What is your one-sentence definition of ‘Teaching’?
Don’t slide past the question! Answer it in your head, at least. Preferably, write down your one-sentence answer, because to write it down you will probably have to think a bit harder about it, selecting some words to write down and rejecting others.
Here are seven definitions, six of which were just in my head. Pick the one that most closely matches your own current view of what teaching is:
1. Teaching is imparting knowledge to people
2. Teaching is helping people develop key skills for life
3. Teaching is helping people to make sense of the world
4. Teaching is the process of helping people learn specific things
5. Teaching is about helping people to do well in their exams
6. Teaching is giving people the freedom to be creative
7. Teaching is the engineering of effective learning situations
Definitions 4 and 7 are similar. 7 belongs to Professor Dylan Wiliam, and if I had to pick one, that’s the one I would pick. As Wiliam says, creating excellent resources is an important part of teaching – much of the ‘engineering’ happens outside of lessons.
The word ‘effective’ is important; it draws attention to the importance of teachers using clear and specific learning intentions to guide the teaching and learning process.
Why it matters
As Paul Hirst (1975) said, ‘Being clear about what teaching is matters vitally because how teachers understand ‘teaching’ very much affects what they actually do in the classroom’.
Jerome Bruner said a lot about the nature of education, including this: ‘To instruct someone… is not a matter of getting him to commit results to mind. Rather, it is to teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the establishment of knowledge. We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-getting. Knowing is a process not a product’. (1966: 72)
Actually, knowledge-getting is a process but knowledge itself – knowing – absolutely IS a product – it is the product of thinking and/or experience.
Going back to the importance of learning intentions: even without a tight focus, people will learn if they’re given good things to do. Say I want you to learn about the Battle of Hastings: even if I haven’t buttoned down specific learning intentions for a 60-minute lesson – if I get you reading a good-quality text about the battle, thinking about it and discussing it, and answering questions that require you to engage well with the text, there’s a very good chance you will ‘learn’ some worthwhile things. But it’s better, of course, for us to have clarity about the learning – US, not just me as the teacher, you, too. To be most effective, there need to be learning intentions that are clear to both the teacher and the students; that’s just common sense.
Here is my dissection of the Wiliam definition of teaching:
‘Teaching is the engineering…’
⁃ This clause reminds us that planning and preparation and indeed assessment are very important – much of the teacher’s ‘teaching’ is done outside of lessons. ‘Engineering’ requires clarity about the desired outcomes from the teaching. And the learner needs to be clear about those, too.
‘Teaching is the engineering of effective learning situations’
Learning situations include all of the contexts in which students will learn (the DT room, the sports field and indeed making a thing in DT not for its own sake but to practise and develop particular DT skills) and all of the specific activities they will do (reading a text and answering questions on it, watching a video, writing a paragraph, drawing a sketch etc).
‘Effective’ is obviously the key word, and three key questions about effectiveness for teachers are:
1. Are we all clear on the specific learning that we want to bring about?
2. Have we devised situations/activities that give a good chance for that specific learning to happen? And
3. How will we know/find out whether students have ‘learned’ it? Say, in a week’s time, and six months’ time?
For teaching to be effective, there must be positive answers to these three questions.
Why I discarded definitions 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6:
1. Ignores skills. 2 ignores knowledge. 3. Too vague – a thoughtful approach to life, and a diary would also help people make sense of the world. 5. Too narrow – what about everything we learn that is never examined in formal tests? 6. Like 3, general – acquiring expertise would certainly give people more freedom to be creative…
