Education, today, is concerned with many issues. Some of them regard the curriculum; what should and should not be included in it, others whether the beliefs of various ideologies and philosophies should be applied to educational process or not while, others try to decide if the state or the parents should have a main role in the students’ education. And there are the advocates and defenders of these issues who try to convince that their educational ideologies should be applied to the educational processes and, those who oppose to them. But there is an issue for which it can be said that no one can oppose to. This issue refers to the teachers’ competency. Because, apart from those issues mentioned above and some others, the persons who influence and affect the educational process are mainly the teachers and hence, they should be competent in order to achieve the expected results and outcomes that concern the effective education of children. But what is meant by saying a teacher needs to be competent? The current essay will try to give an answer to this question and accordingly, it will define and describe four basic characteristics of the competent teacher.
To begin with, a basic characteristic of a competent teacher constitutes the ability to develop and promote consciousness to students. If a teacher possesses this characteristic, consequently he/she possesses some others too. What is meant by this, is that a teacher who is competent since, he/she develops and promotes consciousness to students he/she accordingly, has also the ability to promote and develop dialogue, critical thinking, and communication to students. Because, a basic presupposition for consciousness to be developed constitutes the development of dialogue and critical thinking, as well as the development of communication. A competent teacher is one who abandons the educational “chain” of depositing, receiving, memorizing and repeating knowledge on the students’ behalf. On the contrary, a competent teacher promotes consciousness to students and helps them become conscious beings who adopt a concept of the consciousness upon the world (Cahn, 1997). Additionally, a competent teacher encourages students to reflect on social reality and empowers them to transform the existing conditions that shape their lives (Gutek, 2004). Moreover, a competent teacher is one who engages students in dialogue and manages through dialogue to achieve genuine learning. Because when students and the teacher are engaged in a shared critical dialogue, they can mutually create and construct knowledge instead of passively transmitting it since, they can share their knowledge and experiences, reflect upon them and finally make a critical evaluation of them regarding the way they, themselves, have obtained that knowledge and those experiences (Gutek, 2004).
“Paulo [Freire] claims it is dialogue that helps to move us from our egocentric and sociocentric positions. In dialogue we learn something about worldviews and values different from our own. We are moved out of our own frame of reference into a different one or, perhaps, a larger one of which ours is now just a part” (Noddings, 2007, p.102).In accordance with this, it is necessary to have in mind that teachers, too, can learn a lot from their students since, they do not know everything. Hence, it is important to be engaged in such kind of dialogues that examine students’ life experiences and especially those of the students who are or were marginalized, to discuss and find out the feelings and emotions they have or had when they felt rejection or suffered from such marginalization (Gutek, 2004). Moreover, it can be declared that through such kind of dialogues no one teaches another but rather, teachers and students teach each other, and they become responsible as a group and as a team that is based on dialogue and that accordingly, helps all of them to grow (Cahn, 1997). And as Freire noted, it is by this way, by engaging teachers and students in mutual learning, that true consciousness can be constructed and therefore, true and genuine education can be achieved (Gutek, 2004).
Going further, a competent teacher develops and promotes consciousness to students not only through their engagement in dialogues but also through critical thinking and communication. The concepts of dialogue, critical thinking, and the concept of communication are concepts related to each other and which together presuppose the development of consciousness to students. First of all, the competent teacher, as Freire supported, must come to know reality critically, needs to have a critical attitude towards reality and hence, needs to approach his/her teaching with a realistic awareness of those conditions and factors that restrain the potentialities of human freedom (Gutek, 2004). But critical thinking concerns the students, also. The competent teacher is not one who thinks for his/her students or imposes his/her thought on them but rather, is one who stimulates students’ critical thinking and makes use of the dialogue in order to help students become critical thinkers and co-investigators and hence, to abandon the role of the docile passive listeners (Cahn, 1997). Because teachers, apart from engaging students in heuristic and algorithmic processes they should also engage them into the logic of good reasons, of judgment and therefore, into the logic of critical thinking (Lipman, 2007).
Apart from these, a teacher can be characterized as competent only if he/she abandons and does not follow the notion of him/her being the one who possesses control over his/her students. Instead, he/she is competent when he/she makes reconciliation with the students and hence, resolves the teacher-student contradiction. By this way, the competent teacher transforms his/her and the students’ role, makes them both simultaneously teachers and students, and makes it possible for them both, to become the subjects of the educational process (Gutek, 2004). Moreover, when a competent teacher manages to resolve the teacher-student contradiction, he/she is therefore, a competent teacher who also allows, offers and promotes freedom to the students to practice it since, through the resolution of this contradiction and through the use of dialogue, new terms arise, and these are the terms of teacher-student with students-teachers, that substitute the existing terms of teacher-of-the students and students-of- the teacher (Cahn, 1997).
Except for these, a competent teacher is one who conducts education morally and thereby, tries to induce a moral sense in the students (Cahn, 1997). And in order to achieve this, a competent teacher should therefore, teach students the importance of moral values such as honesty, self-discipline, responsibility, fairness, respect, integrity, and courage.
A competent teacher is one who promotes cultural transmission and perpetuates civilizations by passing on as inheritage essential basic skills and subjects from one generation to the next (Gutek, 2004). Because it is necessary and crucial for the students to know about the culture and the world they live in, about cultures that existed before them while, it is also necessary for them to know about important and historical persons who made great discoveries or contributed in a major degree to the shaping of society. Additionally, it is necessary for teachers to present to the students an effective selection of the world they live in and, to work in cooperation with them in order to help them attain a competence in their own world of experience, in the world they live in (Noddings, 2007).
Summing up, a competent teacher is one who develops and promotes consciousness to students through the use of dialogue, critical thinking and through communication; resolves the teacher-student contradiction; develops a moral sense in students; and promotes cultural transmission. It can be said, that the first two characteristics and their presuppositions, constitute a theory of education and particularly, follow and adhere to the features and beliefs of a Liberation pedagogy as well as to the features and beliefs of a problem-posing education while, the last two characteristics adhere to the beliefs of the theory of Essentialism. These characteristics, apart from others, are basic ones and a teacher should attain them if he/she is going to be characterized as a competent one. Therefore, a teacher who is competent enough to act as an educator who follows and adheres to these characteristics, can be a successful one and can achieve the best education for students. Accordingly, schools, the curriculum and the students who are cooperating and working with competent teachers who attain and adhere to the characteristics that were defined and described previously, can improve the educational process and they can deal more effectively with all the educational issues relating to and impacting educational practice.
References
Cahn, S. (1997) Classic and contemporary readings in the philosophy of education.
New York: McGraw Hill.
Gutek. G.L. (2004) Philosophical and ideological voices in education. Boston:
Pearson Education.
Lipman, M. (2007) Education for Critical Thinking .In: Curren, R. (Ed.). Philosophy
of Education: An anthology. (pp.427-434). Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing.
Noddings, N. (2007). Philosophy of education (2nd ed). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Noddings, N. (2007) The One-Caring as Teacher .In: Curren, R. (Ed.). Philosophy of
Education: An anthology. (pp.372-376). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
No comments:
Post a Comment