Knowledge domains

As regards the domains of knowledge and skills that a teacher needs, the respondents of the questionnaire study rated the teacher’s command of English the highest. Teachers

believe that without the thorough knowledge of English, the teacher of the language loses her credibility. It was the ability to transmit knowledge that achieved the second highest score.

This seems to show a transmissive view of teaching (Widdowson, 1997), considered out-dated by many coursebook authors and methodology experts. However, one might argue that the ability to transmit knowledge in itself is a complex teaching skill, including such sub-skills as the ability to inspire (referred to as the ability to motivate and rated as fourth most important in this survey), the ability to communicate (rated as third most important in this survey), or the ability to explain the material well (fifth most important in this survey).

Table13 Top five domains of knowledge

Q No. Domain Mean Score

1 Command of English 4,76

6 Ability to transmit knowledge 4,7

8 Communication skills 4,68

11 Ability to motivate 4,62

10 Ability to explain 4,6

Let me illustrate the complex nature of English language teaching competence by quoting a novice teacher from one of the interviews:

It is a fact that the teacher has to have a good command of English. She … (pause) she has to be able to transmit her knowledge well, to explain certain things ...

(pause) in a sensible way. And she has to be interesting ... (pause). However well you speak English, if children are asleep, it’s useless. So, she has to find ways to keep the children continually interested. (Participant 4)

Furthermore, an examination of sub-groups was carried out. In terms of the importance that respondents attributed to the knowledge of English, the ability to transmit knowledge, communication skills, the ability to motivate and the ability to explain, no difference was detected between male (n = 29) and female (n = 219) respondents. Similarly, the independent samples t-test showed that there was no significant difference between the importance respondents from Budapest and respondents from the countryside attributed to the top five teaching domains.

However, an Anova test clearly showed that the educational background of the respondents had an effect on how much importance they attributed to teachers’ command of English (p(coE)< .003) and communication skills (p(com) = .014). (F(5, 245) = 3.659 for command of English and F_{(5, 245)} = 2.910 for communication skills.) More specifically, respondents with a Master’s degree attributed greater importance to the teacher’s command of English than respondents with a Bachelor’s degree. The mean difference was .278 with p = .027.

No significant differences were found in terms of the effect of major teaching environment (primary, secondary or higher education) or the mother tongue of the teacher on the top five knowledge domains. Many respondents, however, had varied experience, having taught at all three levels at some point during their career, so there were no distinct groups in the sample. The lack of significant differences between sub-groups with different mother tongues may be explained by the fact that there were very few non-Hungarian speakers in the sample.

Table14 Bottom five domains of knowledge

Q No. Domain Mean Score

14 Ability to work with colleagues 3,96

5 Knowledge of school 3,69

7 Knowledge of education system 3,54 3 Knowledge about language 3,26 2 Knowledge of Ss’ mother tongue 3,03

In terms of the least important domains of teacher knowledge in the questionnaire study (See Table14), it must be emphasised that all the domains included in the questionnaire were cited as very important by the participants of the first round of the interview study. The obvious conclusion, therefore, is that their relative lack of importance is only valid in contrast with the other domains. The respondents of the questionnaire study, nevertheless, found the knowledge of the students’ mother tongue the least important out of those supplied on the questionnaire. This view is in line with the principles of experiential learning, which advocates learning by doing and language learning by exposing the learners to the target

language as much as possible and by creating an English speaking environment within the classroom. But the finding might also reflect teachers’ and students’ view that the mother tongue is not at all necessary for learning a foreign language, a view which was advocated for a long time by the Anglo-Saxon dominated world of English language teaching. For native speakers of English who do not speak any foreign languages, the only acceptable ideology is certainly the ideology of native-speakerism: the deep-rooted belief that the ideal speaker is the native speaker and the ideal methodology comes from the native speaker teacher (Holliday, 2005). Moreover, native-speakerism has had a worldwide impact, permeating the profession.

“Native speaker superiority has been constructed as part of a grand plan for English superiority all along” (Holliday, 2009), which means that even non-native speaker teachers in the periphery have been affected by the literature and resources provided by the West or the Centre.

The fact that one of the least important domains of knowledge is the ability to work with colleagues suggests that there is little cooperation going on in schools and that teaching is a solitary business. A study in which both trainees and practising teachers were interviewed (Harfitt & Tavares, 2004) also found that practising teachers had made very few references to learning or getting support from their colleagues in a Hong Kong setting (Fig. 3. p. 359.).

There may be several reasons for the lack of cooperation, including socioeconomic ones, but the detrimental effects the lack of collegial support could have on teaching and learning are obvious. Hobson et al. (2005) found that relationships play a key role in the formation of teachers and one of the findings of the teacher interviews herein was that participants learnt the most from the people around them. Among these, colleagues, senior and junior, mentors, as well as students were listed. Teachers who do not find it important to be able to work well with their colleagues are therefore not likely to be in the position to learn from their peers either.

The fact that respondents did not attribute much importance to the knowledge of the educational system and the school itself reinforced the experience of the researcher: teachers of English in Hungary are often considered, and in fact consider themselves, to be a special group, a closed circle, within the staff, be it in a primary, secondary or higher education institution. Similarly, the rest of the staff view English teachers differently. Reasons for this might include the fact that teachers of English have undergone different methodology education or have different career opportunities by virtue of English being the most frequently learnt language in all forms of education and the most frequently used language in all walks of life. Teachers of English often behave as outsiders as well, who believe that the task of dealing with topical class problems, organizational matters and school issues is to be done exclusively by the form teacher responsible for the class. It is a revealing fact that hardly any teachers of English in primary or secondary settings become form teachers themselves, leaving this task to teachers of such core subjects as Hungarian language and literature, history, or mathematics. This might as well be attributable to the fact that language teachers usually teach half of a class, although this organisational difficulty could be overcome and is, in fact, often overcome when mathematics teachers, who teach split classes as well, become form teachers.

As regards the bottom five domains of knowledge, an examination of sub-groups showed that there were no significant differences between the responses of respondents from Budapest and those from the countryside, or between the responses of male of female teacher respondents. Similarly, no significant differences could be detected in terms of the effect of the age group on the importance respondents attached to the different knowledge domains (p > .05).

The analysis of variance carried out in order to find out if the respondents’ educational background had an effect on the extent to which they found the bottom five domains of knowledge important showed that it had virtually none.

On the other hand, an analysis of variance showed that the respondents’ major teaching environment (primary, secondary or higher education) had a significant effect on the importance they attached to teachers’ knowledge about the language p_(kaL) = .020. A post hoc Sheffe test confirmed that there was a significant difference between the way respondents with primary and higher education experience, respectively, viewed the importance of knowledge about the language: F_(2,223) = 3.959 where p = .020. The mean for this statement for respondents with primary experience was 2.98 while the mean for respondents with experience in higher education was 3.42. The post hoc Sheffe test showed that the difference was significant at the .03 level.

No significant differences were found in terms of the effect of the teacher’s mother tongue on the importance attached to the bottom five teacher domains, but there were too few non-Hungarian speakers in the sample to be able to draw conclusions from the data.