Rephrasing the teacher's role in the 21st century: Personal responsiveness and educational responsibility in a heterogeneous world

Abstract

AbstractThis paper argues that the mitigation of the normative pedagogy in the value heterogenous world has elicited the need to rephrase the teacher's role. While this study cannot reflect on all issues that have recently arisen, some core questions are addressed to examine the teacher-student relationship and highlight a few principles that teachers need to be aware of. This study links to previous works on responsive pedagogy, accepting the ambition to respond to individual needs but also discussing collective terms such as human freedom and cultural differences, which impact children's perspectives.Accordingly, this paper is an attempt to provide an interdisciplinary framework based on educational philosophy, psychological evidence, and ethnographic studies to discuss the conflict between individual and community interests, basic human needs, individual differences, and ethical issues arising from diverse cultural backgrounds, and some contemporary phenomena that have affected the operations of schools. As a result, following a critical review of the introduced concepts, this paper suggests considering some educational responsibilities that may improve teachers' practice in the 21st century.