Behaviorist Teaching

        Good teaching meets the needs of every individual student while accomplishing the goals of education. Formerly, a teacher was the conveyor of information. Today, the teacher is as much a facilitator of learning experiences. Many teachers, for example, have found the facilitating role comfortable in high technology classrooms when they find that students know as much or more about various technologies as they do. The demand for excellence in recent years has heaped more and more pressure on teachers to perform.  

The Behaviorist Teacher

Behaviorist teaching is the oldest and most widespread technique and has some definite advantages plus a track record of success. Students who perform well for a behaviorist teacher are "sponges" who consume huge amounts of information and details. They are able to reproduce facts and information precisely on a test. These students do well in mastering factual information and on true/false tests or multiple choice items. They can reproduce the ideas of the teacher in an essay as well as the ideas they have read in texts or other prescribed reading materials. 

Behaviorist teachers often come under attack for concentrating on building "surface learning" of facts rather than building thinkers or problem solvers. They may be accused of having so much interest in the mastery of content that "process" tools of learning ("how to learn" skills) are neglected. Student learning styles may be ignored as the amount to be learned increases.

The behaviorist teacher generally:

•  Relies on lecture and textbooks as staples of teaching and learning.
• Is in control of the learning environment. 
• Takes the role of "sage on the stage." 
• Understands the ideas of goals and objectives, careful formulation of activities to achieve the objectives, and testing to match the objectives. 
• Is concerned with delivering a prescribed amount of content to students and expecting them to master it. 
• Uses testing to determine mastery or lack thereof and grades based on expected mastery.

All of us have encountered behaviorist teachers. We can not deny that some of them are extremely competent in helping learners master content. But there are also those who abuse this perspective of teaching. As the pressure to make students achieve increases, the behaviorist teacher tends to exert more and more control and may increase expectations, raise the amount of homework expected, and seek to increase the amount of content given per time unit. The teacher may also use drill and practice plus repeatable exercises, seeking to maximize the memorization of material connected to a particular discipline.

Revised Bloom's Taxonomy in the Cognitive Domain

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom and other educational psychologists developed a classification system of levels of cognitive skills and learning behavior. The classification they created is often referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy. The word taxonomy means classifications or structures. Bloom's Taxonomy classifies thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity. The classifications are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

In the mid-nineties, Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, revisited the cognitive domain in the learning taxonomy and made some changes, with perhaps the two most prominent ones being, 

(1) changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms, and (2) slightly rearranging them.

The new classifications are: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

• Remembering: Exhibit memory of previously learned material by recalling facts, terms, basic concepts, and answers.
• Verbs: Defines, describes, identifies, knows, labels, lists, matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes, reproduces, selects, states

• Understanding: Demonstrate understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating main ideas.
• Verbs: Comprehends, converts, defends, distinguishes, estimates, explains, extends, generalizes, gives an example, infers, interprets, paraphrases, predicts, rewrites, summarizes, translates.

• Applying: Solve problems to new situations by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a different way.
• Verbs: Applies, changes, computes, constructs, demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates, predicts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses.

• Analyzing: Examine and break information into parts by identifying motives or causes. Make inferences and find evidence to support generalizations.
• Verbs: Analyzes, breaks down, compares, contrasts, diagrams, deconstructs, differentiates, discriminates, distinguishes, identifies, illustrates, infers, outlines, relates, selects, separates.

• Evaluating: Present and defend opinions by making judgments about information, validity of ideas, or quality of work based on a set of criteria. 
• Verbs: Appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts, criticizes, critiques, defends, describes, discriminates, evaluates, explains, interprets, justifies, relates, summarizes, supports.

 

• Creating: Compile information together in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions.
• Verbs: Categorizes, combines, compiles, composes, creates, devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies, organizes, plans, rearranges, reconstructs, relates, reorganizes, revises, rewrites, summarizes, tells, writes.

 

Principles of High Quality Assessment

PRINCIPLES OF HIGH QUALITY ASSESSMENT

Assessment plays an important role in the process of learning and motivation. The types of assessment tasks that we ask our students to do determine how students will approach the learning task and what study behaviors they will use. In the words of higher education scholar John Biggs, “What and how students learn depends to a major extent on how they think they will be assessed.” (1999, p. 141).

        

Classroom assessment involves teachers investigating what and how their students are learning as teaching takes place, typically through short questions given out at the end of each class, as opposed to seeing the outcomes of student learning at the end of teaching when there is no longer the opportunity to change teaching practice. 

Assess comes from the Latin verb ‘assidere’ meaning ‘to sit with’.  In assessment, one should sit with the learner. This implies it is something we do with and for students and not to students (Green, 1998).

Assessment should possess qualities efficiently reflect students’ performance. It is very important for teachers to adhere to the principles of high quality assessment since these are means for obtaining data and information about each student’s extent of learning. If these are not present, then the evaluation and assessment would be questionable. It will also not give clear answers as to whether or not instructional objectives and goals are met. 

High quality assessment is not just about giving grades to students. At its best, high-quality assessment provides actionable information to inform curriculum and instruction decisions and allows for a real-time change of course to meet students' needs. The first step is to plan and design relevant, standards-based assessments that are used at many different stages of learning. From there, teachers should approach the resulting data with flexibility and continuously adjust strategies accordingly.

The following are principles of high quality assessment:

1. CLARITY OF THE LEARNING TARGET

Assessment can be made more precise, accurate and dependable of it what are to be achieved are clearly stated and feasible, Learning targets involve knowledge, reasoning, skills, products and affects stated in behavioral terms. Learning targets are something which be observed through the behavior of the students. 

2. APPROPRIATENESS OF ASSESSMENT METHOD

If the learning targets are clarified, teachers can easily identify appropriate assessment methods. For example, assessment of ability that requires demonstration of the ability must be assessed using a method that students are able to demonstrate that ability . Another example is on students writing maybe more appropriate if the learning target is for students are asked to justify their stand on a certain issue rather than responding to multiple choice questions about writing. Another example is performance assessment which is a type of assessment that requires students to actually perform, demonstrate, construct, and/or develop a product or a solution under defined conditions and standard. Performance assessments imply active student production of evidence of learning - not multiple-choice, which is essentially passive selection among preconstructed answers . Another example, if students are to identify characteristics of a particular object, then a multiple-choice test may be the best way to measure that outcome.

3. CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH QUALITY ASSESSMENT

• Validity of the Test. Remember that something valid is something fair.A valid test is one that measures what it is supposed to measure. To ensure validity of the test, consider the following questions:
• What do students think of the test? Is the test too difficult to understand? Is it easy? 
• Am I testing the students the way I taught them? Remember that the kind of test should be based on how it was taught.

               Test can be made more valid by making it more subjective or more open.

• Reliability of the Test. Reliability is the extent to which an experiment, test, or any measuring procedure yields the same result on repeated trials. This means that giving the same test to the same students is assumed to yield consistent results. This means that something reliable is something that you can trust. A reliable test is a consistent measure of what it is supposed to measure. The following questions can help you assess reliability of the test.

• Can we trust the results of the test
• Would we get the same results if the tests were taken again and scored by a different person?

• Fairness. The concept that assessment should be 'fair' covers a number of aspects which the following:
• Student Knowledge and learning targets of assessment
• Opportunity to learn
• Prerequisite knowledge and skills
• Avoiding teacher stereotype
• Avoiding bias in assessment tasks and procedures

• Positive Consequences. Learning assessments provide students with effective feedback and potentially improve their motivation and/or self-esteem. Moreover, assessments of learning gives students the tools to assess themselves and understand how to improve. Positive consequence on students, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders 

• Practicality and Efficiency.  Learning assessments provide students with effective feedback and potentially improve their motivation and/or self-esteem. Moreover, assessments of learning gives students the tools to assess themselves and understand how to improve.

• Something practical is something effective in real situations.
• A practical test is one which can be practically administered.
• Will the test take longer to design than apply?
• Will the test be easy to mark?
• Tests can be made more practical by making it more objective (more controlled items)

• Ethical Practice in Assessment. Conforming to the standards of conduct of a given profession or group.Ethical issues that may be raised

• Possible harm to the participants. 
• Confidentiality. 
• Presence of concealment or deception. 
• Temptation to assist students. 

References:

1.     Frey, B. (2014). Modern Classroom Assessment. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE 

2.     ________ (2003) .Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximize Student Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. 

3.     Kibby, M. (2003) Assessing students online. The University of New Castle. Retrieved May 20, 2020 

4.     from http://www.newcastle.edu.au/discipline/sociol-anthrop/staff/kibbymarj/online/assess.html

5.     Timmis, S., Broadfoot, P., Sutherland, R., & Oldfield, A.(2016). Assessment. British Educational Research Journal. Vol 42, No, 3, June 2016, pp. 454 – 476. DOI: 10.1002/berj.3215

Learner-Centered and Teacher-Centered Learning

Learner-centered teaching is an approach to teaching that is being advocated by contemporary theorist in education. Teachers advocating and practicing learner-centered learning  do not employ a single teaching method. This approach emphasizes a variety of different types of methods that focus on what the students are learning, it changes the role of the teachers from a provider of information to facilitating student learning. The table below shows the difference between teacher-centered and learner-centered approaches.

Teacher-Centered	Learner-Centered
Focus is on the teacher	Focus is on both students and teacher
Focus is on language forms and structures (what the teacher knows about the language and how the teacher will use the language)	Focus is on language use in typical situations (how students will use the language)
Teacher talks; students listen	Teacher models; students interact with teacher and one another
Students work alone	Students work in pairs, in groups, or alone depending on the purpose of the activity
Teacher monitors and corrects every student utterance	Students talk without constant instructor monitoring; instructor provides feedback/correction when questions arise
Instructor answers students’ questions about language	Students answer each other’s questions, using instructor as an information resource
Teacher identifies and chooses topics	Students have some choice of topics
Teacher assess student learning	Students assess their own learning; teacher also assess
Classroom is often quiet	Classroom is often noisy and busy

Source: The National Capitol Language Resource Center (a project of the George Washington University)

Gr2Math Properties of Addition

Chance or Choice?

To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it. - Soren Kierkegaard

 

What does it take to be a teacher? Why do some people love to teach? Does a person who teaches or wishes to teach a teacher? I believe that to teach is more than simply a choice among the array of jobs in the society. It is even hard to accept that to think that there is something true about describing the desire to teach as a choice at all. Because if you have a strong inclination toward teaching there is no need to argue whether to teach but rather you are already contemplating how or under what circumstances you need to do. Prior to your becoming a teacher, you have already considered teaching in schools, in institutions of higher education, or in one of the many other social settings in which teaching can occur. I am sure that we know some who have worked for sometimes in other lines of endeavor – business, law, parenting, the medical field, the field of engineering – before the right conditions have materialized. In my case, after my resignation from a public school I tried working in other institutions. Although my work geared toward teacher training but I was still longing to work in a school. So I applied in a university where I experienced teaching college students and graduate students. However, I knew from the beginning that I could not stay there. After almost three years in that institution, I left. I left with a heavy feeling  because of some circumstances that I went through. I was a bit desperate and promise not to teach again. I tried working in an Education Network as an Academic Manager, but I resigned after few months because I could not cope with the demands of the work. And here again I am  back to teaching.

Many of us have become teachers because we were either influenced by our own teachers or we did not have any choice – but to be a teacher. However, in whatever case, still, the fact remains that now you have taken on that interest yourself. This only suggests one thing – you conceived teaching as more than a job – more than a way to earn - although earning is obviously relevant and necessary. Furthermore, you believe teaching to be potentially meaningful, as the way to instantiate your desire to contribute to, engage with, the world. Persons with this choice are not necessarily heroic. This implies a measure of determination, courage, and flexibility, qualities that are in turn buoyed by the disposition to regard teaching more than a job, to which one has something significant to offer.

A person who wants to teach doubtless hopes, at some level of thought of feeling, is person who has a say in what principles and purposes will guide the classroom, as well as how these goals would be realized. A teacher would always supplement and in most cases extend the functional requirements of the job. It may mean questioning some of those requirements. As a teacher, I believe that we need to find ways to pay increased attention to what our students say, think, and feel about what they are learning rather than just delivering them the goods. Or even worse, feeling oblige to teach and finish the lesson by making it more difficult for the students. I also believe that if we have this stance, as teacher, we should be our own final critic. This is a stance that will accompany our profession as teachers as more than routine.