2. Tomlinson (1995: 9) defines teaching as “an
activity designed to promote learning”.
Defining teaching by reference to its purpose.
The target is complicated in itself.
It is complicated because the teacher will be doing
a lot at once with a lot of people.
3. It is a skill in the sense that capability may differ
from one teacher to another: some teachers are
consistently outstanding at it, others less so, though
these degrees of capability may be limited, for
example to certain age-ranges, classes and topics,
or combinations of these. In these basic respects,
then teaching may be considered a skill.
It is open because there are many possible ways of
responding to similar sets of circumstances.
4. Teaching is the activity that promotes action
and experience whereby learners gain
capacities and tendencies. (Tomlinson, 1995)
Capacities: concepts, knowledge/understanding
and skills.
Tendencies: attitudes, values and ways of
behaving.
5. Teachers should be aware that learning is
essentially a different process for every individual.
Each individual learner must be considered not simply
under a label (a 10-years old or teenager, intermediate or
advance) but as an individual with their own experience-
base, cultural background, style, feelings and so on.
(Malderez and Bodczky, 1999: 12).
Teachers get to deal with each individual as an icon.
6. There are many models or theories about
learning to be a teacher such as, ‘theory and
practice’, reflective professional’, and
theories about ‘implicit learning’.
Task: what kinds of activities and situations
have contributed to your understanding and
expertise in teaching?
7. Malderez (1996)view theory and practice as ‘integral
parts of the same skill in a continuous dynamic
inter-relationship. Theory in this sense is described
as the personal constructed theories of the
individual. (Malderez and Bodczky, 1999: 14).
From this view to teachers’ learning, Malderez
described the teachers as in terms of the ‘modified
iceberg’.
8.
9. The visible tip of the iceberg is the teacher’s subject
knowledge and professional behavior.
These will be influenced by the ‘air’, the culture of
the whole school and more specifically the
classroom in which the teacher works.
The mass below the surface will be influenced by
the surrounding ‘sea’ of the culture and society in
which the teacher lives.
10. Immediately below the surface are the processes
the teacher goes through before going into the
classroom, those involved with decision-making,
lesson planning and so on.
These decisions draw on constructs of the subject,
the pupils themselves and a body of knowledge that
covers a range of possible courses of action for the
classroom and the wider professional world.
11. These knowledge constructs are embedded
in deeper understandings about people,
learning and teaching, which themselves
have been influenced by even more
fundamental beliefs, attitudes, feelings and
experiences.
12. The two-way arrows indicate that this is not a
one-way process: the influences flow in both
directions.
These may be set in motion by something
that happens in the visible part of the
iceberg.
13. As the teacher reviews what happened there, they
will begin drawing from the layers below,
considering possible interpretations, other choices
that could have been made, and the influences from
the deeper levels on what happened.
This process may reveal a need to discover more:
more evidence, more perspectives from others’
knowledge-bases and so on; in other words, to learn
from others’ icebergs.
14. In the planning, these new understandings,
are, as it were, brought back to the surface
and emerge as another visible bit of teacher
behavior.
15. Chapters 9 & 10: Managing for success and
Grouping students.
16. Malderez, A. & Bodoczky, C. 1999. Mentor
Courses: a resource book for trainer-trainers.
Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
