Information on the role of a teacher are given below:
Pre service education of prospective teachers places a heavy emphasis on instructional skills of teachers. However, in reality, though imparting instruction to learners is an important obligation of teachers, they are required to discharge many other responsibilities and are expected to play diverse roles.
In this section, we will make an attempt to understand these duties, responsibilities and roles of a teacher.
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According to Armstrong and Savage (1994), the following is a comprehensive list of a teacher’s roles:
(1) The Instructional Role.
(2) The Counseling Role.
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(3) The Management Role.
(4) The Curriculum Development Role.
(5) The Public Relations Role.
(6) The Professional Development Role.
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(7) Non-School Roles.
Each of these roles places a heavy demand on teachers. While trying to strike a balance among different roles and responsibilities, teachers often find themselves pressed for time. A better understanding of these roles is expected to facilitate a teacher’s work performance, reduce genera levels of anxiety and enhance their abilities to discharge multiple responsibilities confidently.
Let us now look at each role of a teacher in detail.
(1) The Instructional Role:
Providing instruction is the most significant duty of a teacher that defines his/her identity. The instructional role of a teacher is the most important because schools were set up by societies to fulfill the instructional function during the process of evolution of various societal institutions.
However, the manner of performing this role and the purposes served by it vary from teacher to teacher. Some teachers and curricular programmes emphasize transmission of content-matter while others emphasize on preparing students as democratic, productive, responsible citizens.
Some place a high priority on developing creativity and problem-solving skills among students whereas others focus on enabling students to adjust themselves in a given society at the same time training them to bring about social change without major negative consequences.
Very often, teachers’ instructional processes are a combination of many of these priorities and emphases. In any case, some of the significant instructional practices which are common to a large majority of teachers include:
(a) Diagnosing students;
(b) Developing objectives;
(c) Choosing and implementing instructional approaches and strategies;
(d) Evaluating students’ progress.
(a) Diagnosing Students:
School classes comprise of diverse student groups in terms of their intellectual capacity, physical stamina, attitudes, motivations, home background, religious background and socio-economic status. Diagnosis for instructional purposes refers to those teacher actions that seek information about individual students.
This is aimed at designing instructional plans to suit students’ needs and enhance students’ chances of successful learning. Diagnosing students is also aimed at finding out about students’ interests and level of enthusiasm which can be effectively used for introducing new topics.
Diagnostic information also helps teachers to identify learning problems of specific students such as their level of previous knowledge, computational abilities, learning styles or exceptionalities, visual, speech or physical impairment.
(b) Developing Objectives:
Instructional objectives specify expected student behaviour as a result of exposure to learning experiences and instructional process.
Objectives guide teachers in making decisions about learning resources and instructional strategies to be used; instructional objectives clarify teachers’ expectations of student behaviour. They help in assessing the effectiveness of instruction.
(c) Choosing and Implementing Instructional Approaches and Strategies:
An effective instructional programme requires planning and implementing classroom activities. According to Hunter and Russell (1977), planning and implementation of instructional approaches need to focus on the following aspects:
Anticipatory set (teacher actions designed to foe is students’ attention on the instruction to follow);
Objective and purpose;
Instructional input (actions taken to convey relevant content to students);
Guided practice (monitoring students’ work)
Independent practice (without teacher’s monitoring)
(d) Evaluating Students’ Progress:
This is one of the most important responsibilities of a teacher. It helps in ascertaining effectiveness of the teaching-learning process. Evaluation requires proper maintenance of records which form the basis for marks and promotions.
Evaluation should not be only on the basis of paper-pencil tests but also on the basis of performance test. It should include performance on projects and assignments also. Selection of evaluation procedures depend on teachers’ objectives, the nature of the subject taught and the kinds of students in a particular class.
(2) The Counseling Role:
Teaching is considered to be a ‘helping profession’. Teachers’ work involves intense interactions with students and hence, in order to be an effective teacher, he/she should be able to develop and maintain good interpersonal relations skills. These skills are essentially important in performing the counseling role.
In India, very few schools have a professional counsellor on their staff. Even if a school has a professional counsellor, he/she cannot deal with a large number of students appropriately.
Moreover, individual students usually get very well acquainted with their teachers and feel comfortable discussing their problems with them. Teachers are often approached by students (and sometimes parents) who want to share their personal concerns with teachers.
This necessitates that through pre-service education, prospective teachers need to be prepared to help students who seek their advice. They should be able to identify students who need the help of a professional counsellor.
However, this-does not mean that a teacher should develop close friendship with every student that comes to him/her for help. Students look upto their teacher as a mature, knowledgeable adult who would be able to help them.
In order to perform the role of a counsellor, a teacher must pay attention to the following:
(i)Do not misinterpret a call for help as an invitation to personal friendship.
(ii)Listen carefully to what another person is saying and attempt to see the world through that person’s eye (empathy).
(iii)Help students to identify critical features of problems.
(iv)Assist them in working out solutions.
(v)Show respect for the individual who is talking to you.
In order to perform the role of a counsellor well, a teacher must possess the following qualities:
(a) Maturity-psychological and social.
(b) A feeling of personal security.
(c) A positive self-concept.
(d) Confidence.
(e) Ability to solve one’s own problems.
(3) The Management Role:
Very often, teachers do not like to perform this role and complain that a lot of their time is wasted on routine paper work which could be utilized more fruitfully for academic work including preparation of lessons and guiding students.
However, teachers find that they have to discharge many important administrative responsibilities such as:
(i) Keeping records on individual students.
(ii) Ordering required materials.
(iii) Filling up of various forms required by the school or the government.
(iv) Collecting fees and maintaining records.
(V) Looking after the classroom library – issuing books and maintaining records.
(vi) Looking after laboratories, ordering materials and equipment maintaining them..
(vii) Taking attendance and maintaining records.
(viii)Preparing report cards etc.
A teacher could use a computer, if available, to reduce time and effort spent on such administrative chores and devote these to instructional activities. Research findings have shown that there is a close association between the amounts of time students spend on tasks related to instruction with their level of academic achievement.
(4) The Curriculum Development Role:
Instruction refers to procedures followed to transmit content-matter that has been selected and organized. On the other hand, curriculum refers to a general plan or frame-work for selecting and organizing content.
At the school level, teams of individual teachers can work together to design teaching-learning experiences, modes of instruction, selecting instructional materials and deciding evaluation procedures and techniques. Besides, individual teachers can plan individual units of work and lessons in their own classrooms. This kind of curriculum planning allows teachers scope to match learning experiences with the needs of students.
(5) The Public Relations Role:
This role of a teacher is expected to solicit community support for schools and their programmes. This necessitates maintaining good working relationships with parents since their views greatly influence the opinions of others in the community. Very often it is not convenient for parents to visit a school.
Hence teachers need to maintain frequent written communication links with parents of their students. This is especially true when there is good news to report. For example, teachers can inform parents about something positive a student has done.
This generates a good feeling and a positive attitude towards the teacher and the school and helps in developing supportive community feelings towards the school.
Besides, comments written by teachers on students’ papers/work should be a balanced mix of positive and negative remarks. Such comments should be grammatically correct with no spelling mistakes.
Teachers should maintain sincere, open and personable relations with community members in general and parents in particular. He/she should help community members understand that the school is satisfying the intellectual, social and emotional needs of students effectively.
(6) The Professional-Development Role:
Professional-development for teachers is a career-long obligation. Professional-development activities are of many types such as acquiring formal degrees, attending summer courses or evening classes. The content of such courses should be relevant to the needs of participants.
Participating in professional groups provides teachers with opportunities to extend their expertise. It also includes discharging duties as a supervisor, preparing school’s budget, handling purchase orders and distributing materials acquired, facilitating cordial relations among other teachers and co-ordinating school’s activities.
(7) Non-School Roles:
These roles pertain to personal lives of teachers including family obligations, political interests, hobbies, social membership and so on. Often teachers find it difficult to fulfill their school-related and non-school roles simultaneously which leads to a feeling of stress.