Teacher Professional Development in the Era of Hermes

Abstract

The cooperative development discourse framework ( Edge, 2002) has traditionally been used to help individuals-who-teach explore and improve their teaching practice by speaking openly and nondefensively to one of their colleagues, who will refrain from judging and evaluating them. This article presents the rewards of establishing such a nonjudgemental exchange, this time, for the people acting as attentive listeners (i.e., the Understanders, in the framework's terminology). While engaging in cooperative development, Understanders are presented with the opportunity to develop a critical consciousness (Freire, 1973) of themselves as individuals-who-teach and to sharpen their ability to suspend their values, beliefs, and assumptions regarding the English language teaching world, as part of the process of learning to handle otherness'' in a respectful and empathetic way.