It is most people’s assumption that passing on knowledge or skills to learners is the primary role of the teacher however, a large part of the working day involves other activities (see Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Roles of the teacher
These activities can be better evaluated if placed in the following four categories.
Teaching Related Roles:
In this role the teacher can be expected to plan and prepare schemes of work and session plans (including the resources), deliver the teaching sessions, carry out assessment (both of the learners and reflective practice), provide feedback to learners, act as a facilitator for learning, act as an internal verifier and contribute to course development.
Pastoral Roles:
The Collins Dictionary defines pastoral care as “help with personal needs and problems given by a teacher”. The way a teacher will provide this is by acting in loco parentis, acting as a tutor on a one-to-one level, being a role model and being the disciplinarian (chasing absence, dealing with tardiness/rule breaking).
Administrative Roles:
The ways in which a teacher can fulfil this role is by maintaining the registers, book keeping, preparing and writing reports, keeping learners’ records in a safe and secure manner, implementing quality procedures and corresponding with parents, employers and examining bodies.
Institutional Roles:
A teacher carries out their institutional roles by attending parents’/open evenings, preparing prospectus entries, dealing with course enquiries, acting as a mentor to new colleagues and attending meetings.
The Teaching Related Role can also be broken down into at least 4 separate roles which we can call the Primary School Teacher, the Secondary School Teacher, the Further Education Teacher and The Teacher in the Workplace, these roles can be summarised as follows:
Primary School Teacher
The primary school teacher usually does not specialise in any given subject but develops the basic skills in a child leaning...