Teaching Styles

Although there is no one “right way” to teach our students, we do determine how we will facilitate and what we believe are best practices for teaching based on how we view our students.  So, what do teaching and learning styles have to do with it?  Our personal teaching and learning styles influence the way we facilitate our courses although most of us adjust our styles depending on the instructional environment.

What has helped us develop our attitudes about learning and teaching?  How are our attitudes made evident in the way we teach?  Why do we teach the way we do?  Apart from the learning environment, the students, and our teaching styles, can we still accommodate the various learning styles of our students?

Have you ever had students in your class who seem to be uncomfortable, who demonstrate problems in learning, or who do not want to participate? Could it be that your teaching style has an impact on the students' ability to learn?  Although we don't realize it, we have a tendency to prefer a particular teaching style which may also reflect our own learning style.  If we limit our teaching to fit our own learning style, we may inadvertently alienate students with a different learning style. By recognizing our preferences in teaching and learning, we can work toward creating more effective learning opportunities for our students.

We all have preferences for how we teach and learn.  But based on the situation, these preferences can be modified and adapted to produce a better outcome.  It is important for you to understand your teaching style and how that may affect your students’ learning before you go into the classroom or begin an online class.  Furthermore, understanding your style will help you to adapt to the learning needs of your students.

How we were taught is often reflected in how we teach.  But no matter how engrained our preferences, they can be modified based on our teaching successes.  The successes influence our attitudes toward teaching and the methods we embrace when seeking information and attempting to identifying our personal skill level.  Just as with teachers, these methods also vary significantly among learners.  Luckily, just as teachers can adapt their teaching style, students can adapt their learning style.  Therefore, the first step is to identify both your teaching and learning styles.

eduTecher is a hub for exploring free web resources

eSchoolNews highlighted eduTeacher this week as its Site of the Week.

Created by Adam Bellow, director of educational technology for the College Board Schools, eduTecher.net is a no-cost resource for finding and sharing free web tools with educators and students around the world. The website includes short-and-sweet reviews of free web tools and resources, as well as video clips showing certain tools in action and explaining how teachers can integrate these into the classroom. The site recently has been revamped to allow for more social media interaction. 

“We’re not only creating a more social environment that’s conducive to sharing tips, ideas, and resources among our users, but also … inviting every user to ‘Become an eduTecher,’” Bellow says. “You can now save favorite links, capture private notes, create your very own educational blog, and connect with like-minded colleagues to form a personal learning network, with whom you can share messages, your lists of favorites, have a live chat, and more. This new approach lets eduTecher users explore, share, and contribute to educational technology in a whole new way.” 

Teaching Philosophy 2011

This week I ask my EDU 271 students to develop their philosophy of teaching. Therefore, I decided to post my philosophy as well. In looking back over the documents that I have developed over the years, I realize that my philosophy has been an ever-changing document--incorporating new ideas and experiences as I create new understandings of how we learn and my role in that process.

First of all, I am a facilitator, a coach, a guide, a co-learner.  I embrace teaching as an opportunity to inspire and empower. In my view, teaching is not about instructing or imparting information to students as if their minds were waiting to be filled with my knowledge. Rather, teaching is igniting transformative learning; empowering students to take responsibility for their learning, inspiring courage to grow intellectually, cultivating curiosity, providing opportunities for developing relationships, clarifying values, uplifting the spirit and igniting action.  Ideally, I want students to feel personally changed by their participation in a course. Transformative learning is most likely to occur when students become personally engaged with the material and perceive the subject matter to be directly relevant to their own lives. Learning, then, is experiential. 

Furthermore, the student should be the focus—not the teacher.  While the process of reading examples and completing exercises in textbooks and from handouts is valuable, the real learning comes through the student’s own efforts at solving problems.  Learning is also a social endeavor; therefore, I facilitate learning through group work and student-led discussions; problem-solving through student inquiries and debate; writing through peer review; and computer literacy through research and discussions board participation. 

Generally, I believe the role of a teacher is to be a facilitator. We should work to be flexible, adapting our approaches according to the needs of the learners, the subject matter, and the setting. Teaching is a process of encouraging students to make connections between their experiences and the subject matter. We must work to create bridges between the classroom and the world because learning has not actually occurred until the student makes a connection between prior knowledge and new knowledge—understands a reason for remembering the data. As teachers, we should enable our students to become responsible for their own learning. We should vary our teaching styles and should expect students to participate in a mixture of lecture, discussion, and collaborative activities.

I believe that teachers and students must be part of the constantly changing technological landscape. I believe that we should not only teach with technology but about technology as well, providing students with the skills to critically evaluate how they use and access technology. To do so, technology must be carefully integrated and should complement the course goals, objectives, and content matter. Online interactions and Web 2.0 tools allow our students not only to interact more with the instructor and with one another, but also to become active participants in a community larger than the classroom itself.  Technology allows us to create more authentic learning environments and assessments.

It is crucial that teachers recognize the power inherent in their role and are self-reflective about their actions. In my teaching, I work to be mindful of my position as a role model of the kind of learning I strive to promote among students. Transformative learning is a reciprocally educative endeavor—informative and uplifting for teachers and students alike. It is about “opening hearts and minds...” and changing lives for all those involved in the process.