There may not be standardized golden rules in teaching....

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.