The Changing Face of TESOLJack C. Richards

My work as a teacher educator, academic, and textbook author, working inseveral different continents and a dozen different countries over the past 30
years or so, has, provided me with a fascinating and rewarding career. It hasenabled me to work with teachers and teacher educators in places like China,
Brazil, Oman, Singapore, Indonesia, Mexico, and Hawaii and provided
opportunities to witness and participate in many different aspects of the worldwide profession of English language teaching.
Over the past 30 years I have had the privilege of getting to know and work withsome of the heroes and leaders in our profession. Here I would like to pay a
special tribute to one such hero, James Alatis, whose efforts and vision lead tothe establishment of the TESOL organization, and who early in my career offered
me important guidance and encouragement. The friendship I have enjoyed with
Jim and his wife Penny has been much treasured over many years.
As a university-based teacher educator for most of my career, I have beenprivileged to be part of a community of professionals who have been involved
both in developing as well as delivering the academic knowledge-base of our
profession. Part of this process involves subjecting our professional beliefs andpractices to ongoing critical self-examination and renewal. For at conventions likethis one, we are reminded that we belong to a field that is very receptive to new
ideas and practices. We have seen this when new ideologies such as criticalpedagogy or learner-centredness become sanctioned by the profession, wheninnovations such as task-based instruction or blended learning become
fashionable or dominant, or by responses to new technology such as when thepotential of the World Wide Web catches the imagination of teachers. Part of mytalk today will focus on some of the changes that our profession is undergoing asa result of what can be called internal self-renewal.
However as well as changes in our professional understandings and practices thatare internally motivated, by which I mean that they arise from research, fromparadigm shifts within the profession, or as a result of the contributions of some1

of our influential thinkers and leaders, there are also other important external
factors that impact on our work as teachers and teacher educators. These reflect
the changing status of English in the lives of many people around the world.
For in recent years there has been a dramatic change in the scope of English
language teaching world wide and consequently, growing demands on thosecharged with providing an adequate response to the impact of the world-wide
spread of English. Increasingly an English-proficient work force in many key
sectors of the economy as well as the ability to access the educational, technical,
and knowledge resources that English provides, are seen as essential features ofcontemporary societies. But the demand for competent English users, as well as
adequately prepared English teachers, often exceeds the supply.
It is this gap between demand and supply that provides the motivation forendless cycles of curriculum review and innovation in many parts of the world. In
those countries that do well in terms of the English language learning stakes, thisoften involves merely fine tuning national language teaching policies andpractices, which is what the Council of Europe’s Common European Frameworkseems to be about. In other parts of the world, however, more drastic measures
are often needed, including increasing the time allocated to English in public
education, commencing the teaching of English at primary school, teaching someschool subjects through English, importing native-speakers to work alongsidenational teachers in high schools, or increasing the weighting given to English in
University Entrance exams. And there is also a demand by national educational
authorities in many places for new language teaching policies, for greater central
control over teaching and teacher education, and for standards and other formsof accountability.
Then there are pressures from within the language teaching field, as theprofession continually reinvents itself through the impact of new ideas, neweducational philosophies, and new research paradigms, and teachers are
expected to keep up with the changes.
I would like to use the opportunity offered here to reflect a little on some of thesechanges and how they are redefining the nature of our profession and our work
as teacher educators and teachers. I will comment first on some of the internallygenerated changes I referred to above, before looking at the impact of external
factors.

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SOME CHANGES FROM WITHIN
Situated conceptions of teaching
Our understanding of what we mean by good teaching and what teachers need toknow in order to teach well, has changed considerably over the years. One reason
for this is because we have come to recognize that conceptions of good teachingdiffer from culture to culture. In some cultures the conventional view of a goodteacher is one who controls and directs learners and who maintains a respectful
distance between the teacher and the learners. Teaching is a transmission
process and learners are the recipients of the teacher’s expertise. In othercultures, the teacher is viewed more as a facilitator. The ability to form closeinterpersonal relations with students is highly valued. There is a strong emphasis
on individual learner creativity and independent learning is encouraged. Students
may even be encouraged to question and challenge what the teacher says.
Look at these quotations from teachers around the world and note how theyreflect different views of what a good teacher is:
When I present a reading text to the class, the students expect me to go throughit word by word and explain every point of vocabulary or grammar. They would
be uncomfortable if I left it for them to work it out on their own or if I asked them
just to try to understand the main ideas. (Egyptian EFL teacher).
If a student doesn’t succeed, it is my fault for not presenting the materials clearlyenough. If a student doesn’t understand something I must find a way to present
it more clearly. (Taiwanese EFL teacher).
If I do group work or open-ended communicative activities, the students andother colleagues will feel that I’m not really teaching them. They will feel that I
didn’t have anything really planned for the lesson and that I’m just filling in time.
(Japanese EFL teacher).
The way a person teaches and his or her view of what good teaching is will
therefore reflect his or her cultural background and personal history, as well as
the context in which he or she is working, and the kind of students in his or herclass. For this reason teaching is sometimes said to be “situated” and can only beunderstood within a particular context. This creates a particular dilemma formany English teachers, who are sometimes positioned between cultures withdifferent values and expectations.

3For example, here is a comment by an Australian student studying Chinese in
China and reacting to the Chinese approach to teaching:
The trouble with Chinese teachers is that they’ve never done any real teachertraining courses so they don’t know how to teach. All they do is follow the book.
They never give us any opportunity to talk. How in the world do they expect us tolearn?
Compare this with the comments of a Chinese student studying in Australia:
Australian teachers are very friendly but they can’t teach very well. I never know
where they’re going – there’s no system and I just get lost. Also, they’re oftenvery badly trained and don’t have a thorough grasp of their subject.
Sociocultural theories of teaching hence refer to teaching as “situated social
practice” – practice that is shaped by the context in which it occurs.
A changing knowledge base
There have traditionally been two strands within TESOL – one focussing onclassroom teaching skills and pedagogic issues, and the other focussing on what
has been perceived as the academic underpinnings of classroom skills, namely
knowledge about language and language learning. The relationship between thetwo has often been problematic. These two strands provide what has come to be
the established core curriculum of TESOL training programs, particularly at thegraduate level, where course work on topics such as language analysis, discourse
analysis, phonology, curriculum development, and methodology is standard. The
language-based courses provided the academic content, and the methodology
courses show teachers how to apply such knowledge in their teaching. An
unquestioned assumption was that such knowledge informs teachers’ classroom
practices. Recent research however shows that teachers in fact are often unable
to apply such knowledge in their classrooms and that teachers draw on othersources of knowledge in the classroom. Despite knowing the theory and principles
associated with Communicative Language Teaching for example, in their own
teaching teachers are often seen to make use of more traditional activities intheir classrooms. Donald Freeman and others have raised the issue of therelevance of the traditional knowledge base of language teaching, observing, “Theknowledge-base is largely drawn from other disciplines, and not from the work ofteaching itself”. Responding to this charge, innovative teacher education
programs now seek to expand the knowledge base of language teaching toinclude the processes of teaching and teacher-learning itself, and the beliefs,
theories and teacher knowledge which informs teaching. Rather than the MA
course being a survey of issues in applied linguistics drawing from the traditional4

disciplinary sources, course work in areas such as reflective teaching, narrativeinquiry, classroom research, and action research are now included as parts of thecore curriculum in such programs.
From designer-methods to teacher-designed methods
Those of you who have been in this profession for a while will remember not so
far back when Communicative Language Teaching came to replace
Audiolingualism and when novel methods as Total Physical Response, The Silent
Way, and Counseling Learning proposed new approaches to teaching that would
revitalize language learning. Thirty years or more later, while Communicative
Language Teaching is still alive, though in different forms, many of the “novel”
methods of the 1970s have largely disappeared. And so to a large extent has thequestion that attracted so much interest at that time: “What is the best method
to teach a second or foreign language?” We are now in what has been termed thepost methods era.
Many of the more innovative methods of recent years have had a fairly short
shelf-life. Because they were linked to very specific claims and to prescribedpractices they tended to fall out of favor as these practices became unfashionable
or discredited. One of the strongest criticisms of the “new methods” was thatthey were typically “top-down”. Teachers had to accept on faith the claims ortheory underlying the method and apply them in their own practice. Good
teaching was regarded as correct use of the method and its prescribed principles
and techniques. What is called the “post methods” era has thus lead to a focus on
the processes of learning and teaching rather than ascribing a central role tomethods as the key to successful teaching. As language teaching moved awayfrom a search for the perfect method, attention shifted to how teachers could
develop their own personalized teaching methods. These reflect core principles
derived from subject-knowledge, contextual knowledge, experience, and theirown personal theories, values and beliefs.
Changed understanding of the nature of teacher education
As commentators (e.g. Freeman) on the history of our profession have pointed
out, such as TESOL in the form that we know it today dates from the 1960s,
when specific approaches to teacher training for language teachers began. The
discipline of applied linguistics dates from the same period, and with it came abody of specialized academic knowledge and theory that provided the foundationof the new discipline. At the same time we began to distinguish between “teacher

5training” and “teacher development”, the former being identified with entry-level
teaching skills linked to a specific teaching context, and the latter to the longerterm development of the individual teacher over time. Qualifications in teacher
training such as the RSA Certificate were typically offered by teacher training
colleges or by organizations such as the British Council. Teacher development on
the other hand meant mastering the discipline of applied linguistics. Qualificationsin teacher development, typically the MA degree, were offered by universities,
where the practical skills of language teaching were often undervalued.
But in recent years just as the field of second language acquisition brought about
a rethinking of our understanding of the nature of second language learning, thenature of teacher-development or “teacher-learning” as it is now referred to, hasbeen subject to the same kind of scrutiny and theorizing. While traditional viewsof teacher-learning often viewed the teachers’ task as the application of theory topractice, more recent views see teacher-learning as both the acquisition ofknowledge, as well as the theorization of practice, in other words, making visible
the nature of practitioner knowledge and providing the means by which suchknowledge can be elaborated, understood and reviewed. Transmission modes ofteaching are replaced with various forms of dialogic and collaborative inquiry.
Learning is seen to emerge through socialization into the professional thinking
and practices of a community of practice.

CHANGES FROM THE OUTSIDE
While the kinds of changes I have described above reflect the healthy state of our
profession and the impact of influences from research, applied linguistics,
curriculum theory, and teacher education, there are other sources of change that
affect our work. These reflect the unique status of English in today’s world.
Changes in the status of English
When I entered this profession we tended to assume that teaching English was apolitically neutral activity and that it would bring untold blessings to those who
succeeded in learning it. English was regarded as the property of the Englishspeaking world, particularly Britain and the US. Native-speakers of the language,
particularly those with blond hair and blue eyes, had special insights and superior
knowledge about teaching it. And it was above all the vehicle for the expressionof a rich and advanced culture or cultures, whose literary artifacts had universal
value.

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This picture has changed somewhat today. Now that English is the language ofglobalization, international communication, commerce and trade, the media andpopular culture, different motivations for learning it come into play. English is nolonger viewed as the property of the English-speaking world but is aninternational commodity sometimes referred to as World English or English as an
International Language. The cultural values of Britain and the US are often seen
as irrelevant to language teaching, except in situations where the learner has apragmatic need for such information. The language teacher need no longer be an
expert on British and American culture and a literature specialist as well. English
is still promoted as a tool that will assist with educational and economic
advancement but is viewed in many parts of the world as one that can beacquired without any of the cultural trappings that once went with it.
Changed goals for learning English
One of the implications I draw from the new status of English as an international
language is a rethinking of what our goals should be in English teaching. If
English is taught as a practical tool, to function as one part of the learner’s overall
communicative repertoire, traditional formulations of desired outcomes –targeting an advanced level of language learning that mimics the competency ofthe native speaker - may be unnecessary and is largely unattainable in mostcircumstances anyway. Rather, most learners in EFL contexts need to beequipped with a type of language proficiency that enables them to deal with bothprofessional and real-life situations, that gives them a command of thinking andproblem-solving skills in English that can be achieved with an upper-intermediatelevel of language proficiency. A different kind of proficiency in English is needed,
one which will help employees to advance in international companies and improvetheir technical knowledge and skills. It also provides a foundation for what havebeen called “process skills” – those problem-solving and critical-thinking skills
that are needed to cope with the rapidly changing environment of the workplace,
one where English plays an increasingly important role. Although considerable
skill in language use is required, native-speaker proficiency is neither anattainable, nor in most cases, a necessary goal, a fact that the developers of theCommon European Framework, seemed to have missed.
New Englishes
In the past, the target for learning was assumed to be a native-speaker variety ofEnglish and it was the native speaker’s culture, perceptions, and speech thatwere crucial in setting goals for English teaching. The native speaker had a7

privileged status. Today local varieties of English such as Filipino English andSingapore English are firmly established, and even in contexts where English is aforeign language there is less of a pressure to turn foreign-language speakers ofEnglish (e.g. Koreans, Mexicans, or Germans) into mimics of native-speaker
English, be it an American, British, or Australian variety. The extent to which alearner seeks to speak with a native-like accent and sets this as his or her goal, isa personal one. It is not necessary to try to eradicate the phonological influencesof the mother tongue nor to seek to speak like a native speaker since thespeaker’s accent often serves as a valued marker of cultural identity.
Off-shore English
At the same time the notion of English as an international language also has
implications for how native-speakers speak English. Those of us who use English
daily as an international language need to develop the ability to use a type ofEnglish that makes use of high frequency vocabulary, that avoids colloquialisms,vague language, and obscure syntax. In Europe meetings of the European Union
are increasingly carried on in English, since it is argued that English is thelanguage that excludes the fewest people present. However it comes at a cost,
since according to a recent report in the Economist, “native-English-speakers arenotoriously hard for colleagues in Brussels to understand: they talk too fast anduse obscure idioms”.
So when dealing with global business, native speakers are often at a
disadvantage when it comes to brokering deals in their mother-tongue. And somelanguage schools are now offering courses in “offshore English” to help CEOs
looking to clean up their language when working abroad. Offshore English (likeBasic English of the 1930s) consists of 1500 or so of the most common English
words and a syntax that is stripped of unnecessary complexity and vagueness.
And in classes in offshore English, native speakers are taught to speak “coreEnglish”, to avoid idioms, (e.g. to say “make every effort” instead of “pull out all
the stops”), and to use latin-based words like “obtain” instead of those withGermanic roots such as “get”.
Organizational and management views of teaching
In the last decade or so language teaching has also been influenced by concepts
and practices from the corporate world. Schools are increasingly viewed ashaving similar characteristics to other kinds of complex organizations in terms oforganizational activities and processes, as systems involving inputs, processes,

8and outputs. Teaching is embedded within an organizational and administrative
context and influenced by organizational constraints and processes.
This management-based or industrial view of education has brought into
language teaching concepts and practices from the commercial world, with anemphasis on planning, efficiency, communication processes, targets andstandards, staff development, learning outcomes and competencies, quality
assurance, strategic planning, performance appraisal, and best practice. We havethus seen a movement away from an obsession with pedagogical processes to afocus on organizational systems and processes and their contribution to
successful language programs.
Learning moves beyond the classroom
In the not too distant past, teaching was viewed rather narrowly as a selfcontained activity that didn’t need to look much beyond itself. Improvements inteaching would come about through fine-tuning methods, course design,materials and tests. And for years we focussed particularly on methods as thedriving force of teaching and learning.
But it has taken us a while to realize that while good teaching is no less important
than it ever was, today’s learners are not as dependent on classroom-basedlearning and teaching as they used to be. Have you ever wondered why young
people in the northern European countries such as Sweden and Finland speak
English so well when they leave school, and why students in countries like Spain,
Italy, Korea and Japan of the same age have such difficulties with English? It isn’t
because the teaching is much better in some parts of Europe. Talk to young
people from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland and they typically tell youthat they learned most of their English from the media, from watching TV
programs and movies in English. But the important fact about the media in thesecountries is that foreign movies are not usually dubbed: subtitles in the mothertongue are provided, giving students a bilingual mode of developing theircomprehension and to some extent, their oral skills, something which doesn’t
happen in those countries like Spain, Italy and Japan, where English learning ismuch less successful. Movies and other English-language based visual media
there are always dubbed and students go through the educational system rarely
encountering a word of English outside of their English lessons.

9And if this source of informal out of school language learning is so effective,
imagine how much more effective learning is becoming when students encountera major part of their exposure to English not in classrooms but in chat rooms,
face books, blogs, e-mails, and the countless other sources of real English
students can access today. And this is why students in many countries today aredemanding that their teachers and course books prepare them for the kinds ofEnglish they encounter outside of the classroom, in the media and the internet
and elsewhere. So the challenge for us is how to make the most of the newopportunities that the internet, new technology, the media, and blended learning
offer.
The demand for accountability
The scope of English teaching world-wide has also created a demand for greater
accountability in language teaching practices. Accountability seeks to answer suchquestions as “What constitutes a quality English language program in terms of its
curriculum, the teaching methods that it gives rise to, and the kinds of teachersthat the program depends upon? What knowledge, skills and competencies do theteachers in such programs need?” These kinds of questions are very difficult toanswer since there are no widely-accepted definitions of concepts of “quality” inlanguage teaching and likewise there is no internationally recognized specificationof English language teacher competencies, though local specifications of essential
teacher competencies have been produced in many countries and by a number ofprofessional organizations. The current approach of course to the issue ofaccountability is through the identification of standards for language programsand through specification of indicators of best practice for language schools. At
the same time traditional English language syllabuses at state and national levelare increasingly being replaced by banks of competencies that spell out thedetails of what students are expected to learn and teachers expected to teach, as
we find in the “can do” statements of the Common European Framework. Thishas been criticized as a reductionist approach to educational planning, and isanother dimension to the industrialization of language teaching that I referred toearlier.

LOOKING FORWARD
When we attend conferences like these we often leave with a sense of
excitement, energized by new understandings of the field and keen to apply someof what we have learned to our own teaching contexts. The determination to do10the best for their students and to continually fine tune their teaching in order tobring about better levels of learning in their learners are common characteristics
of English teachers world wide. Most are always willing to take on board new
ideas and to look for opportunities to bring about change.
Some observers of the status of English language teaching today would like tobypass the role of our profession in shaping educational change and attributepressure from outside the profession as the engine that is driving the majorchanges that are occurring in language teaching in many parts of the world. They
point to the emergence of a quasi- industrial, corporate, or political response towhat is sometimes termed called “the English problem”. And it is true thatsometimes when planners are looking for solutions to the language teachingproblem, they don’t turn always to us for guidance. So, for example, when the
Malaysian government recently decided that Malaysia’s economic future as aregional centre was in decline and that better English language proficiency on thepart of school leavers was needed, they decided to switch to using English for theteaching of math and science, starting from primary school. They didn’t ask the
ESL profession to come up with a solution to the problem but announced thepolicy change first. The language teaching profession then had to respond with
programs to support the change. Similarly in Hong Kong when educational
planners were concerned that high school leavers’ poor listening skills would be ahandicap when they entered English-medium universities, they didn’t approach
specialists in the teaching of listening, for suggestions. They simply increased theweighting given to listening comprehension in the school leaving examinations,leaving the washback effect to take care of the rest.
Competency-based instruction provides another example. In many countries
governments have adopted a competency-based framework across thecurriculum, because it is the favoured model for the provision of vocation andtechnical training world-wide, because it provides a useful framework forplanning and assessment, and so, it is argued, it should be used for English
courses as well. In countries like Australia, this meant that language programs for
immigrants and new arrivals, which had been planned around a learner-centred
framework to much acclaim from the language teaching profession in the1980s,
had to be redesigned around a competency framework in the late 1990s in
response to government policy. Teachers and schools then had to rethink theirapproaches to teaching and assessment.

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On the other hand, optimists like myself like to point out that while we may feel
we have little control over some of the events that create our professional
challenges, the TESOL profession itself IS making a difference, indeed, it ismaking a huge contribution to helping our learners achieve their goals. Let meconclude by citing just a few examples.
Raising the language proficiency of non-native English teachers
Most of the world’s English teachers are non-native speakers of English, andtheir proficiency level in English is an important factor in their competence as
language teachers. Apart from the contribution to teaching skills that English
language proficiency makes, research has also shown that an English teacher’s
confidence is also dependent upon his or her own level of language proficiency, so
a teacher who perceives herself to be weak in English will have reduced
confidence in her teaching ability and an inadequate sense of professional
legitimacy. This may be why research into what non-native English teachersconsider to be their most pressing needs for professional development generally
rank very highly the need for further language training.
One solution is to ignore the problem and bring in “native speakers” to help theteacher, as happens in Japan and Korea, where untrained graduates in any
subject area can work in high schools alongside the national teachers to assist
with the conversation classes. I haven’t seen any evidence of the long term
success of this strategy. And it does nothing to foster improvement in the English
language proficiency of the national teachers.
A more successful strategy in many countries however has been to invest in
raising the English proficiency levels of English teachers, either through offeringteachers chances to take courses like the Cambridge First Certificate or throughhiring teachers with better levels of English. This factor alone is having a major
impact on standards of English teaching in many parts of the world. In the past in
countries like Mexico and in many parts of south America, to learn English fromteachers with a good command of English, students had to enrol in private
institutes, taking extra courses after school. And so a parallel educational systemdeveloped to provide such courses. Nowadays however, the standard of English
teaching available in public schools is much higher, resulting in declining numbersof students feeling the need for extra English classes in private institutes.

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Newer standards for textbooks and learning resources
Another response to the expanding demand for English courses has been adramatic expansion in both the scope and quality of textbooks and other teaching
resources. I see this as reflecting the sophisticated levels of knowledge,
professional training, and expectations of today’s language teaching professionals
as well as in the higher standards demanded by their students. Whereas in thepast textbooks tended to be based on academic fashions, to reflect the culture
and methodology of origin, to be geared mainly to native-speaker teachers, tocontain extensive use of both artificial texts and tasks, and to provide models ofstandard or prestige native-speaker English, teachers today demand much moreof textbooks. And as a result of pressure from teachers and students, current
textbooks provide a much richer resource for students and learners, have astronger focus on international and indigenous cultures, expose students toexamples of authentic world Englishes, provide support for both trained andnovice teachers as well as those for whom English is not a native language, anddraw on multimedia and the internet as sources for classroom as well as
independent learning. And the fact that English teachers are achieving higher
levels of attainment in their learners is evidenced by the fact that in many
countries, demand for low level materials is declining, while there is an expanding
demand for intermediate and upper-intermediate textbooks and resources.
Raising the professional standards required of English teachers
Another message that the profession has communicated to the market has been
the need to raise the professional standards of English teachers. English language
teaching today is seen as a career in a field of educational specialization, it
requires a specialized knowledge base obtained through both academic study andpractical experience, and it is a field of work where membership is based on entry
requirements and standards. The professionalism of English teaching is seen in
the growth industry devoted to providing language teachers with professional
training and qualifications, in continuous attempts to develop standards forEnglish language teaching and for English language teachers, to the proliferationof professional journals and teacher magazines, conferences and professionalorganizations, and to the expanded knowledge base required of English teachers.
The focus on professionalism may mean different things in different places. In
some it may mean acquiring new qualifications. The Mexican Ministry ofeducation for example is currently language teacher-education course for some
150,000 English tea hers working in the State sector. When in the Sultanate of13

Oman, a decision was made to start teaching English at primary school, aprogram was set in place in conjunction with Leeds university, to provide every
primary school English teacher in the country with a B.Ed TESOL degree. For
teachers new to the profession there are now a wide range of possibilities forteachers to pursue professional development. And teachers don’t need muchencouragement to avail themselves of the opportunity. In some countries I havevisited recently, the demand for the TKT test far exceeds the number of places
available on TKT courses. Countries differ of course in the support they provide
for professional development. Few countries can probably match Singapore,
however, where teachers can take up to 100 hours of professional development
courses a year.
There has also been a growth in a more personal approach to professionalism, inwhich teachers engage in reflection on their own values, beliefs, and practices.
The current literature on professional development for language teachers
promotes a wide variety of procedures through which teachers can engage incritical and reflective review of their own practices , e.g. through self-monitoring,
analysing critical incidents, teacher support groups, book study groups, andaction research.
And so...
Despite the pressures of the market place and the workplace, our profession iswell geared to respond to the kinds of changes I have referred to here. Today’s
English teachers are better prepared than ever before, the teaching resources
available to us are providing new environments for teaching that were notavailable to us just a few years ago, and the professional support provided
through our schools and professional organizations enables us to learn fromparticipation in a worldwide community of teachers. And technology is offering
exciting new opportunities for teacher development too. Technology is providing
new dimensions to campus-based teaching (for example using internet-based
resources) as well as for distance teaching through on-line learning. These newforms of delivery allow for the development of teacher-networks that crossregional and national boundaries, establishing globalized communities of teachers
who can bring their own cultural, social, professional and personal experiences
into the teacher learning process.

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These are good times to be an English teacher or a teacher educator. I wish I
could have the opportunity to do it all again, but starting from where we are now
rather than from the state of the profession when I first entered it. At
conferences like these we are reminded of the dynamic nature of our profession,a profession that is engaged in ongoing reinvention as it seeks to respond to theneeds of today’s teachers and learners. And while my perspective has beensomewhat backward-focussed, reflecting on the kinds of changes that I havewitnessed during my career, looking forward I can only imagine that the pace ofchange will be much faster and somewhat less predictable. But that is going to beanother story. Thank you for listening to my story. And I look forward to hearing
your stories in the years ahead.

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