When a mother bird fly's to her young, having received a fresh supply of grub, she bends down opens her mouth, and allows the young to eat what she regurgitates up. The young, not even knowing what they're receiving open wide and gobble it up knowing that it'll keep them alive. Through a process known as digestion the young allow the parts needed to filter into their body and become one with them while the rest is dropped on some poor soul's toupee.
I feel often times we view teaching as a mother bird to her young. Teachers go ahead of us and gain knowledge. They then come back and regurgitate that learning to all who will receive it. Some prefer to starve, some take it because they must, while others leap at the opportunity. Those who are the receivers of knowledge don't really understand what is being given, but know that it should serve a purpose. Once the information is in it sits and is cataloged by the brain. Some people are able to retain a good deal of what was taught. They usually are the ones most interested or have a good memory retention. Others like me catalog the things most important and interesting into one area for retrieval, and catalog the rest into a part of the brain that is meant to retain the information, but has a flaw... what is put in usually seeps through cracks in the cabinet or decay over a short span of time. Sadly much of what is taught does leak out.
This week I've come to realize that there is more to teaching than this method of regurgitating and filing. There are multiple teaching methods. As teachers we often times focus on a small few, but we really should broaden our horizons. There are many ways of learning, and not every student is trained to use every method, therefore we should not assume our teaching has to be a specific way. The three main categories of teaching methods are Behaviorism, Constructivism, and Cognitivism. Respectively they are to teach with a focus on rewards and punishments, teach using knowledge previously gained, and teach using observations, hypothesis', and theory (or at least that is what I understand them to be). Not only are there different ways to teach, but there are many people who have performed tests and theorized about what teaching ways are the best, and though there isn't a single best way, there sure are some good arguments out there.
Some individuals who have helped expand the concepts of teaching methods are Elliot Eisner who recognized that a problem could have more than one solution, Benjamin Bloom who taught that teaching is a process and introduced Blooms taxonomy, Paulo Freire who preached that students were not empty vessels, Bandura who showed how influential the actions and personality of a teacher is on the students, and Skinner who believed that people have a fear of failure and that people don't give enough direction. On a side not, Skinner also believed in hands-off parenting and created a skinner box: a box that was lined with paper @ the bottom connected to a roller. He'd put his baby in the box and let the baby do its thing on its own in there. Once the baby "relieved itself" in the box Skinner would roll the paper so that the waste would come out and a fresh bit of paper would be rolled back into place. Not my idea of good parenting but to each his own.
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