Meta – Performative Awareness in Teacher Education

Teacher education talks endlessly about methods, planning, aims, staging, outcomes, materials, and technique.

But some of the most powerful things teachers do are still described in frustratingly vague terms:
good rapport
positive atmosphere
strong presence
supportive manner

What do these actually mean in practice?

Because learners do not only remember what teachers taught.
They remember what teacher behaviour seemed to communicate.

They remember the teacher who made mistakes feel dangerous.
The teacher who made them feel seen.
The teacher who rushed them, exposed them, ignored them, believed in them, calmed them, or made them want to try.

And that is where I think teacher education still has a serious blind spot.

We often know that classroom relationships matter.
We often know that confidence, safety, and recognition affect learning.
But we still do not have a precise enough professional language for identifying the behaviours through which those effects are created.

What do teachers actually do that learners experience as expansive — and what do they do that constricts them?

The answers are more concrete than we often admit.

Expansive behaviours include things like:

• welcoming mistakes
• responding calmly to difficulty
• listening attentively
• giving learners time
• making expectations clear
• creating space for contribution
• signalling warmth, trust, and belief

Constrictive behaviours include:

• harsh criticism
• vague instructions followed by blame
• public shaming
• threat-based control
• rigid domination of classroom space
• ignoring learner contributions
• pushing learners before they are ready

These are not small details.
They are not “soft skills.”
They are not decorative extras added to “real teaching.”

They are often the real teaching as learners experience it.

Because a teacher’s behaviour is always saying something.

A calm response to error says:
You are safe to try.

A dismissive response says:
Your contribution doesn’t matter.

A clear explanation says:
I want you to succeed.

A humiliating correction says:
This is not a safe place to fail.

That is why I’ve become increasingly interested in what I’m calling meta-performative awareness: a teacher’s ability to reflect on what their behaviour may be communicating, not just what they intended.

That means asking harder questions in teacher development:

Not just:
Did the activity work?

But:
What did my behaviour communicate in that moment?
Did I create safety or threat?
Did I invite agency or shut it down?
Did I signal recognition, or dismissal?

I think this matters enormously.

Because if teacher education cannot name these things clearly, it cannot help teachers develop them deliberately.

And if we keep hiding behind vague language like rapport and presence, we will keep missing some of the most identity-shaping dimensions of classroom life.

If this line of thinking speaks to you, join us in the Performative ELT Community, where we explore embodied, relational, and performative approaches to teaching and teacher development.

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