The Teacher’s Roles, Responsibilities and Boundaries
The teacher’s roles, responsibilities and boundaries.
A teacher has a number of roles, each involving different activities with concomitant responsibilities. The most obvious is that of being a knowledge imparter through means such as lecturing, presentation or practical demonstration. At the same time the teacher has a role as a facilitator who acts as a mentor and facilitates the students own self-directed learning and development, drawing out their potential. The third role, which follows from these is that of assessor, to evaluate the effectiveness and outcomes of both the student and the curriculum. In order to perform these roles the teacher must also be a planner, organising both the curriculum and specific courses or programmes of study, and a resource developer, identifying and producing, material and guides that will be required for the teaching activity and will make it more effective in realising intended outcomes. As Fawbert (2003) notes, the teacher should be a role model both as a teacher and simply as a person who performs a job and its associated roles effectively and to a high personal standard. The responsibilities of the teacher are sometimes specific and derived directly from the roles, e.g. to deliver the lecture or class in a timely and effective manner, or to be available for contact and tutorials so as to realise the facilitator role. However, there are boundaries to the relationship between the teacher and student which must remain professional and appropriate while it continues so that for example it is not correct for a teacher to be a Facebook ‘friend’ of a current student or to socialise on an informal and non-work context with current students. legislation and codes of practices affecting the work of teachers and how these relate to your specialist subject. There are a number of pieces of legislation that apply to the work of teachers. Thus they are subject to the Health and Safety Act of 1974 which mandates that a place of
A teacher has a number of roles, each involving different activities with concomitant responsibilities. The most obvious is that of being a knowledge imparter through means such as lecturing, presentation or practical demonstration. At the same time the teacher has a role as a facilitator who acts as a mentor and facilitates the students own self-directed learning and development, drawing out their potential. The third role, which follows from these is that of assessor, to evaluate the effectiveness and outcomes of both the student and the curriculum. In order to perform these roles the teacher must also be a planner, organising both the curriculum and specific courses or programmes of study, and a resource developer, identifying and producing, material and guides that will be required for the teaching activity and will make it more effective in realising intended outcomes. As Fawbert (2003) notes, the teacher should be a role model both as a teacher and simply as a person who performs a job and its associated roles effectively and to a high personal standard. The responsibilities of the teacher are sometimes specific and derived directly from the roles, e.g. to deliver the lecture or class in a timely and effective manner, or to be available for contact and tutorials so as to realise the facilitator role. However, there are boundaries to the relationship between the teacher and student which must remain professional and appropriate while it continues so that for example it is not correct for a teacher to be a Facebook ‘friend’ of a current student or to socialise on an informal and non-work context with current students. legislation and codes of practices affecting the work of teachers and how these relate to your specialist subject. There are a number of pieces of legislation that apply to the work of teachers. Thus they are subject to the Health and Safety Act of 1974 which mandates that a place of