profile 3.p65


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INTRODUCTION

“          e have a profession which is informed by established
   practice…That practice is challenged by theory and also

by the experiences of many practitioners. We must take these challenges
seriously. One thing is sure. If teachers are to be able to offer their
learners a range of language learning activities, if they want to find out
how best to meet the needs of their students, if they are to take full
advantage of a range of teaching materials and to keep abreast of new
teaching opportunities, then they need to adapt to new values, new
approaches to language, to learning and to students. They need to
assimilate a range of new techniques and procedures. They need to be
prepared to experiment and innovate.”1

Educational reforms, students’ expectations, technological
development, and new views on assessment are just a few of the
pressures today's English language teachers are encountering. If the
foreign language profession is to provide first class instruction to its
students while keeping up with a growing list of demands, support for
high quality teacher preparation and continuing professional
development must be given high priority.

English language teachers must maintain proficiency in the target
language and stay up to date on current issues related to the target
culture and language teaching. Regardless of the skills and knowledge
that foreign language teachers possess when they commence teaching,
maintenance and improvement must be an ongoing process and these
cannot solely depend upon policy makers or administrators’ plans.
Though teachers’ skills and knowledge can be fostered by external
agents (advisors, colleagues, supervisors, university programmes /
professors, policy makers, among others), beliefs and attitudes cannot
be attained if they are not based on individuals’ willingness. Beliefs
and attitudes are the main internal forces that can lead to development
and cannot be attained if teachers’ commitments towards their
importance are not genuine.

Teachers interested in their growth see professional development
as an on-going process and thus take part in different activities to gain

1 Dave Willis, in Willis, J. & Willis, D. (eds.). (1996). Challenge and Change in Language
Teaching. Oxford: McMillan, p. vi.

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experiences, to validate their expert knowledge, to keep updated, or
to maintain contact with academic communities. In any case, we can
see that development is attained when we engage in reflective cycles
that integrate practice and knowledge. These two components inform
and support each other and can then contribute to expansion of our
pedagogical knowledge. As a result of this interplay, we gain deeper
understandings of educational phenomena, solve problems, answer
questions, confirm theories, test hypotheses or introduce innovationsinnovationsinnovationsinnovationsinnovations.

Given the fact that we always seek transformations in our practices,
I can argue that innovative proposals should be based on theory. That
theory could stand for new findings after having carried out new
explorations; it can also embody the expansion of existing principles,
or the confirmation of hypotheses. In any case, our theories cannot be
the result of the emotion of change. In contrast, as an innovation may
work for some people but not for others, they should be realized
through an appropriate methodology which illustrates how those
constructs operate in real situations. In view of this, the values and
principles which lie behind any innovation must be made explicit.
These considerations can somehow justify why we do not only value
the topics or the results of innovations we hear about or come across
in publications, conferences or just when we exchange views and
experiences with other teachers. We need to know about the
assumptions behind innovations and the processes they implied. In
other words, we enquire about the “how” so that we can figure out
why particular results are achieved. It is very likely that this information
can serve as the basis for other teachers’ innovative initiatives.

Being aware of our teaching profession involves a cyclical process
of stating what we know about an aspect of our teaching; questioning;
trying to account for what is known and believed, that is to say,
exploring what others have found out about our area of interest;
reconceiving; and seeing things differently from new perspectives and/
or proposing alternative ways of doing things and thinking about
them. This cyclical process can be fostered in continual teacher
preparation, but its actual effect can only be observed in teachers’
decisions to make it part of their daily practices. Keeping these
reflections in mind, the first part of this PROFILE Journal issue starts
by drawing the readers’ attention towards what constitutes teachers’
knowledge base. In order to somehow contribute to the development
of our knowledge base, we include some articles concerning aspects
such as the features of a communicative classroom, the factors influencing
the learning of a second / foreign language, and the importance of



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approaching the individuals encountered in the preschool classroom by
applying the theory of multiple intelligences. It is expected that frameworks
like the ones addressed in those papers contribute to the development
of our pedagogical understanding. Likewise, the second part of this
edition gathers a series of papers written by teachers who participated
in former in-service courses and who describe innovations they have
built-in in specific teaching contexts. Innovations presented here cover
areas such as story-telling, the promotion of oral communication through
extra-curricular activities, the development of students’ self-esteem to
speak in English, the use of task-based learning to enhance classroom
interaction, and the management of children’s aggressiveness when
playing competitive games in the English class.

By focusing on teachers’ innovations we can re-evaluate myths
which most of the time associate change with policies or outsiders’
decisions and interventions. Departing from the assumption that
teachers are agents of change, we value the importance of presenting
a series of experiences teachers wish to share with others. It is hoped
that principles and conclusions they present in their papers generate
the readers’ interest to explore those issues in their classrooms through
further investigations or to react by writing other papers that can
contribute to widening our professional knowledge.

Melba Libia Cárdenas B.
Journal Director

PROFILE