Iaplicatioas / 173
6.2 The teacher as restraint
Too often practitioners are seen as, and see themselves as, end
pointe on a linear research model - either they are the subjects
on the one extreme or the consumers on the other. In both
positions their role is that of passive object of the experts'
attention. For ethnographers this model represents a perversion of
their perspective. Practitioners, in the context under
investigation, are not subject^ to be studied but Informants, the
ones who have the information, and collaborators in the process of
reaching understanding (Gilmore and Smith,1982:14)
One could then start by having teachers and teacher trainees analyze
their conceptions about language teaching and learning in school, trying
to trace their rationale and the way they contrast with those
recommended in curricula and syllabi. On the basis of my own experience,
as systematic studies are still scarce, it is likely that Mozambican
Teachers would present the following views:
1 Medium is more important than message in language learning.
This conception is based on the ideological role Portuguese performed
in colonial times, which shaped a great part of the teachers' own
education. The prestige socially attributed to the command of the colonial
language (see 3.1.2 and 3.2.1) set the criterion for judging the
professional competence of teachers, which was the accuracy of the
pupils' spoken and written Portuguese. The power structure reinforced the
assumption that pupils had nothing to say or worth saying In whatever
language, and the methodology of teaching Portuguese in the colonies or
Latin in the metropolis was the same, as their political function was the
same. Current policies and methodologies as they emerge in the Teacher
Manuals, however, continue the colonial tradition in this aspect, and
therefore teachers find them in harmony with their own conceptions. The
mismatch is at another level, as the role attributed to Portuguese after
Independence is presented as different in official documents (see page75).
However, if an attempt to introduce Interlanguage-Insplred methodologies