Centre stage papers – Days 3, 4 & 5: Extending the vision

The challenges of a 21st century educator

 

 

Teaching, one of the noblest occupations in the world, has evolved over the last few centuries from a vocation into a cutting edge profession. The challenges that a teacher faces, too, have evolved. Educators globally have realised the need for education to be student-centred and student empowering. In recent years, there have also been dynamic shifts in many countries in the way education is being redefined. But in this search for newer methodologies, content and perspectives, somewhere we are losing the very essence of education. This essence is rightly described by Kahlil Gibran when he says, ‘Education sows not seeds in you, but makes your seeds grow’. It is important that we ponder over this in some detail to better understand the challenges of being a teacher in the ever-changing 21st century.

The profile of the teacher from being the ultimate fountain of knowledge has been dramatically challenged with the free and easy accessibility to large amounts of resources, mainly through the internet, leaving many insecure about the new role they are expected to play. Thus, they are no longer required to be just seed-sowers. At the same time, students across the world have seemed to mature earlier and manifest greater abilities than ever before. Hence, engaging students with academic work that isn’t merely focused on text books but on skills, and content that is relevant to them, has become the need of the hour in education. This also implies the need for teachers to evolve into seed-growers by tapping into the potential of students in the most meaningful of ways, aimed at students becoming responsible and open-minded global citizens. This more progressive ideology is the underlining philosophy of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (www.ibo.org) and many other similar international curricula. The most important element of this transformation lies in training and self-empowerment of teachers in more ways than one.

Teachers need to realise that their role is no longer that of ‘telling’ students what there is to know but to ‘mentor and coach’ them, much along the lines of the ancient system of Gurukul, in India. The quote by Gibran, in fact, had been the guiding philosophy of the Gurukul system. In ancient India, the mode of learning was through the Gurukul, which literally translates into the ‘home of the mentor’. In this system, students had to diligently devote 12 years of their lives to their teacher, or guru, and live in residence in what was known as the ‘ashram’ (abode of the guru). The teaching was mainly oral and lessons were learnt in real life contexts, as the students had to do everything from the mundane chores of washing their own clothes and cooking food to learning the various ancient sciences, languages and mathematics and seeking alms. The guru judged the ability of each student and teaching and learning was student-centred. The job of the guru was not as much to lead children on his way, but more to help them find their own ways.

This, in the more modern sense, is exactly the way Professor David Hargreaves describes the 21st century educator. Even though there have been sea changes in resources and teaching methodologies, a lot still needs to be done in terms of teacher training and teacher empowerment. Teachers need to be trained with regards to their new role as facilitators of learning and thus empowered to deal with the changing face of education.

This, in concept, is still new and most schools across the world are struggling to move away from the ‘teaching’ of knowledge to ‘facilitating’ student learning. The basic difference lies in the fact that, through facilitating, it is actually the students who are empowered to learn on their own and take responsibility for their own learning, while the teacher merely plays a mentoring role. The IBO’s mission statement refers to students becoming ‘active, compassionate and life longlearners’, thus paying more emphasis not only on what they learn but, more importantly, on how they learn. There is already a lot of work happening in enabling teachers with skills of collaborative and inquiry-based planning and continuous assessment. The focus now needs to shift to helping teachers accept the new expectations and then undergo training to be able to meet them. Much of this training must also guide teachers on personal self-development, as the role of a teacher has broadened in its scope and will place a lot of pressure on the teacher person if he/she is not ready for it.

We often talk about the need for teachers to demonstrate learning and be role models. However, most often this remains at a level of lip service and sometimes taken for granted as the onus being with the teachers only. Hence, little is done to help teachers grow as human beings. As long as we forget that education is all about creating great human beings out of the impressionable clay that is handed to us in primary school, we will continue to ignore the great need for an inner revolution in teachers. This inner revolution requires teachers to be firstly empathetic and compassionate and understand the diverse backgrounds students come from, be it of abilities, family or learning styles.

Teachers also need to feel reassured and supported in their own travails by the school system. The school system needs to recognise and respect the need for teacher empowerment and self-development and nurture potential for mentoring and leadership. Teaching of content is slowly going to become one of the lesser responsibilities of a 21st century educator. The greater challenge will be to become a guiding light to students who are socially alienated, unattended or rejected and who are simultaneously bombarded with influences from the mass media and peer pressure, making them prone to seek escape routes that are self-destructive and negative, to say the least. In a world where parents spend less quality time with their own children, the family is more fragmented and temptations and indulgences are galore, the primary job of the teacher is to set the child on a search for his/her own truths and thus, enable him/her to seek true and genuine happiness. This can only be achieved when the teacher him/herself has set on that journey and has had a few discoveries and experiences to draw from! It still surprises me to see how much importance is still placed on knowing the subject matter, and so little on a student’s - and a teacher’s - personal growth.

At the risk of sounding spiritually minded, I feel that the greatest decay in our society has been of the human sprit. The challenge of the 21st century educator lies in restoring that humaneness back in students and helping them realise a more peaceful world. This whole cycle is that of interconnectedness and is governed by cause and effect and these are concepts we want our students to arrive at through their own self-discovery. Thus, the concrete and more technical suggestions from Professor David Hargreaves will simply enable teachers in the 21st century to be better equipped in dealing with the changing times.

The increasing challenge thus, remains in training current teachers and in recruiting newer ones. I have been lucky to have not been formally trained as a teacher and yet having worked in this profession for the last eight years in schools in India that have been progressive in their ideology, thus giving me enough room for experimentation and risk taking, and hence self-discovery and learning. Thus, I have learnt to be a teacher with help and direction, mostly from students. The additional workshops have only added layers of techniques and expertise at handling situations. In this journey of mine, I have realised deeply that to be a 21st century educator, certification and academic training is no longer going to be adequate, as the certification itself, is limited in its scope of application in the real world of today! Hence, to recruit new teachers, schools need to draw up a personality profile that articulates the kind of person a teacher needs to be. Some schools, like the Western Academy of Beijing, already have such stringent recruitment criteria that go beyond the traditional requirements of degrees and subject specialisations.

Moreover, schools need to recognise such existing teachers and share and delegate leadership more generously and collaboratively. The whole process of nurturing potential in teachers sets a good example, not only for other teachers but also for students. When students see adults working together in complete harmony, they actually imbibe skills of cooperative learning and working. Thus, as a school body, we need to be conscious of the hidden messages that we give out to our students and, in a way, program positive experiences into our ways and systems of working.

Finally, unless a teacher as an individual feels the need for inner change, to be able to deal with the outer challenges that they are faced with, in terms of students’ learning needs and behavioral issues, no amount of external support or training can help the concerned teachers. Thus, teachers, who fail to rise up and respond to the slow but sure transformation in education, will feel ill-equipped to deal with the changed circumstances.

In the end, completely agreeing with Professor David Hargreaves, I leave you with some food for thought that is ancient in origin but absolutely relevant to our modern day dilemmas regarding the shape of education we want to see.

‘Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.’- Buddha

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Abhimanyu Das Gupta has been a teacher for the last eight years; half of this time has been spent involved in the International Baccalaureate curriculum. He currently works as a form tutor in the Primary Years Programme, at the Pathways World School, in Gurgaon, India. He is actively involved in extracurricular activities, coordinating school concerts and co-editing the year book. He has also spanned across the school by coordinating and training students for the Harvard Model Congress Asia (Bangkok, 2006) and the Model United Nations (Delhi, 2006). His passion for writing and having dialogues on issues concerning education, stem from his own experiences in his childhood and his close observation of the process of teaching learning through his diverse encounters with great leaders and successful institutions. He has also successfully enthused students in his school to take active part in the iNet student online conferences.

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