This comes from an inbuilt sense of altruism that could be based on their own prior positive or negative school experience. They are often highly empathic and selfless. People want to become teachers. Teaching is often derided as a profession; people equate the workload of the teacher with that of the student and assume that working days are 9 — 3 and all 13 weeks of allocated holiday a year are spent relaxing; not so.
This is not a piece designed to bust those myths or to present teachers as modern martyrs but more to address the qualities and beauties of the profession — a love letter to why teachers are so important, and why they must be supported at all stages to continually improve. Statistics gathered last year by the NCES gave us the following:. Teachers and teaching are largely held in high regard by those who are affected by them; however, we are looking here at the extrapolation from the classroom to society as a whole.
But then again, is a school not a microcosm of the wider society it represents? There is variety, diversity, mixed ability, laughter, tears, achievement, failure, inspiration, opportunity, hope, relationships, interactions — all played out every day; our school years form us. Apart from the fact that they provide instructional delivery to students from early years right through to Adult education, they are role models, touchstones, influencers and inspirers.
Teachers are given Safeguarding training, understand Pastoral care, have subject knowledge and need to be able to manage the delivery of content in a way that enables others to learn it — great qualities.
For years thinkers and educators have sought answers and definitions regarding the impact of teaching:. Politicians, activists, intellectuals and influencers can all be found quoting with regards to the power of education and the way it can change the world.
Teachers therefore play a fundamental role in enabling our ability to read, write, communicate, analyse, think critically and understand ethics — again, quite a role. An effective teacher who is one, who through grit, passion and empathy act as a rolemodel for young people.
They also have the ability to take previously unknown concepts and ideas and translate them, not only into a language their students understand but give them the context in which they are relevant. They act as an acculturator for those for whom doors might often be shut or — worse still — hidden; they expose students to thoughts and ideas they might not have otherwise come into contact with.
Teachers, therefore, benefit society by enabling acquisition of capital — social, emotional, cultural capital — that might otherwise have gone unacquired. According to research conducted by Duckworth et al , effective teachers also possess certain personality traits and qualities that spread beyond that of simple teaching.
Teachers must maintain a healthy scepticism too, but never be cynical — cynicism lacks all hope, and to return to Freire, hope is essential to formative dialogue and critical thinking. Education is the foundation upon which we build a society, without it society falls down, there is no informed leadership in the next generation, no role models for children to look up to and now development of new ideas to move society forward.
Without education, we have no society. Education is acknowledged to have transformative power; that power is therefore wielded by the educationalists, those that turn the intent into impact through implementation — teachers and school leaders; pastoral staff; safeguarding officers. Where children went hungry over the pandemic, schools were the centre of the rescue — breakfast clubs, campaigns for Food Bank support, delivered packed lunches, Free School Meal vouchers.
The ASCL Ethical Leadership framework really highlights those personality traits and aspects that teachers strive for: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, leadership. As role models for the young, how we behave as leaders is as important as what we do. Teachers must not only be recruited but well-trained and highly supported — their impact on students is clear.
In their report , the EPI recommended that:. If teachers feel valued, they will stay; if they stay, they will get better. If they get better, so do the outcomes, and the outcomes spill out into the communities the schools themselves serve.
Charles Clarke himself an ex-teacher makes two key statements, both of which resonate:. In the latter Clarke is almost channelling Freire again, placing politics alongside teaching and giving it leverage from a governmental level. Kuh recommendation to increase college success is simple: each student should participate in at least two-high impact educational activities before graduation.
Further studies have highlighted more specific and tangible benefits of EL and service-learning within the context of teacher education. Celio et al. Coker et al. Haddix describes a writing methods course involving secondary English and literacy pre-service teachers where students engaged with the coordination of a community writing event for local middle and high school students, or urban youth. The study revealed how the development of teacher identity through engagement with the community helped to reduce deficit ideologies about learners from urban communities of color Haddix, , p.
Some research on the impact of service-learning, however, has revealed negative outcomes. Seban study of pre-service teachers working with at risk children, for example, showed how the impact of the type of project on new teachers' conceptualization of service-learning could result in differential outcomes for the participants including limited and discrepant thinking about community needs and the source of social problems. Chang et al. One conclusion drawn from this study was that teacher educators involved with these types of EL projects must be careful to mediate and structure students' experiences in ways that reflect the particular histories, contexts and backgrounds of the specific social groups the teacher candidates worked with on these experiential programmes.
That said, while EL and service-learning have been shown to impact in multiple ways on novice teachers, there is still a paucity of research on the ways that EL can promote better subject knowledge in novice teachers Richmond, Harfitt and Chow found that their teacher candidates developed a stronger awareness of key concepts in teaching and subject knowledge including learner-centeredness, collaboration, lesson planning, and peer learning through EL with different community partners on their 1-year postgraduate teacher preparation courses.
Interestingly, some of their findings aligned with the work of Seban and Chang et al. When structured poorly, that service-learning can reinforce stereotypical views Boyle-Baise, More research and dialog in this regard is required. As seen, service-learning has the potential to be both generative and transformative. Bringle and Hatcher note that service-learning is a powerful pedagogical tool which enhances the complex process of teacher preparation while at the same time promoting and raising awareness about local community needs.
That said it is also an approach that is fraught with difficulties because of the multi-faceted nature of experiential and service-learning projects. For one thing, teacher educators who organize EL and service-learning opportunities for their novice teachers have to invest time and effort to organize out of class learning through careful and sustained interaction with faculty colleagues, teacher candidates, and community partners.
Hou studied one faculty's curriculum in EL and reflected on salient challenges faced by academic staff and their students; some of these included time commitments and the issue of student anxiety when engaging with EL projects.
Then, of course, there is the vital reflective and feedback component which underpins EL but which adds another layer of complexity for those involved Kolb, ; Kuh, It is not surprising, then, that some service-learning projects are less rigorous or well-structured than others.
Certainly, the sustainability of projects and a faculty's long-standing relationship with community partners is a crucial aspect of effective service-learning; otherwise service-learning can become volunteerism or at worse a box-ticking curriculum exercise with little or no benefit for participants or stakeholders.
This was one reason why at the outset of the curriculum initiative reported in this paper which aims to promote a mandatory EL project for every novice teacher we sought to position our community partners as equals in the learning experiences provided to our novice teachers.
In this aim we were aligning with Zeichner et al. Neither schools nor universities should think they can educate teachers alone; even together, schools and universities cannot educate teachers well without accessing the expertise that exists in the communities of which they are part.
Through the establishment of a compulsory EL block as part of our teacher preparation courses, we are imagining ways to access and collaborate with the knowledge and expertise situated in three spaces relevant to TE—university or other provider, school, and community.
The inclusion of the community in the cycle of teacher preparation also brings to the fore two important questions for the field. Firstly who are the knowledge holders for teacher education in our community? Secondly and closely connected to the former is the question of where are the places of teacher education on today's educational landscape? They can perform as role-models for student educators by demonstrating how formally learned educational theories and practices can be integrated through their extensive community work Chang, Regarding the places of teacher education today it should be noted that while academic knowledge in teacher education is often associated with TEIs and practical knowledge is often attributed to schools, the contextualized knowledge of children, issues of diversity, culture, and learning reside, in part, in communities.
The benefits of boundary crossings with local communities have been well documented in the literature Zeichner, ; Brayko, ; Harfitt and Chow, They can develop a more sophisticated understanding of diversity which, again, might be hard to actualize through more traditional lecture, teacher-led formats in universities or schools; tried and tested settings like teaching practicum schools do not always grant novice teachers access or exposure to the full cultural context of families and communities McDonald et al.
There are still some gaps in the literature however, and as mentioned earlier there is an urgent need to throw light on the question of whether a community-based teacher preparation model actually leads to tangible and observable benefits in terms of subject matter teaching skills Richmond, Teacher candidates can learn particular sets of knowledge and skills within university classrooms and schools, but there are surely other sets of knowledge and skills that can only be found in the community outside.
So what do these skill and knowledge sets look like and how do they inform teacher education? The focus of this paper is not to present these community placements as an alternative to teaching practicum or TP which is generally acknowledged as the field experience in teacher preparation models. The importance of TP in shaping the pedagogies novice teachers need at the start of their teaching careers should never be underestimated.
As Murray has noted, teacher educators, too, are central to the field of teacher education and play the role of expert guides throughout life cycle of teachers. Their work with novice teachers in TEIs is aimed at role modeling good professional practice and should complement the supervisory role of mentor teachers who are often full-time teachers in schools and who work alongside novice teachers during TP.
The premise of this paper, then, is not to dismiss the benefits of school-based mentoring and training for novice teachers learning their profession, but that off-campus learning, namely community-based placements for novice teachers presents a fundamental and complementary layer of learning that supports the work of teacher educators and school-based teacher mentors in developing and cultivating key attributes that teachers of the Twenty-first century need including specific subject content skills.
This study stems from a TEI in Hong Kong that has recently made EL a mandatory component of a revised postgraduate diploma in education course 1-year in length and on undergraduate teacher preparation courses. In late a small Experiential Learning team was established in the Faculty of Education with the responsibility for building an infrastructure for candidate teachers to engage with community-based learning projects.
These projects were established through a series of meetings with different NGOs and community partners in Hong Kong and the region. Since that date links have been forged with more than 30 local NGOs and community partners in Hong Kong and South East Asia including some global advocates of social justice and education.
Novice teachers can also nominate their own EL projects based on connections they might have with NGOs and similar organizations. This opens the door to new boundary crossings and learning opportunities for other students.
More than teacher candidates from undergraduate UG and postgraduate diploma in education PGDE preparation courses have undertaken these projects since and all of our novice teachers are given the chance to work in inter-disciplinary teams under the supervision of local and regional NGOs, and then to work on community-based tasks closely linked to education and their dynamic role as educators.
The EL projects are all credit bearing, carefully structured, curricula-based and linked to specific course goals and learning outcomes but do not carry grades as we believe that participation in community-based projects should be motivated intrinsically and not by extrinsic grades or marks.
In many ways, the projects are following Haddix's example of sustained community engagement. The revised curriculum places a heavier emphasis on the integration of theory and practice by combining school experience where novice teachers spend 1 day a week in schools shadowing teachers and immersing in the culture of a school , a compulsory EL block of around 6 weeks and then an 8-week teaching practicum TP inter-connected by university-based classes and lectures.
Underpinning the programme are eight concepts that are seen to encapsulate the qualities of an effective twenty-first century educator see Bridges et al.
These concepts are aimed at inculcating in our graduates a distinctive professional and personal identity, both locally and globally. Through the compulsory EL block, it is hoped that the learning processes experienced by each student will contribute to the actualization of these concepts and provide an important learning strand which connects and reinforces other parts of the curriculum.
Apart from trying to foster in novice teachers creativity and passion, there is a determination, too, to nurture socially engaged and policy-aware educators who are all lifelong learners. A summary of what the novice teachers did during their EL placements might help to contextualize the learning processes observed in this curriculum initiative. Table 1 outlines five of the EL projects embedded into the curriculum and in these examples it can be seen how the projects are related to the teacher candidates' learning and professional development.
All projects take place in community settings and our community partners work with the Experiential Learning team which was set up at the TEI to support student learning in this way. The overarching research question underpinning this study aims at investigating the perceptions of novice teachers toward the impact of a compulsory EL block on a teacher preparation programme.
In such a way it is possible to see how community-based EL projects might allow novice teachers to develop specific skills and knowledge which will accompany them to their teaching practice period and then into their future careers as teachers. A qualitative methodology was adopted to address the above research question in order to obtain a more nuanced perspective of novice teachers' experiences of a compulsory EL component in their teacher preparation programme.
The study drew on perceptual data to study the experiences of teacher candidates engaged in this particular EL project across two full academic years — Their experiences were organized around their participation in their respective EL projects and at different times; before the EL started, in the middle of the EL block and once more after the EL project had been completed.
As one of the team members who visited all the students during their EL project and recognizing that grounded theory is a socially constructed process, the contextual influence from my own involvement is embedded in the analysis which follows Clarke, The beginning teacher participants from this study stemmed from two preparatory programmes, the 1-year postgraduate diploma in education PGDE and the 5 year double degree in Education and another major subject.
Novice teachers were aged between 20 and 51 years of age and the majority of them were from Hong Kong and nearly all ethnically Chinese. Most were female which reflects the make-up the teaching profession in Hong Kong. A small percentage of students came from other countries including Canada, Korea, Thailand, Australia, and Japan. The undergraduate students also came from different majors as there are double degrees in Education and Arts English and Chinese Language , Science and Social Science.
These EL courses were initiated in Education, but were also open to students from other Faculties. Because students were encouraged to choose their own EL project from the range of projects provided by the Faculty, this ensured that many projects were inter-disciplinary in nature meaning that projects included students from different subject disciplines.
This arrangement was a positive, but unplanned outcome and it transpired that the EL block across the teacher preparation programmes was one of the only times that students from across the spectrum of subjects worked with each other on the same task. Our novice teachers were encouraged to write monthly journals and post written reflections to an online learning platform throughout the academic year. This allowed me to access novice teachers' perceptions at different stages of the learning process: before the project, during the project, and once more a short time after the project had finished.
Reflective practice in professions such as teaching is well recognized and long established see, for example, Schon, ; Cochran-Smith and Lytle, Another important data source was the teacher candidates' feedback later in the academic year during their TP block. It was felt that this would provide for a more nuanced and critical response because by that time in the academic year participants in the study might be better able to recognize and understand key differences and commonalities between their practices in EL and subsequent TP in local schools.
This was conducted partly through written feedback and partly through semi-structured interviews. From the start of this EL initiative reflection became an integral part of the novice teachers' learning process. Our teacher candidates were also encouraged to exemplify their learning experiences through different media including the use of moving images, photos, drawings, letters, and even poems.
This formative approach created the opportunity to shine a light on the process of change in novice teachers' learning and perceptions of EL. The following reflective prompts were given to the novice teachers in advance but most chose to form their own :. Describe some of the successes and challenges you faced when learning in a different context to the university meaning in your NGO or community partner ;.
Describe your significant learning over the duration of the project and your studies;. How can your learning experiences during the EL block be transferred to your teaching? A total of 26 focus-group interviews were conducted with participants and most interviews lasted between 30 and 60 min.
Teacher candidates could select their own groupings as mentioned above, many projects were inter-disciplinary and this was reflected in the composition of interview groups and medium of language was English for all students the TEI in the study teaches all of its subjects through English with the exception of Chinese language.
Dyad groups two participants and triad three participants groups were employed; these allowed for more interactions between participants Brinkman and Kvale, All interviews were transcribed verbatim and participants' names were removed.
The first layer of analysis was provided through reading and re-reading the reflective journal entries along with the focus-group interview transcriptions. This allowed for emerging and recurring themes to be identified.
Data collection and analysis followed a grounded theory approach which facilitated the emergence of patterns and which was not aimed at testing any hypothesis against the data Strauss and Corbin, Interview transcripts, reflective journals, and salient themes also underwent an iterative process of data reduction and verification Miles and Huberman, Such a process ensured that the novice teachers' experience could be accurately reflected.
The creation of a coding system is in practice a form of theory building, as relationships are identified or established in the data, giving new meanings at a level beyond the surface of the words. Each line of the reflective journal and interview data was coded by labeling or categorizing the topic or phenomenon that was being described; this foregrounded the procedure of arranging the open codes which were related to each other.
The creation of a coding system offers new meanings at a level beyond the surface of the words and forms organized constructions Holliday, Three stages of data coding were adopted: open, axial, and selective coding Strauss and Corbin, The open coding of responses was carried out by reading and analyzing the written reflections and the interview transcripts.
This data was then reviewed once more to see if any relationships could be identified between the categories. The grounded theory approach facilitated the inductive development of themes from the raw data Corbin and Strauss, A number of salient themes across the participants emerged: 1 heightened sensitivity to learner-centeredness and attentiveness to students' needs; 2 pedagogical development, including lesson planning and subject knowledge; and 3 role modeling and co-constructing knowledge through collaboration, peer support, and mentoring from the community partners.
In the analysis of written reflections and interview data, the central category was very much the issue of learner-centeredness and attentiveness to students' needs. Collecting qualitative perceptual data through eliciting students' experiences depends on strong levels of rapport between researchers and participants.
Examining projects in which this researcher was involved brought challenges and the threat of potential bias. Nevertheless, I believe that the amount of time spent on these EL projects and the rapport which was developed with community stakeholders provides the groundwork for a detailed account of the learning that took place on these EL projects.
All subjects novice teachers, academic colleagues, and community partners gave their written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Teacher candidates' names have been removed at their request and respondent validity was ensured by a process of member checking with all the participants in the study.
Each category was further divided into properties and characteristics see Table 2. The notion of learner-centeredness and attentiveness to students' needs was a dominant theme that emerged across the dataset. Our teacher candidates consistently made reference to the importance of the learner through their EL work even though many EL projects organized for the novice teachers were not school-based and did not involve working with young learners.
In some cases, for example, our novice teachers worked with the elderly in social service centers and adults in a marine theme park tourists as well as locals. In the following interview extract a student teacher talks about her growing awareness of the learners' needs through EL with an elderly center in the middle of Hong Kong:. When I worked with my mentor she showed me that it was important to get to know all the old people who used the centre. She knew them all by name and could tell me everything about them, even small details about where they lived and what they used to do in their jobs.
She cared about these people and they were all important to her. After that I started to talk more with the elderly residents who visited the centre every day. They were so pleased that someone was showing an interest in them. I joined the PGDE programme to learn to teach and I guess I used to think teaching was about me, but it's much more complicated than that. It's about the students and I have to focus on their needs first. That's a big lesson for me. If I want to help my students I need to take an interest in them and their learning first.
They are more important than me. Novice teacher placed at a social services group attending to elderly citizens in Hong Kong. In this extract there is an obvious concern on the part of the student teacher to get to know the elderly citizens she was working alongside during her 6-week placement at the center.
We can also detect a strong sense of empathy in her reflection as she made the connection between building a rapport with her future school students and the way she was trying to connect to the elderly residents in her EL work.
Another student teacher who traveled to Delhi, India, for his EL project talked about the importance of not making assumptions about students and about classrooms in general:.
I learned many things on this trip but I think the main conclusion I have drawn is not to make assumptions about my students. I had such a narrow view of India and the way that students learn here, but I was so wrong. I think teachers, too, often make rash judgments about their classes and schools—I mean whether some students are bright or lazy or hardworking—but it's not as easy as that. It's not what's on the surface but what's inside the students and the teachers.
It's what is inside me that will make me the best teacher I can be. It's too easy to make quick assumptions but these are often wrong and they come about because we can't take the time to learn about our students and our teaching contexts in detail.
I saw no luxuries in India but I saw so much more than that and that's what I will take into my future classrooms—it's what's inside that counts. Novice teacher placed in a social services group working with a secondary school in Delhi, India.
It also aligns with Greene's call for teachers to be demonstrate wide-awakeness to the world around them and attends to Sleeter's point about novice teachers needing to learn about the diversity that exists in the wider community. It is also possible to see evidence of deep personal reflection in these comments as teacher candidates engage with their local communities and learn more about the people and issues which make up that community Payne and Zeichner, There must be good teachers with the abili ties to guide them in the right direction and to teach them the right values of life.
I was a one of lucky students who had a great teacher. For generations teachers have been developing our future through harmony, wisdom, and intellectual adventure. A teachers' role in society is to help our youth grow and further their understandings in the principles of life. The expository essay The Role of the Teacher by Irving Layton provides a different perspective on education in the 21st century. Similar to Layton, I firmly believe that education is for the expansion of the young mind and nothing should restrict a student's ability to do so.
Layton touches on a view where teachers need to be passionate about their jobs, however, teachers are not always responsible for every action the school makes, but the responsibility may lie in the hands of the school board. In my opinion, teachers have the most important role in society, next to the role of being a parent.
They are so influential. Essentially, they control what a student is learning. They control whether a student learns the history of the violent war heroes or the history of the heroic peacemakers. Teachers have the ability to provide inspiration to drift into the background of society, or to stand up and challenge society. There are many definitions of teacher and many understandings of what the role of an educator is. To me a professional educator is someone who facilitates in the expansive process of education and exploration within the individual.
This facilitation, or mentoring, benefits not just the individual but also benefits of the community by creating trenchant minds that challenge the world they live in to be a better place for those that come after. A professional educator must bring their passion and creativity into the classroom everyday and be enthusiastic about educations, and inspire their students to take and active and interested role in their own learning.
But above all it is through critically reflecting on their practice, and modifying their practice, based on their own observations and contemporary research that a professional educator can promote the values of democracy and bring justice into their classrooms by identifying, and meeting the needs, of all who come through their doors.
Home Page Contributions of Teachers to Society. Contributions of Teachers to Society Powerful Essays. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Teachers hold a very sensitive role in the modern civilized society. Regarded as social engineers, teachers possess immense knowledge on various issues that affect our daily lives as a community of human beings. Though in many countries including the developed ones, teachers are poorly remunerated they make invaluable contributions to their communities, to society and to the world at large, engaging in yeoman services with selfless love and dedication that could only be considered priceless.
This paper serves to explore some of the social contributions that teachers make to the modern civilized society. Teachers impart knowledge and values on learners with the intention of creating self sufficient, articulate, socially responsible, resilient and active citizens of the world.
Currently, knowledge capital is an important ingredient in the growth of the economy locally and globally. Through provision of intellectual capital, teachers can be considered to be the pillars of a sustainable and progressive society Singh and Samiti.
0コメント