Concepts of learning and teaching

Learning

There are real people in any classroom. These people are involved in processes that enable them to learn. Some of these processes are known to us and some is not. We know that learning takes the shape of:

• Acquiring or getting something.
• Retention of information or skills or values.
• Learning implies storage systems, recognition and memory.
• Learning implies active conscious focus and active events which take place internally or externally.
• Learning is relatively permanent yet subject to forgetting
• Learning involves forms of practice.
• Learning is change in behaviour, via schools or any other agents (home, peers or streets).
• The best learning is the one that influences all facets of personality, namely; the cognitive domain, the effective domain and the psychomotor domain. This influence however, has to be positive.

Teaching

If we try to be difficult we will compare the concept of teaching to the concept of buying. This is the way John Dewe thinks; in order to have the concept of buying takes a realistic shape one has to have a buyer, a seller and a product. In order to have the product sold to a buyer, the buyer must submit a price to the seller. When the latter receives the price the former becomes the owner of the product and so on.

Unfortunately, teaching and learning do not necessarily follow this principle. One finds individuals who learn without teaching, and vice versa. To simplify the concept of teaching we should consider:

• Implementing specified objectives.
• Delivering knowledge to persons who need it.
• Presenting materials in order to be learned.
• Guiding and facilitating knowledge, values and skills.
• Enabling students to learn and broaden their experience.
• Choosing, experimenting, assessing, evaluating and so on.
• Setting suitable conditions for learning.
• Organising, socialising and creating and inviting encouraging instances for learners.
• Motivating students, enhancing and provoking minds to further humanize humans.
• Governing theories, principles, approaches and techniques and putting them into action in the most proper time.
• Digging deep into humans' souls in order to make them face their fate and consequences.

Will a man or a woman come up with all the preceding qualities? I doubt it, and so does Peter Strevens when he says, "It's one thing to train a man to a high standard of professional ability: it is another to insure that he or she maintains that standard, or improve on it".

The worst teachers on earth are those who are only effective as the textbook permits them to be. Like a physician who treats his patients according to the medicine he has on his shelf. To be honest, teaching is not merely a job. If it is not consciously done, it will lead pupils no where. Teachers should not assume that what interest them interest their students. They have to find out what is interested to them. A teacher must:

Encourage and motivate learners.

Have an adequate command of the language.

Display at least a minimum skill as a teacher.

Rely little on materials prepared by others.

Maintain a lovely personality with positive attitudes towards the learners, the language he teaches and towards himself.

The concept of teaching is worth exploring in its own right and yet no body came with a full definition of it. Absolutely, teaching is a science and art at the same time. It is also askill and knowledge interwoven together with no guarantee that they will satisfy most learners, most of the time. Sometimes teachers reach out their learners by sheer luck. That is why teachers are advised to integrate methods, approaches and techniques and not rely on a single one all the way. Individual differences must exist among learners which necessitate the application of varying methods. We know also that learners use varieties of strategies and so do teachers. Thus, another indication that what works for some may not work for others. To sum up, teachers who want to be on the save side should be eclectic; use whatever works on their situations and leave the door open for things that will occur in the future. However, only imaginative, effective and selective individuals will be so. At least, by so doing, one helps define the field of teaching as different from other careers.