The importance of being anxious

by Carole Russell

My purpose in this article is not to offer yet another 'solution' to the problems of language teaching and learning. It is, rather, to describe some of the shadowy areas that lie between the dilemma of teacher anxiety and its possible resolution. It seems to me that in this space between dilemma and resolution lurk several amorphous shapes whose existence we tend to try to ignore. For who knows what disturbing truths we may be confronted with if we look into those dark spaces?

But look into them we must, before we can even begin to resolve them. This "looking" involves, at a minimum, careful description and analysis of the dilemma within a framework of self-critical questioning of cherished assumptions about teaching and learning processes. Without this spirit of self-critical enquiry (for which, as I shall try to show, teacher anxiety acts as the 'trigger'), we may, in our haste to resolve teaching and learning dilemmas, fail to devote sufficient attention to certain shadowy truths. This may result in a) dilemma resolutions that address only outward signs, leaving the underlying causes untouched, and b) the dilemma returning to haunt us, since it has not been effectively brought out from the shadows into the light of accurate identification and analysis.

However, when we confront these neglected shadows, we also run the risk of aggravating our professional anxieties. But isn't it time, though, that we admitted to ourselves that without the (sometimes painful) process of being honest with ourselves about the causes and effects of anxieties experienced at the chalkface, authentic 'teacher development' cannot take place? Shouldn't we be making common cause with experts in the field of ELT (and they with us), to create the kind of public forum where we could openly, honestly, and without fear of ridicule discuss our anxieties and thereby learn from each others experiences? In other words, what if we were to strive, as a profession, for the collaborative learning communities' described so eloquently in the literature - not of ELT - but of the field of education? (see, for example, collected papers in Bennett et al, 1994).

In trying to do this, the first amorphous shapes we run up against are the selective narrowness of our teaching and learning horizons, the fragmented nature of ELT research, and of the conferences and journals through which results are disseminated. I find it unfortunate that nothing approaching the mutually supportive and multi-disciplinary synergy of the 'collaborative learning communities' described in the education literature to which I have just referred has yet to emerge in ELT. For it seems to me that the move we seek to fill the gaps in our professional skills with knowledge and insights gained from outside the relatively narrow scope of ELT, the more the shadowy anxieties so many of us have about our abilities to help our learners will diminish. Even a cursory glance at the rich insights provided by great thinkers in the field of education will enhance and deepen our understanding of both the nature and principles of teacher development, especially as they apply to our own practice. While the term used in the field of education is 'reflective practice', we will find not only that this concept bears a direct relationship to our own notions of 'teacher development', but also that it sheds much light on the anxiety' which is my theme.
Take, for example, a thoughtful paper entitled 'Rethinking Professional Development', by Osterman & Kottkamp (1994: p.46) in which the process of 'reflective practice' is described as 'a means by which practitioners can develop a greater level of self-awareness about the nature and impact of their performance, an awareness that creates opportunities for growth and development'. As the authors elaborate the principles to which this concept gives rise, we begin to see the need for a precisely defined 'reflective toolkit' in order, first, to achieve the sharpened levels of awareness of thought and action which are necessary for identifying and analysing those problems which lurk in the shadows, and, second, to achieve the personal and professional growth in teaching and learning contexts which we seek.

But Osterman and Kottkarnp stress, as do others in the field of education, that 'reflective practice' is not a 'relaxed meditative process', but rather a 'challenging, demanding, and often trying [one] that is most successful as a collaborative effort' (ibid). We find, further, that this concept is not new, but is firmly rooted in a tradition of self-critical enquiry which stretches back to Socrates. It is a tradition which draws into itself thoughtful contributions from such writers as Dewey, Piaget, Kofb, Schon and many others who have written on the subject of developing greater levels of awareness of the impact and nature of personal performance in diverse teaching and learning settings.

In the field of education, we find, too, that the process of developing such awarenesses (our reflective toolkit') is often described as being cyclical and rooted in experience. Koib's 'experiential learning cycle'(1 984), for example, relates theory to practice by 'doing'. Koib's thesis is that in order to become proficient in a skill, we have to practise it, a concept that is referred to in ELT circles as 'learning by doing'. I am not personally aware, however, that this concept has been linked with its origins in 'reflective practice'; nor, more significantly, have I yet to see it analysed in terms of its relationship to problematic learning processes and experiences.

It is this omission which brings me to a 'key disturbing truth' - and one which is, for me, a key area to emerge from the shadows. Discussions of 'reflective practice' in the field of education converge on the point that effective learning comes about through 'a troublesome event or experience, an unsettling situation that cannot be resolved using standard operating procedures ' (Osterman and Kottkamp, op. cit.) describing Dewey's [19381 exposition of the 'process of inquiry').

It seems to me - and I hope you will forgive me if I stress yet again a point that we seem (at least outwardly) to ignore in ELT - that prominent thinkers in the field of education generally accept that anxieties and uncertainties are k