JP/6/SIMON

JP/6/SIMON

Teachers should be encouraged to be learners too

Simon Marcus Gower
Principal, Harapan Bangsa
High School, Kotamodern
Tangerang, Banten

As the government moves towards the adoption of a new schools
curriculum -- planned for 2004 -- the role of teacher's will
change. Demands will be made of teachers that require that they
work much more closely with their students and so have to, in
turn, be much more open to students' inquisitiveness.

Teachers will less and less be thought of as the ultimate
source of knowledge and more and more be the guides and
facilitators that lead students. "Traditional" perceptions of
teachers as respected, unquestionable and quite distant will have
to change.

An uncomfortable silence resided over a high school class
recently. A student asked a question and for a moment there was a
flicker of concern on the face of the teacher. The situation is
fraught with potential worries and embarrassments for the
teacher.

The teacher's position could seemingly be undermined by this
lapse. Lack of knowledge is seen as a threat; it diminishes the
teacher's standing. So what did the teacher do? Essentially, he
side-stepped the question with the hurried response, "We don't
have to look at that now" and a brisk "OK let's move on to the
next page."

Was this evasiveness either acceptable or necessary?

It was not acceptable and should be seen to be unnecessary by
all teachers, but regrettably very often teachers feel pressured
to take such evasive actions. Too often teachers believe that
they must be all-knowing and indomitable.

There is still a widely held perception that the teacher
should be the ultimate authority on his subject and there should
be no gaps in knowledge that the students might perceive as a
weakness.

But this is an archaic misperception of the role of the
teacher that exemplifies weakness rather than strength. Worse
still it is a perception that is bedded in the notion that
students are and will remain dependent on the teacher.

This should not be allowed to be the case, the teacher should
be encouraging and guiding students towards autonomy that allows
them to be independent in their studies. This is, after all, what
they will be graduating to as they continue their studies to
university level.

It should not really be seen as weakness for a teacher to say
to his student or students "I don't really know the answer to
that question." To be sufficiently open and honest about the
situation seems entirely honourable and, perhaps as importantly,
shows that the teacher possesses the right qualities of character
that include willingness to increase knowledge and understanding.

In this context, the ability to say "I don't know" also
reflects that it is reasonable for teachers to make use of
reference material. Indeed this is good practice that actually
constitutes a good role-model for students. No academic of any
quality stands alone.

All effective academics make reference to predecessors or
colleagues in their field and the teacher that is willing to show
his reference to texts or other sources is following this
accepted and reasonable practice.

Naturally, it would be unreasonable for a teacher to
constantly be saying to students "Sorry I don't know".

But occasionally willingness and openness to say "I don't
know" can lead to more effective learning and hence more
successful teaching.

The teacher that is willing to be evasive and close-up about
any lack of knowledge is likely to be reinforcing ignorance,
whether obvious and overt or obscured and hidden.

Numerous examples have been witnessed in which a teacher
suffers an awkward pause after a difficult question and then
proceeds to avoid the question. The result of such action means
that either the question goes unanswered, which is unsatisfactory
as ignorance remains, or the question is dismissed as being
outside of "learning necessity" and so is disregarded, which is
really rather ignorant conduct towards the questioner.

It is much better for a teacher to have the strength of
character to say, "I don't know, let's find the answer to that
question together." Here a sense of inclusion and willingness to
participate in learning is being shown that will inevitably
assist the students in their own learning and fits with the
government's desire for more communicative and competence-based
education.

Consider this small example of a teacher's willingness to
exhibit learning skills. During an English class with final year
senior high students a teacher was eliciting vocabulary from the
students.

New words were being drawn from the students and their
meaning was being checked with the students and the teacher would
then provide confirmation or reinforcement of the definitions
that the students provided. Here then the teacher was acting as
the catalyst for actions and participation and the teacher-role,
as the source of knowledge, was being used acceptably as words
were checked and definitions clarified.

However, at one point in this free-flowing interaction a
student produced a word that the teacher could not provide a
definition for.

The word was zephyr, but the teacher had the presence of mind
and openness to say, "That's an interesting word and,
you know, I'm not really sure what it means." The student was
then asked to give his definition of the word and the teacher was
able to follow this up with, "OK, good, let's check that in the
dictionary."

What followed was near full participation of students plus
the teacher looking the word up in their dictionaries
-- teacher and students learning together, participating in the
learning process together.

This is, then, good practice for both teachers and
students alike. No one expects teachers to be walking
encyclopaedias and any teacher that believes that they need not
check and reference their work is likely to wallow in ignorance
and probably never really fulfill teaching ideals.

To say "I don't know, let's check" is the intelligent thing to
do and probably more teachers in Indonesia should be
comfortable to do this. The above teacher and students found
that zephyr, a noun, is a name for a soft gentle wind.