The Inductive-Descriptive
Paradigm in English Teacher Training
Iwan Syahril
To become a peak English teacher poses a lot of challenges. First of all
the teacher has to be able to handle all the nitty gritty atomistic side of the
English language. Secondly, the teacher has to know how to cope with the
overwhelming demands starting from the curriculum, the school, the parents, the
textbook, as well as from students. Finally, the boredom that the teacher has
to face as the result of repeated routines from teaching the same areas over
and over again for many years. One of the ways to deal with those matters is by
having a proper continuous teacher training. It is believed that teacher
training serves as a tool to improve teacher performance. There are usually
some teachers/researchers who share their ideas, experiences, and findings towards
teaching issues in a teacher training. By doing this, teacher participants usually
feel enlightened and possibly recharged after such training that they come to
their classes with an upbeat emotion. They will try the new ideas, suggestions
or recommendations they get from their training in their lessons. They are
sometimes happy to find the solutions to some of their teaching problems. This
will consequently improves their teaching performance which also increases the
quality of education in general.
However, there have been many criticisms toward teacher training. Corony Edwards mentions her experience when she once joined
a workshop for teacher trainers. The participants were asked to come up with
the definitions for ‘input’ and ‘feedback’. One of the participants then said
that input is telling trainees how to do it while feedback is telling them how
they should have done it. This incident reflects a prescriptive approach in
teacher training. Edwards in Challenge
and Change in Language Teaching (Edited by Willis & Willis;1996) suggests that teacher training should be ‘trainee-centered’ emphasizing on self-examination rather than
transmission. This corresponds with the mainstream idea in language teaching
where lessons should be more learner-centered.
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Syahril,
Website: www.geocities.com/eltindonesia
Email:
eltindonesia@yahoo.com