Implementation: frontal teaching

The teacher’s task is to initiate the learning process and then get out of the way.

John Warren

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Today we had a teaching session on implementation with a focus on frontal teaching. Our group Tree was responsible of presenting the topic of guiding groups and individuals in vocational and higher education.

If we take a look at the Finnish national core curriculum for basic education, for example, we won’t find the verb “to teach” (opettaa) or collocation “to teach the students to”  ..there. The prevalent verb we can find in regard to the learning process is “to guide students” (ohjata), and other verbs like “to support students” (tukea), “to help students” (auttaa). So we can consider that in the contemporary Finnish education the ‘teaching’ has been gradually substituted with ‘guiding’ and teachers are mostly seen in the classroom and outside of it as guides of the learning process, who promote and facilitate the learning process of the students rather than simply transmit knowledge. So technically in traditional terms our group was faced with a challenge of presenting the topic “How to teach groups and individuals”, which is the subject of the whole pedagogical science and 45 minutes would have not sufficed to cover even a small part of it. One of our group members came up with the idea that instead of trying to present theoretical information on such a vast topic, we could do it very practically and to actually GUIDE ‘our’ students in their learning process, basically show on practice what “guiding” means and how it could be done. We decided to go with the idea of doing a workshop on the topic of idea generation and how creative ideas get born in the process of close collaboration between individuals. The workshop was designed to incorporate individual exercise part, brainstorming, feedback session with discussion, written reflection on the and the final discussion. Therefore the aim was as well to incorporate various teaching / learning methods into the workshop. At the end of the workshop the idea was to disclose that what we as tutors have done within this workshop was guiding the participants through their learning process, originally designing, and then facilitating and supporting their idea search and learning.  And that is what is required from the teacher. At the end we presented the students with the general principles of how to make guiding learning more successful and effective.
For a teacher who does not yet have many years of experience every teaching s/he has to do is to certain extent nerve-wrecking. I came in today to teach with a feeling that it was going to be either success or complete failure. The biggest worry was that the participants will be reluctant to participate in our exercise and will dismiss it quickly without trying to engage in deeper and more creative thinking. The other concern was that they won’t listen attentively enough to one another and one of the main objectives of the workshop – idea generation in collaboration with others – will be lost. And main concern was that the students won’t see the connection between what we did and the topic we were to present due to the fact that we chose a different approach to presenting the topic today without concentrating on the theoretical material. However, everything went smoothly, and I was very happy with the level of the student’s engagement and did they have some creative ideas! It is astounding in how many ways we can actually use paper clips! I believe my husband would have appreciated to participate in this workshop a bit earlier and find out that one can use a paper clip as a wedding ring! A creative solution for the family budget.

I received a very nice feedback on the teaching from the session participants and I felt it was rather honest as they were actively learning and participating and there were no awkward moments in the session. If I were to change something in my teaching today is to maybe add the guiding questions to the written reflection, to disclose in a more detail what was meant by the ‘umbrella’ question. I presented the questions orally, but during the discussion I felt that it could’ve been rather helpful for the students. Also I would have probably shortened the reflection writing time from 10 to, say, 5 mins, which would allow students to both reflect personally and then would give more time to reflect in the group together during the final discussion. Points for development: more explicit and concise instructions, short, complete and to the point. Otherwise, I am quite satisfied with the process and outcome of my teaching today.

Owls presented today on the topic of personalized learning and how its different from individualized learning. The presentation used interesting digital tool for both presenting the material and practicing, writing our own feedback during the exercise stage. I personally discovered the new tool to use in the future myself, Flinga, and it was great to try it out. What I learned from owls presentation was that vocational education strives to design teaching and learning along the lines of personalised learning strategies, where the learning objectives are different for all the students, where teacher should use variety of didactic strategies to promote students’ potentiality, focus i not only on cognitive development of the students, but also ion their social skills and emotional world, with self-direction being the crucial skill to develop and apply in the learning process and where learners themselves participate in the construction of the curriculum.
What I really liked about owls’ session is also that we got to choose a teaching method and try to see how this particular method can be used in the context of personalized learning. This task really made me think of how standard methods for language teaching, such as roleplay, for example, can really be even more student centred, promote student creativity and autonomy. For instance, instead of me deciding on a roleplay task, designing the roleplay cards, I can give my students the power to choose topics more pertinent to their needs, come up with roles and then act them out, me giving the needed language input and feedback upon the completion of the task.

What I realized for myself in the process is that for the future personal endeavours its very important to allocate enough time if I want to use a digital tool that could be new to students, as it could be confusing for them to start using new software and, for example, in a classroom of say 20  students it could take a lot of time to get everyone on board and proceed with the task. Crucial thing also is that instructions must be explicit and followed by precise demonstration.

Bastu’s topic was group dynamics and the collaborative methods that can be used in teaching. Bastus introduced us to Belbin’s theory of team roles, the basic principle of which is that for a team to be successful it needs to consist of people with various behavioural and interpersonal characteristics who will play different roles in the team and then the collaboration will be successful. If most of the team members have the same weaknesses it will become the weakness of the team, and if the same strengths are dominant among the members, it could lead to power struggle and poor collaboration as well. We as teachers need to know our students as to assign the groups in our classrooms where the members’ personal characteristics and strengths will complement to the common effort of the group. Bastus also presented the different ways of grouping the individual for activities, random, instructor-generated, self-selected and mixed. In my opinion the teacher should choose the way to form the groups based on the specific context and the activity at hand. Sometimes the decision may be random, sometimes depending on the activity/projects grouping might be well thought through.

A very important insight that I got from the presentation is how crucial for the teacher is to know the group and the relationship among the students.  In our teaching situation we, teacher trainees, might not know everything what happens in other groups, but when we are teachers outside of our sessions we MUST do our best to know what is the relationship and the dynamics in the groups we are teaching, so that we don’t create awkward, uncomfortable and sometimes maybe even unethical classroom situations. This insight comes from the situation that one of our group members does not belong to the group anymore due to the conflict inside of the group which was resolved by him leaving, and presently he does not belong to any group. When the Bastu teacher started discussion of how our groups are working, have we had any conflicts and how we managed to resolve those conflicts , he was unaware that one of us does not belong to any group presently, and the situation was very uncomfortable for me to comment on in front of our former team member  and the one of “no comment” from that team member. Conclusion for real world practise: Know the students you’re teaching, know students’ relationships.

Overall conclusion: It was a very interesting and collaborative session. The main outtake:

•  Teacher is there to guide his/her students to and through their learning. Teacher is not transmitter, “giver” of knowledge, but he assists students’ idea creation and discoveries. To do so affectively he needs to know his students, encourage them, motivate and most importantly, in my opinion, CARE, truly and deeply, about the students and their success and achievements.
  
  
• Teacher’s objective must be to personalize the learning in his classroom, give students more autonomy in their learning, create the opportunities to develop cognitively, socially and emotionally. Teacher should wisely choose classroom teaching methods to meet this objective.
  
  
• Teacher should really know his students, know how they work together, can they work together? What students do work together with best possible outcomes and what personal characteristics, knowledge and experiences of the students can complement the best the desired achievement of the teams.

I’ve come to believe that passion is the core element that creates the good teaching. If a teacher is not truly passionate of what he does and his work with and for the students, good teaching or guiding won’t take place. But if a teacher is passionate about his subject and the work with the students, he might transmit his passion and enthusiasm to his students, with which they will be motivated and determined to make great discoveries along their leaning journeys.