about. Our goal has been that you will use the principles and techniques in the
methods we have written about as a way to make explicit your own beliefs about the
teaching/learning process, beliefs based upon your experience and your professional
training, including the research you know about. Of course, a study of methods is not
the only way to make your beliefs explicit, but unless you become clear about your
beliefs, you will continue to make decisions that are conditioned, rather than
conscious. In a way, this set of explicit beliefs could be said to be your theory, which
will inform your methodological choices. It will also be your theory that will interact
with those of others. As we wrote in Chapter 1, ‘Engaging with the professional
beliefs of others [their theories] in an ongoing manner is also important for keeping
your teaching practice alive.’ Furthermore:
... if the teacher engages in classroom activity with a sense of intellectual
excitement, there is at least a fair probability that learners will begin to participate
in the excitement and to perceive classroom lessons mainly as learning events—as
experiences of growth for themselves.
(Prabhu 1992: 239)This has been true for Tim McNamara. He describes what transpired after he
interacted with the theories of others in a Master’s degree program:
I became an observer in my own classroom, of myself and, in particular, of my
students, and kept thinking about what I was doing and what alternatives there
might be. Once I had developed an appetite for that understanding, it never left
me. To learn that a site of practice was also a site for thinking gave a dimension to
my experience of teaching which has remained with me.
(McNamara 2008: 302)Larsen-Freeman frames it this way:
A theory helps us learn to look (Larsen-Freeman 2000). It allows us to see and
name things that might otherwise have escaped our attention. Our intuitions may
be quite sound, but conscious awareness of why we do what we do allows us to
make a choice—to continue to do things the same way or to change the way we do
them. A theory also stimulates new questions in teachers, as well as in researchers
... Additionally, our theories help us make sense of our experience.
(Larsen-Freeman 2008: 291)For some teachers, the choice among methods is easy. These teachers find that a
particular method resonates with their own values, experience, and fundamental views
about teaching and learning. It fits with what they are trying to achieve, and it is
appropriate for their students and their context. We might call the position such
teachers adopt, when confronted with the issue of methodological diversity, one of
absolutism: One method is best for them. What makes it so is because it is the one the