Cultural Barriers In Teaching

A. Explain why it is necessary for teachers to engage in critical reflection.
Critical Reflection is not an inert process but an active doing kind of process; it is not a performance management strategy. Critical reflection is crucial to becoming a successful teacher. As a beginner teacher you will encounter many contradictions and challenges in school; you will learn to teach in a particular context but will need to be able to transfer your learning to new contexts. Critical reflection will help teachers to do this and further allows us to synthesize different perspectives to help explain, justify or challenge what we have encountered in our own or other people’s practice. It may be that theory or literature gives us an alternative perspective

Outline the extent to which (or if) the cultural barriers discussed by Brookfield are present in your school setting. In view of your response, how do the absence/presence of these barriers affect the teaching learning process at your school? (7 marks).
Before looking into the cultural barriers discussed by Brookfield I am compelled to first understand what culture is. This is because many persons have limited knowledge and understanding of what it is, in that culture too many it refers to the race, religion, politics and food. Culture encompasses all the learned beliefs, traditions, language, values, customs, rituals, manners of interacting, forms of communication, expectations for behaviors, roles and relationships commonly shared among members of a particular group and often transmitted from generation to generation. Culture provides people with a design for living and for interpreting their environment and shapes how people see their world and structure their community and family

As a Vocational Skills Tutor I have experienced all three of the cultural barriers over the years. When the Administrators of the Training institution where I am employed decided to implement the use of technology into the Course Guide and Occupational Standards there were reservations. It was further mandated for teachers to introduce the methods into the classrooms to aid in the delivery of their lessons and there were continued oppositions to change. Resulting from these reservations was clear evidence of the cultural barriers in action. The teachers especially the older ones did not embrace the idea at all some did not share the same views of the need and benefits of such instructional approach. It was clearly because of fear of learning something new, embarrassment of not being technologically literate, and the inability to execute effective time management and classroom management skills. Teachers are of the opinions that teaching is a private activity and they demonstrate a lack of open talk about the experience, the ups and downs and meaning of