Rethinking Teaching Practices in the Light of Learning Strategies

Selected Papers from the III ELT Conference at U.N.V.M. RETHINKING ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Universidad Nacional de Villa María

Lugar: Villa María; Año: 2015; p. 50 - 55

Controversial debate about the professional role of teachers shows the value assigned to the analysis of the practice of teaching which leads to what is known as reflexive teaching (Edelstein 2011). The problem is not whether teachers reflect upon their practice ? since they seem to ? but on explaining the content and the ways of going into that thinking process. A significant number of authors generated specific production about the topic: Peters, 1987; Goodman, 1987; Marsick, 1991, among many others. Beyond different types of debates, it can be clearly seen that there is a tendency to accept that it is of great value to know/understand what goes on in the classroom as a way to act upon the practice of teaching. Mainly, if we take into consideration that classroom work takes place in a particular socio-historical context, but not in a pre-established one. The problems which may arise are not clearly defined and it is necessary to elucidate them starting from situations which may be, in many cases, ambiguous and contradictory. It is the complexity which makes us think about the different factors that affect the learning process. Problems related to the academic performance of students can be grouped into four fields: personal, academic, socio-economic and institutional. In order to face different problematic relations concerned with the academic performance, it would be convenient to have high quality teacher-training programs and educational policies that support both, research and innovation. In relation to academic performance, and based on research in the field, it is clear that there are a multiplicity of factors playing a role and affecting the object of study. It is our aim in this paper to concentrate on academic factors that affect performance. In order to deal with failure and dropouts, which happen at a high rate in educational institutions, the proposal is to rethink our teaching practices and training of our teachers-to-be by setting our minds to enhance the importance of and training in the use of strategies for learning. Thus, we will be in a better position to help students become more autonomous learners.