Category Archives: Teachers’ narratives

Students’ Feedback and Teachers Support to Advance Teaching Practices: A Teacher’s Reflection

Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teachers' narratives, ,
Dasarath Rai

Over the decades, we have witnessed a different shift in the principles and methods of language teaching. The key concern behind such a move is to appease and address the need of the learners and make them achieve the desired linguistic competency. However, the ideologies of language teaching prescribed to us so far have proven to be contextually irrelevant. According to Kumaravadivelu (2003), “classroom-oriented studies carried out in the last two decades show that teachers could not be successful in putting the methods into practice in real classroom situations.” These findings have encouraged teachers to innovate their own practices and generate theories beyond what was prescribed, and grow as independent, autonomous, and reflective practitioners.

Throughout my six-year tenure as an English teacher in a private school in Kathmandu, I have encountered numerous pivotal moments in my classroom that have served as beacons of enlightenment, guiding me toward creating my own teaching methods rather than merely adhering to prescribed principles and methods. I think principles perform perfectly for scientific experiments, however; language teaching and learning necessitate a more adaptable and fluid approach. In this regard, every language teacher becomes a reservoir of principles, possessing a comprehension of learners’ unique needs, context, and intended objectives.

My journey towards transformative teaching commenced with a fundamental shift in perspective, prioritizing the needs of my students. This shift was prompted by the realization that my own educational background had conditioned me to cater solely to the expectations of my teachers, fostering the belief that they were the absolute source of knowledge. As a result, my teaching endeavors were driven by what I knew and what I desired to impart.

Nevertheless, the awakening of my conscience compelled me to recognize the inadequacy of this approach in the capital city, where students are inundated with abundant information and varied sources of knowledge. In this regard, I realized that introspection and self-evaluation are key to cultivating insights and intuition for relearning and unlearning.

Evaluating teacher from students’ bench

Knowing students’ attitudes, beliefs, and interest is quite rewarding for a teacher. Therefore, I decided to collect students’ feedback. The rationale behind gathering their feedback was: to critically evaluate my teaching methods from students’ vantage points, make learning more engaging and students centered, and find out the flaws which unconsciously go unnoticed in the classroom.

To achieve my objectives, I told students to write their feedback on the paper. I urged them not to show their write-ups to their friends. It is because I wanted to dig out personal opinions from them.

I collected students’ opinions from three sections. I took their feedback home and read it thoroughly. I divided the feedback into two groups. Positive feedback is one pile, and constructive feedback is another. I read all the constructive feedback twice and analyzed whether they had been true to their words or not, whether they had any personal influence and any prejudice or not. Then I picked up some of the common feedback, which really required my attention. One common feedback was that “You give us some contextual knowledge but extend it to dull and boring lectures.” This is what the teacher-centered approach is, where the teacher keeps on talking, and students become just passive listeners.

No matter whether students perceive it or not. As a result, students feel bored, unenviable, and exhausted. They don’t get time to exchange their personal thoughts, feeling, and ideas with teachers and their friends. At the same time, the teacher also becomes exhausted by screaming throughout the day and trudging home disconsolately due to students’ reaction of disappointment in his or her class. It indicated that high school students want specific information from the teacher instead of rattling off all the information he or she knows. It is particularly due to their age, level, and experiences in the real world. The next feedback read, “We feel your focus on only some students. So focus equally on all the students and promote students’ participation in class” I understood that it was the voice of those students who did not get the opportunity to participate in different activities in the classroom despite their talents. As a result, they felt socially distanced and emotionally detached in my class. At the same time, it was the question of equity in learning. In this regard, Ling, Nasri, & N. M. (2019) define “equity means that students should have equal opportunities to achieve their optimal abilities without being restricted by their community background or dispositional characteristics.” In my case, equity denoted scaffolding to especially those learners who have poor linguistic performances and cannot learn at the pace of other students in my subject. The aforementioned feedback enlightened me that treating all students equally regarding content delivery and teaching language skills is unjustifiable in a heterogeneous classroom setting.

Response to students’ feedback

The students’ feedback revealed that they wanted to activate themselves mentally and physically in the classroom. They wanted to listen less and engage more in activities that could be productive, meaningful, and interesting. I pondered the best strategies and materials that could equally engage the students in learning. While doing so, I discovered that our teaching and learning activities are limited when we fully depend on textbooks. Therefore, I did not fully rely on the textbook but prepared different materials and worksheets for teaching all four language skills. For reading activities, I created worksheets that were intellectually challenging. Students had to fully comprehend the text to do the activities to develop intensive reading skills, and the activities given in the prescribed textbook were below students’ level.

Regarding speaking activities, I used-cut outs consisting of clear guidelines for speaking. I designed the materials in such a way that students had to brainstorm for two to three minutes on the topic before they spoke. The guidelines helped them to maintain coherence in speaking. This activity helped me in two ways: one exciting part was I could maximize students speaking, and another was I could engage them in a meaningful talk. I assume that speaking should not only be commotion for students, but it should be meaningful where they can share their thoughts and ideas. In the same way, I used IELTS listening text in my class, and the outcome was so exciting.

The students’ feedback helped me modify my teaching method, which was particularly practicable and fit for my context. I could equally engage the learners in learning. In another way, the students were at the center, not me.

Teaching, a collective effort

Our faculty often used to have discussions on different ideas about teaching and learning activities and professional development. Therefore, the English faculty in our school adopted some techniques. Firstly, the school allocated one weak period for faculty meetings, which were regularly held. The meeting served as a platform for teachers to engage in narrative sessions, sharing their classroom practices, techniques, methods, outcomes, and the challenges they encountered during their teaching experiences. During the meeting, we did not only share the stories but also offered suggestions to the problems. For instance, experienced teachers shared their materials, discussed lesson planning, and suggested novice teachers use positive verbal reinforcement to the unruly students in and out of the class to make them responsible in their work. By implementing this methodology, we established a supportive community of educators, as advocated by Richards and Farrell (2005), wherein mutual classroom observations and constructive feedback facilitated a teachers’ support group.  In addition, we engaged in a classroom observation process where we attended our colleagues’ classes to observe their teaching methods and reciprocally invited them to our classes for feedback. We diligently recorded these valuable insights in a personal diary, allowing us to enhance our teaching skills and refine our strategies. This instructional approach aligns with the peer observation framework proposed by Richards and Farrell (2005). Through reciprocal classroom visits, we observed our colleagues’ instructional practices and invited them to observe our own. We systematically documented the feedback in a personal diary to facilitate continuous improvement. After observing one of my classes, my senior faculty head, with extensive teaching experience, provided written feedback, insights, and recommendations, which read as follows.

You have incorporated materials that went beyond the usual textbook. This approach kept the students alert and engaged. The activity was a reading-based exercise, where students delved into thought-provoking texts and answered questions that required higher levels of cognition. The challenging nature of these questions fully engrossed the students, fostering a deep understanding and critical thinking. Besides, consider the pronunciation of ‘bicycle’ and get students to paste the material in their copy after they finish activities.

Rethinking evaluation system

Despite the tireless efforts exerted by teachers and students throughout the year, the final outcomes of students have consistently sparked discourse and deliberation among students, educators, and academicians. However, the concerns related to the evaluation system often go unnoticed within our educational setting. While our education system emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and creativity, the evaluation system relies on grades, often viewed as irrational and lacking justification from students’ perspectives.

Last year, two students had not made the required grade in two subjects to qualify for the next level. The outcomes left them feeling disheartened and humiliated, leading me to ponder, does this three-hour evaluation system truly assess students’ capabilities? Does it compensate for students’ time and efforts? Probably, the answer is ‘no’. Those two students, who served as representatives from my class, are just a glimpse of the thousands of students across the country whose self-worth and sense of pride have been severely undermined by the impact of this evaluation system.

Hence, it is imperative for educationists and academicians to engage in a comprehensive evaluation of the existing assessment system, ensuring that it possesses the necessary flexibility to effectively measure students’ abilities while being practical and contextually relevant.

Souvenir at farewell

Teaching is my passion. I feel I am born for it. I know nothing can be more rewarding for teachers than the complements and their students’ achievement. Last year, some students came to me with colourful paper folded artistically. They handed it to me with excitement. My inquisitive hand unfolded the papers. As the papers unraveled before my eyes, a symphony of emotion swirled within my being. The profundity of their gratitude echoed through the chambers of my heart. Their words, like sacred verses, embraced my weary spirit.

To,

Mr. Rai,

In the beginning, your classes were boring to be honest, but as time passed by, we got to know your English class was one of the most exciting classes. You have been a really great teacher. Your teaching style is wonderful. Your experience is learnable. It has been two years of your wonderful teaching that we cherish. Your handwriting has been a favorite part. If you will not be in our section next year. You will always be remembered.

Reference

Aloni, N. (2007). Enhancing Humanity. Dordrecht: Springer.

Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Ling, T., & Nasri, N. M. (2019). A systematic review: Issues on equity in education. Creative Education, 10(12), 3163.

Richards, J. C., & Farrell, T. S. C. (2005). Professional Development for Language Teachers: strategies for teacher learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.

About the Author: Dasarath Rai teaches English at Ideal Model School, Dhobighat, Lalitpur. He has accomplished Master’s Degree in English Education from Mahendra Ratna, Campus, Tahachal, Kathmandu. He is interested in teacher professional development, multiculturalism, cultural identity, and materials development in language education.

Dealing with Late Assignment Submission in Colleges

reflection, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teachers' narratives, ,
Surendra Prasad Ghimire

Setting Context

I joined college teaching at Matribhumi Campus, Lamjung, where a few regular students were in the classroom. I would have enough time to share ideas, listen to them, and support them. Later on, I was appointed as an assistant lecturer of English at Hetauda School of Management and Social Sciences, Makawanpur, where there would be an average of 50 students in each class. In the beginning, all the classroom activities were going smoothly on. However, gradually, I was entangled with the late submission of home assignments by some of the students, which caused me troubles in teaching and learning activities, particularly about completing the assigned course in the expected time. Thus, in this paper, by reflecting on my experience, I discuss specific causes/reasons behind the delayed submission of home assignments of English and some practical solutions to get rid of them.

Introduction                                    

Academic achievement of students and their submission of home assignments in time have been associated (Eren & Henderson, 2008; Rawson et al., 2017).  Thus, the study by Kim and Seo (2015) claimed that the procrastination of home assignments indicated the low academic performance of the students. There have been various reasons for such delayed submission of home assignments. For instance, a study by Kuftyak (2022) argued that the students who had low performance in their studies, their laziness, and lack of proper time management were some of the causes of delayed submission of their home assignments. Moreover, delayed submission of home assignments would have a colossal impact affecting almost all the aspects of social and professional lives of students, particularly their academic performance. In addition, a study by Shaked and Altarac (2022) reflected feelings of frustration, anxiety, stress, damage to self-image, and receiving a lower grade were some of the consequences of delayed submission of home assignments. Despite the devastating impact of procrastinating on the home assignments, some of the students in my class delayed the submission of their home assignments. Although I tackled the problem by encouraging and motivating the students to complete the assigned work in time, the fundamental situation remained the same. Moreover, they made various excuses, such as forgetting their copies of assignments and not feeling well, just to name a few to justify their delayed submission. However, finally, I overcame gradually minimizing the ratio of late submission of assignments by adopting various strategies such as finding the real causes of problems, establishing friendly relations with the students, changing the ways of teaching, dealing individually with them, and assigning the work on their consent, thereby, here, I argue by understanding the real causes/reasons of delayed submission of home assignments and dealing accordingly with the students assist minimizing the ratio of delayed submission of home assignments instead of imposing the workload and various instructions for them. Thus, in this brief descriptive reflection, I focus on just how I made the students submit their home assignments before the deadlines by exploring the causes/reasons of the problem and adopting some strategies to get rid of the problem.

Causes of late assignment submission

I explored various causes of late submission of assignments of English which were different from student to student. However, some of the causes of late submissions of home assignments are discussed below:

  1. Lack of clear understanding of the lesson

I found the students who did not concentrate on the classroom activities often delayed submitting their home assignments as they did not have much idea about how to solve the given problem due to a lack of clear understanding of the lesson. To solve their homework, they needed to explore their prescribed texts and other related materials which made them delayed in submitting their assignments before the deadline.

  1. Time management

I discovered some of the students who delayed in the submission of their home assignments had a lack of managing the time in solving their assignments as they reported they often began solving their home assignments very late hour after receiving them, due to which they could not submit their assignments before the given deadline.

  1. Workload

I found the workload of students’ home assignments was also a responsible factor in the delayed submission of their home assignments as I often used to prescribe them more work by realizing that they had to do a lot to improve their academic performance. In addition, some of the students reported that they would receive extra work in other subjects as well, due to which they would be already overloaded.

  1. Negligence

I investigated some of the students who did not submit their home assignments on time and often did not pay attention to working on home assignments instead, they enjoyed copying readymade answers from various sources, such as from their friends’ exercise copies, without really being involved in the given activities. Moreover, some did not care about the deadline of their assignments and made various excuses for their delayed submission.

Ways forward to overcome the problem

After finding some of the causes/reasons behind the problem, I adopted the following strategic procedures to solve the delayed submission of home assignments. They are as follows:

  1. Establishing friendly relationships with students

Establishing friendly relationships with students assisted me in minimizing the delayed submission of home assignments by supporting me in a better understanding of the students and promoting the teaching and learning environment in the classroom. In doing so, I began spending more time with students outside the classroom, such as during break time, particularly focusing on the students who did not submit their home assignments on time. Gradually, I sorted out the names of the reluctant students, particularly about doing their homework, and developed their portfolios under their consent which helped me to assign a particular kind of homework for certain students and follow them before the deadline of their home assignments. As a result, the students who procrastinated in submitting their home assignments gradually improved and began to submit their home assignments a bit faster than earlier. They started sharing their problems of solving home assignments and other problems related to teaching and learning, which supported me in preparing further plans for overcoming the problem of delayed submission of home assignments.

  1. Changing the ways of teaching

By exploring a connection between ways of teaching and the submission of home assignments, I reviewed and changed my previous ways of teaching in the classroom. I minimized the lecture method and focused on students centric teaching methods, such as class discussion and group work, just to name a few. Changing ways of teaching assisted me in solving the problem of lack of clear understanding of the lesson in the class. As a result, I found the majority of the students who delayed submitting their home assignments were actively participating in the classroom activities. I kept on following and inspiring them by highlighting their latest progress in classroom activities. Gradually, I realized the change in their classroom performance and submission of their home assignments before the deadline, which inspired me to work further to change their ways of working with assignments. Thus, changing the way of teaching assisted me to some extent in overcoming the problem of delayed submission of home assignments by promoting students to solve the problems and making them more responsible in the assigned work.

  1. Dealing individually with students

In addition, I started dealing individually with some of the students who were still nagging about submitting the home assignments and making various excuses such as forgetting or missing their exercise copies, having an urgent piece of work at home so forth.  They often would give me word that they would come the following day with the assignments; however, they never kept their promises. Then, I decided to deal individually with such students, which made it easier to explore further and understand them and to make them responsible for doing the home assignments. I initiated assigning different tasks for each such student instead of homogeneous kinds of work, which prevented imitating from each other’s copies and supported me assigning the work based on the standard of the students. The result was wonderful, as I found most of them submitted on the assigned time. Very few of them still did not submit on time. However, there was an improvement in their way of working.

  1. Assigning on students’ consent

Finally, I developed another strategy, such as assigning home assignments on students’ consent for those who (very few of them) were still remaining back on submitting their homework on time. Thus, I asked them some questions before assigning some work to them, such as “Could you complete this work in the given time”? “Could you solve the following problem?” After finding some positive responses from such students then only I began assigning work to them. Later on, I found successful results after doing this as they improved them by following the given timeline of their home assignments and solving the problem in better ways instead of making various excuses like earlier. However, I found some students would like to receive very few home assignments compared to the other students in the class. Thus, it took me a bit more time to assign them the homework on their consent; nevertheless, I did not give up. Ultimately, I found adopting such a strategy supported me in overcoming the problem of delayed submission of English home assignments.

Conclusion

This article reflects some causes/reasons for delayed submission of English home assignments. It provides some practical solutions for solving the problem, such as establishing friendly relationships with students, changing the way of teaching, dealing with each student individually, and assigning the work on students’ consent. This reflective writing showed a single strategy has not been adequate for addressing the problem of delayed submission of home assignments and provides clear direction for further exploring the problem.

References

Eren, O., & Henderson, D. (2008). The impact of homework on student achievement. The Econometrics Journal, 11(2), 326-348. https://doi.org/org/10.1111/j.1368-423X.2008.00244.x

Kim, K. R., & Seo, E. H. (2015). The relationship between procrastination and academic performance: A meta-analysis. Personality Individual Differences, 82, 26-33. https://doi.org/org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.02.038

Kuftyak, E. (2022). Procrastination, stress and academic performance in students. ARPHA Proceedings, 5, 965-974. https://doi.org/10.3897/ap.5.e0965

Rawson, K., Stahovich, T. F., & Mayer, R. E. (2017). Homework and achievement: Using smartpen technology to find the connection. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(2), 208. https://doi.org/https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/edu0000130

Shaked, L., & Altarac, H. (2022). Exploring academic procrastination: Perceptions, self-regulation, and consequences. Journal of University Teaching Learning Practice, 19(3), 15. https://doi.org/https://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol19/iss3/15

About the author: Surendra Prasad Ghimire is an MPhil Scholar at Nepal Open University, Nepal, and lecturer of English at Hetauda School of Management and Social Sciences, Makwanpur, Nepal.

Online Education Amid COVID-19: An Experience of a Teacher

Reflections, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teachers' narratives, Technology, , ,

The outbreak of COVID-19 has affected every aspect of human life, including education. The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education system in human history. Social distancing and restrictive movement policies has significantly disturbed traditional educational practices. It has changed education for learners of all ages. Nepal has also suffered a lot due to the lack of adequate and appropriate sustainable infrastructure for the online system. In addition to this, the limited internet facilities in remote and rural areas were the other challenges for virtual academic activities. Many schools remained closed for a long time during the lockdown and some managed alternative ways of teaching. However, the teaching learning activities could not be made effective as expected. The impacts of the pandemic has directly affected the students, teachers and parents.

In the context of Nepal, many children from low income families and disadvantaged groups could not afford even the necessities of learning such as textbooks, notebooks and other required stationaries. Modern digital devices including smartphones, iPads, laptops, and computers were far from their expectations. On the other hand, the people in the remote and rural areas were deprived of online access due to limited internet facilities. In this context, providing equal opportunity for virtual learning to all groups of people in all the parts of the country was challenging. The online programmes shifted the education from schools to families and individuals. In some ways, educating children at home made the life of parents challenging. The school closures impacted not only students, teachers and families but had far-reaching economic and societal consequences. This closures in response to the pandemic shed light on various social and economic issues including students’ responsibility, digital learning, food security, homelessness, childcare, health care, housing, internet and disability services. The impact was more severe for disadvantaged children and their families, causing interrupted learning, compromised nutrition, childcare problems and consequent economic cost to families who could not work.

As per my experience, the institution where I work consists of students from different parts of the country. They come from different family backgrounds. When the government made an announcement of the school closure to prevent the spread of the pandemic, we did not have any idea of what to do. Later on, when the government issued a notice to resume the teaching learning activities virtually, it was very difficult for us to begin as we were not prepared for it. It was a challenging task for the teachers as well as the students. We did not have any exposure and special training to start the virtual mode of learning. The school provided a short training on how to use zoom app. Then, the teachers invited the students of their respective classes and guided them to use different digital applications. It took us about two weeks to get started. We conducted two periods a day which were of forty minutes each, as the trial version of zoom got disconnected after every forty minutes. In the beginning, the students were excited about the online classes. Many of them asked their parents to buy multimedia mobiles to attend online classes. As the parents were worried about the disconnected study of their children, they somehow managed to continue their study. It was not so easy for all the parents to buy new mobile and to pay for the mobile data. All the students did not join the classes as their parents could not manage mobiles and internet data. A few students were out of network access. They had to climb up a hill to take their classes. Later on, we increased the number of periods to four each day. But we found that the number of students gradually decreased after the second period and in the last period we could find only a few students attending the class. It was hard to manage the classes as there would be frequent problem of power-cut and the low bandwidth of the internet. 

The students and the parents complained that they had to spend a lot of money on data and had to charge their mobiles every few hours. We fortnightly contacted the parents of the students to get feedback about online classes, especially the problems that their children were facing during the online classes. Many parents provided positive feedback, thanked teachers for continuing the teaching learning activities. Some complained that their children played mobile games throughout the day. They also requested us to counsel their children for not misusing mobile phones. We also conducted the interaction between the teachers and the parents virtually. We got mixed responses from the parents. Some of them explained that the online teaching was effective as their kids were being engaged at least for a few hours, while others said that it had not been effective as their kids did not have access to the online classes conducted by the school. We tried our best to explain to the parents that the teaching learning activity through virtual means was the continuation of learning. Instead of searching for perfection we had to support the virtual mode of teaching learning as it was totally new to everyone. We used to be obsessed with the behaviours and activities of some students as they did not respond when they were asked questions and they did not turn on their videos. It was very hard for us to find out whether the students were paying attention or not. It was really difficult to ensure the progress of those students. 

Teachers in my school tried to find out the different techniques on how the participation of the students could be increased and how to make the students active in the class. Several extracurricular activities were also conducted virtually. The home assignments and project works were also assigned to the students. Later on, our school launched a systematic virtual learning application and we started teaching through this application. However, during conducting examination, we faced problems as many students got disconnected time and again due to the poor internet connectivity. It was a very tough time for the teacher like me because we had to prepare the materials for each and every class. E-learning tools played a crucial role during the pandemic by helping teachers facilitate teaching and learning. While adopting to the new changes, the readiness of teachers and students needed to be gauged and supported accordingly. The learners with fixed mindset found it difficult to adapt and adjust, whereas the learners with a growth mindset quickly adapted to the new learning environment. There was no one-size-fits-all pedagogy for online learning. Different subjects and age groups required different approaches to online learning. Therefore, it was not easy in the context of our country.

Despite the adverse effects posed by the pandemic, there were some positive impacts on academia. It has allowed reshaping the pedagogical strategies and adopt to innovative e-learning techniques. The schools and universities decided to introduce a digital education system which seemed to be one of the most outstanding achievements in the history of education in Nepal. The educational institutions as well as the learners used media such as TV, radio, YouTube and other social media. During the pandemic, teachers and students increased the digital literacy and expertise in virtual platforms. Many trainings were conducted for the teachers and students for the online system to join the virtual classes effectively. Many institutions expanded ICT infrastructures to support ICT associated with teaching learning. Many institutions prepared their guidelines for facilitating online classes and assessment under the direction of the government of Nepal. Schools also collaborated with local to national media such as Radios, TVs and local Radio networks. Many teachers who did not have any knowledge of ICT, also took the trainings and started using laptops and mobiles. They also learnt many techniques on preparing educational materials which helped them grow personally and professionally.

In conclusion, COVID-19 has taught many possible ways which can be adopted to tackle the crisis and build a resilient education system in the long run. This pandemic has taught us how the blended modes of education system could be implemented to improve the quality of education at an affordable cost with limited trained human resources. Furthermore, how different learning activities such as homework, assignments, open-book exams, take-home exams, quizzes or small projects can be taken into consideration as the alternatives of conventional paper-pencil based examinations.

Researcher’s Bio: Rajendra Joshi is an M. Ed. (English) from Tribhuvan University. He has more than a decade experience of teaching English from primary level to secondary level. Mr. Joshi has also published an article in the Journal of NELTA. He is currently working as an English teacher at Sainik Awasiya Mahavidyalaya Teghari, Kailali and Shree Krishna Secondary School Gulariya, Kanchhanpur.

Part-Time Teachers’ Well-being in Urban Community Campuses: A Narrative Inquiry

Professional Development, Reflections, Research paper, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teachers' narratives, , ,

Prologue

I am currently a faculty of English at QAA certified public campus situated in the district headquarter of Tanahun. I have worked there for over five years as a part-time teacher. I started my service at the campus in 2016 with two periods assigned, and then I have been working continuously. In 2016, when I was appointed to the campus, I was satisfied with the benefits offered by the campus since that was the initial phase of my career, and I did not have so much pressure from my family. Moreover, I was optimistic that the benefits, along with the payment made to me by the campus, would be revised logically. As I read them, I went sound in my deliveries for a couple of years, and students were satisfied. I always kept my head high and focused on my preparation and deliveries; as a result, more than 95% of students passed the exam in my paper. I was free from any anxiety though I had to spend many hours on preparation.

In recent years, most of the time, I have been passing through mental stress. Now it has been almost six years of my service at the campus, but I am paid the same with no additional benefits, and still, I am a part-time teacher. It has been challenging to sustain in the profession. I have been excessively anxious for a few years, and sometimes I imagine quitting my work. To free me from mental and professional deficiencies, I joined M. Phil. in 2020 A.D. Most of the time, I spend reading books to gain professional capital, but it does not work well as I have anxiety shaped by the unfair treatment made to the part-time teachers and other teachers at the campus. Except for that individual attempt, I have never witnessed any TPDs or other programs supporting teacher well-being. I do not feel comfortable in my profession and have been unable to concentrate on my deliveries. To make sustainable earnings, I have been taking ten periods daily, which is quite tough to maintain quality. Preparing the teaching force is a crucial concern of the government and concerned institutions worldwide (Gautam, 2016). Still, our teachers working in public campuses, especially part-time teachers, are ignored.

A teacher’s well-being refers to the state where the teacher experiences personal, professional fulfillment, satisfaction, purposefulness, and happiness (Acton & Glasgow, 2015). The student’s learning outcomes largely depend upon the teacher’s performance, and his well-being influences the teacher’s performance. Students’ learning outcome is at the core of the teacher’s work. Ryan & Deci (2011) define well-being as “open, engaged and healthy functioning.” A teacher’s well-being is a strength or power to energize teachers to work. His smiling and cheering face matters a lot in his performance. A teacher’s stress directly hinders students’ learning outcomes (Ramberg, Laftman, & Mordan, 2019). But the issue of teachers’ well-being is ignored by the concerned authorities. Educational actors, including policymakers, do not look serious about the subject. The condition of teachers’ well-being in Nepal is not pretty good, both in a rural and urban settings. The situation in a rural setting is tremendously critical than in an urban context. In my observation, permanent teachers working in community-based schools, especially school-level teachers, are slightly well supported by the government, so they are less angst-ridden compared to those teachers working in community campuses as part-time teachers. Several teachers working at the tertiary level in a public institution are very outsized, but the campuses leave out the issue of their well-being. Part-time teachers in public campuses are not open and well-functioning since they are mistreated. Benefits made to the part-time teachers in the public campus are personally manipulated. The policies of campus are running dysfunctional. They are entirely unsympathetic toward the ongoing sufferings of those teachers.

The current policies and practices look unsupportive to the part-time teachers working on public campuses. First, no ample research is done on teacher well-being out of the Kathmandu valley. If they are, they haven’t addressed the issue of teacher well-being working on higher levels, especially in public campuses. Hence, this paper aims to explore the problems of tertiary level teachers regarding their well-being and its influence on teachers’ and students’ academic performance. Part-time teachers working in the public campus are paid significantly less than full-time teachers and permanent teachers working at the same institution. Full-time teachers and permanent teachers within the institution are enjoying the good benefits. Part-time teachers are not provided any additional financial aid except their salary but are just made fun of. Part-time teachers at the public campus from all over the country must have gone through the same situation. Most of the public campuses in Nepal are running a profit-oriented mentality where the issues of teachers’ well-being are ignored. Teachers with the same duties and responsibilities in the public campus are treated individually. The salary and other benefits provided to them looks heavily imbalanced and unfair. Teachers having more than ten periods in a day for more than five years are still part-time teachers and are paid just a half to the full-timer and permanent teacher without other support, is not an injustice? Is it not intellectual exploitation? How can they supply their sound deliveries to satisfy their students in such a miserable condition? Hence, this paper aims to examine the narratives of some part-time teachers working in public campuses regarding the issue of their well-being.

Methods of the Study

This research is based on a qualitative research design under the interpretive paradigm. The interpretive paradigm is emphasized in this research to bring out tertiary teachers’ stories on their well-being. To explore the real-life experiences of those teachers, I employed Narrative Inquiry as a research methodology. I conducted online interview (Denzin& Lincoln, 2000) to get their narratives. Vyas Municipality from the district headquarter of Tanahun was purposively selected as a research site, and two part-time teachers working at the public campus in the urban setting of Tanahun are the research participants. Along with the data from the participants, this study further incorporates secondary materials such as books and journal articles.

Analysis and interpretation

Mental well-being

A healthy body only isn’t sufficient to stay alive in any profession, and a sound mind complements well-being. The excellent reciprocal interaction between body and mind is always most for professional delivery. The teaching profession requires a creative mind free from any mental stress. Teaching in a tertiary-level course is challenging, and it is impossible to sustain professionalism without a sound mind. Due to the growing stress in the profession, the number of teachers leaving work is increasing (Brunsting, Sreckovic, & Lane, 2014). Stress manifests in teachers and most prominently affects their sense of efficacy, job satisfaction, burnout, attrition, student engagement, and physical health (Shernoff, Mehta, Atkins, Torf, & Spencer, 2011).

As a higher education teacher, I observe that kind of stress myself. The day I enter the classroom free of stress, I see my students’ smiling faces, which satisfy me throughout the day. That satisfaction further inspires me to make classes come meaningful. But sometimes I don’t want to talk even for fifteen minutes if I am stressed. I feel a single forty-five minutes to be long enough. Generally, family issues, managing financial problems of a family, health issues, untimely payments, additional payments among the teachers having the same responsibility, and excessive workload make me stressed. One of my respondents, ’X,’ told me that he forgets everything unfair that goes with him until his salary is dispersed. Still, the day he learns about his salary deposited in his account, he goes suffocated. As he reported, his salary is just half of some other teachers though he completed 5/6years of his life in the institution (variations caused by the nature of appointment). Another respondent, ‘Y,’ responded that he feels he serves the institution free of cost. He said, “It is not a job but a voluntary service…”. Too low payment made to him by his campus makes him feel so. This situation sometimes made him forget what he was speaking to his students. The financial problem, according to him, destroys his mental and professional well-being.

Moreover, teaching a large heterogeneous group of learners, urban poverty, teacher preparation, and managing students’ hyperkinetic behavior make teachers stressed (Shernoff et al., 2011). Since he has to handle higher graders, a tertiary-level teacher often goes through this situation. Research conducted in national or international educational set up suggested lower learning outcomes resulting from teachers’ ill conditions.

Financial well-being

The financial issue comes first in teacher well-being. Most teachers working in the public campus as part-time teachers are stressed about their financial status. The amount paid to them looks insufficient and lower than that paid to secondary-level teachers. Permanent teachers working in the government schools are provided additional benefits as per the provision made by the government. The statistics suggest that the current basic salary for the secondary level first-class teacher is Rs. 47380. As per the financial provision of Tribhuvan University, the recent basic pay for an Assistant lecturer is Rs. 35500, which is lower than the salary of a primary level first-class teacher (Rs. 35990) (source: edusanjal.com). Mr. X, my respondent, said, “I have five periods in a day, excluding the day shift for grades 11 and 12, and I am paid just 25,000 per month. Still, the permanent teacher in the same campus is paid 44,000 for three periods excluding additional allowances…”. The data above shows a massive injustice for the part-time teachers in the public campus. Another part-time teacher from another public campus from the same district is paid just 4000 for one period.

The situation with the teachers working in the same institution is supposed to be more complicated regarding the well-being of teachers working there. They have to take 9/10 classes to earn equivalent to full-time and permanent teachers of the same campus with a basic period of 3. Due to this discriminatory attitude of the public campuses to ignore the contribution made by those teachers, they are stressed a lot. Both of my respondents plight fully revealed that they don’t get their salary on time; sometimes, they may stay penniless for 4/5 months. The Covid-19 pandemic made the situation more intricate since they didn’t get their salary for 7/8 months. First, the part-time teachers are less paid by the institution they work in, and then they aren’t paid on time, resulting in poor deliveries inside their classroom. Despite this poignant situation with the teachers, concerned authorities look indifferent toward the plight of teachers.

Professional well-being

I started my tertiary-level teaching career in 2016 A.D. at a public campus in Tanahun. Since I was a novice in the field of teaching at the tertiary level, I was not well competent in pedagogical skills. I desired to have some training to impart my delivery to my students. My campus organized a faculty development program, occasionally focusing on leadership development and the use of ICT, which would provide me solace. It has already been five years of working at a campus. Still, I have never experienced an attempt to enhance the professional development of a faculty from the government or the university except for the campus. Teachers’ professional competence—their professional knowledge, skills, beliefs, and motivation—is a critical predictor of teachers’ professional well-being and success (Laurmann & Konig 2016). Mr.’ X’ and Mr.’ Y’ never witnessed programs assisting in their professional development and well-being. Secondary Education Development Centre (SEDP), Distance Education Centre (DEC), Primary Teacher Training Centre (PTTC), and National Centre for Educational Development (NCED) are some government-funded programs to train teachers in Nepal. Besides them, Women Teacher Training (WTT) , On-Spot Training, Teacher Training Through Distance Learning, B-Level (Under SLC) Teacher Training, and Vocational Teacher Training Program are run by the government and non-government organizations. They all are confined to school-level teachers; instead, there are no special programs to train teachers from higher education (Awasthi, 2010). My respondent Mr. X  said,” I spent more than five years at my campus teaching for bachelor’s, but I do not know any programs run at the campus for our professional well-being…”. Mr. Y had quite a different experience regarding the teachers’ professional well-being. He said, “my campus occasionally offers some training on leadership development and the use of ICT but not on teaching skills and curricular issues…”. It suggests that tertiary teachers do not have access to professional development programs, so they do not feel professionally sound.

Teachers’ autonomy is practiced globally as a supportive tool for teachers’ professional well-being. Action Research (A.R.), Reflective Practice (R.P.), Teacher Research (T.R.), and Exploratory practice (E.P.) are practiced in the international educational market to assure teachers’ autonomy (Dikilitas & Griffiths, 2017). Recently, Tribhuvan University has initiated to adopt those innovations to develop teachers’ professionalism through teacher’s autonomy, but it is confined within the center; However, one of the public campuses of Tanahun has been encouraging its faculties to write a research article on current ongoing affairs related to their professional issues. Similarly, the culture of campus to sponsor the faculties (permanent) financially to gain higher education degrees with a paid study leave is another central effort made for teachers’ professional well-being. This internal support of a campus assists in acquiring professional skills and exploring existing problems with their classroom teachings. The campus makes financial assistance of five thousand for the faculties who write a paper. It is a magnificent effort made to enhance teachers’ professional well-being. But this kind of culture is not practiced in other institutions providing tertiary education.

Teacher’s well-being and students’ academic well-being

Many kinds of research and surveys made in the times of yore indicate that teacher well-being is essential to students’ well-being. If the teacher goes inside the classroom with a stressed mind, it doesn’t deliver anything meaningful to the students. A survey by Wellbeing Australia (December 2011) found that of 466 respondents, 85.9 percent strongly agreed. A further 12.1 per cent agreed that a focus on student well-being enhanced an effective learning environment and 74.5 per cent strongly agreed. An additional 21.9 percent agreed that focusing on teacher well-being promotes student well-being. 73.9 percent of respondents were teachers, of whom 20.5 percent were school principals (Roffey, 2012). It reveals that the issue of teacher well-being needs to be considered for students’ sound learning outcomes.

Hwang et al. (2017) write that students’ learning outcomes depend upon the teachers well-being, so teachers’ intervention is suggested to provide to teachers to enhance their well-being. There are large numbers of teachers working as part-time teachers in Nepal, and they are suffering from the issue of their well-being. Most of them are tormented by their financial problems. Their financial satisfaction determines mental and professional soundness. If the financial crisis haunts one, no professional development program works to keep him strong in his profession. Mr. X narrates, “Throughout the month, I forget everything unfair that goes with me, and I find myself focused in my profession. I find my classes strong enough, and my students look satisfied with my deliveries. But for a few days after I get the message of my salary deposited into my account makes me unpleased, and I lose my professional control”. He further says it is the financial issue that influences his mental well-being and professional well-being. As a part-time teacher, he is made a complete payment just for ten months in a year and paid one-period equivalent for two months. It means he has been paid just Rs. 5000 each for the last two months, which he opines is unjustifiable. These two months are particular for students since they are provided revision classes at that time, but he could not make any meaningful contribution to his students. And as a result, unexpected students failed his paper. It shows that it is essential to address part-time teachers’ issues regarding their financial well-being to keep teachers free from mental and professional deficiencies and students’ good performance.

Conclusion

The teachers working in community campuses of Nepal as part-time faculty are anguished from several aspects of their well-being. Teachers working in the community campuses as part-time teachers experience very rare personal and professional fulfillment, satisfaction, purposefulness, and happiness. Untimely payment, variation in payments among teachers having the same responsibility, excessive workload, and teacher preparation made them stressful. Teachers working in community campuses as part-time teachers are segregated from the offerings made to the full-time and permanent teachers within the same campus. Even after many years of service in the institution, they are not promoted. They have been working with minimal internal support from the campus since no meaningful attempts have been made for their professional development. Mentally, financially, and professionally those teachers are not sound, and as a result, the student’s learning outcome has been degraded. To ensure the quality of education, discriminatory attitudes to look at the part-time teacher should be corrected. 

References

Acton, R. & Glasgow, P. (2015). Teacher well-being in neoliberal contexts: A review of the literature. Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Awasthi, J. R. (2010). Teacher education with special reference to English language teaching in Nepal. Journal of NELTA.

Brunsting, N.C., Sreckovic, M.A., & Lane, K.L. (2014) Special education teacher burnout: A synthesis of research from 1979 to 2013. Education and Treatment of Children, 37, 681–712.

Campus Mannual. Aadikavi Bhanubhakta Campus. Tanahun.

Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). The sage handbook of qualitative research. Sage publication. New Delhi.

Dikilitas, K. & Griffiths, C. (2017). Developing language teacher autonomy through action research. Palgrave Macmillan.

Gautam, G. (2016). Teacher training in Nepal: issues and challenges. Researchgate.

Grainger, A. S. (2020). Teacher well-being in remote Australian communities. Australian journal of teacher education , 21.

Laurmann, F. & Konig, J. (2016).Teachers’ professional competence and well-being: Understanding the links between general pedagogical knowledge, self-efficacy and burnout. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305828549_Teachers’_professional_competence_and_wellbeing_Understanding_the_links_between_general_pedagogical_knowledge_self-efficacy_and_burnout

Ryan R.M., Deci E.L. (2011) A self-determination theory perspective on social, institutional, cultural, and economic supports for autonomy and their importance for well-being. Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology, vol 1.Springer, Dordrecht.

Ramberg, j., laftman, s. B., & mordan, t. A. (2019). Teacher stress and students’ school well-being: the case of upper secondary schools in Stockholm. Scandinavian journal of educational research .

Roffey, s. (2012). child wellbeing-teacher well-being; two sides of the same coin? education and child psychology , 8.

Shernoff, E.S., Mehta, T.G., Atkins, M.S., Torf, R., & Spencer, L. (2011). A qualitative study of the sources and impact of stress among urban teachers. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227324157_A_Qualitative_Study_of_the_Sources_and_Impact_of_Stress_Among_Urban_Teachers/link/09e4150c8ac8a074c3000000/download

Author’s Bio: Bimal Khatri is a lecturer of  Aadikavi Bhanubhakta Campus, Damauli, Tanahun since last six years. He is currently having M.Phil in ELE in Kathmandu University. Moreover, he is a life member of NELTA Tanahun. He is currently working on the issue of inclusion and equity in English Language Teaching in Nepal. He has published one article in peer reviewed journal of Aadikavi Bhanubhakta Campus in 2020. He can be reached at khatri.bimal05@gmail.com, Bimal.khatri@aadikavicampus.edu.np.

 

 

 

Mother Tongue as a Resource in the EFL Classroom

ELT Resource, reflection, Reflections, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teachers' narratives, ,
Ganga Laxmi Bhandari*

Introduction

Whether mother tongue should be allowed or not in the EFL/ESL classrooms has been a debatable issue for many years, especially after the Grammar Translation (GT) method was considered ineffective in teaching English in non-native contexts (Paker & Karaağaç, 2015). Krashen (1981) claims that the use of the mother tongue (L1) deprives the learning of the English language (L2) in a natural setting, while the monolingual approach would maximize the effectiveness of learning the target language. Turnbul (2001) and (McDonald, 1993) are among other scholars who join Krashen in arguing that the use of the mother tongue hampers the learning of English and the best way to teach English is through English only.

However, the English-only approach – or the notion of teaching English through English (Richards, 2017) – is gradually being challenged as an impediment to teaching and learning English (Butzkamm & Caldwell, 2009; Pan & Pan 2010; Savage, 2019). The use of L1 not only creates the foundation for a better understanding of the L2 curriculum but also develops a positive attitude among children towards the schools that teach L2 (Savage, 2019). The use of L1 will be particularly relevant to the students from introductory to lower-intermediate levels (Pan & Pan 2010). According to Cook (2001), L1 creates a mental link between L1 and L2 and, thus, equips learners with the language competence they need to learn the second language.

Languages are linguistically interdependent, argues Cummins (2007), who, in the 1970s, developed the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis. Here,, the use of the mother tongue in the classroom reinforces the interdependence and enables the students to learn the second language through language transfer. Monolingual policies or prescriptions are actually contrary to and inconsistent with current understandings of how people learn (Cummins, 2007). In the same vein, Cook (2001) demonstrates that English-only policies and assumptions are wrong and urges instead to treat L1 as a classroom resource both for teachers and students to convey meaning, explain grammar and promote collaborative learning. Urging to use English where possible and mother tongue where necessary, Weschler, R. (1997) goes on to suggest developing a hybrid method drawing on the best of both schools of thought; English only approach and judicious use of mother tongue while teaching English.

At the beginning of my teaching career, 15 years ago, I was also influenced, like many beginner teachers, by the monolingual approach. I also used to think that English-only was the right approach, even aware that I was teaching on a public campus in which most of the students were from public schools with poor English competency. My preference for the conventional style of teaching English was to be an ideal teacher who could speak English fluently in the classrooms forbidding students from using their native languages.

Later, I realized that my approach was wrong particularly after my students started shifting to another class where the teacher used students’ mother tongue (Nepali in my context) as a medium (for instruction, teaching grammar, warming up, explaining homework and also the meaning of some technical words). Realizing the students’inclination towards their mother tongue went bilingual and saw the impact of it on the retention of students and their interactive participation in teaching-learning.

In the subsequent sections, I am sharing my own latest classroom practices in which I have used LI as a resource to teach writing skills and vocabulary. It was practised among 40 students of Bachelor of English Education at a Public Campus in Kathmandu.   almost all the students were from Govt schools, with limited English proficiency. Most of them were from the ethnic communities that would speak Nepali as a lingua franca.

Practice 1: Each student was assigned to write a paragraph (8 lines) describing their own culture in English within 20 minutes. Out of 40 students, only 2 students (5%) completed the assignment. Eight students (20%) wrote some four lines of a paragraph. Twelve students (30%) wrote hardly two lines and 18 students (45%) wrote nothing (sat passive biting a pen throughout the 20 minutes). The body language of almost all students would tell that the practice was dull and dispirited.

Practice 2: Students were divided along with their cultural/linguistic background and were asked to write a half-page about their culture in LI, Nepali in this case, within 20 minutes. Almost all the students completed the assignment in time. Unlike the first assignment, students were happy, engaged and motivated to complete the exercise to the best of their ability.

 Practice 3: Each group was, then, asked to translate the text into English and present it to peers. In case of difficulty finding an English term, they were allowed to retain Nepali term/s. Each group tried their best to translate what they had written, and presented among their peers highlighting the words/phrases they could not translate. I jotted down the highlighted words or phrases on the whiteboard. After the presentation, each group was asked to seek help from the other groups (using LI) to help find English words/expressions in their writing. After listening to the students, I stepped in to help them, explaining that certain cultural words might be difficult to translate, such as the name of community-specific food: Yomari (Newari food), Ghongi (Tharu Food), Sargemba (a food item of pig blood), Thekuwa (sweet cookie of terai people) and so on.

It worked well. Students were cheerful and fully engaged. No one seemed hesitant to share and express. On the contrary, everyone had something to offer and help a fellow student in need. It was truly collaborative. The mix of L1 and L2 would create a new environment of learning.

Impression

The use of LI is very helpful in EFL classrooms in a multicultural setting, like ours in Nepal. Foremost of all, it firms up the bond/connection between a teacher and students and helps create an inclusive environment in which students learn from each other (e.g., culture-specific vocabulary, writing skills, interpersonal communication) on an equal footing. It enhances inter-cultural respect among students and promotes collaborative learning.

The use of LI creates an environment in which everyone becomes an active learner. No one sees English as a burden. Instead, learning English becomes fun. As Pan and Pan (2010) rightly put it, “if L1 is utilized well and presented communicatively, it can be a facilitative tool that will improve the language proficiency of students” ( p.8 ) by motivating them to engage in learning exercises. L1 helps to develop students’ intercultural competence by providing learning content that is familiar to them (Chinh 2013). It is easy to build on familiar content, which also creates a level playing field for all to engage equally in learning without any sense of superiority or inferiority.

As argued by Weschler (1997), L1 opens the door to many possibilities for L2 while creating a natural learning environment. Learning cannot be imposed. It should not be a burden. Learning should instead be fun, which is possible through the use of the mother tongue.

The L1 versus L2 debate is not limited to educationists and teachers alone. Even our parents are drawn into it. Many of them want to see their children trained in the English-only fashion, unaware of perhaps the contribution of L1 to L2. Our teachers should also bridge the gap between the parental expectation (of L2) and the need of the students (of L1) by making the parents aware of the importance of L1 in getting their children where they want them to reach.

References

Butzkamm, W., & Caldwell, J. A. (2009). The bilingual reform: A paradigm shift in foreign language teaching. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag.

Chinh, N. D. (2013). Cultural Diversity in English Language Teaching: Learners’ Voices. English Language Teaching, 6 (4), 1-7.

Cook, V. (2001). Using the first language in the classroom. Canadian modern language review, 57(3), 402-423.

Cummins, J. (2007). Rethinking monolingual instructional strategies in multilingual classrooms. Canadian Journal of applied linguistics, 10(2), 221-240.

Krashen, S. D. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. The University of Southern California.

McDonald, C. (1993). Using the target language. Cheltenham, UK: Mary Glasgow.

Paker, T., & Karaağaç, Ö. (2015). The use and functions of mother tongue in EFL classes. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 199, 111-119.

Pan, Y. C., & Pan, Y. C. (2010). The Use of L1 in the Foreign Language Classroom. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 12(2), 87-96.

Richards, J. C. (2017). Teaching English through English: Proficiency, pedagogy and performance. RELC Journal, 48(1), 7-30.

Savage, C. (2019). The importance of mother tongue in education. Independent Education Today. Available at: https://ie-today.co.uk/comment/the-importance-of-mother-tongue-in-education/ (downloaded on 30 March 2022)

Turnbull, M. (2001). There is a role for the L1 in second and foreign language teaching, but…. Canadian modern language review, 57(4), 531-540.

Weschler, R. (1997). Uses of Japanese in the English Classroom: Introducing the Functional-Translation Method. Kyoritsu Women’s University Department of International Studies Journal, 12, 87-110.

Author’s Bio: Ms Ganga Laxmi Bhandari is a lecturer of English education at Mahendra Ratna Campus Tahachal (T.U.), Kathmandu. She has over 15 years of teaching and training experience in ELT. She has also been working as a Central Committee Member of NELTA. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD degree from Tribhuvan University. Her area of research interest is teacher professional development. She can be reached at gbgangakattel@gmail.com

Teachers’ Collaboration for Professional Development

Professional Development, reflection, Reflections, Teacher Education, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teachers' narratives, ,
Shaty Kumar Mahato*      

Introduction

Collaborative teacher development is the process of sharing together for enhancing and cooperating the quality of teaching and learning practices. It occurs when the teachers and learners work together in the process of teaching and learning. This paper is based on my presentation at the 22nd international conference of NELTA 2017. The teachers and learners have the common goal to overcome the problems occurred in the practices of teaching and learning. The teachers’ association like NELTA in Nepal is helping in energizing language teachers and researchers to be professional as well as professional growth. Personally, by joining NELTA, I am benefitted from growing professionally and academically. The teachers can play a pertinent role to collaborate with the people involved in teaching and learning practices. Collaborating together, the teachers explore more opportunities for the learners so that the learners can envision several steps of learning.

Likewise, teachers can also enhance expertise and build good confidence with their learners. The teachers exchange their ideas and knowledge with other participants in teaching and learning and that led them to be professionally sound. Therefore, collaboration is one of the ways for teachers’ professional development. Regarding collaboration, Vygotsky (1978) as cited in Barfield, (2016, p. 222) states, “Collaborative learning can be seen to occur through dialogue, social interaction, and joint-decision making with others and these shared processes contribute greatly to individual and collective growth as well as to co-constructed understanding and knowledge”. As a language teacher and researcher, I have had a similar experience in my classroom and outside of the classroom.

Similarly, Hargreaves, (1994, p.186) says, “To a point where teachers can learn from each other, sharing and developing their expertise together”. The learning becomes effective while sharing because they can generate meaningful ideas and information. Furthermore, Medgyes and Malderez, (1996), as cited in Barfield (2016, p.222), state, “collaborative teacher development is founded on dialogue, questioning, and discussion in working together towards educational change and improvement” and it is supported by Datnow (2011, p.155) that “it is at its most effective when it emerges voluntarily and spontaneously from teachers’ own beliefs that working together is productive and enjoyable”. It means teachers can feel comfortable if they apply the collaborative work to practice. Similarly, my experience in teaching is teachers can professionally forward in sustained and meaningful ways if we are able to do so together. Here, I transformed myself into a professional teacher and researcher.

This article explores the needs and importance of collaboration for teachers’ professional development. It is my own experience of encountering collaborative and non-collaborative teaching and learning. The theoretical studies of the collaboration in the field of language teaching and learning enhanced my pedagogical skills and also helped to explore more innovative ideas and skills. Likewise, this paper sets to explore collaborative teaching and learning to envision how it is one of the sources for teachers’ professional development.

Collaborative Teaching and Learning for Teachers’ Professional Development 

As a teacher and a member of NELTA, I participated in seminars and conferences and understand that teacher is not only empowering her/his students but also growing professionally. I also understand that professional teachers always try and stand in search of learning knowledge. Maggioli (2004, p. 5) defines, “professional development as a career-long process in which educators fine-tune their teaching to meet student needs”. As Maggioli suggests it is clear to say that professional development is not a day or night development for one’s career, it is an ongoing process where one should professionally develop and grow through joining different minds together. It gives the vivid concept that if the teacher understands themselves as a learner and expert to fulfil the demands of the students.

Collaborative teaching and learning make a sense of learning by sharing and engaging together. It also builds harmony in our Nepalese context. The teachers’ collaboration and an active engagement with their students and different agencies could explore more innovative ways and skills of learning. The literature also focuses on collaboration which means working together especially in a joint intellectual effort so that one could stay sound and confident in language teaching-learning practices. According to Richards and Burns (2009, p. 239), “it is a social process that is contingent upon dialogue and interactions with others, processes through which teachers can come to better understand their own beliefs and knowledge as well as reshape these understandings through listening to the voice of others”. It is clearer in our Nepali context that our country is diverse which helps to understand the social phenomenon. Similarly, teaching and learning practices enhance when there is equal dialogue and interactions. Through collaborative teaching, teachers can come and interact with other people. Regarding their understanding, experience, and subject matter build confidence and broaden their skills. Likewise, it helps to exchange ideas, skills, and understanding with other fellow teachers, researchers and policymakers in the language field.

Similarly, Johnston (2003) considers collaboration as a wellspring of teacher professional development. Collaborative teaching and learning are fundamentally social processes. It creates collegiality and quality in the teaching profession. Edge (1992) states, “self-development needs other people…by cooperating with others, we can come to understand better our own experiences and opinions”. I also understand that self-determination in learning with other people enhances both confidentiality and collegiality. Likewise, we need collaborative teaching and learning for teachers’ professional development because Johnston views state collaborative teacher development as any sustained and systematic investigation into teaching and learning in which a teacher voluntarily collaborates with others involved in the teaching process, and in which professional development is a prime purpose.

Collaboration is crucial and influential in teaching and learning, which is concerned with the teacher’s professional development that gives the update and current affairs of knowledge. Cook (1981) states, “concern for the ultimate clients, the students, and for intermediaries, the teachers are apparent in all programmes, and this concern is directed toward sound educational and professional development rather than the gratification of immediate needs and desires.”  Collaboration in teaching is not only meant for programme development, it is meant for individual development too. It creates an ample opportunity for the teacher to integrate and come up with the vision, increased understanding among teachers at all grade levels and in varied subject areas.

In my experience, I understand collaboration while engaging and interacting through different agencies such as NELTA, LSN, and so on. In doing so, I developed my skills and confidence not only in classroom teaching but also beyond classroom teaching. Likewise, it helps me to explore my techniques, strategies and methods to apply in and outside of the classroom. Doing collaborative works and finding its relevance in academia is described by Darling Hammond and Richardson (2009).

To make it more explicit, Cook (1981) states, “collaboration is to provide a means for improving the professional education, it is important to consider not only the meaning and implication of “collaboration” but also the nature of “improvement”. Collaboration creates an environment where the teacher can work together and learn together to improve their professionalism. The dialogue and interaction which led through collaboration also build trust, confidence and collegiality. Teaching/learning in such a way could give sound satisfaction with satisfactory achievement, which would orient them to professionalism. This could become like cooperation but not exactly cooperation. Collaboration is somehow different from cooperation. Let’s see the differences.

Collaboration and Cooperation 

Killion (2012) states, as cited in the essential guide to professional learning Aitsl (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership) “the more one educator’s learning is shared and supported by others, the more quickly the culture of continuous improvement, collective responsibility, and high expectations for students and educator’s grows.” Collaboration is a community where learners and teachers are involved together to share their knowledge, skills or ideas to recover the issues and challenges seen in teaching and learning. According to Aitsl, collaboration creates a community of working to achieve a common goal through the sharing of practice, knowledge and problems. And, effective collaboration encourages ongoing observation and feedback among colleagues where a culture of professional sharing, dialogue, experimentation and critique becomes commonplace. What I also observed through experiencing collaborative teaching, it makes sense of collegiality and mostly to get to know how things are going on worldwide.

Brook et al. (2007) state, “collaboration creates a base of pedagogical knowledge that is disturbed among teachers within a school as opposed to being held by individual teachers” as cited in Aitsl. It clears that if the teacher is suffering from the pedagogical problems they would get the chance to solve them through collaborative work that may not be solved by an individual. AITSL clearly defines both collaboration and cooperation where collaboration is concerned with working with another or others in a joint project.  Collaborative works, it has a common goal and a high level of trust. It is a job-embedded long term program and works with joint planning, decision making, and problem-solving methods.

Cooperation has individual ownership of goals with others providing assistance for mutual benefit. Generally, cooperation is spontaneous and passive engagement by others. Therefore, cooperation and collaboration have not much comparison. Collaboration is far better than cooperation in academia. We can say that doing collaborative work makes professional growth. Therefore, to grow professionally collaboration with the teachers’ association, colleagues, researchers and teachers enhance the skills needed for professional development.

Why do we need collaborative teacher development?

Collaboration is viewed as a process that facilitates teacher development, serves to generate knowledge and understanding, and helps to develop collegiality and one of which teachers should have or share control. It is an organizational and inter-organizational structure where resources, power, and authority are shared, and where people are brought together to share common goals that could not be accomplished by a single individual or an organization independently, Kagan (1991, p. 3) as cited in Rainforth and England (1997, p. 86). The work accomplished by the group may not be solved by an individual and mostly they become unfamiliar with the phenomenon or process used to accomplish the task. When they come together they would have common goals which can be shared together and can be easily accomplished. In other words, the most common things in collaboration are it facilitates every individual to share and learn the issues one is facing.

Similarly, teacher development is a social process that is contingent upon dialogue and interaction with others, processes through which teachers can come to better understand their own beliefs and knowledge as well as reshape these understanding through listening to the voices of others. It can be viewed as teachers learning, rather than as others getting teachers to change. In learning, the teachers were developing their beliefs and ideas, developing their classroom practices, and attending to their feelings associated with changing, Bell and Gilbert (1994), as cited in Evans (2002, p.126). It seems clearer that joining hands and working together means helping an association as well as helping an association means building a nation together.

Likewise, Goddard and Goddard (2007) states, “when teachers have opportunities to collaborate professionally, they build upon their distinctive experiences, pedagogies, and content” as cited in Burton, (2015, p.6). If we collaborate, our work and ideas together in a group could bring the lived experience in the field of professionalism. I’m not sure the satisfaction that I got during a teaching in a particular situation is equal to others in their own field. However, in my experience of teaching and learning in a group, I explore more ideas and opportunities to overcome problems with solutions. We need collaboration not only for individual improvement but also for our program development.

Yarger (1979) suggests, as cited in Cook (1981, p. 99) “collaboration in teacher education is not related to quality and improvement in program development”, it should provide a breadth of perception and vision, an enrichment in terms of resources and an opportunity for increased understanding among the teachers at all grade levels and in varied subject areas. It could then lead to effective programs of professional development.

Different Forms of Collaboration for Teacher Development

Collaborative Teacher Development (CTD) can take the initiation of effective teaching/learning along with professional growth. Nowadays it is one of the major concerns to be professional in one of the fields and teaching/learning is integrated into all the other development of the people. It helps learners and teachers to explore more innovative skills to find and accomplish the task according to their interests. To decide who, where and how the teacher gets collaborates for further development is necessary to know. We could say that five fingers are stronger than one finger, in the same way, working together by involving collaboratively could bring a concrete result which is most beneficial for all.

There are different forms of collaboration where teachers are the centre point to achieving the goal. According to Johnston, (2003), as cited in Richards and Burns (2009, p. 242), there are four different forms of collaboration that teachers can involve in their professional development.

Teachers can collaborate with their fellow teachers

In this group, the teacher and their fellow (peer) teachers worked and discuss together. This is the most balanced relationship in terms of power.  Collaboration among language teachers may well focus on instructional issues such as materials exploitation, classroom management, classroom language use, and other related issues. The language teachers are likely to point them toward certain common concerns and interests. Their professional understanding and depth of knowledge can help everyone involved in the group. It creates a lot of interaction related to the subject area and enhances the other further skills and knowledge. Here, we could say that meeting with different expertise minds certainly helps other minorities who have difficulties with resources and facilities in teaching/learning.

Collaboration between Teachers and University-based Researchers

As a teacher and researcher, I am much benefited from these forms of collaboration. I explore more innovative ideas and skills needed for the teachers and learners. For doing educational research such kind of collaborations are commonly initiated by the researcher to find out lived experiences of the teachers. Teachers and university-based researchers collaborate together and talk about the general and specific issues, and challenges that occur in the language field. Sometimes they do the classroom research to find the solutions; creating such an environment teacher could easily enhance their skills and knowledge whereas researcher also gets the credit for research and that could develop their professionalism as well as collegiality. Teacher and university-based collaboration may have a great inspiration for the teachers because the researcher could provide access and authentic resources to overcome the problems.

Teachers with their Students Collaboration

This type of collaboration makes an arrangement and offers fascinating possibilities for learning in-depth about one’s own classroom and who is in it. This kind of collaboration encourages the teacher and students to accomplish the goal together. Here, the learners are empowered by the teacher and the teacher also comes to know the current affairs of knowledge related understanding in teaching and learning. This form of collaboration is action and problem solving oriented which is livelier in the field of language teaching. It is problem and action-oriented therefore it could fix the problems raised by the students or teachers so that they could get the prompt feedback from their students to achieve the goal.

Collaboration with Others Involved in Teaching/ Learning

In this form of collaboration, teachers can collaborate with the administrators, supervisors, parents, materials developers and so on. Teachers and administrators collaborate together to find the issues and challenges that cause the improvement of the teachers, institutions, and programs, for the development. Similarly, the teacher and the supervisors collaborate together to recover the problems in the teaching and learning field. Supervisors can give constructive feedback to the teacher for their professional development. The teacher can also collaborate with the materials developers and share the implications of the material in the language classrooms. Teachers can also collaborate with the parents who play a vital role to achieve the students’ goals. They could share the students’ attitudes toward learning and the teachers’ teaching. In doing so, many of these collaborations, in turn, have had a significant component of the professional development of the teachers.

Conclusion

Sharing one’s learning is the everyday experience of human behaviour. The knowledge is hidden; it would enhance and grow when human beings take part in the discourse. Even unknown and unfamiliar things become known knowledge and familiar when people come together to share and present. Collaborative practices lead teachers to re-conceptualize the innovative process, boosting learners to continue varieties of challenges, generate cross forms, and participate in constructionist and supportive practices, including an-alternative dialogues. Collaborative teaching and learning practices help both teachers and learners to explore creativity and construct new frameworks for learning. Likewise, it creates innovative ideas and skills to know together and learn together.

References

Barfield, A. (2016). Collaboration. Key concepts in ELT, 17 (2). Retrieved from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/

Burton, T. (2015). Exploring the Impact of Teacher Collaboration on Teacher Learning and Development. University of South Carolina Scholar Commons (Doctoral Dissertations). Retrieved from http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3107

Cook, G. E. (1981, May). Collaboration, Change and Concern: Professional Development through teacher centers. English education, 13 (2), pp. 97-104.

Evans, L. (2002, Mar.). What Is Teacher Development? Oxford review of education, 28 (1), pp. 123-137.

Rainforth, B. & England, J. (1997, Feb.). Collaborations for Inclusion: Education and treatment for children, 20 (1). Pp. 85-104.

Richards, J.C. & Burns, A. (Eds.). (2009). Second Language Teacher Education: Collaborative Teacher Development. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Maggioli, G. D. (2004). Teacher- Centered Professional Development. Association for supervision and curriculum development (ASCD). Alexandria, Virginia, USA.

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (aitsl). The Essential Guide to Professional Learning: Collaboration.

http://www.aitsl.edu.au/professional growth/australian teacher performance/and development framework.

Author’s Bio: Mr. Shaty Kumar Mahato is an MPhil graduate in English Language Education from Kathmandu University and working as an ELT teacher, researcher and trainer in the field of education. Since his Bachelor’s degree in 2005, he has been involved in teaching and research. He has presented his research paper in NELTA, LSN, TERSD and Asia TEFL. At present, he is working as a Project Coordinator-Education in Aasaman Nepal a national NGO. His area of interest is teaching methodologies, Collaborative Approach, Teacher Education, Language Policy, Discourse Analysis and Narrative Research Inquiry.

Teacher identity and the new forms of governmentality in higher education in Nepal

Teacher identity, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teachers' narratives, ,
Raj Kumar Baral
Prem Phyak, PhD

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to discuss the identity construction of teachers in higher education in Nepal, particularly in Tribhuvan University (TU). The article is based on our research on the narratives of teachers working in TU. We focus on how teacher identities are shaped by the existing broader socio-political context and the hierarchical structural arrangement of the university. Our arguments in this article are informed largely by the sociocultural perspective of teacher identity. This perspective considers teacher identity as a phenomenon which evolves in interactions with external and internal factors sharing their assumptions, positionings and sense of belongings. We are particularly interested in unravelling the professional trajectories of junior faculty members, known as lectures, working in TU. Due to space limitation, we are unable to include complete narratives, but we have tried to cover the most striking experiences that the teachers have shared with us during our in-depth interviews.

Understanding Teacher Identity

Teacher identity remains as one of the major aspects of teaching professional development (e.g., De Costa and Norton, 2017). How teachers define their own selves and how their selves are defined by others play a critical role in shaping their professional identities. Understanding teacher identity is important for two reasons: a) it helps us identify the state of teachers’ job satisfaction and their commitment to the profession; and b) the knowledge of teacher identity construction provides a framework to understand the institutional culture that shapes teachers’ professional trajectories. Teacher identity is not a fixed entity; rather it is a dynamic and evolving experience that involves complex interactions between both internal and external factors.

Thomas and Beauchamp (2007) argue that professional identity stands at the core of the profession and thereby provides the framework for teachers in the construction of their own ideas of “how to be” and “how to act” as a teacher (p. 230). The importance of identity is also highlighted by Palmer (2007) who notes that a strong sense of identity is the trait common to all good teachers. As he argues, our teaching experiences reveal who we are and that “teaching holds a mirror to the soul” (p. 3), adding that we cannot know our students until we know ourselves. In our teaching, continues Palmer, “We teach who we are” (p. 2). De Costa and Norton (2017) argue that both individual and psychological factors shape the self-image and other-image of particular teachers. For them, teacher identity is shaped by institutional cultures, structures, and values.

Methodology

The identities of teachers we have discussed in this paper are based on the analysis of narratives from six teachers from TU, who are anonymized as Teacher A, B, C, D, E and F. The participants are mostly the lecturers who are at the bottom of the professional hierarchy, according to the university’s rule. In order to collect the data, we had in-depth interviews with each participant. We also had informal conversations with the participants. All the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed for the purpose of analysis. In addition, we also took field notes of events and activities that the participants took part in. In the remainder of the paper, we discuss major identity-related data under two different themes.

New culture and new identity

The participants in this study reported that ‘a new culture’ has emerged in the universities in Nepal. The new culture the teachers describe is the ‘bhaagbandaa’ (share) culture. One of the teachers (Teacher A), for example, said that ‘accept or not we have ‘bhaagbandaa’ in our university’. He explains that bhaagbandaa has been ‘the core system in TU […] is run by bhaagbandaa […] all officials are appointed on the basis of their affiliation to the political parties.” He argues that “if the appointments are made on the basis of party politics, then academic identity is not important here [university].” In the case of Tribhuvan University, the faculty members are divided into different groups such as ‘Democrat Teachers’ and “Progressive Teachers’. The democrat teachers’ group is the sister organization of Nepali Congress while progressive teachers’ group is affiliated to Nepal Communist Party. These teachers’ groups have organizations at the national and local campus level. As Teacher A shares, these groups have membership of their respective political party and follow what their party leaders ask to do. Teacher D reveals the reason behind university teachers being a member of a political party and unionized as party members. She shares that “teachers become a cadre to get niyukti (appointment) in different positions such as campus chief, Dean, directors, rectors, registrar, VC.” She reveals that “appointments in academic positions are shared among the teachers who belong to the party groups.”

The new culture of governance in the university has seriously affected the teachers’ professional identity. As Teacher C tells, university teachers are now “recognized by their affiliation to the party groups, but not by their academic work.” What is more interesting is that the teachers who lead the party-based organizations are considered ‘powerful’ and ‘hartaakartaa’ (decisive/influential), as Teacher C says, in the university. He further says that the teachers who lead the party groups ‘seek their bhaag (share) in each appointment of the university’. Consequently, the identity of the teachers who would like to remain independent from partisan politics remain invisible. The story shared by Teacher D reflects this situation: I was asked to be open and support one group of the teachers. They told me that they would help me for the appointments as well. It’s not easy to remain far from the political groups. These groups are key actors in the university. They recommend the names of the teachers for the academic appointments. Different groups of teachers negotiate and decide the share of the position.

The teachers agree that this kind of new culture has been very powerful in the functioning of TU. As Teacher D argues, “teachers who have good academic background are hardly appointed in academic positions if they don’t have political affiliation.” This view is supported by Teacher F’s reflections that “academic identity is important, but it is less important now. Teachers’ political affiliation seems to be more decisive.” These views indicate that a new culture of bhaagbandaa, on the basis of partisan politics, has positioned the academic identity of teachers invisible and unrecognized. More importantly, this culture has promoted new identities of teachers recognized as ‘pragatisheel’ (progressive) or ‘prajaataantrik’(democratic) rather than experts in their field of inquiry. Our discussions with the teachers also show that the new culture has affected the governmentality of the university system.

New form of governmentality and teacher identity

The new culture as mentioned above has created a new form of governmentality in the university system. The teachers in the discussions said that most appointments, including part-time teachers and non-teaching staff, are done on the basis of political bhaagbandaa. Teacher E said “every decision is made on the basis of bhaagbandaa, mostly directly and sometimes indirectly. You know if campus chiefs or other authorities make decisions without consulting political groups, they cannot implement their decisions.” For Teacher E, “due to political bhaagbandaa, the authorities cannot work independently.” One of the major issues that the teachers have highlighted is how they are ‘forced’ to become a member of one specific group. Teacher B, for example, tells that he had participated in programs organized by one of the groups because he did not like to be ‘an odd person’ in his campus. After attending such programs, he now feels that “he has other colleagues to support him if he faces any problem in the university.’’

According to the participants’ views in this study, the new form of governmentality, created by the bhaagbandaa culture, forces teachers to join politically affiliated teachers’ groups. For example, Teacher D shares that the teachers with strong academic, research and teaching background are rarely appointed in decision-making positions. She claims that this situation has hindered “innovative academic and other professional activities” in the university. As decision-making positions are filled with ‘bhaagbandaa’, the appointees become ‘loyal’ to their groups, but not the institution. In many cases, such appointees are ‘under control’ of their ‘factions’, and they hardly make policies and implement innovative ideas. This situation reproduces the status quo and contributes to creating an ‘unfriendly environment’ for academic activities.

The new governmentality has affected the early career teachers (lecturers) in many ways. For example, Teacher B asserts that ‘we are not free to say something because we do not know much about politics in the university’. He finds “lack of academic activities in his campus” and argues that “most discussions among university teachers are about national politics and political leaders.” As a junior faculty, he feels that the new culture has ‘divided the university teachers according to the partisan politics. This environment, as Teacher F claims, has invisibilized the academic and professional identity of teachers. As space for collective and collaborative academic activities is rare, junior faculty members do not have much opportunities to build their professional identity. In fact, Teacher F argues that the existing environment is demotivating for him. Although he can work independently, he says that “if you and I start a work together but we belong to different factions, at some point, the factions will discourage us. Why are you helping that person of another faction? They say I should work with our own members. This is never motivating. This will take us nowhere.”

The above discussion shows that in the new form of governmentality, university teachers are expected to become a member of political groups. Since most activities, including opportunities for professional development, are decided by the teachers’ factions, the identity of teachers who are not active members of such groups remain invisible.

Conclusions

In this brief article, we have discussed how teachers’ professional and academic identities are shaped by the political culture, bhaagbandaa politics, in Nepal. We understand that the arguments discussed here are based on the views from six teachers only, but the issues discussed here reflect how a new form of governmentality has been formed and how it has created a sense of uncertainty regarding professional development of the junior faculty members. The teachers’ perspectives as discussed in this paper show that teacher identity, most professional identity, of Nepali university teachers is heavily affected by the divisive political culture based on partisan politics.

Authors:

Raj Kumar Baral is a lecturer at central department of English at Tribhuvan University Nepal.  Dr. Prem Phyak currently teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

References

De Costa, P. I. and Norton, B. (2017) Introduction: Identity, transdisciplinarity, and the good language teacher. The Modern Language Journal, 101, 3-14.

Palmer, P. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life (10th ed.). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

Thomas, L., & Beauchamp, C. (2007). Learning to live well as teachers in a changing world: Insights into developing a professional identity in teacher education. The Journal of Educational Thought, 41(3), 229-243.

Can be cited as:

Baral, R. K, & Phyak, P. (2021, January). Teacher identity and the new forms of governmentality in higher education in Nepal [Blog article]. ELT CHOUTARI. Available at: https://eltchoutari.com/2021/01/teacher-identity-and-the-new-forms-of-governmentality-in-higher-education-in-nepal/

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