algerian universities.
Even more, argued by Schon (1983, 1987) action research is seen as an on-going process in which teachers generate, in an effective method, an autonomous professional development which incessantly entails reflections on their own professional practice and help them maintain and increase their effectiveness as teachers. This ultimately sustains the idea that being an inquirer professional development means definitely a self-initiated growth. It is very much like a do-it-yourself activity with maintained morale, sustained vigour and increased personal effectiveness. In this specific context, Richard (1999) argues that: “The process of change occurs when teachers articulate to themselves and others what they want to change and why, when they identify the factors that inhibit change, and when they develop strategies to implement change over time.” (Richard,1999:143).
Taking on reformulated conceptions of teaching, teachers learn together as a professional community within which they collaborate on different projects set goals and make plans by organizing academic events by sharing resources of pedagogy to explore different learning contexts, Miranda (2012).
Development as making the basic advanced
The nitty gritty of development within this view is “to make things better”. It refers to the individual efforts of the teacher to improve him/herself or by the institution to promote teacher improvement. All too often, training organisations offer development courses, and schools and universities discuss and sometimes advertise their teacher development programmes. In this vein, Edge (2002: 15) writes that “training is what other people do to you. Development is what you do to yourself.”
Yet, in ELT the distinction above is not always clear. The training courses the institution provides to improve teaching usually take the form of what is generally referred to as “supervised self-development”. Edge (1992) has, himself, invoked “cooperative development” to refer to the collaboration among teachers themselves to attain development. He rightly posits that “I need someone to work with, but I don’t need someone who wants to change me and make me more like the way they think I ought to be. I need someone who will help me see myself clearly.’’ (Edge,1992:38)
Development as a result of recent events:
Under this last definition, development is intimately associated with the impact of some recent events and incidents conducive to a change in modelling ways of teaching. These events and incidents do not happen deliberately; they are not chosen. They generally come from external sources; for instance, complaints coming from the institution about the students’ little progress, or the introduction of new technology in the classroom (interactive whiteboards).
To sum up, then, we have shed light on three possible definitions of the term development and applied them in relation to ELT. We have come up with the conclusion that the teacher can change or develop in the following ways:
• Unconscious change (to change without noticing the change)
• Deliberate change ( to make things change)
• Change as a result of recent happenings.
• Teacher development: a Necessity in Education
By and large, professional development in any domain is crucial as it helps learn and apply newly acquired knowledge and skills which, in turn, will improve one’s performance at work. What is more, development is seen as an on-going learning that is not only approved by the profession, but rather a requirement for keeping the job.
In the field of education, research has evidenced that teaching quality and school leadership are the most important factors in enhancing student achievement. For teachers to be as effective as possible, they have to “continually” expand their knowledge and skills in order to put into practice the best pedagogical strategies. Also, teachers learn how to help students learn at the highest levels and how to better cope with their needs and weaknesses.
Regretfully, many teachers may not be well aware of the most efficient methods for improving their own teaching on the one side and their students learning strategies on the other. Besides, many misunderstandings do exist among teachers about the notion of development, its purpose and function. Teacher development seems to be one of the most needed strategy educational institutions have to strengthen and support at a time when quality education accounts too much. In a nutshell, then, teacher professional development is undisputedly the gateway to attain better teaching and learning as well.
Limitations
When carried out, the present study, as indicated above, was mainly based on the data obtained through the use of different research instruments at the department of English in the University of Tlemcen and Bel Abbes. It is truism then all the interpretations should in no way reflect, in a broader sense at a broader scale the current state of teaching at the Algerian university. Other confines can also be claimed, as for the fact that the number of respondents was, roughly speaking, reckoned to twenty-five teachers of different ranks from both universities.
Conclusion
Professional development of teachers is certainly the cornerstone of any educational system in which it is compulsory for teachers to be acquainted with the variables of the teaching-learning process that might emerge here and there according to situational pedagogic circumstances. It is, therefore, the task of academic officials to lay a substantial emphasis on how to regain the teacher’s confidence in the classroom, take measures that give rise to effective teaching practices by founding a broad consensus between the administration and the whole academic staff on teaching regulations and teaching assignments that must be upheld by every single teacher. Moreover, the importance that stands now in our university is the responsibility which must be placed on the professional development which imperatively must be viewed, by official deciders, as a mandatory component of being a teacher so as to transform the process of language teacher preparation into a never-ending quest for quality by reformulating, refining and reconsidering their epistemological beliefs.
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