| Popis: |
Everything is changing around us: circumstances, global environment, people. From the top of the mountain to the bottom of the sea, everything seems to be working right now with the aid of computers. Moreover, everything seems to be happening in a virtual world that can only be described and understood through acronyms and terms whose meaning is hard to grasp by the less ,,IT-literate" people. In the education sphere, starting from the early pre-school education up to higher education, PhD and post-graduate studies, as well as life-long learning, the advancing technological trend seems to have completely changed the ,,face" of the teaching process as compared to what we experienced as pupils and students (and by ,,we", we mean women in their forties' or fifties' working as language teachers in a predominantly adult male environment). The roles of the teacher seem to have evolved from the traditional models so as to cater for the students' newly reconfigured needs. On-line language learning seems to have shifted the balance creating, or at least suggesting, a different inventory of ,,hats" that the teacher has to put on in order to acquire and use the necessary' skills in the virtual classroom. Quite a lot of research has been conducted in recent years with respect to the changing role of the language teacher, even leading up to the question whether we need language teachers (and especially English teachers) at all, now that there is a practically inexhaustible reservoir of lessons, activities, projects and tests on the internet. On the other hand, research has also shown that in the traditional classroom gender seems to still play a part even if we have gone well over the threshold of the 21st century. People seem to still have at some level a notion of what a good teacher is like and, in many cases, reference seems to be made to gender issues too. Thus, the present paper is meant to cover significant aspects of the language teacher's role in face-to-face courses and the way in which this role changes in on-line courses, as seen from a gender studies perspective. |
