Esp teacher’s Transforming Profile

2. BEST COLLEGE TEACHERS’ TRAITS IN ESP ENVIRONMENT
In his article ‘Getting Better as Teachers’ L. Dee Fink (Fink 2012, 6-9) makes an outline of the most important characteristics that best university teachers had been attributed to, based on Ken Bain’s findings published in his book What the Best College Teachers Do from 2004¹. These traits can be classified in three groups that refer to three different aspects of teachers’ perspectives: learning, teaching and interaction with students. As the research refers to academic environment, the findings can apply to ESP teachers as well. Thus further on we shall list the characteristics as recognized by Fink and will determine them more specifically considering the ESP particularities.
2.1 LEARNING
-Intense desire to continue learning: Bein’s best teachers not only keep pace with the development of the discipline they teach, but they also continuously learn about teaching and the nature of human learning (Fink 2012, 7). In terms of ESP this means that the teachers should simultaneously keep pace with both ESP teaching news and the development of the discipline they teach in. (Very often one teacher teaches at different faculties which means he or she should stay tuned with the development of several disciplines in addition to ESP teaching in general.) In addition, this teachers have to be life-long learners in the field of teaching, constantly open to reexamination of their professional philosophy as they develop.
Our example: we have already wrote about the capacity of the ESP course to help both teachers and students to develop both personally and professionally by broadening their attitudes with respect to the subject of the science in question and the changing concepts of the nature of learning². Thus we have accepted the holistic perspective of education and we constantly explore the ways of application of humanistic methods in teaching.
-Used teacher evaluations to improve: they examined the results of their teaching throughout the course, examined students’ evaluations and tried to improve their teaching and the course, without automatically blaming the students. (Fink 2012, 8) In terms of ESP this is even more possible since the subject offers broader freedom regarding the students’ needs and preferences and can be adapted to the current situation.
Our example: asking the teacher what the use of this course was since it is taught only one or two semesters, usually during the first or the second year, a student made us re-think about the course and the course-book design. It motivated us to search for the possibilities of the course to enable students to develop competencies they will use during their life-time such as increasing their critical and creative thinking skills by the ESP course.
-Viewed their teaching as a part from larger context: they consider their teaching not as something isolated, but as part of the larger effort of the institution or the discipline they teach. This means that they are aware of the possible contribution they can give ‘to the collective effort to provide students with a high-quality educational experience”.(ibid) Teaching ESP is all about it! It is a subject that enlarges the competences of the students in different aspects: starting with the ability to communicate worldwide with experts and broaden the knowledge from the particular scientific field, up to acquiring competences like information processing, management and application that are gained during the ESP course as part of a particular discourse analysis.
Our example: the course offers the opportunity to develop students’ higher thinking skills, gain competences to understand and consequently represent the information of the particular science in English and expand their awareness of different aspects of approaching their science thus increasing their openness and ability to think outside-the-box!