The Role of Attention in Teacher Education: A Factor in the Quality of European Schooling
Abstract
The text is an article of reflection aiming to examine causes of disproportions between the amount of effort undertaken by leading international institutions in the field of education and the quality of European school systems measured by the attainment of curricular goals. As worrying trends have been observed mainly at the classroom level, psychological rather than organizational factors need to be examined. It is hypothesized that current didactic problems should be explained by attention rather than motivation deficits. The paper, therefore, analyzes various types and aspects of attention, tendencies to misdirect it as well as ways of building and maintaining attention in order to counteract distraction, boredom and overstimulation of both teachers and learners. Suggestions are also formulated for pre- and in-service teacher education programs which are postulated to give more emphasis to the role of attention as well as to provide a toolkit of verbal and non-verbal strategies which may help language teachers to elicit and sustain learners’ attention without departing from the lesson scenario.
Keywords
quality; language learning; attention; distraction; coping strategies; teacher education
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