John Wetherell
-
DISCIPLINE
AND HUMANISM IN MIXED ABILITY CLASSES
John Wetherell has spent his working life in TEFL classrooms in
Catalunya. He currently works for the British Council and ESADE in Barcelona,
after many years as Director of
Studies at the English Centre, Igualada in Barcelona province. As our third
guest writer, he paves the way for our Autumn edition by focussing on the early
days of the academic year. Over to you, John:
DISCIPLINE
AND HUMANISM IN MIXED ABILITY CLASSES
This is a brief summary of two ideas included in a short course
given on behalf of the Generalitat de Catalunya to a group of secondary school
teachers about the problems of coping with mixed ability classes. At first they
may appear contradictory but I think they are perfectly compatible - a
humanistic learning approach and high standards of discipline. The reason why I
think they're particularly applicable to mixed ability classes is that they are
both based on universal principles such as respect which are easily understood
by anyone whatever their level of English may be.
All classes are obviously mixed ability classes even if they’ve
been through the most stringent selection procedures because ability is made up
of so many different factors that it cannot be judged simply by half an hour or
even three hours of spoken or written production. And although there's no doubt
that some sort of levelling helps, all classes are basically the same - a group
of people. And as established by Ericson and Maslow amongst many others all
people react in a more or less predictable way to external stimuli. Way before
any ambition to receive or transfer knowledge from one person to another, people
wish to be listened to, understood, given a chance, respected and wanted for
themselves. A classroom is an ideal place for all of these things to happen and
indeed most of these things and many others too do happen but for the teacher
the aim would be to harness these needs and to direct them towards learning
objectives. The first days of the class are fundamental in establishing the
relationships that will prevail throughout the course.
There are two priorities at the beginning of any course -
probably for both teacher and the student are establishing a relationship and
establishing the rules that are going to govern that relationship. It's
important that the teacher considers the different roles that he can adopt
before starting the course. The traditional teacher role as a source of
knowledge is becoming obsolete in a society where there are so many situations
where students can come into contact with English. The teacher is becoming more
that anything a facilitator - giving direction and strategies to the students to
get the most out of the different contexts in which they come into contact with
the language. And surely the teacher's main concern should be motivation because
this more than any other factor facilitates students learning and the teacher's
own job.
The relationship the teacher establishes in this changed role has
to be a closer one than before. Only through understanding the student as a
person will the teacher be able to help and motivate him and only by winning the
trust of the students will the teacher's advice and directions have the desired
effects. The first few days then should be spent developing a personal
relationship with the students. This will almost certainly entail giving the
students information about yourself that in a traditional teaching situation
would have been considered unnecessary. But if you want to base your teaching
around tasks and projects rather than language points, show students how to
learn things (strategies) rather than tell them what to learn and give them a
certain autonomy rather than directing their every move it's only realistic to
assume that you're going to have to start by showing the way.
While a humanistic approach is essential in developing student
interest it's possible that it could be misinterpreted by the students. While
you may know that the student will benefit from this way of teaching, initially
he may not know this, and may well consider your attempts to establish some sort
of personal relationship as softness or leniency on your part. To avoid these
problems we have to make it clear to the students what the rules that are going
to determine class activity are and insist that these rules are more important
than the activities that they may be asked to do basically for two reasons: in
the first place without these rules there's the danger that class time will not
be productive and secondly these rules if they are good ones should be about
issues that are essentially more important than learning English such as respect,
desire to learn, autonomy and personal development etc.
If our intention as a teacher is to establish a closer
relationship with the students it should be obvious that we are doing this from
a position of respect towards them and a consequent desire to understand them
better. In return we expect greater not lesser respect from them. What qualifies
for respectful behaviour will vary among teachers and necessarily among students
too so it's always useful to negotiate what will be considered unacceptable
behaviour. As in any negotiating process you the teacher really have nothing to
fear and a lot to gain if you know what your priorities are. The result of this
process is often called a learner contract although it could be called a learner-teacher
contract because it should bind the teacher as much as the student. It should
include some of the ideas of the students while maintaining the fundamental
points for the functioning of the class as seen from your point of view. These
may cover: silence when another person is speaking, only positive responses when
a student sets his work out to the rest of the class, acceptance of differences
if the student is able to justify them (e.g. handing in homework late), language
used in class, punctuality, mobile telephones, chewing gum and anything else
that you feel contributes to the deterioration of the class atmosphere.
So, in conclusion because the humanistic teaching approach is based on universal principles it should be easier to maintain discipline in classes where it is used. Teachers should not fear asking for the highest standards of behaviour as they would be in consonance with this teaching method, but it helps to establish these rules in a formal way at the beginning of the course.