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"Train Your Brain- Learn How to Learn"
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Being a teacher could be rewarding or it could be upsetting. The teacher is the change-maker of the change-makers of the society. Teacher-student interaction has a long lasting (sometimes permanent) impact on the students. Teacher’s behavior towards the students leaves a permanent trace in their minds. The student can remember a teacher who changed his/her life in a positive way, who became a source of inspiration. On the other hand, the student might remember him/her as a source of depression, discouragement. The effective teacher let the student experience the wonderful joy of learning. He/she increases the students’ sense of love of learning, the thrill to study and the will to excel in future.
The teacher can mold the student's behavior to the positive and good end and the teacher can witness that the behavior is changing.
So, how to become an effective teacher?
There are certain “Don’ts” and “must follow approaches”. The effective teacher should not set rules for the class rather set up norms, i.e. ask the students to come up with statements what they should not do during the class-time and have that in written form signed by the students and the teacher as an agreement between the teacher and the students. A teacher “who never listens” to his/her students will ultimately fail. Similarly, a teacher “who always listens” to his/her students will also fail. The effective teacher should know when to listen and when to ignore the students. If a student argues without any reason during the class, the teacher must tell him/her to come right after the class for further discussion to make sure that the class time is not wasted.
Teacher-student relationship
It must not be too rigid or too loose. In too rigid case, the Professor does not try to build connections with the students. In too loose case, he/she takes student problems too personally, and shares too much personal information. A good rule of thumb is to make sure the teacher can maintain the role of a Professor in every situation.
The effective teacher shows kindness and enjoys teaching. He/she knows about students’ interests. He/she is empathetic (showing an ability to understand and share the feelings of another), reflective, compassionate, always positive, a builder of trust, friendly, and builds social capital through sharing and caring. He/she builds a secure, non-threatening learning environment. The effective teacher should never show his/her back during the class rather move forward and backward if needed. A teacher in higher education, should not follow pedagogy/directive, which is teacher centered. Pedagogy is the art and science of helping kids to learn, whereas andragogy is the art and science of helping adults learn. He/she should be learner centered/directed.
A great teacher inspires, brings out the hidden qualities of the students and inspires them to go a long way.
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”-William Arthur Ward.
Active learning
Now, let’s discuss about active learning. Active learning involves students in doing things and thinking about things they are doing. The teacher must activate the brain of the student. Even when asked a simple question “How are you today?” the brain comes into action to answer. The teacher must involve the student into finding the answer to a question. The teacher is co-learner and co-creator of knowledge. If he/she gives the solution at the very beginning, then there is no initiative from the student’s side to find it.
Maximize Utilizing the First Ten Minutes of Lecture
Researchers found that the amount of information retained by the students declines substantially after ten minutes (Thomas, J., 1972. The variation of memory with time for information appearing during a lecture. Studies in Adult Education, 4, 57-62.)
Traditional lecturing without engaging students thus fails here and in most of the cases, students prefer discussing over lecturing. It is not what the teacher covers (e.g. through lecturing), but what the students discover that matters most in learning. The students must discuss about the topic, write about it and relate it, thus they must make it part of themselves. They could be put into pairs as groups.
The effective teacher should know about the transactional analysis (TA). TA is a system of popular psychology assuming that one's behavior and social relationships reflect an interchange between parental (critical and nurturing), adult (rational), and childlike (intuitive and dependent) aspects of personality which was established early in his/her life. He/she should be rational (adult) dealing with the students and sometimes may be nurturing parent but should never be a rescuing parent (over helpful to the students). The transactional analysis knowledge will help the teacher to understand the behavior of the student.
The effective teacher should also know about Multiple Intelligences (MI) -
- Naturalist (nature smart)
- Musical (sound smart)
- Logical-mathematical (number/reasoning smart)
- Existential (life smart)
- Interpersonal (people smart)
- Bodily-kinesthetic (body smart)
- Linguistic (word smart)
- Intra-personal (self smart)
- Spatial (picture smart)
Course learning objectives should be turned into learning outcomes. Examples of Course learning objectives - Students will understand, Students will learn, etc. Examples of Course learning outcomes - Students will demonstrate knowledge about, Students will be able to use/apply etc.
Bloom’s taxonomy
The effective teacher should apply Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom's taxonomy is a classification system used to define and distinguish different levels of human cognition (understanding)—i.e., thinking, learning, and understanding.
In 1956, Bloom and his committee defined three categories of knowledge or ‘learning domains’ (‘domain’ = ‘category’ and taxonomy = classification):
- Cognitive domain (knowing)
- Affective domain (feeling)
- Psychomotor or kinaesthetic domain (doing)
- Ascending Order of Bloom’s taxonomy:
- Remember
- Recognizing
- Recalling
- Understand
- Interpreting
- Exemplifying
- Classifying
- Summarizing
- Inferring
- Comparing
- Explaining
- Apply
- Executing
- Implementing
- Analyze
- Differentiating
- Organizing
- Attributing
- Evaluate
- Checking
- Critiquing
- Create
- Generating
- Planning
- Producing
Similarly, the wording of the questions should be direct, e.g., rather than questioning “What is the difference between….” one should ask “Differentiate between…”.
Examples of Bloom’s words-
Level
Useful Verbs
Sample Question Stems
- Remember
Locate
Name
State
Describe
• What happened after...?
• How many...?
• Who was it that...?
• Can you name the...?
• Describe what happened at...?
2. Understanding
Conclude/ Summarize
Define in your own words
Illustrate/ Identify
- Can you write in your own words...?
- Can you write a brief outline...?
- What was the main idea...?
Generalize
Infer
Show
Use
• Could this have happened in...?
• From the information given, can you develop a set of instructions about...?
• Would this information be useful if you had a ...?
4. Analyzing
Distinguish
Select
Arrange
• How was this similar to...?
• What was the underlying theme of...?
• What do you see as other possible outcomes?
5. Evaluating
Assess
Justify
Judge
• Is there a better solution to...?
• Judge the value of...
• Can you defend your position about...?
• How would you have handled...?
6. Creating
Design
Compose
Plan
Hypothesize
Revise
• Can you design a ... to ...?
• Can you see a possible solution to...?
• What would happen if...?
• How many ways can you...?
• Can you create new and unusual uses for...?
Rubrics
Rubrics (scoring guides) are useful for grading or scoring. Rubrics can be implemented to give students a better understanding of what is being assessed, what criteria grades are based upon
Rubrics are scoring criteria that are:
- summative- provide information about a student's knowledge
- formative- provide information about a student's strengths and weaknesses
- evaluative- provide ways to create instruction that better fits each student's needs
- educative- provide students with an understanding of how they learn science
Rubrics and scoring guides offer several advantages for assessment:
• Student performance is improved by clearly showing them how their work is assessed.
• Students become better judges of the quality of their own work.
• Students have more informative feedback about their strengths and areas in need of improvement.
• Students become aware of the criteria to use in providing peer feedback.