Post-Method Pedagogy: Teacher Growth behind Walls

There have always been attempts in the field of English Language Teaching to find solutions to language teaching problems. The field has been in constant movement and change. This change is mostly due to the adoption of new teaching approaches and methods, which emerged in order to meet the learner’s needs in different periods. In other words, the solution to problems in ELT throughout the history was seen in the new methods which resulted in the search for the best method that is generalizable and applicable across various contexts. Effective English teaching is thought to be about using a method correctly by applying its prescribed principles and techniques. Nowadays, while teachers who think that they can perfectly practice the Communicative Language Teaching Method are considered to be successful teachers, those who are more on the Grammar Translation Method are considered as old-fashioned and not successful at all. Moreover, preservice teachers who are trained to base their teaching on these methods, especially the communicative ones face an overwhelming experience when they start teaching in the actual classroom. They come to realize that what has been theorized does not usually reflect the reality. Therefore, one needs to question how successful the use of the methods and the search for the best method has been.

Classroom-oriented studies carried out in the last two decades show that teachers could not be successful in putting the methods into practice in real classroom situations though this does not mean that they could not be successful in achieving learning outcomes. More specifically, the research results indicate that teachers who claim to follow a particular method do not practice its principles and procedures, those who claim to follow different methods often follow the same classroom procedures and vice versa. Lastly, teachers are found to be developing and following their own activities that are not related to any method. This kind of situation brings us to the post-method era requiring us to reconsider the relationship between theorizers and practitioners of methods”

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In brief, there is not a need for an invention of another method but a need for post-method pedagogy which is not a method. I believe post-method pedagogy does not mean the end of methods but rather it involves an understanding of the limitations of the concept of method and a desire to go beyond those limitations. Therefore, post-method pedagogy brings new insights into teacher growth by discussing the place of the conventional teaching methods and the post-method pedagogy.

(adapted from http://dbe.metu.edu.tr/convention/proceedingsweb/Pedagogy.pdf)