TOPIC 4: THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER IN THE SECONDARY EDUCATION CENTRE

Topic 4: The foreign language teacher in the secondary education centre

The fourth topic we dealt with in class was “The foreign language teacher in the Secondary Education Centre”. Throughout this topic, we dealt with the different roles a teacher can have in his/her school centre, the importance of tutorship and classroom management. 

Firstly, we studied in class the different institutional roles that the teacher can adopt. For instance, the role of the principal, the role of the assistant principal, which can be understood as the “head of studies”; the role of the leading teacher, who is in charge of organising the teachers of his/her department; the secretary, the teachers in the school board and level, stage or project coordinators. We also learnt that all the teachers are members of the teachers’ assembly, an important figure in schools. 

Moreover, apart from these roles, each teacher has some functions in their school centres. We learnt that a teacher can be a tutor, a participant in the events organised by the school, a collaborator with other workmates, a conflict-mediator and a resource provider. Other roles of the teachers are to be an examiner, a prompter or a facilitator of knowledge. Of all these roles, we focused in class on tutorship and its importance for empowering students and educating them for life. These ideas mean that students need to be motivated, to feel a sense of belonging to their class, to have fun while they are learning new concepts and to feel they are capable of achieving the objectives they have. 

Therefore, the role of the tutor is really important, since this teacher has to analyse students’ needs, solve problems, talk to parents or be a guide for his/her students. Tutors usually follow the “Plan de Acción Tutorial”, a document inside the “General Annual Plan” of the school which allows tutors to know the different procedures and criteria they have to follow. 

The second topic we studied in class was classroom management, in which we examined different styles of teaching and classroom management styles according to several authors. Regarding types of teaching and according to Lippit and White, we studied that a teacher can have an authoritarian style, a democratic style or a laissez-faire style, depending on his/her level of control in class. Nevertheless other authors like Pratt provided four different types of teaching: the authority style, the demonstrator style, the facilitator style and the delegator style, depending, again, on the amount of freedom that students have. 

Pratt also provides a categorisation of different teaching perspectives a teacher can adopt. These are the transmission perspective (in which the teacher is the one who transmits the concepts to students); the developmental perspective (in which students are asked to create something by themselves); the apprenticeship perspective (in which the tasks and activities used come from real settings); the nurturing perspective (in which students understand that their effort and their abilities are the most important elements and that they need to be self-sufficient) and the social reform perspective (in which teachers are seen as leaders, they believe that education requires social change and therefore, they try to empower their students to take social action). 

Lastly, we also studied during our lessons that we, as teachers, should act according to our own philosophy of teaching, that is, our notion of education. Each of us has an idea about the different elements in education, how and what we want to teach, our beliefs on what learning is and our role inside the educational system. Therefore, each teacher should find his/her own philosophy of teaching and develop it across his/her teaching years.