Teaching and Its Relationship

Reflections of my teachers highlighted the discussion of “teaching” and its relationship to learning. As there is already a great emphasis on the former (seen through our own PLTs, daily classroom practices, external research papers), I am greatly encouraged by my teachers’ reflections to speak on the latter – considering what exactly constitutes such learning.

Often teachers teach students not subjects, instead I believe that it must be teaching something to someone. However, what is the relationship of teaching to learning to be considered? There are those who believe that the only way to increase the learning of students is to increase the quantity and quality of learning. But yet we also know that learning is something that student has to do himself and such initiative lies with the student – hence we emphasized on self-directed learning SDL. So I believe that we teachers are mere guide and director of a band, who steers the group but the music that comes out of it must come from those who are learning.

Such thoughts, especially with reference to the students own responsibility seemed to bring about the idea that if the student was not learning, then the teacher was not teaching. Is this the right conclusion? One of my considerations is the intent of the teacher to bring about learning. However, I also know that this alone does not necessary result in good teaching, and it is especially hard to separate out between those who try to teach but fail to do so and others who actually do teach. Hence, good intended teaching must show purpose to the learner and introduce competencies that support the students learning. Such supporting conditions may include introducing life skills or strategies chosen by the teacher that would likely help the student achieve the learning.

How about the unintended learning of the students? Is it still of the teacher’s responsibility? In my opinion, the teacher is responsible for the students’ learning and because of this, if the students learn things from the teacher even though there is no intention to teach such things, for example, that it is alright to be “blue” – so less attentive during lesson on Monday or in the afternoons, or it is permissible to be bad-tempered during certain days. My point is that students learn things from their teachers for which these may be no direct intention of the teacher. Hence, if teacher exemplifies such values, the students may readily pick them up from them.

Therefore, what this means for teaching is that failure for our students to learn may not be the teacher’s fault alone – for example that students may fail to learn even though teaching was going on. However, if we take our teaching responsibility seriously, we may have to ask ourselves for some good reasons why such failures is not our fault especially if the student consistently fail.