Frustrations of Being a Teacher Educator: Part 2

Why do I feel that I am not as effective as I could be, I am getting close but ultimately missing the target as a teacher educator?

Do you ever find yourself wondering if you could be a more effective teacher educator? I recently attended several conferences and training workshops, and something struck me as paradoxical. Many ELT trainers and educators, who champion personalized, learner-centered lessons focusing on communication and language use, often deliver their training sessions in a tutor-centered, content-focused manner. It’s almost as if they’re transmitting knowledge rather than fostering participation and learning. As educators, we must lead by example, showing how to encourage participatory learning, or else teachers may merely pay lip service to the idea of ‘facilitating learning’ while remaining entrenched in the traditional role of a knowledge transmitter.

With over four decades of experience as a teacher trainer, I’ve had the privilege of observing countless lessons. What I’ve noticed is that most lessons adhere to what I term the ‘competence’ model of teaching. They are meticulously planned with explicit aims and objectives, with the primary emphasis on delivering and practicing content. Yet, rarely do I come across lessons rooted in what I call the ‘performance’ model of teaching, where the lesson is learner-centered, open-ended, and built upon learner-generated participation and content. Admittedly, the ‘performance’ model is a high-risk approach, demanding strong facilitation skills. Most teachers, in my experience, tend to avoid such risks, often lacking the support needed to develop facilitation skills. My aim isn’t to argue which teaching model is superior; instead, I am drawn to the aspiration of training teachers to be effective facilitators, a goal I share personally. However, despite this aspiration, I too often find myself standing before rows of teachers in workshops, clicking through PowerPoint slides to transmit content. I’ve often wondered if other teacher educators face this same role conflict.

These reflections compelled me to explore questions like: What are facilitation skills, and how can they be cultivated? As Ruitenberg (2007) aptly notes, “Teaching is performative; it unfolds as embodied and enacted responses, in the moment.” In contrast, traditional academic knowledge is usually conveyed through words and numbers, making it disembodied. This propositional knowledge, while valuable, can only take a teacher so far, as true growth requires practice, as emphasized by Nelson (2013).

So, I embarked on a quest to identify the key performative skills that distinguish effective teachers. In Part 3 of this series, I’ll unveil what I’ve discovered