Structural Preparation for Teaching - Essay Example

Preparing to teach 2005 Groups are viewed as a powerful means of learning, which can be an environment in which people invent and explore symbolic structures for understanding the world, learning from each other; or they can encourage conformity, squander time and energy on ritual combat, revel in failure. (Knights, 1993). There are three types of groups which affiliate with the following kinds of knowledge: instrumental (scientific, cause-and-effect information), communicative (mutual understanding and social knowledge) and emancipatory (increased self-awareness and transformation of experience). (Brown G., & Atkins, M., 1988) First of all, I'd like to emphasize that activities in class much depend on planning, that's why it's so important to make all the necessary preparations for teaching to provide a strong and authoritative background for good educational results. The information provided was gathered with the help of analyzing quantitative and qualitative data of questionnaires and test results provided for students at the beginning and in the end of teaching process to study the results of teaching methods and their impact on group learning. Preparing for teaching a teacher needs to determine the group size. Generally, the shorter the task the smaller must be the group (those of six or less), but for better cooperating process the optimum number of people is from eight up to twelve, where there is a possibility to work in pairs and in groups of three. There is also a task for the instructor to select the group. Groups selected by the researchers tend to perform much better than the self-selected groups. Heterogeneous groups are generally better. The length of teaching process depends on the specific collaborative learning activity, but there is a need of time for a group to become cohesive. (Dechant, K., Marsick, V. J., and Kasl, E., 1993) So that I organized the group of twelve students to be able to work in small groups of two, three and four people, that also gives an opportunity to provide them with different types of tasks and make the process more interesting and useful one. Also I've selected the group members (6 boys and 6 girls to avoid the appearance of possible gender differential misunderstanding in the process of teaching and fulfillment the tasks. Then, me, as a teacher, arranged the room for students to face one another and so the teacher can walk up to each group. While structuring the task and positive interdependence among the students, I provided them with academic task explanation, and criteria for success explanation, pointed out a group goal for the students to be able to rely on one another, thus emphasizing the fact they need to establish good collaboration between one another, and that much is dependent on the inner relations of the group members. (Smith, K. A., 1996) That's why on the second preparatory stage the teacher is to think over the possibilities of conflicts appearance inside the group and provide the best practice of their outcomes. So this reason I've studied theoretical material on conflict management to structure the group in its best way; then - explained the task and common group goals for students to know what they are to aim at. While planning group structure, the teacher must choose between three main group types: informal, formal, and base. Informal groups can be created in short term for solving some problems, have little structure, can have new group member with each class day, and is mostly useful during lectures, because it provides a quick check on student comprehension. Next type, which is formal group, requires more planning as to the size and composition of the group, because it has greater structure; has a specific purpose, and the same group members throughout its existence. Base groups, on the contrary, serve a broader purpose. They meet regularly, require planning as to the size and composition, have a constant membership and a specific purpose to complete. The teacher here should provide support, encouragement, and assistance between group members. (Smith, K. A., 1996). So, every group serve its own role, and the teacher's task is to establish a goal and then to structure the group to meet its objectives in the most effective way. My group is a formal one, so the selected number of members didn't change and the established task was a common one for all students. In group learning there could possibly exist some barriers to learning. The objective of the teacher is to minimize members' threat and embarrassment, establish a friendly atmosphere of mutual help and understanding, and evaluation where everybody feel safe and sound, and have a desire to move towards the common goal. (Butterfield, J., and Bailey J., 1996) On his first meeting with the group the teacher is to deal with this problem for further less individual problems appear connected with the mentioned barriers. On the preparatory stage the plan of minimizing these barriers should be worked out. I chose a Collaborative Learning strategy that is a very progressive one, because it provides students with simple tasks which are less structured, and may last the entire class period or several periods; there are beneficial links between knowledge and skills and their practical impact on daily lives; the degree of interaction between the students and the instructors is dependent on the instructor's teaching preference, personality, and need for control. So, first of all, the teacher studies the group and then chooses the tools of teaching for a particular group. The teacher can start with more structured activities for students, and when they become more experienced, longer-term and more ill-defined tasks can be given (Miller, et al., 1996). To make collaborative learning a successful process, there must be a kind of 'glue' that holds group members together, when they understand they have a common goal, and they must also have the skills necessary to make the group work effectively. So that on its preparatory stage I studied the strengths and weaknesses of the group, establish a goal and adjusted all the problems by providing a good group organization. There are five essential components for a successful small group work: positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interactions, teamwork and social skills, group processing, and individual accountability and personal responsibility. (Butterfield, J., and Bailey, J, 1996) Positive group interdependence means that team members need each other to succeed, that unite the group members and make them struggle for a common goal. This process is supported by the face-to-face promotive interactions between group members, that helps the individuals to overcome problems; they promote the feedback between members necessary for all individuals to test ideas and build a framework for their knowledge, and they provide resource sharing; it also provides respect, caring and encouragement, that motivates the individuals to study together. (Sutherland, T. E., and Bonwell, 1996). Having formed a group, reviewed group structure, group roles, and social skills needed for the task, I've made a conclusion that a teacher needs to view the main academic tasks: explanation of the task clearly to the students, the objectives and relation of it to prior knowledge, the concepts and procedures needed must be also explained and examples, if needed, presented. Collaborative learning strategy can be considered to be the most successful and innovative one both for teachers and students because it changes not only the teaching and learning styles but also the authority and control structure. Having had an experience of working with such a group, I can say that group activities here have different structure (Miller, et. al., 1996), and there is a need to consider several factors, such as course structure, instructor's level and style. When following a collaborative learning strategies, such issues as number of students, their demographics (freshmen or upperclassmen), whether they are majors or nonmajors, the students' group learning experience level need to be taken into consideration. Cooperative learning helps students feel successful at every academic level, and involves individual accountability and every member's mastering interpersonal skills needed for the group to accomplish its tasks. (Smith, K. A., 1996). It also improves relations between students from different ethnic backgrounds, and in the process of interactions where the students explain their ideas to each other, they minimize those inside-group barriers of learning which they had at first. Overfilled class-size, economic disadvantages and 'learning disorders' are named as three primary barriers to learning, which must be viewed and decided by the teacher beforehand. Students have different learning styles which are determined by their individual perception. That's why a chosen approach to teach should evaluate four combinations of the perceptual and ordering ability in each individual: concrete sequential, abstract random, abstract sequential, and concrete random, and the provided teaching strategy should correspond to them. (Miller, et al., 1996). As for the most effective tools of teaching I've chosen a dialog that is considered to be the most appropriate for a collaborative type of learning and gives better results for teachers and students with less time spent (Senge, 1990) Here the power of group work and constractive communication process is given the primary importance, and the students can get to known the points of views of their group-mates and share their own thoughts with them, that will intensify the whole learning process and students' interactions. Based on personal experience, I want to point out that for an effective group learning functioning the teacher should, first of all, organize the group, selecting the students, and setting the size, then - set ground rules for being in a group, minimize the barriers to learning, evaluate everybody's individual perceptual and ordering abilities in working out a group teaching strategy, and establish a collaborative environment where everyone won't be afraid of participating in the process and focus on the common goal. References 1. Brown G., & Atkins, M. ( 1988) Effective teaching in Higher Education. London: Methuen 2. Butterfield, J., and Bailey, J. "Socially Engineered Groups in Business Curricula: An Investigation of the Effects of Team Composition on Group Output." Journal of Education for Business 72, no. 2 (November-December 1996): 103-106. 3. Dechant, K., Marsick, V. J., and Kasl, E. "Towards a Model of Team Learning." Studies in Continuing Education 15, no. 1 (1993): 1-14. 4. Knights, B. "Hearing Yourself Teach: Group Processes for Adult Educators." Studies in the Education of Adults 25, no. 2 (October 1993) 5. Miller, J. E., Groccia, J. E., and Wilkes, J. M. (1996). "Providing structure: The critical element" In Sutherland, T. E., and Bonwell, C. C. (Eds.), Using active learning in college classes: A range of options for faculty, New Directions for Teaching and Learning No. 67. 6. Sutherland, T. E., and Bonwell, C. C. (Eds.), Using active learning in college classes: A range of options for faculty, New Directions for Teaching and Learning No. 67 7. Smith, K. A. (1996). "Cooperative Learning: Making 'Group work' Work" In Sutherland, T. E., and Bonwell, C. C. (Eds.), Using active learning in college classes: A range of options for faculty, New Directions for Teaching and Learning No. 67. Read More