unit 5 - Roles and responsibilities

Unit 5 – Understand Role & Responsibilities

On our first lecture we talked about some of the most important things that we have to understand in order to become conscious teachers and these are the “roles, responsibilities and relationships” in lifelong learning. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of these expressions in an educational level/setting/ we tried to break them down into their different components.
First of all, what is the “role” of a teacher? With my group partner we first tried to define what it means. What could be a role that is not necessarily a responsibility? We came up with the ideas of mentor, role model and friend.

During the class discussion one of my peers came up with the terminology of “expectation” as the synonym of role, which I found very interesting. It is very hard for me to make a distinction between role and responsibility as they exist mostly together. With the role of helping students achieve results in a subject, we have the responsibility of providing the circumstances, resources, techniques and attention that they need. In order to provide the competent circumstances we have to make sure that the students are in a safe environment, regarding their health as well as their privacy. Regarding their health and their safety, the teacher has to follow policies and rules. For example it can be necessary to do a risk assessment before a lesson. Regarding the privacy of students we pointed out that it could be a very serious moral and ethical issue if we had to estimate whether it is right to share personal informations about our pupil (with other teachers for example). If a family issue is influencing our pupil's achievements, when is the time to share that private information and when is it not. When is it right and when is it wrong? Students are entitled to privacy but when do teachers have a say in the matter?

The techniques and methods that have to be taken into account are focusing on the well-being of all the students. Teachers have to focus on inclusion and work with a high level of awareness at all times. Furthermore, as teachers, not only we have to ensure that all the materials are equally accessible to all the students but in addition that they are suitable to all of them. The Equality Act does not tolerate any form of preferential treatment (We have to think here about gender, age, disability, race, religion or marital status). So when we talk about equality and diversity we mean that every student has the right to access and participate to the lesson regardless of their level, their background or religion, circumstance or impairment. Through these methods of teaching a professional teacher has to show that he respects these differences in his students and that he is able to meet the requirements of these individuals. It can be challenging to overcome our own personal preferences, our thoughts and opinions in order to find a way to include all students in every exercise or to encourage every students at the same level.

Finally, teachers have to be mindful and attentive to the needs of their pupils in order to teach them effectively. Their responsibility is to notice if a student has dyslexia for example, or if someone in the class is having difficulties with his writing skills as English is his second language. But in order to identify these issues and react to them, it is indispensable to assess the pupils. Therefore it is the responsibility of the teacher to make sure that these assessments take place on a regular basis.

I believe that a teacher should be someone that guides the students with these assessments, someone that can keep an open mind in order to respect his students individualities and make the pupil feel safe in an environment where he is looked after without offending his privacy.

And finally, we talked about relationships. We mentioned relationships between teachers, between teacher and student and also between teacher and parents. This made me think again about the meaning of “role”. The role of a teachers can not be compared to a friend or a role model simply because in the role of teacher you have boundaries and behavioural regulations. It would be unacceptable to talk to our students the same way that we talk with parents or colleagues. Furthermore, in order to maintain a professional image a teacher would discuss different topics with these three groups and use an appropriate language and vocabulary for each of them. We also mentioned during group sharing that teachers have to liaise and cooperate with family members, employers or community members in an appropriate manner.