What counts as experience?

to the contrary, there are potentially beneficial aspects of watching other teachers teach even though the data item below points to a lack of awareness amongst trainees of what Lortie described as 'the apprenticeship of observation' (p.61):

[s]tudents do not tend to consider their experience about their former teachers as teaching experience and also, much practice is needed during the training.

Trainers are well advised to bring this idea to the attention of their trainees, Lortie’s criticisms notwithstanding, since it allows trainees potential access to a wealth of experience, some of which they will view positively, some less so. Watching others teach is an example of a training resource, very largely untapped, available to all in every classroom. If for no other reason, watching others teach will emphasise the creativity that teaching involves.

opinion, each student who used to be at school at one time must have some experience…

They may know what is a “bad” teacher like’

MN Teacher expectations

Before I nipped back to the office, I offered the space, i.e. the teacher’s space at the front of the class, to the peer teacher. On my return the space is empty. Am I in possession even in my absence? My communication was (could have been) obviously faulty/unclear, but I can't quite grasp the lack of initiative on the part of those who (at least appear to) want to become teachers or to teach… Am I being unfair here? Was I as organised as these people at 21/22/23?

Was I as linguistically competent? Was I as courageous? I don't know. I have little comparison and my lot was very different. I ought to be more daring with this class, ask provocative questions, play devil's advocate. It's the perfect forum, perhaps we'd be the perfect actors.

As this entry reveals, I was puzzled by the peer teacher’s reluctance to take over the teaching space I had, purposely, vacated for them. However, the event threw back the focus on myself, causing me to reflect at my behaviour in their position. Hindsight is a great leveller, but I doubt whether I would have reacted very differently. This entry also prompted me to ponder the significance of experience as a teacher and what that means in practical and theoretical terms. As the data from this sub-question reveal, becoming a teacher can entail a long and hard process of stopping being a student.

This then goes some way to countering what is effectively one trainee’s dismissal of the experience won by watching others: I don’t think that having learnt English in a school

myself” counts as experience in teaching! Sadly this view is common and causes trainees to ignore a valuable resource that they can bring to their classrooms, that of the ability to reflect on their actions in the classroom.

From the data come a range of views which together go some way towards providing a broad definition of experience for the purposes of teacher training. These can range from a view of experience which does not focus exclusively on teaching:

your experience as a learner when having English, another foreign language; experience as a teacher of English or of other languages (including L1) to a group or to individuals/private students/siblings (for a couple of weeks)

to one which emphasises the practical over the theoretical: [f]or me experience is when you already had a few lessons taught, and not just planned it on [a] sheet. To the fully inclusive notion of [a]ny kind of encounter with teaching, either as a recipient or performer and includes both sides of the process, teaching and learning. Further, data also reflects the findings from Research Question 2 as well as raising new points, for example the idea that teaching experience can include more than the transfer of content knowledge or specific skills. It can also include being in a situation in which one had to teach s[ome]th[ing] which had an emotional effect on the person, or similarly [s]ituations we remember, can relate to. The teaching experience should be one where the would-be-teacher acts like a real teacher, one which allows the would-be- teacher to feel what being a teacher is like.

Significantly, such a broad definition allows every attempt to teach something to somebody [t]o counts as experience… and [w]e can learn from every attempt. This reference to making an attempt reveals another important characteristic of the teaching experience: that

of [t]eaching in a conscious way. Experiencing mistakes and correcting them. For the trainee the experience of teaching can be stimulating:

if you are challenged to do something on your own. Experience a teaching situation from the teacher’s point of view.

However, for the majority of trainees, experience is gained via real teaching within the formalised confines of the school classroom through via hard work and application. In this view peer teaching no longer counts. It is the classroom that is the real “battleground”, anything else counts for very little:[w]hen the teacher trainee teaches real students, not peer trainees or reflecting the teaching environments where many trainees succeed in working teaching in a secondary school. If you don’t know what teenagers are like, you don’t know how to teach them.

This type of teaching means that the teacher teaches in front of a group without any supporting background, having been trained in holding and organising a lesson for a class/group, and in a methodologically based way. This then is achieved because of [t]he knowledge that have accumulated through the years of practice and practical skills; a wide range of materials and activities.

This hard won experience is also the result of sustained and regular teaching. Such sustained regularity of teaching adds to the characterisation of learning to teach as a process, a process with results and outcomes that need to be experienced. It is this process which must result from [r]egular (not one-off) teaching. This regularity is variously defined as [t]eaching a group or a class in school for more than a few times or [h]aving taught for a year at least more or less regularly.

This process of learning to teach can be supported by an environment that is designed for learning and teaching along with the inner forces [which] form the group. Having said that, it is also necessary to be aware of aspects of teaching which do not lend themselves to easy identification or quantification, that is to be able to handle the unexpected. Moreover, it is a process that does not end upon completion of a teacher training course, but involves informal as well as formal elements, that is the exchange of ideas with others along with more formalised provision:

[t]alking to colleagues as much as possible about their own experience, taking part in teacher training courses even after graduation.