It’s easy to make claims as experienced teachers about what we do or never do in the classroom. If I were making some such claims, I’d probably say I’m the type who doesn’t rely to heavily on a course book, who is happy to divert from planned activities in response to emergent needs, and who celebrates a rejection of fixed ‘methods’ in favour of, in Larsen-Freeman’s 1 terms, ‘principled eclecticism‘. All worthy claims in my view but how accurate are they? Documentary evidence points to the fact that, at in at least some cases, teachers perceptions of what happens in their own classrooms are at odds with the reality. In his study on teacher’s theories on grammar teaching, Borg 2 provided an anecdote to illustrate how important it is to distinguish between teachers beliefs about what they do and their actual practices.
“David, another teacher in my study, was adamant that he never used students’ first language; it was only when I gave him transcripts of his lessons that he realized how often he actually did.” (1999:161)
This week, I have decided to keep a record of what happens in the lessons I teach in terms of the materials I use. I’m interested in finding out where the activities my learners are engaged in originated from, how far they differ from the original published version, if indeed there was one, and what the balance of new experiments vs. old favourites is like. I won’t claim to go into every (or any) lesson with a printed lesson plan, but I’ll also be noting if and when the activities we end up spending time on differ from the ones I had in mind. I’m teaching a pretty diverse range of classes at the moment, so it should make for an interesting mix: general English at intermediate level, an academic studies class and the first week of a part time Cambridge First preparation course with a couple of one-to-one classes thrown in there too. That’s quite a lot of note taking and reporting back but hopefully there will be some interesting insights. Has anyone else done something similar? If so, I’d love to hear whether your initial claims proved accurate!
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A very valid point you make here about us often saying one thing and doing quite another. I love the idea of you making notes of what actually goes on in your classroom! Can’t wait to hear what you find. I am so jealous I’m not teaching at the moment (although I could probably only fit that in as well if I stopped breathing or eating!).