The importance of being anxious
Does it not follow, then, that teacher anxiety is a healthy sign that reflective practice is taking place? Is it not an indicator that awarenesses are being sharpened and honed as a result of difficult encounters at the chalkface, that 'confusions and irritations' are being confronted and put to good developmental use? So why the 'culture of silence' which surrounds this subject in ELT? Should not such anxieties and uncertainties be publicly aired (instead of privately suffered)? Is it likely that real advances will be made in understanding what really happens in our classrooms if anxious feelings arising from problematic teaching and learning experiences are kept out of sight in the shadows (as they now are) rather than being shared and aired (as they need to be)?
Our reticence to confess to anxiety at the chalkface transforms a phenomenon that is, under the circumstances, quite natural (on this point, see Robert Nusbaum's article in this issue) into a debilitating condition that must at all costs be suppressed, and that consequently cannot be brought to light through open discussion. When these unvoiced doubts are allowed to remain beneath the surface, they insidiously undermine professional and personal confidence. In our profession, practitioners often fear that if they admit to anything less than perfection, they run the risk of being accused of that most heinous of ELT crimes: incompetence.
Occasionally, some honest soul will nonetheless risk possible ridicule and bring up such anxieties and insecurities during, say, a weekly staff meeting. More often than not this will be in the context of urgent pleas for more staff development workshops to ease the frantic 'preparation-teaching' round which barely leaves teachers enough time to keep up with current developments in teaching and learning as disseminated by ELTJ, MET, etc. Just mention the word 'anxiety', however, and an embarrassed and defensive silence will descend. Colleagues may be more than ready to pick over and advise on the problems experienced by the honest soul in question; but there will rarely be an admission of personal doubts or difficulties, and how these were (or were not) overcome. An account of 'successes' in difficult classroom situations, yes. 'Anxieties', no.
This is not to suggest, however, that all teacher practitioners are beset by such doubts. Some, even many, no doubt do stride purposefully into their classrooms confident that what has been planned
will indeed bring about the desired learning. And then there are those whose teaching is 'personality- based', where recognition of personal strengths has led them to develop intuitively their own techniques and methods for guiding and interpreting teaching and learning processes, which may or may not be consistent with received wisdom on such matters (I am using the term 'received wisdom' here with specific reference to those skills-based teacher training courses, such as the RSA Dip. TEFLA, which propagates a view of 'the right way to teach', a view which I am not the first to question: see, for one example among many, Tessa Woodward, 1994, in issue 31 of the SIG Teacher Trainer. p.3)
.Back to the Top
Be that as it may, I would like to pose the following questions to those with whom the issues I have raised here resonate: if we accept that anxieties and insecurities are part and parcel of the self-critical reflective process through which a committed teaching professional will strive to become more effective (and given that this process, which is often brought on by an unresolved dilemma encountered in the classroom or elsewhere, lies at the very heart of teacher development) should we not then agree as a profession to be more forthcoming with each other about our failures as well as successes, to describe to each other for our mutual benefit what really happens at the chalkface? Would this not be preferable to plugging away doggedly in isolation, not daring to openly acknowledge that far from bringing about the desired learning, the repertoire of standard CLT methodologies on which we draw may actually be preventing learning from taking place?
And this brings me another disturbing truth: is not teacher anxiety also a natural and healthy 'symptom' of the underlying causes that I referred to at the beginning of this article'? Is our anxiety not rooted in a dual awareness (based on experience) that (1) CLT methodologies may not bring about the intended learning, and (2) we may well be using a dysfunctional teaching model'? Could this awareness not motivate us to search further and differently for resolutions to teaching and learning dilemmas, rather than pretending to ourselves and each other that our methodologies are effective, when we know in our (anxious) hearts that they are nothing of the sort?
Back to the Top
And just imagine what exciting avenues of research would open up if we were get to grips with these amorphous shadows and begin acknowledging even some of the following:
--that instead of wasting our time scouring the methodological haystack for an "effective" needle, we should be inventing, collectively, as a profession, a multi-purpose, flexible, and adaptable needle that sews.
--that as a result of turning in anxious haste to resolutions without accurately identifying and analysing the corresponding dilemma, we have found out little of use to practitioners about how second language learning takes place, leaving us no choice but to live by the old but hazardous adage that says, 'if you don't know where you're going, any old road will get you there'
--that as a result of our lack of faith in our teaching models, we have moved (as Michael Swan put it in his closing plenary talk at IATEFL Keele in 1996), from leaching language' (which is hard) to 'doing things with language (which is easier, and more fun)
--that our 'aims and objectives' in language teaching ar
《The importance of being anxious》
★读了本文的人也读了：