What does a range of nationalities in class bring to the teaching and learning experience?

I have argued elsewhere (see "Constructivist Learning" and "What is learner autonomy and how can it be fostered?") that knowledge does not belong to a teacher who is supposed to deliver it ad placitum; it is rather the result of social interaction and the meanings the teacher and the students construct together. This process is not a linear sequence of events but a dynamic phenomenon, whereby the teacher, who is more knowledgeable, is called upon to act, among other things, as a mediator, influencing and being influenced by the students, who happen to lack this knowledge. In reality, this process is far more complicated than it seems, as there are a host of factors that affect its outcomes, for example, learner abilities, the classroom environment, infrastructure, etc. Here, we will only examine the role of the teacher and his/her contribution to (language) learning. Of course, teachers in the real world come in all shapes and sizes, exhibiting a wide range of different personalities, beliefs and ways of thinking and working. Thus, we cannot hold that someone who uses methods and models of teaching that differ from the ones informed by research is necessarily a "bad teacher." After all, the present paper is a far cry from a list of injunctions or guidelines on effective teaching. Its main purpose is to draw our attention to a vast theoretical plane, of which language teaching is only a small part.

A constructivist view of education

Ernst von Glasersfeld, the "father" of constructivism, believes that education has two main purposes: to empower learners to think for themselves, and to promote in the next generation ways of thinking and acting that are deemed important by the present generation (Glasersfeld,1995). Moreover, in his view, constructivist learning is best put into practice by dint of presenting the learners with issues and concepts in the form of problems to be explored, rather than as factoids to be ingested and then regurgitated. To this end, the teacher's role is very important.