C- Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
3.8 Teachers’ professionalism, material innovation and autonomy
Since teaching is considered in many studies as an occupation that is spread over time, there are some teachers who’s experience in teaching environments make them competent but in a way that is limited and this can be referred to as ‘crystallised expertise’ (Berliner, 2001). Such a teacher may find it difficult to adapt to the changing environments and may not be robust in solving students’ problems as they are limited to their professionalism that directs them to discipline, instruct, teach and access their students.
According to Berliner (2001), the number of years that a teacher has spent teaching is not the most important thing but the level at which they have improved their ‘fluid expertise’ and developed their professional self. Therefore, exercising autonomy requires that teachers develop a sense of ‘fluid expertise’.
For instance, teachers may often want to explore and scrutinise how well a generally produced solution will be efficient in addressing their personal problems and in that respect tailor the solutions to fit them and their working environments.
The only hindrance to this is at the level of effort and time needed to be dedicated towards the process, and this always creates tension for them between upgrading
their professional expertise and the possible risk of creating a new version of the existing wheel (Hall, 2009).
Several past research studies (Hall, 2009) have found that those who declared that for teachers a robust professional identity is a key factor in professionalism, often support a certain degree of autonomy and a space for teachers to do their own work in their own ways without external oppression or direction (Day et al., 2006, in Hall, 2009).
However, the conception taken by Stenhouse (1981, in Hall, 2009) insists that teachers are active agents whose roles are like those done by professional researchers. This implies that a professional researcher’s work is not only to engage in planning their activities, but to know more about them and strictly solve them.
The starting point of effective teaching falls within the teaching environment as this is the place where teachers can identify challenges and take actions that counteract them, thus working collectively to produce corrective outcomes.
These challenges are the ones that encourage teachers to engage more in constructive learning activities, pursue greater understanding and contribute to their own attainment of professional identity. The effects of professionalism in the work place seem to be important with regards to how positive teachers feel about themselves and the motivation to stay in the same profession. This is expressed in the distinct separation between long-term experienced teachers and expert teachers (Berliner, 2001, in Hall, 2009).
The point here is that there is clearly a link between a teacher’s work place, students- centred approach and their respective fluid expertise. To stress on this further, Ecclestone’s studies (2000, 2002, in Hall, 2009) of teachers at various levels of education show clearly how several teachers, who were able to exercise a degree of autonomy, and groups of professionals became learners by the use of the same framework that it uses to promote learning autonomy in various environments.
Despite all these, professionals that aim to improve their status and recognition need to follow the procedures that qualify them to become real professionals.
This section explained the importance of letting teachers modify their materials and
textbooks (according to Hall (2009)) and develop their own craft. Furthermore, providing teachers with a professional workspace is an act that gives them the recognition as major role players of education and materials development.
To agree with the latter statements and the introduction of this study, a link between a teacher’s involvement in the materials development and their professionalism and the degree in which they are able to practice autonomy is required. In order to find the answers to their eager learners’ questions and to best aid their students who were able to think out of the box, teachers must obtain the needed technology available in the present era and be able to themselves think out of the box and develop upon the materials they have been provided.
Such access would allow them to practice autonomy. It is also a reason for teachers to acquire the choice of having a degree of autonomy and apply their own interpretation, which results in self-efficacy. This last point will be addressed in the following section.
3-8-1 Teacher self-efficacy
The responsibility of teachers includes a huge amount of personal interpretations of the appropriate materials that are applied in classrooms. This can answer the anticipated results set by the Saudi educational ministry in various provinces.
However, teachers cannot neglect the main goal of the profession, despite wanting to avoid the hurdles they meet by application of the personal interpretations, which is required for exercising autonomy in their teaching approaches or chosen materials.
This results in ‘self-efficacy’.
Self-efficacy of teachers was described as a judgment that is self-reflective of a person’s ability to impact on outcomes of students, engagement as well as studying, without regard to environmental or student attributes (Pajares, 1996, Tschannen- Moran and Hoy, 2001). The aspect of self-efficacy holds a big role regarding the resulting impact upon teachers’ role at their work place. The sense of efficacy of teachers is a minute idea with a big impact, which acts as a stronghold while examining the beliefs and behaviour of teachers (Fives, 2003, Tschannen-Moran and Hoy, 2001).
Self-efficacy of teachers is vital for teacher encouragement and behaviour since it directs people to take action from their knowledge (Fives, 2003). It is also the primary determinant of effort. Making decisions in pedagogy is affected by the self-efficacy of a teacher (Cousins and Walker, 2000, Woolfolk et al., 1990). The self-efficacy of teachers informs the choices differently. For instance, people may participate in behaviours, which they trust will result in success, escaping behaviours they are not confident in (Schunk and Pajares, 2002). Moreover, when a person has a greater self- efficacy, he or she may persist in case of hardships (Schunk and Pajares, 2002, Zimmerman, 2000).
Self-efficacy is likely to occur with unknown reactions of students as well as teachers who are limited by restricted materials and policies to be applied in classrooms. Self- efficacy is a result of a responsibility that requires teachers to follow their sense of exercising autonomy. Such responsibility put forward in order to achieve the required impact for the sake of the learners’ individual differences and needs, which will be addressed in more detail in the following section.
In this present study, I am not arguing that teachers should necessarily be curriculum developers, but the importance of having the flexibility to respond to learners needs through the development of teachers materials is well supported by the literature.