Teaching and Learning

The Teacher Role

The teacher role consists of three main activities:

Managing the group, managing activities & managing the learning.

As the facilitator of learning, it is the job of the teacher to lead discussions, ask questions and engage learners.

They may also adopt roles such as:

The wanderer when working in large groups, the information centre, the commander & the absent 

friend (McCrorie, 2006).

To be a successful teacher you will need to be:

Organised, both in yourself and for the lessons/sessions, understand your subjects, be energetic and enthusiastic, varied teaching styles for different levels of students & have empathy with the learners.

Learning, Teaching & Assessment Cycle

Identifying needs

Find out the needs of the learner and the needs of the organisation.

Planning learning

What's the topic? What do the students need to learn? What do I want them to take away from the lesson? This is the critical part before the learning and making sure all the questions are answered.

Facilitating learning

This is the practical learning elements so the learning itself and making sure that everything is in working order to ensure learning is effective.

Assessing learning

After the learning has finished we can assess how the session went, if the goals were met and targets achieved. This can also be used to sum up how well a student or learner has done.

Evaluating learning

Evaluating is working out weather the whole process was a success and everyone's learning needs have been met and that the organisation has their needs met too. At this point we can work out the pros and cons and start the cycle again.

Honey & Mumford Learning Styles

Honey and Mumford are learning styles developed by Peter Honey and Alan Mumford. They identified four distinct learning styles/preferences: Activist, Theorist, Pragmatist and Reflector.

Activist

Activists learn by doing. They have an open minded approach and like to involve themselves in experiences.

e.g Group work, solving problems, puzzles

Theorist

Theorists like to understand the meaning/theory behind the actions. They prefer to use facts, analyse and use theories.

e.g Models, stories, graphs and information

Pragmatist

Pragmatists like to see how learning practice works in the real world, concepts that are abstract are hard to understand if they can't see a practical use. They like to try out new ideas.

e.g Discussion, case studies, time to think

Reflector

Reflectors learn by thinking and observing what they saw. They don't jump right in and prefer to take a step back, collecting information and taking time to process and work out information.

e.g observing activities, interviews, questionnaires.

There are various ways to go, all with the same outcome.

Constructivism, Cognitivism and Behaviourism 

Behaviorism

Behaviourism is the idea that learning occurs when a correct response is demonstrated after the specific stimulus of environment and responses

Cognitivism

With cognitivism, the learner adapts to the learning environment  and processing information leads to understanding and retention.

Constructivisim

Constructivism is the thought that we build our knowledge through our individual experiences of the world.

Good Practice Flipped Classroom Models

Flipped classroom is the idea of overturning the traditional method of teaching and lesson delivering to learners using internet or learning environments to teach lessons or prepare.

A good example of this for instance is to post a lecture online as a learner can watch this with no distractions and take notes at their own pace as they can pause and play.

Studies have shown us that this can decrease the fail rate in students who have access to such resources.

Students can mix classroom with online