p.19
“…there will be very few standardized practices that help students across the
board learn essential skills and knowledge. An approach that one students finds
particularly useful or congenial may well be profoundly unsettling and
confusing to the student sitting next to her.” (Brookfield, 2006)
Objective
In
the second chapter of The Skillful Teacher, Brookfield introduces three core
assumptions of skillful teaching. They are “(1) skillful teaching is whatever
helps student learn. (2) Skillful teachers adopt a critically reflective stance
towards their practice (3) the most important knowledge skillful teachers need
to do good work is a constant awareness of how students are experiencing their
learning and perceiving teachers’ actions”. The first assumption is
self-explanatory. In reality teacher’s choice that helps one student learn does
not necessarily help the other. To some degrees, our teaching styles are shaped
by our learning experience, advice from colleagues, professional standards and
models that guide us “what should work”. Brookfield (2006) then states that when
many colleges nowadays have adopted a virtual “open admission” policy, our
students are likely very diverse in their learning styles, learning abilities
and their readiness to learn. Standardized and replicable approaches rarely work
as ideals. All we can do is to extract useful information from these gold
rules, and apply them situationally in our classroom. This also asks for
accurate interpretation of the nature of diversity we face in the classroom.
Reflective
When
I started my current job, I intended to follow what the former instructor did
and mimic their approaches because of the fact that “it worked well”. Unfortunately
it wasn’t always successful. Some of the students are able to grasp the concept
from listening while the others are not linguistic learners who need visual
aids to illustrate. We have self-directed learners who will preview course
materials while others may come unprepared with little knowledge or interest of
what the lesson is for. I started to be skeptical that “they should all work”
could have been too optimistic. This quote answered my question – if any, there
will be very few universally effective practices that will help all students learn.
Every learner has their own learning style that should be considered at least
in some of the classroom activities. Besides the diversity in learners,
teachers have their own strengths and weakness, competencies and skill set.
Blind adoption of someone else’s instructional approach may not work in every
classroom.
Interpretative
Not
all students learn the same way. Gardner (1993)identified eight
intelligences: verbal-linguistic, logical mathematical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic,
musical-rhythmic, intrapersonal, interpersonal and environmental-naturalist. In
reality a large class could consist of even more than these eight learning
styles. Hence teachers are always faced with the challenge of adapting their
teaching styles to accommodate the variety of learning styles. While the net
generation “Millennials” are coming to college and universities, they have
added digital learning style to the already diverse learning style inventory.
These digital natives grew up with technology and then lived in a digital
world. They often have a short attention span for learning (Oblinger, 2005). They were described as "assertive,
self-reliant, and curious person who is enmeshed in an interactive
culture" (Tapscott, 1998). The awareness of the diversity of
learning styles in our classroom is our most prominent consideration before
implementing the right teaching strategies.
As
interpreted from the quote, there are very few practices that we can directly
use to solve all the problems. However we can always adapt effective approaches
to the suitable situation or modify an approach to fit into our teaching
styles. While learning styles provide insight of how learners perceive,
interact and respond to learning, teaching styles reflect the beliefs and
values that teachers hold about teaching – that do not often change in short
time being. After all we are the best of ourselves. We need to remind ourselves
not to teach in a way that we were taught before which is very likely with a
content-oriented approach with little student involvement but structured
activities (Brown, 2015).
We shall find a balance point where students’ learning preference matches
optimally with our teaching styles in order to maximize student’s motivation
and learning achievement. On the other hand learners are informed that it is
almost impossible to have the teacher teach exactly to their “taste”. Learners
need to become all-around learners by adapting their own learning styles and
learn to perceive knowledge in multiple ways.
Decisional:
Teaching
is highly situational by its nature. It depends on accurate classroom
observation, thoughtful consideration of leaner’s learning styles, learning
progress and regular evaluation of teaching and learning. In my future
practice, it is important to develop learning activities with different
learning styles and expectations. I will start from the learning outcomes that
need to be achieved, then take full consideration of the learning outcomes,
learning styles and my teaching styles in lesson plan. I will begin from asking
myself several questions: 1) do I know my students, their learning styles,
their preference, and their expectations? If not, design a pre-formative
questionnaire to acquire knowledge of the learners 2) How will I adapt and
accommodate their learning needs without compromising the learning outcomes?
Teaching
adaptively is both intellectual and technical (Corno, 2008).
In my future practice, as I respond to learners I should also read student’s
verbal and non-verbal signals to diagnose needs on the fly. It is important to
quickly assimilate any past experiences to seek ideas of adaption and fine
adjustment. I understand that not every attempt of accommodating multiple
learning styles can be successful. However thoughtful reflections upon teaching
practice will lead us closer to real skillful teaching in the future.
Bibliography
Brookfield, S. (2006). The Skillful Teacher: On
Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Brown, B. (2015). Teaching
style vs learning style, myth and realities. Retrieved from
http://www.cete.org/acve
Corno, L. (2008). On
teaching adaptively. Educational Psychologist, 43(3).
Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple
intelligence: the theory in practice. Basic Books.
Oblinger, D. (2005). Educating
the net generation. Retrieved from Educause:
http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen
Tapscott, D. (1998). Growing
up digital: the rise of the net generation. New York: McGraw-Hill.
