When we mystify presence, we make teacher development less accessible

A lesson can be well planned, well staged and well resourced — and still fall apart.

Every teacher educator will recognise the moment when…

The trainee teacher stands in front of the class. The aims are clear. The materials are appropriate. The procedure looks sound on paper. Nothing in the lesson plan raises major alarm bells.

But once the lesson begins, something shifts.

A learner hesitates and is corrected too quickly. She withdraws. Another learner offers an idea, but the teacher misses it. The teacher pushes on with the plan, but the atmosphere has changed. The class becomes restless, or quiet, or compliant in that flat way teachers recognise immediately.

No major methodological principle has been broken.

And yet the lesson begins to unravel.

Afterwards, the teacher educator faces a familiar difficulty: what do we actually say?

We may write comments such as:

“Build more rapport.”

“Create a warmer atmosphere.”

“Involve the learners more.”

“Respond more naturally.”

“Be more confident.”

“Manage the group more sensitively.”

These comments may all be true. But they are also frustratingly vague.

What exactly does the teacher need to do differently?

The problem with vague feedback

Teacher education is very good at helping teachers think about what to do.

We train teachers to plan lessons, stage activities, analyse language, give instructions, monitor, correct errors, manage feedback and design tasks. These are essential professional skills.

But teaching is not experienced by learners as a sequence of procedures.

It is experienced through interaction.

Learners respond not only to the teacher’s explanation or the activity on the worksheet. They respond to tone, timing, eye contact, facial expression, movement, silence, hesitation, warmth, firmness and responsiveness.

They are constantly reading the human signals in the room.

Am I safe here?

Am I seen?

Can I risk an answer?

Will I be embarrassed if I get it wrong?

Does this teacher believe I am capable?

These questions may never be spoken aloud, but they shape participation, confidence and learning.

And yet this performative dimension of teaching is the hardest to unpack.

We assess it, but do we teach it?

Teacher education does not ignore classroom relationships. Of course it doesn’t.

Observation criteria often refer to rapport, atmosphere, learner involvement, sensitive correction, clear instructions, monitoring, responsiveness and knowing when to intervene or stand back.

But these qualities are often described broadly. They identify desirable outcomes, but not always the specific real-time behaviours that create or weaken those outcomes.

We can say:

“The teacher established good rapport.”

But what created that rapport?

We can say:

“The learners were not fully engaged.”

But how did the teacher’s pacing, positioning, gesture, tone or response to uncertainty contribute to that?

We can say:

“The teacher needs to be more confident.”

But confidence is not a very helpful development target unless we can break it down into observable choices.

Did the teacher speak too quickly?

Did they fill every silence?

Did they over-explain?

Did they avoid eye contact?

Did they miss learner contributions?

Did they move nervously around the room?

Did they correct in a way that closed participation down?

Without this level of detail, feedback can begin to sound less like professional guidance and more like a judgement on personality.

The danger of “natural presence”

This is where teacher education can unintentionally become unfair.

Some teachers are described as “naturals”.

Some teachers “have presence”.

Some teachers “command the room”.

Some teachers “just connect”.

There may be truth in these descriptions, but they are not enough.

When we talk like this, we risk turning teachable skills into mysterious personal qualities. We make presence sound like something you either have or do not have.

This is a problem.

It praises some teachers without explaining what they are doing.

It leaves others feeling that the issue is who they are, rather than what they can learn to do.

And it allows teacher education to assess something it has not fully learned how to develop.

Presence is not simply charisma.

Rapport is not simply chemistry.

Engagement is not only a matter of activity design.

These are partly created through skilled, embodied, relational action.

Towards a more precise language

What we need is not a new checklist of teacher behaviours.

Teaching is too complex for that. Learners interpret teachers differently. Classrooms are shaped by culture, context, history, identity and emotion. A gesture that feels warm to one learner may feel intrusive to another. Silence may create thinking space in one moment and anxiety in another.

But complexity should not make us abandon this area to intuition.

If rapport matters, we need to ask what creates it.

If engagement matters, we need to ask how teachers invite it, protect it or unintentionally close it down.

If atmosphere matters, we need to look at the teacher behaviours that shape the emotional climate of the room.

We need a more precise language for the lived, relational and embodied dimension of teaching.

This is where the idea of performative skills becomes useful.

Not performance in the sense of acting.

Not entertainment.

Not theatrical display.

But performance in the sense that teaching is enacted. It happens through voice, body, timing, space, attention, responsiveness and presence.

Teaching is not only planned.

It is performed into being.

Why this matters

The issue is not whether rapport, presence and engagement matter. Teacher educators already know they do.

The real question is whether we are willing to treat them as developable professional skills.

Because if we continue to describe this dimension of teaching through vague labels, we leave too much to chance.

We tell teachers to be warmer, more confident, more responsive or more engaging, but we do not always show them how.

We assess the atmosphere they create, but we do not always help them understand how they created it.

We praise presence when we see it, but we too often mystify it.

And when we mystify presence, we make teacher development less accessible.

Perhaps some teachers do not simply “have presence”.

Perhaps they have developed skills we have not yet properly named.

If these questions interest you, you are warmly invited to join the free Performative ELT Community, where we explore the embodied, relational and performative dimensions of teaching in more depth. The community is a space for teachers, teacher educators and researchers who want to think beyond technique and ask how teaching is actually experienced by learners. You can join here: Performative ELT Community

And perhaps one of the unfinished tasks of teacher education is to bring those skills into view.