This blog is Part 3 of 3.
My goal is to unpack the concept of teaching for you, offering some different angles through which we can think about it.
I started this in Part 1, continued it in Part 2, and will draw it to a conclusion here.
At the end of Part 2, we had just finished considering the idea that teaching is all about assessing learning
Next, we’ll turn to more profound matters.
Opening Learners’ Eyes
If we have a good understanding of where our learners are at, we are in a better position to teach them.
If the opposite is true, we may find ourselves teaching lessons that rehash old ground with which learners are already familiar.
When looked at in an ideal sense, teaching and learning tend not to be concerned with this.
Rather, the aim is to open the learner’s eyes, helping them to see things that were previously obscured or, perhaps, not visible at all.
In Plato’s famous story, the philosopher uses the analogy of shadow figures dancing on the wall of a cave to illustrate the way in which what we think we see or know about the world may turn out to be other than it seems.
In Plato’s cave, the dancing figures are shadows created by the flames of the fire.
It is only when the teacher – philosopher in this case – intervenes, that the people watching the cave wall find themselves drawn outside, into the light.
Here, their eyes are opened, and the world appears to them, anew and afresh.
Forgive me for shortening and somewhat bastardising Plato’s intricate allegory about the nature of appearance and reality.
But this has been done with good intentions!
(Whether that alone is enough to warrant such changes is a discussion we can leave for another time.)
The imagery serves to neatly demonstrate how teaching can influence our learners’ perspective; the lenses through which they see the world.
Opening learners’ eyes means presenting them with information and ideas they would otherwise miss, come to find through more circuitous means, or by chance, if at all.
This ranges from the simple act of teaching new concepts like nuclear fusion or magnetism (depending on the age group) to the slightly more complex act of problematizing learners’ present understanding (such as when we revisit ideas or information learned at an earlier age) and through to the challenging of views or opinions via the provision of quite different ways of thinking, or the introduction of previously undiscovered problems.
In all these cases the aim is the same.
To develop learners’ minds by giving them new experiences.
This can be exciting and confusing.
It can be invigorating and challenging.
Some learners may resist it; others will embrace it, sometimes with great fervour.
Why not take this opportunity to think back to a time when a teacher or lecturer opened your eyes?
What was it like?
Try to think yourself into the frame of mind you had at the time.
How did it feel to have a new vista laid out in front of you?
Or to have a firmly held belief challenged?
Now, consider what your mind might be like if such an instance had never occurred.
If you had never experienced the contrasting perspective or if someone had never unlocked a door to another chamber of thought for you.
And now consider what else might be out there, waiting to be discovered.
And then think about how many opportunities you will have to give this experience to your learners through the lessons you teach.
Passing on Knowledge
Another way to think about teaching is a touch more prosaic than the enlightenment trope underpinning the idea of opening learners’ eyes.
Passing on knowledge can sound somewhat dry and uninspiring in comparison to the prospect of enhancing a learner’s understanding of what it means to be human or showing them for the first time how surface tension holds water together, seemingly miraculously, on the exterior of a leaf.
But we must always remember that knowledge is the bedrock upon which learning and development rests.
A learner who cannot recite their six times table cannot use this knowledge to make swift calculations further down the line.
And when we take ourselves right back to the first years of schooling, what do we find?
The very beginnings of knowledge transmission.
Beginnings upon which so much else rests: the first steps in reading and writing.
Language is a tool humans have developed.
It has been passed on through generations.
The alphabet is a set of arbitrary symbols that possess meaning because we credit them with meaning.
And where does this crediting come from?
We are not born with it.
It must be learned.
To illustrate the case, we can turn to an alternative set of symbols: здравствуйте.
You may know Russian and recognise the symbols as belonging to the Cyrillic script.
Or, like me, you may not.
(I used Google Translate to translate ‘hello’ into Russian.)
At this fairly advanced stage of our development – a stage when we can read a text like this and make sense of it – it is natural to take for granted the fact that everything we are able to do stems, initially, from the passing on of knowledge concerning the alphabet.
Without having first been given access to that knowledge, we would not have been able to take the next step, then the next and so on.
Thus, the transmission of knowledge is, arguably, what teaching is really all about.
If knowledge if not transmitted, it may wither and die.
This happens to languages as the last remaining speakers pass away.
(Wikipedia even has a list of endangered languages from around the world.)
But let us move away from these forebodings and turn back to something we mentioned earlier: the curriculum.
It is here that we find the most cogent proof for our suggestion that teaching centres on the transmission of knowledge.
When we create our lessons, we do so with the curriculum in mind.
Our aim is to teach learners the content of that curriculum over a sequence of sessions (which could last for multiple years).
In doing this, we find ourselves intimately involved with the transmission of knowledge.
The curriculum, that careful delineation of relevant content, represents a stock of accumulated knowledge deemed apt and appropriate for learners to learn at a given age, or in relation to a given qualification they are seeking to pursue.
It is from here that our lessons begin.
It is from here that we decide how we will transmit that which our culture has already established as being of value.
Acculturation
And so, we come to our last answer to the question ‘What is teaching all about?’
Acculturation.
The term has a few meanings.
Here, we are interested in its use to describe the process by which we adopt the behaviour patterns of our surrounding culture.
A similar term is socialisation, meaning to learn the norms and values of the culture in which we find ourselves.
Teaching, one could argue, involves the teacher helping their learners to become fully-fledged members of the society to which they both belong.
In doing this, they must introduce those learners to at least some of the norms and values necessary to achieve this, as well as the knowledge and understanding the society has deemed important and worthy of study.
Comparison will again allow us to see this point more clearly.
See if you can get hold of a curriculum from a different country (or from the past).
You can do this quickly by searching online.
Compare this to the curriculum you are or will be using.
Notice the overt content of the curricula and how this is similar in places and different in others.
Notice too how the implicit messages of the curricula diverge.
This is because they are underpinned by different norms and values, with these being closely associated with the prevailing trends, customs, traditions and beliefs in the society from which they come.
Certainly, there will be overlaps between the two curricula in these areas – but so too will there be differences.
This serves to show how teaching is in no small part about the acculturation or socialisation of learners who are slowly making their way from the safe and supportive confines of the family unit out into the wider world – a world they must appreciate and understand if they are to have the best chance of succeeding in it.
So what is teaching all about?
We find ourselves back where we began, faced by the question: What is teaching all about?
By now you will have seen that my presentation of a whole series of answers has been a way of giving a broader answer.
Namely, that teaching is about giving learners an opportunity to learn, but that this involves many different things on the teacher’s part; things described and explained above.
The purpose has not just been to introduce you to these different aspects, but to encourage you to reflect on your own experiences, assumptions and beliefs.
And to consider how these might change and develop as your training progresses.
I’ll finish with a few questions on which you might like to reflect, as well as a few short activities you can use to further interrogate your existing understanding of teaching.
Questions for Reflection
- What does teaching mean to you? Do you agree with the different answers I have set out? Would you add anything or take anything away?
- Can teaching get in the way of learning? Why?
- To what extent has your own schooling shaped your attitude to teaching and learning?
- Does a teacher have to be memorable to be good? Why?
Activities
- Make a list of the teachers who have had the biggest impact on you throughout your education. For each one, identify why they had an impact and what you can take away from this to inform your own practice.
- Rank the different answers I have given across the three blog posts to the question ‘What is teaching all about?’ from most to least important. Add in any other answers of your own you think I have missed. Then, consider why you have ranked them this way and what this might mean for your approach to teaching.
- Challenge yourself to re-order the answers so they are in a form with which you disagree. Try to develop a coherent argument explaining why someone else might choose to rank the answers in this way. Then, reflect on your original choices and assess whether you still stand by them.
