Blog Post 3: Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals

Blog Post 3

Kumaravadivelu Chapter 1

Monday September 3rd, 2012

In Kumar’s first chapter in his book, Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching, he discusses different types of teachers.  Not only does his chapter describe different types of teachers, but it conceptualizes the general nature of teaching as a professional activity.  Teachers may see themselves as passive technicians, reflective practitioners, transformative intellectuals, or a combination of these three. As he states, it depends on the mind engagement of the teacher and how they “recognize the symbiotic relationship between theory, research, and practice, and between professional, personal, and experiential knowledge” (22).

I found Kumar’s first chapter incredibly fascinating and self-reflective.  What kind of teacher do I want to be?  I think to answer that question I need to look at myself and see what type of person I am and how I go about educating myself.  I believe that out of the three teachers described, I would most likely fit under the Teachers a Transformative Intellectuals.

Teachers who are transformative intellectuals are a “particular group of educationists called critical pedagogists” (13).  “Critical pedagogists view teachers as ‘professionals who are able and willing to reflect upon ideological principles that inform their practice, who connect pedagogical theory and practice to wider social issues, who work together to share ideas, exercise power over the conditions of their labor, and embody in their teaching a vision of a better humane life” (13).

To break that down into their actual teaching practices, Kumar quotes Joe Kincheloe (1993, p. 201-03) who lists the way this type of teacher teaches.  So many of these reflect my main beliefs of teaching such as teachers being inquiry orientated.  Teachers need to cultivate and extend research skills that help them and teach their students how to explore problems they themselves have posed about life outside the classroom.  I am a strong believer that education should mainly be about educating students to function in society in whatever discourse they choose to reside in.  We should teach them how to go about solving their problems vs. giving them the answer to their problems.  That is one major way to help prepare them to function on their own and to be proactive about their personal issues.

I also agree with the statement that teachers should be dedicated to an art of improvisation.  Not everything goes as planned and in a classroom, especially a classroom that is discussion based, there are many teaching opportunities.  The discussion may travel to a different, yet still relevant and important topic.  Teachers need to have the flexibility to improvise and alter their lesson plans in order to realize that there may be something else that needs to be addressed.  Learning takes place when the content is meaningful to the students and when they can see how the content is relevant to their lives.  Letting the lesson drift into a different direction may be beneficial to the learning environment for the teacher and students alike.

Another topic on the list is a teacher who is extended by a concern with critical self- and social-reflection.  This will encourage students to be introspective, and self-reflect.  This is so important especially for adolescents who are learning meta-cognition and need practice thinking about what helps them become a better student and a better person.

Teachers as transformative intellectuals is by far the most interesting type of teacher that I believe I will be one day.  While I agree with the majority of what is described by Kumar in this section, I do, however not agree with one particular description of this type of teacher; or maybe I am just a little confused as to what he is stating Freire’s philosophy on teachers as transformative intellectuals. 

Freire’s philosophy is that within the description of teachers as transformative intellectuals, “critical pedagogists believe that pedagogy, any pedagogy, is embedded in relations of power and dominance, and is employed to create and sustain social inequalities.  For them, schools and colleges are not simply instructional sites; they are, in fact, ‘cultural arenas where heterogeneous ideological, discursive, and social forms collide in an unremitting struggle for dominance” (13).  What does this mean exactly?  That these types of teachers are power hungry and believe that they need to dominate the classroom? Or that any type of teacher has the need to dominate the classroom? I do not believe that this follows the rest of the description of teachers as transformative intellectuals because it seems to be based on the teachers helping students to become self-reflective while they themselves are transforming and learning along with the students.