Am I an autonomous teacher? Food for thought!

 

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Much has already been said about students' autonomy and how to promote it. However, things change when it comes to dealing with teachers' autonomy under the perspective of the teacher as a learner. There are many definitions of what teacher autonomy is about. The most common one is when teachers have 'academic freedom' (Sehrawet, 2014) - when they are able to make their own choices regarding the teaching materials, the methodology as well as the types of assessment they will use in their day-to-day teaching practices. Here, though, I will focus on the perspective of the teacher-learner autonomy.

Teacher-learner autonomy

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Defining it briefly, teacher-learner autonomy is associated with the idea that teachers should have ownership of their own learning as teachers (Smith & Erdogan 2008). This perception is closely connected to professional development. 
How can we promote autonomy inside of our classroom if we are not autonomous teachers? This is one of the questions that come to the minds of many English teachers when they are told that they should do their best to foster their students' autonomy. 
Being an autonomous teacher is also about recognizing your strengths and weaknesses. Learning more about our weaknesses and being willing to improve them will lead us to successful teaching practices. We shoud try to learn more and more each day. We always need to ask ourselves the following questions:

• What do I still need to learn?

• What should I improve in my teaching practices?

• How can I delevop my English teaching skills?

By reflecting on these questions, it is gonna be much easier to spot possible constraints regarding our practices as well as to find a solution to them. 

Having said that, I personally recognize that a teacher's workload can be very heavy. There are always exams to grade, lesson plans to prepare and lots of students to teach. In addition, in certain contexts, it is very difficult for some teachers to attend conferences or even participate in teacher development courses. So, here, I intend to introduce you to three websites that will help you to develop your teaching skills. You can be either an experienced or novice teacher, there will be always something you can learn from the resources available in these websites.

BBC Learning English - The teacher's room

https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/

BBC Learning English is a fantastic website full of resources for both teachers and students. The section The teacher's room is dedicated to offering a lot of tips on how to teach English. They cover many useful topics such as teaching models, drilling, teaching vocabulary and so on. It is very interesting the way they bring theory and practice together in their videos. They always start their lessons with an introductory video on the topic - there is a brief explanation and practical examples on how to apply the tips they are giving. They also provide their audience with a full written explanation about the topic they are dealing with. In addition, there is always a quiz in the end of each "lesson" so that you can check what you were able to learn. Overall, it is a wonderful platform for teachers who are not much familiar with journal articles reading or who do not have enough time to read them. You can watch a short video demonstration below: 

You can access The teacher's room here

VOA Learn English - Let's teach English

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/

Another interesting website is the VOA learning English. They offer FREE online training for English language teachers worldwide. They have a collection of ten teacher training videos on topics such as English for Specific Purposes, Critical thinking skills, Learning strategies, Listening skills, etc. Each "unit" has a script of the video as well as the lesson plan of the class that was used in the unit. Overall, the videos are very useful. We can learn a lot from them. I really recommend them for novice teachers; However, if you are an experienced teacher, you can benefit a lot from them as well. 

You can access Let's teach English here

American English

Last but not least, there is this wonderful website from the United States Department of State - American English. There are hundreds of useful resources for both students and teachers. They have a special section for teachers called 'Teacher`s Corner' where you can find a lot of articles and materials focused on teacher development. Also, they have a collection of recorded webinars covering topics such as speaking, listening and pronunciation, global citizenship, reading and writing, teaching methods and so on. Everything there is of high quality. 

Another interesting resource are the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). They are online free courses offered in partnership with many American Universities. Some of these courses can be taken on a self-paced basis, while others require that you attend a few synchronous online classes. When you complete the course, they issue a certificate for you. I took some of these courses  a few years ago and I really recommend that you take at least one of them. You learn a lot from these courses, and the best of all is that it is FREE of charge. 

You can access the American English website here

That's all for today, guys. See you on the next post! 😁

References

Sehrawat, J. (2014). Teacher Autonomy: Key to Teaching Success. Bhartiyam International Journal of Education & Research, 4(1), ISSN: 2277-1255.

Smith & Erdoğan. (2008). Teacher-learner autonomy: Programme goals and student-teacher constructs. In T. Lamb & H. Reinders (Eds.), Learner and Teacher Autonomy: Concepts, realities, and response (pp.83-103). John Benjamins Publishing.