ABSTRACT
If you are among those who have decided to take up teaching as a career you will already have some idea of what it is like to stand in front of a class. The picture you have, however, will depend on your own school experience and this may be rather different from the situation you are preparing to meet. Indeed you may discover as a result of further visits or reading, that many of the things which teachers do, or are encouraged to do nowadays, are very different from what you had expected. Soon, like them, you may be urged to adopt an unfamiliar role. Perhaps it will be suggested that you should become a ‘manager’ of resources-a kind of technological whizz-kid laden with film projectors, tape recorders, teaching machines and the rest of the latest gadgetry. Alternatively, you may be encouraged to see yourself as a kind of educational shepherd guiding your pupils lovingly along the paths of learning and discovery while lending an ever-ready ear to their difficulties and problems. Some will doubtless propose that you join forces with local social workers and take up home visiting while others will attempt to persuade you to pay less attention to teaching children and devote your energies to teaching parents instead. Given this profusion of ideas about how teachers should see their job I am going to begin the discussion of the teacher’s task by looking into the nature of teaching itself.
