The Future of Teacher-Learner Relationship in a Plugged Context: Case of EFL Teachers and LMD Graduate Students at the University of Oran

Abstract

Education is a fertile land for innovation and change. Technology, on its side, has always shown a deliberate potential to move language teaching and learning. Integral in the latter is the teacher-learner relationship. The entire study is about the importance of this relationship. It is also about the open paths for it, mainly within contexts that increasingly endorse tech-use. With that, teachers’ roles are expected to vary; thus, this work sheds light on how the use of online learning affects those roles. To fulfill the purpose of this work, data are gathered from a sample of 26 EFL teachers and 100 of their students at the University of Oran 2, Algeria. Questionnaires were conducted as well as interviews and classroom observation in the Department of English. This triad of instruments allowed for a corpus that fed the investigation. A breadth of attitudes and opinions pertaining to tech-use and the teacher-learner relationship were amassed. They showed that the teacher-learner rapport is fundamental, impactful, and valuable for the studied sample. In addition, respondents ‘subverted’, with their expressed views, the spread ‘fear’ and the thought that technology can replace teachers. For the majority of them, no machine can substitute good teachers, i.e. they stuck to face-to-face instruction (57.14%). 47.62% of them opted for blended learning whereas, surprisingly, none of them preferred online instruction. Based on those percentages, the work demonstrated that, for the investigated case, the future has two main paths instead of three: face-to-face and blended instruction. This also preserves teachers’ roles. The sample suggested many roles but the most notable one is the role of guiding. Within online learning environments, teachers will still be present to guide, supervise, and train students for online and auto-learning. As it has been found, teachers will keep doing their job in the best way they can. This study concludes that change touches methods, tools, means, and materials. The human aspect of teaching and learning will not be withdrawn. Ultimately, the teacher-learner relationship will be held important differently from what has been the custom though.