7.

2 Juggling the roles

The role we take on is dependent on what we wish the students to achieve. Where
some activities are difficult to organise without the teacher acting as a controller,
others have no chance of success unless we take on a less dominant role. There
are times when we will need to decide whether to act as a prompter or whether it
would be more appropriate to act as a resource. A lot will depend on the group we
are teaching, since our leadership style may well depend on the particular students
we are working with: some students may be more comfortable with using the
teacher as a resource and a tutor, others may hunger for us to adopt a more
controlling role.

Knowing that different teachers act differently and that individual teachers vary
their behaviour depending on what they are doing, gives us insights into classroom
behaviour. Thus, for an activity where students are involved in a team game, we
will want to behave energetically (because a game needs excitement and energy),
encouragingly (if students need a nudge to have a go), clearly (because we don’t
want the game to fail through misunderstanding), and fairly (because students care
about this in a competition situation). If, on the other hand, students are involved in
a role play, we should ‘perform’ clearly (because students need to know exactly the
parameters of the role play), encouragingly (because students may need
prompting to get them going), but also retiringly (because, once the activity has got
going, we don’t want to overwhelm the students’ performance) and supportively
(because students may need help at various points).

We need to be able to change between the different roles we have described here,
judging when it is appropriate to use one or any other of them. When we have
made that decision, we need to be aware of carrying out that role sensitively and
with discretion.