INTRODUCTION TO ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES AND RELATIONSHIPS FOR NEW TEACHERS IN THE LIFELONG LEARNING SECTOR
A teacher should to be aware of her/his new role. It is important to state that the teachers are limited by legislation. Some of the laws focus on the children’s right are linked with the teacher’s role, like the Protection of Children or The Children Act 2004. These protect the interest of the children related with physical and mental health and the social and economic wellbeing, involving educational partners. The Disability Discrimination Act, Sex Discrimination Act, and Race Relations Act promotes the equality and defends the rights of disabled people (physical or mental impairment) in areas like employment, education, access to services and buying or renting a property. Maybe, it has to be highlighted the Equality Act 2010 because developed a common framework to set eight aspects which protect the individual rights without distinction of age, race, disability, sexual harassment Another laws are related with the protection of the image of children or the level of exposition allowed for the most vulnerable people: The Data Protection Act or The Copyright Designs and Patents Act. The teacher has to implement in his/her daily routines the main aspects of these laws. The reason why the teachers have to follow this “pattern” is because it is necessary to set a way to ruled how teacher has to behave through differences or to achieve a fair teaching method.
Equality and diversity are two main aspects to consider in the teacher role. The teacher has to ensure that learners have the same rights and opportunities to achieve their goals. In the same way, after accepting the diversity, which involves value the differences in people whether they relates to gender, race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation and age. Everyone is an individual with different experiences, abilities and needs. The teacher needs to question his/her values, attitudes or beliefs, not imposing them on the students. The teacher might offer Additional Learning Support when necessary and use a full range of diverse resources to meet the needs of the students. “Most students who are able, hardworking or pleasant receive better treatment from teachers; this is understandable but not professional”. Petty (2009:164)
The teacher’s role in the post compulsory teaching sector is defined through different duties involved in teaching adults. This is called: The teacher training cycle. There are five stages in the process of teaching and learning. In the first stage, the teacher has to identify the learner’s needs, so the teacher role would be an assessor or advice giver for the student. The second stage involves the teacher designing which follows some standards. Then, the teacher needs to evaluate the lesson plan whether it has been too ambitious. The teacher’s professionalism is very important in all the stages. They should keep up dated with recent teaching methods and be aware of their role as a teacher.
The third stage (one of the most important) is to facilitate the learning, constructing an active process, having empathy with each student as well as understanding their individual needs. It is considered the most active part of Teaching, because the feedback between teacher and student determine the success of the process. In this moment, the teacher is considered an instructor and facilitator of the learning process, this will “produce” students committed to you and the lesson. The fourth stage is the Assessment, where the teacher validates the knowledge acquired for the student. Finally, the last stage is to evaluate all the processes to detect and prevent future weaknesses in our role as a new teacher. The function of this process is monitoring learning strategies and improving study skills. It is called Evaluator. Apart from the teacher, there are a full range of professionals who can help the student to choose an appropriate course