Conceptualizing Teaching Acts

University of Antioquia-School of Languages DIDACTICS 1 Teacher: Javier Alexaner !ivera !eflection "a#er 1$%&' (arta Cecilia Arneo )rti*

Conce#tuali*ing Teaching Acts !eflective Tas+ 1,1 In our current educative context, it has been very common to meet an education focus on educating people to have them participating actively into the economic system. To do that, our educational system has provided teachers who play the role of passive technicians that is, teachers who transmit a specific knowledge needed to fulfill the needs and demands of the nowadays global market. The advantages of such as role of teachers as passive technicians is that they provide learners with the experience they require to get a job and through it supply daily needs like paying the rent, buy food, pay social security and health in order to have what we call a good living. But this role also implicates certain disadvantages on the one hand, this kind of teachers used to focus their daily practices on content!based activities where students play a passive role and in the other they are not encouraged to think critically. It makes me think about the kind of education I received and it is very visible I was educated under this educational guidelines. In high school I had teachers who were very good at their subjects and taught me enough to have the information I needed to face spec specif ific ic test tests s such such as the the I"#$ I"#$% % and and test tests s I had had to take take to pass pass at the the university. They were very worried about giving me the tools to incorporate appropriately into the system after I graduated from high school. But they did not encourage me to think about what was going on around the social and economic problems that were affecting our families and neighbors and the violence generated by the lack of education and work opportunities. I was always regardless of these social issues because my teachers never talked about it in their classes and did not make us to reflect and discuss about these situations. &ow that I have the opportunity to work as a teacher I think it is still important to take take into into acco accoun untt some some aspe aspect cts s of the the tech techni nici cist st orie orient ntat atio ion n like like  promote

student comprehension of knowledge but it has to be related to the context and students' needs. It is essential to help our students to reflect on what is happening in their social context, to make them think critically about the problematic of our current society and show them how they can act as change agents to improve their lives and impact positively others.

!eflective tas+ 1, Being a reflective practitioner in a learning or teaching context presents several obstacles when doing so. In first place, schools are most of the time scenarios where some principals and teachers are dedicated to implement programs that allow students to learn content knowledge without thinking about what that knowledge is for and how he(she can use that knowledge to transform their  society and his(her own life. Then reflective teachers are meeting every day students who are not used to think critically because they haven)t been encouraged to do it and the challenge of making those learners to be aware of  problems they and their families are going to encounter in the current society. In second place, educational policies are still pushing schools all around to compete for getting the highest scores in quality which leaves aside important roles of the school like sociali*ation and acquisition of values, factors that help students

understand differences

among

individuals

and

accept

those

deviations. To overcome such difficulties, it is necessary that our educational system start implementing changes in terms of education politics that advocate for learning environments in which administrators worry less about obtaining high scores in standardi*ed tests and stuff related to standards of quality. Instead, it would be very interesting having principals and teachers encouraging students to participate actively in spaces where social and cultural issues were discussed. In those debates, students could be inspired to think about how they can contribute to improve the quality of education and play active roles as social change agents.

!eflective tas+ 1,%

#or a long time, we have been told to implement in our practices principles that come from outside experts and exercises designed by textbook writers. %ometimes for teachers it has been an inconvenient to apply and work with these frameworks coming from countries with such different cultural, social and economic systems. +hat has been successful in those contexts do not always suit the special conditions and needs of our social and educative context. If we teachers were given the opportunity to construct our own theory, we would have the opportunity to start producing ideas of how education can enrich our social and cultural context and would generate possible solutions to problems our  society is facing today. It also will encourage teachers to reflect on the approaches or methodologies that best suit their students' needs. But when trying to do it, we would face the following obstacle we teachers are not accustomed to do research and it is fundamental to do it if we want to theori*e from our experience and practice. To fight this obstacle, we should start operating changes in our conceptions about our roles. +e need to jump from our role as passive teachers to active researchers. This change is going to help us to understand our current education system lacks and from that to reformulate the way things have been done until now and operate the changes needed.