Saturday 21 September 2019

Teacher Empowerment...!

Hello friends, after a gap of a month,  I have resumed my journey of blogging once again..

Today I am going to write about Teacher Empowerment..

The topic was the same there in the opening planery of IATEFL CONFERENCE , held in Liverpool and brilliantly presented by Paulo Rebolledo...

After her presentation , I really sat back to think upon the topic in deep and some of the thoughts that came into my mind the then , I am going to jot down today throyth this article..

Friends , have you ever thought about Teacher Empowerment personally ?

To me, the answer was 'No', till that first  day of IATEFL CONFERENCE..But as the planery session began with the great zeal and a thought provoking topic of Teacher Empowerment, I was really impressed and made to look into the matter personally and deeply.

What is Teacher Empowerment in your views ?

About teacher empowerment, something I found is that , it not only the power within you but it is also the power with others..

I would support my findings with the example that when you have lot of power  in you to speak but there is no one to have power to listen to you , then your only power can not do anything.
The same happened with our teachers as well most of the times.
They have power in them in various streams of education but they are not valued for their expertise.

Resulted that the teachers feel disappointed and frustrated.

That's the reason teachers are silent because no one hear them.

I would like to support these with some of the practical evidences as follows:
Let us just think about the following aspects with reference to teachers.

1. Decision making
2.Status
3.Impact
4.self efficacy
5.Autonomy
6.Professional growth

Now let's talk about decision making.
How many teachers are considered in the process of decision making regarding education?

Just think about , who take part in deciding- 
1.Curriculum
2.schedule of the school
3.class size
4.infra structure
5.coursebook selection
6. Evaluation pattern 

And so many
more........

Even though all the above factors are related directly to the teaching learning process and they impact on  it greatly, I could hardly find teachers are involving in the process of decision making of these factors.

Some of the teachers voices are as follows-

"Change in the length of class, class sizes increased or decreased, decision made to give coursebook to the students - teachers are never consulted even though it's the teachers who are impacted the most."

"Everytime , so that means every year when we have to teach the curriculum which has already determined the topics and linguistic contents. I can not properly modify in accordance to the groups , abilities and  backgrounds."

The above examples would clearly portray the picture of what is in real.

So the question raised into my mind so eventually that , are we really empowering teachers?

Then I thought for a while and came up with an answer that teachers would really feel empowered when we give them -

1.Autonomy to decide
2. Collaborative actions 
3. Opportunities for professional development
4. Risk taking factors

etc....
After all,

Teacher Empowerment is the process whereby the teachers develop autonomy to make decision and exercise their professional judgement about how and what to teach.

What do you feel about teacher empowerment?