The Role of the Teacher in the Teaching-Learning Process - Assignment Example

Mboa M. Vincent

Alice Wambui NGUNJU

GEM5101: Fundamentals of Pedagogy

14 July 2020

CAT 1 and 2

QUESTION ONE

Critically evaluate the role of the Teacher in the teaching learning process (15 Marks)

Learning is brought about through the art of teaching, or rather, through a teaching process – which is the arrangement of environment within which students or pupils can interact and study how to learn. As a result, the process of teaching learning becomes the central process in learning whose primary aims may include imparting skills and formation of the learners’ attitudes, values, and behaviors, and most importantly, it is through this teaching learning process that knowledge is transmitted from the teacher to the students. Consequently, it is not a secret that teachers play a critical role in the lives of their learners in a teaching learning process (or in their classrooms). In Kenya, just like many parts of the world, teachers are best known for the incomparable role that they play in educating the students who have been placed under their care. However, this does not mean that educating students is the only solemn role that teachers play in teaching learning processes, they also play a series of other critical roles which may include but not limited to setting the tone of their classrooms, building conducive environments for learning to take place, mentoring and nurturing students, becoming role models to their students, play a lead role in setting the tone of their classrooms, and guiding students in conducting research. The following is the discussion that briefly extrapolates on each of these roles of teachers in the teaching learning process:

• Teaching Knowledge

There is no secret that teaching knowledge, in a classroom setup, to students is one of the most common roles that professional teachers play. In order for teachers to play this role in a more effective manner, they must adhere to curriculum guidelines that are provided so that they can ensure that they meet the required criteria that is used to teach and test learners. In other words, teachers are given a curriculum which they must follow or adhere to meet the stipulated guidelines of teaching at any given level. Consequently, by following this particular curriculum throughout the academic year or calendar, teachers ensure that all pertinent knowledge – on any given subject, has been dispensed to the learners accordingly and comprehensively. Teachers can achieve this benevolent goal by using various ways/methods during teaching learning processes such as assigning students small group activities, through classroom lectures, hands-on learning activities, and so forth.

• Mentoring and nurturing students

Professional teachers are highly blessed individuals and many students rely on them to mold their behaviors and characters. This is mainly so because learners are directly affected by the manner in which teachers interact with them during a teaching learning processes: socially and academically. As a result, mentoring becomes a very natural role that is taken by teachers – regardless of whether they do it intentionally or not. It is, therefore, because of this reason that the way teachers conduct themselves in the classroom can either have a positive or negative impact on learners. Mentoring is simply referred to a manner in which teachers encourage their students or learners to put more effort in doing whatever they can to become the best versions of themselves in the future. However, mentoring is limitless on its scope since it can as well reflect the teachers’ efforts in trying to encourage students to enjoy learning during a teaching learning process. Moreover, teacher-student interaction during a teaching learning process resonates well with the kind of mentorship roles that teachers play when it comes to listening to their students. In fact, by just listening to your students, as a teacher, you can impart to students the sense of ownership in a classroom. In turn, this aspect can build and boost the learners’ confidence and even motivate them to start participating more in the teaching learning process.

• Role Modeling

Professional teachers commonly refer themselves as role models to their students/pupils. However, from a pedagogical concept of teaching-learning process, they are actually role models to those students who have been placed under their care. For the fact that learners spend a great amount of time with their teachers means that the teachers assume the roles of role modeling to these children. However, depending on the teacher, this role can positively or negatively impact the learners. As such, considering that teachers are not only supposed to teach the students, they are also expected to be loving and caring for these children. Therefore, for this reason, teachers are highly reputable persons in the community and therefore they are regarded as role models to the students and their parents.

• Creating conducive environment for classroom learning

When it comes to creating a conducive environment for students to learn, it is the role of the teacher to ensure that everything is set for the teaching learning process. In other words, during a teaching learning process, teachers assume the role of classroom managers. And considering that students often mimic the actions that are done by the teacher, it is more likely that what a teacher does during this process impacts their learning experience in one way or another. For instance, when a teacher prepares a happy and friendly environment for learning, students are more likely to enjoy the learning process and even participate in it. Similarly, if a teacher creates a boring learning environment, learners are more unlikely to respond and even participate in class. For example, if/when the students realize that the teacher is angry or ill-prepared for the class, they are more likely to react negatively to the learning process; hence, impairing the teaching learning process. Therefore, knowing that these are the likely outcomes of the students’ social behaviors in class, teachers play a critical role in taming the social behaviors amongst their students. Social behavior is an ideal reflection of the actions of the teacher and how he or she sets an environment of learning. Therefore, depending on the teacher’s preparation mood for the teaching learning environment, it can yield a positive or a negative impact to the learners.

• Facilitating research learning or process

Research is one of the most fundamental aspects of learning, especially in higher education. Therefore, when it comes to teaching learning process, teachers inadvertently assume the roles of research facilitators whereby they guide their students on how to conduct research by teaching them and equipping them with relevant research skills and techniques.

QUESTION TWO

Using relevant examples, analyze various classroom tests administered to learners

in the teaching learning process, showing their advantages and disadvantages. (15 Marks)

In any teaching learning process, tests are an irreplaceable aspect of studying and learning. Testing is necessary in classrooms because it provides an insightful information on assessing what the students know or don’t know. And this kind of information is key for a number of reasons and(or) purposes such as for the purposes of grading the students, for the purposes of pinpointing the kind of individual attention each learner needs when it comes to grasping a particular subject or content, and so on. Furthermore, another benevolent reason for testing the learners and their learning in the teaching learning process is helpful to the teachers because it guides them on how they should shape their teaching learning methodologies to address the needs of each student. There are various types of tests that can be conducted in the classroom during a teaching learning process which may include but not limited to essay tests, oral tests, matching tests, short answer tests, true-false tests, multiple-choice tests, and performance tests. The following discussion explains these types of tests that can be administered during a teaching learning processes and some of their advantages and disadvantages.

• Essay tests

In a teaching learning process, there are a myriad of testing ways through which students can engage with their teachers and vice versa. And one of the traditional ways of testing students in a teaching learning process is through essay tests where learners are given assignments/questions that assess their capabilities to interpret various objectives of a given learning material(s), collect or sort materials, and even prepare learning conclusions of that given task or assignment. Essay tests are types of tests that gives students the freedom to freely express their understanding on a particular question through an in-depth writing of ideas and responses. For example, if a teacher is teaching on topic X, he or she may decide to ask the students to do research on that topic and prepare an essay on the same – something that gives freedom to learners to come up with new perspectives and thoughts on that topic.

Advantages of essay tests:

• Essay tests allows learners to express their thoughts and ideas in a more open manner without any restrictions – something that gives room to new thoughts and diverse perspectives on a given topic or subject amongst learners; hence, enhancing teaching learning process.
• In an essay format, there is no correct answer since the learners are allowed to express themselves on a particular topic.

Disadvantages of essay tests:

• In a usual classroom setup of teaching learning process, essay tests are time consuming not only to learners but also to teachers. For instance, students can spend a whole lot of time trying to answer a question or two. Similarly, a teacher may need to devote a lot of time reading lengthy responses on a particular topic or concept.
• Oral tests

At most times, teachers prefer using written tests as the primary form of testing on a given topic or topics. However, oral exam is one of the greatest ways of testing teachers can use to assess their students’ conceptual framework and learning during a teaching learning process. One of the greatest advantages of this kind of test is that when a teacher asks his or her students about a particular concept during an ongoing teaching learning process and the students give their feedbacks, it gives a teacher a chance to expound and correct the learners’ ideas and feedbacks. This kind of interactions makes the teaching learning process enjoyable and effective as the learners feel the ownership of the classroom. However, more often than not, these kinds of tests are disadvantageous to shy learners who can neither ask questions in class nor respond to a particular question with confidence – even though they have understood the concept.

• Matching tests

In a teaching learning process, teachers, at most times, want to assess to what level their learners have understood various concepts such as relations between events and places, times and events, and so forth. Therefore, in such kinds of situations, teachers use matching tests to assess if their students have grasped the concepts, they have been taught in class by giving them matching questions to respond to during a teaching learning process. The following are some of the advantages of using matching tests in a classroom:

• Matching questions are great ways of testing the learners, especially those who have lower reading levels in the classroom.
• Considering that that this type of test has “clues” and “matches,” it minimizes guess work amongst the learners; thus, giving them confidence to participate more in the teaching learning process.
• Another advantage of matching tests is that teachers can use it to cover a large amount of content in a teaching learning process.

Nonetheless, however effective they may be, matching tests are also synonymous to a number of disadvantages when it comes to teaching learning process such as;

• Creating matching tests takes a significant amount of time in the sense that teachers can take a lot of time to create questions/tests.
• Also, students may find it exhaustive and disengaging to spend a lot time doing match tests especially if there are too many matches.
• Multiple-choice tests

In a classroom setup, during a teaching learning process, multiple-choice tests are some of the most common forms of tests that many teachers prefer giving to their learners. Through these tests, teachers not only get a chance to understand the levels of understanding of each of their students but it also helps them to gauge/measure how well the students have understood complex concepts on a particular topic during the teaching learning process. Notably, considering that all the possible answers are given in multiple-choice tests, students take very little time to carry out their calculations and devise an answer to that particular question. Consequently, these multiple-choice tests are usually designed to be the checkpoints of the learners’ ability and readiness in answering specific question(s).

Advantages of multiple-choice tests:

• One of the greatest advantages of multiple-choice tests is that well-written questions can help the students to improve their critical thinking abilities. In other words, these tests can move learners to higher-order thinking capabilities such as how to apply various concepts, how to integrate information, and even how to evaluate what they are being taught during the teaching learning process.
• Multiple-choice tests are less influenced by guesswork as compared to true-false tests.

Disadvantages of multiple-choice tests:

• The most serious disadvantage is the limited types of knowledge that can be assessed by multiple choice tests.
• Coming up or developing good questions can be time consuming during a teaching learning process.
• The test results can portray biasness in teaching learning process because they seem to favor reading savvy students or those learners who have high test-wise abilities as compared to the others.
• Performance tests

In a teaching learning process, teachers can assess the students’ expertise in particular objectives or experiments through performance testing. In these performance tests, learners are given a specified timeframe to conduct an experiment or exercise in which they are expected to execute them with maximum proficiency. For instance, learners can be given a math question and asked to calculate the answer within 5 minutes and the teacher can go round marking their answers.

Advantages of performance tests:

• These tests help the teachers to measure specific abilities among the learners, for example, students with mechanical abilities can be discovered via this kind of testing.
• Performance tests are generally suitable tests of testing learners, especially pre-school children, during a teaching learning process because at that level, these children have not begun reading or writing.

Disadvantages of performance tests:

• One of the most critical concern about performance testing is that these tests neither measures the learner’s reasoning abilities, judgement nor imagination powers or abilities. In other words, performance tests do not meet the Binet’s testing criteria.
• Another disadvantage of performance testing is that most of these tests are not suitable for higher levels of teaching learning processes because they don’t require above-average levels of thinking.

• Mentoring and nurturing students

Professional teachers are highly blessed individuals and many students rely on them to mold their behaviors and characters. This is mainly so because learners are directly affected by the manner in which teachers interact with them during a teaching learning processes: socially and academically. As a result, mentoring becomes a very natural role that is taken by teachers – regardless of whether they do it intentionally or not. It is, therefore, because of this reason that the way teachers conduct themselves in the classroom can either have a positive or negative impact on learners. Mentoring is simply referred to a manner in which teachers encourage their students or learners to put more effort in doing whatever they can to become the best versions of themselves in the future. However, mentoring is limitless on its scope since it can as well reflect the teachers’ efforts in trying to encourage students to enjoy learning during a teaching learning process. Moreover, teacher-student interaction during a teaching learning process resonates well with the kind of mentorship roles that teachers play when it comes to listening to their students. In fact, by just listening to your students, as a teacher, you can impart to students the sense of ownership in a classroom. In turn, this aspect can build and boost the learners’ confidence and even motivate them to start participating more in the teaching learning process.

• Role Modeling

Professional teachers commonly refer themselves as role models to their students/pupils. However, from a pedagogical concept of teaching-learning process, they are actually role models to those students who have been placed under their care. For the fact that learners spend a great amount of time with their teachers means that the teachers assume the roles of role modeling to these children. However, depending on the teacher, this role can positively or negatively impact the learners. As such, considering that teachers are not only supposed to teach the students, they are also expected to be loving and caring for these children. Therefore, for this reason, teachers are highly reputable persons in the community and therefore they are regarded as role models to the students and their parents.

• Creating conducive environment for classroom learning

When it comes to creating a conducive environment for students to learn, it is the role of the teacher to ensure that everything is set for the teaching learning process. In other words, during a teaching learning process, teachers assume the role of classroom managers. And considering that students often mimic the actions that are done by the teacher, it is more likely that what a teacher does during this process impacts their learning experience in one way or another. For instance, when a teacher prepares a happy and friendly environment for learning, students are more likely to enjoy the learning process and even participate in it. Similarly, if a teacher creates a boring learning environment, learners are more unlikely to respond and even participate in class. For example, if/when the students realize that the teacher is angry or ill-prepared for the class, they are more likely to react negatively to the learning process; hence, impairing the teaching learning process. Therefore, knowing that these are the likely outcomes of the students’ social behaviors in class, teachers play a critical role in taming the social behaviors amongst their students. Social behavior is an ideal reflection of the actions of the teacher and how he or she sets an environment of learning. Therefore, depending on the teacher’s preparation mood for the teaching learning environment, it can yield a positive or a negative impact to the learners. Read More