ABSTRACT
Students learn not just from what teachers say and do but what they are. Modelling, in this sense, can be an important though sometimes unconscious or unacknowledged part of teaching. Its importance varies with the type of course. In school, the teacher may represent the grown up, the adult. In vocational or professional education, he or she may exemplify the experienced or skilled practitioner-role; after all one is a doctor or designer or mechanic. In higher education, the lecturer may embody the subject and make it come alive. In the creative or performing arts, models may constitute an essential stage on the long journey to finding one’s own style or voice. Modelling is not central to all courses, and even where it is, the model may be ignored or rejected (I hope I never become like him…). However, it is more subtle and pervasive than we sometimes admit (think of the teachers or lecturers who influenced you in the past), so we need to address it as an aspect of teaching that can have quite profound and lasting effects on the learner, both positive and negative. After all, as the advertisement said: ‘nobody forgets a good teacher’ (rather than teaching).
