The
first approach, the teacher as executive, views the teacher as a manager of
complex classroom processes, a person charged with bringing about certain outcomes
with students through using the best skills and techniques available. Carefully
developed curriculum materials and methods of teaching backed by research are very
important to this approach. They provide the teacher with techniques and
understandings to use in the management of the classroom and the production of learning.
Jim Barnes probably was using this approach.
The
facilitator approach is the second of the three approaches. It places a high
value on what students bring to the classroom setting. It places considerable emphasis
on making use of students’ prior experience. The facilitative teacher is
typically an empathetic person who believes in helping individuals grow
personally and reach a high level of self-actualization and self-understanding.
Humanistic psychology, learning theory, and existential philosophy are some of
the fields of scholarship that underwrite thisview.1 Nancy Kwong exemplifies
this approach.
The
liberationist approach, the third and final approach, views the teacher as one
who frees and opens the mind of the learner, initiating himor her into human
ways of knowing and assisting the learner in becoming a well-rounded,
knowledgeable, and moral human being. The classical idea of a liberal education
underwrites the mainstream version of this approach. Roberto Umbras appears to
be engaged in this approach. Although there is much to learn about these
different approaches to teaching, it is, of course, possible to teach without
thinking about one’s approach. Just as one can be a lover or a parent without
giving much thought to the meaning of love or the responsibilities of
parenting, one can teach without engaging in deep reflection on the nature and
purpose of the activity. But we believe that teachers become professionals only
when they reflection and choose a stance toward their calling that guides and
sustains them in the important work of educating persons. We also believe that,
in this instance, knowledge is power. Possessing an understanding of different approaches
to teaching provides you with a basis for reflection on and appraisal of your
work. Even more rewarding, it gives you the power to choose ways to teach that
will help you achieve one of the noblest goals to which human beings can
aspire: assisting the young in becoming thoughtful, competent, and caring
adults. The amazing-glasses metaphor captures well the use of the three
approaches as ways to study and reflect on teaching. However, to bring the three
approaches closer to home, we also treat them as if they were styles of teaching
for you to try on. Our purpose here is twofold. First, to provide you with a
means with which to analyze and reflect upon the teachers you observe, and
second, to provide you with an opportunity to ponder a style of teaching that
seems right for you. This dual use means that you will sometimes find us using
the three approaches as devices for analyzing the activities of teaching and
other times treating the approaches as teaching styles that you might adopt as
your own.
Even
though the three approaches are not, in each and every respect, completely
separable from one another, we present them in ways designed to highlight the
differences between them. As will become evident, the three approaches share
quite a few features, despite their differences. In the following three
chapters we will present the approaches by highlighting the maximum contrast
between them. The book concludes with a chapter devoted entirely to cases and
disputes. As you complete your reading of each chapter, we urge you to make extensive
use of these cases and disputes to stimulate and focus your thinking about
important issues and applications of the three approaches. For example, the
case”Go Fly a Kite“
Will
you please turn to it now, so that you have an idea of what we are talking
about?
As
you will see from your reading of the “Go Fly a Kite” case, the cases are a
very important means for you to dig more deeply into the ideas behind each of
the three approaches as well as to discover where you stand relative to the
different approaches. Thinking them through before discussing them with fellow
students will assist you in sorting through your own points of view;
subsequently, discussing them with fellow students will enlarge both your
understanding and your perspective.
The
Common Framework: MAKER
Before
we turn to examining each of the three approaches in depth, it will prove
helpful to have a means to compare and contrast the different approaches. What
we are calling the MAKER framework serves this purpose. This framework consists
of the five core elements of teaching. They are Method, Awareness
of students, Knowledge of the content, Ends that describe the
purposes and ideals for teaching, and the Relationship that exists between
the teacher and students. These five elements are common to all teaching. No
matter what level you teach, or where and how you do so, your work can be
described using these five elements. As a guide to memory, we have arranged the
first letter of these elements to form the acronym MAKER
Each
of the three approaches to teaching—executive, facilitator, liberationist— has
its own MAKER profile. That is, each approach has its own variation on two or
more of the five elements. It is worth our while to spend a few moments
exploring each of the five elements.
The
first element, Method (M), pertains to the skills and techniques teachers
use to assist students in gaining the knowledge, understanding, and skill that
teachers intend their students to achieve. Included within this dimension are
such things as how lessons are planned, how the classroom is organized, how
tasks and duties are devised and assigned to various students, how new material
is structured and conveyed and old material refreshed, how student work is
judged, and how these judgments are communicated to students and to their
parents. You may have noticed that the dominant word in this list of examples
is how. For the most part, Method
pertains
to how you teach (the fourth element, Ends, pertains to why you teach as
you do, but more on that in a moment). Awareness (A) is the second in
the framework of common elements. It is quite straightforward, for it refers to
what the teacher knows about his or her students, including such things as
their interests, talents, and concerns; their personal histories and family
backgrounds; and their performance in previous years of schooling. Awareness,
in this context, is not about “real time” awareness, such as when a teacher becomes
aware that a student is about to do something he or she should not do.
Awareness as we use it here refers to what and how much the teacher knows about
the students. The third element, Knowledge (K), covers what a teacher
knows about how well does she know science? How firm is her grasp of the
important concepts, theories, and facts? Is she comfortable with the methods of
inquiry that are common to the various disciplines within the sciences? Is her understanding
of the subject matter sufficiently deep that she can explain it using metaphors
and analogies that make the content more accessible to students without distorting
its integrity and validity? Ends (E), the fourth element, are the
purposes a teacher has for his teaching and for his students. Ends are revealed
in the answers to such questions as the following: What do you want your
students to know and be able to do? What are you trying to accomplish as a
teacher? What are your ideal educational aims? Although all five of the MAKER elements
can be slippery to interpret, Ends is perhaps the trickiest. That is because we
often draw a distinction between the ends of education and the ends of schooling.
Did that last sentence cause you to pause, wondering what we could possibly
mean by distinguishing schooling from education? The difference between the two
becomes increasingly important as we move from executive to facilitator to
liberationist.
In
this book, when we write of the ends of education, we refer to the grand and
noble ideals that we seek for the children and youth who attend the nation’s
schools. These ends should be distinguished from two other phenomena with which
they are often confused. The first of these are the goals of schooling, which
are the specific outcomes we hope schooling will accomplish. The second are the
actual consequences of schooling, which may or may not be congruent with either
the goals or the ends. This three-way distinction may seem a bit confusing at
first, but it is well worth your while to master it. Ends are the high ideals
we hold for the education of the young; goals are the specific outcomes we hope
the young will attain as a result of their schooling; consequences are the
actual results obtained from the experience of schooling. As an example, a
community might hold ends that include the cultivation of critical thinking,
moral rectitude, and exemplary citizenship. It may set as the goals of
schooling learning to read, write, problem solve, and master bodies of
knowledge from different subject areas. The consequences of schooling—what
children actually take away from the experience—may be considerably different from
either the ends or the goals.
The
importance of the distinction between ends, goals, and consequences is that
they can nestle harmoniously with one another or they can be in opposition to
one another. The desired state of affairs, of course, is to have all three
aligned with one another, such that they are mutually reinforcing.
Such
a state of affairs is far from easy to obtain, as our exploration of the
various approaches to teaching will make clear. Unfortunately, it seems that it
is more often the case that the ends, goals, and consequences work against one
another. As we examine the various approaches, we will illustrate how this
tension arises and what would be required to resolve it. The fifth and last
element, Relationships (R), covers the kind of connection that teachers
forge with their students. Do you, for example, believe that student mastery of
subject matter is the paramount consideration and that this mastery is best
obtained by your remaining somewhat aloof from students’ personal interests and
concerns? Perhaps, by contrast, you believe that you cannot be the teacher you
want to be without becoming a friend and caring guide to your students. From
yet another perspective, you might have the sense that to succeed with your
students, you will need to “get inside their heads” to see how they think and
respond, so that you can better assist them to become powerful critical
thinkers and moral deliberators.
Each
of these represents a different way to develop relationships with your
students, ways that you will find featured in the different approaches to
teaching.
Using
MAKER with the Approaches
As
each approach is presented, you will see that some elements are prominent features
of one approach while other elements are less so. The elements are like
dominant and recessive genes: Some are dominant in one approach to teaching but
recessive in another approach. If you happen to play bridge, you can think of
the elements as suits in the deck, with some being trump in one approach but
not in another. For example, M and K are dominant in the
executive approach, while A and R are dominant in the facilitator
approach. It is our hope that this way of comparing the approaches will deepen
your understanding of them. One last thought before we turn to the executive
approach: Another value of the MAKER framework is that all the elements are
under your control. For example, you make the decision of how thorough your
understanding of Method will be; you also decide on the various skills and
techniques you will employ in the classroom. You have the option to decide how
Aware you will become of the life experiences and character of your students
and how this understanding will affect your teaching. You have control over how
thoroughly prepared you will be in the subjects you teach, and how you will
represent your Knowledge to your students. You have considerable freedom to
adopt Ends for your teaching, and to pursue them in your classroom. Finally,
the kind of Relationship you have with your students and how this Relationship
complements or detracts from your efforts is very much up to you.
Think
of MAKER not only as a framework for comparing and contrasting approaches to
teaching, but also as domains of expertise, such that the more knowledgeable
and proficient you become in any domain, the better teacher you are likely to
be. The three approaches to teaching presented here offer different
perspectives on what elements or domains are crucially important to good
teaching and on why it is important for you to master these elements. Approach Mismatch.” Doing so will give you a
chance to examine your own predispositions toward the different approaches as
well as help you see how a teacher’s approach to teaching might conflict with
school policy and cause problems. We hope you will also get the sense that
doing serious thinking about the different approaches is not just an academic
exercise; it is crucial to helping you become the kind of teacher we are sure
you want to be.
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