The catalyst role of teacher: from the perspective of prospective teachers

Year 2017, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 193 - 204, 21.06.2017

Nur Cebeci , Işıl Gamze Yıldız

Abstract

Teachers have a wide range of roles
to handle the class in terms of supporting students and accomplishing their own
responsibilities. Additionally, the roles of a teacher may also change due to
many factors such as methodological development or technological innovations.
With the current changes, it seems that teachers play the role of a catalyst by
supporting and motivating the students. In this study, the term catalyst
teacher is used to describe the teacher’s role, and the teacher’s role as a
catalyst is investigated from the perspective of prospective teachers. In doing
so, the prospective teachers of English at a Turkish university were
interviewed through semi-structured interview questions to explore their
understanding of teacher cognition. The interview has three different
dimensions: prospective teachers’ previous learning experiences; their recent
experiences, and their school practicum experiences -in terms of mentor
teachers’ roles. The results of the study displayed that the prospective
teachers believe that the teacher should be a model and guide- catalyst- in the
classroom; however, they declared that their previous teachers implemented
traditional teaching techniques for teaching English. Similarly, they also
declared that their mentor teachers followed traditional teaching methods.

Keywords

teacher role, catalyst role, foreign language learner

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