What have teachers ever done for us?

Forgive the nod to Monty Python and what might seem to be a silly question. It is tempting to answer ‘Teach us’, but of course you will already know that it is not as simple as that. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is ‘to give lessons to a student at school or university’. That’s true of course, but it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what we do.

What we also know is that tutoring on a one-to-one basis is a very different skill set to teaching a classroom. So how do theories of education that are used for classroom teaching stand up in comparison with one-to-one tutoring?

This course asks you to start diving down into the theories behind the practice, starting with those which formed part of the basis of modern teaching, and we will look at how the theories relate to tutoring. We will go through each theory and show you what it would look like if you were to tutor applying just those methods.

You are about to read about some well-known pedagogical approaches and about some of the most well-known of the practitioners of those approaches. As you read about them, try to apply the theories to a particular student or child that you know. Think about how you feel the child would react to being tutored with that approach.

What you will very quickly realise is that there is no single learning theory that fits all children. As a tutor and especially as a 1:1 tutor, you will be able to see if one approach works or doesn’t, or, more likely, if one element of one approach works or doesn’t. Being flexible with your approaches is what all good tutors do. They get to know their students and design lessons and tasks and approaches which suit them. Initially there will be some element of trial and error but, as you establish a working relationship with the student, you will very quickly be able to think holistically about teaching philosophies and select the elements that suit the student.

This may of course be an approach which you might find challenging, and you will certainly need to feel comfortable tutoring in a particular manner, but that is all part of a dynamic tutoring relationship.

How to approach this course.

Firstly, read about the teaching approaches that we are going to focus on. Read them carefully and try to apply them to a learning situation you have experienced, or a particular student, even if this is your own child or your younger self! This will enable you to think with a critical perspective about the approach.

We have also used five theoretical positions which you can use to judge the efficacy of each of the teaching approaches. The four positions are:

• Behaviourism
• Cognitivism
• Constructionism
• Connectivism
• Humanism

We will go through each approach one by one. As you will see each approach involves a slightly different way of viewing what learning is and how knowledge is acquired.

There are also 4 themes weaved within this course. These themes are different to the theoretical approaches as they are more about testing the assumptions and limitations each theoretical approach creates.

Let’s think about that for a minute, how can theoretical approach (a theory) show us assumptions and limitations?

Creating knowledge is a big messy process, but the result is always something neat and tidy. Something that (hopefully) everyone can understand. The person researching Education and how people learn, has lots of ideas, simplifies the ideas into something that can be tested, creates lots of experiments to test those simplified ideas which in turn creates lots of data. Then the researcher must make sense of all that data and simplify all the new knowledge they found so other people who have spent years researching the new packet of knowledge can understand it.

So, from the first step the educational researchers we are going to explore had to simplify their ideas to test them. This means they had to make assumptions and cut out the everyday complexity to study how people learn. The Researchers would have their own biases as to what they did or didn’t think was important.

Therefore, we are not only going to look at what the researchers found when they studied children learning, but we are going to look at what they left out, what they didn’t address in their research and what parts of being human they couldn’t cover in their research.

Intelligence /mindset

This theme address whether how we learn, and whether our academic ability is all down to how intelligent we are OR down to our mindset to learning. If you listen to everyday language, you can hear these two narrates a lot.

‘That’s Jake there, he will do well in his exams, he is so intelligent’

This statement cuts out any mention of how hard Jake might work, perhaps he likes studying and the rewards it brings so he puts in more time.

‘Susan was bound to be successful at whatever she did, once she puts her mind to something she always succeeds.’

This statement is about Susan’s mindset and her determination. It cuts away whether Susan was intelligent or not as it is not seen as relevant.

This intelligence verses mindset theme is a huge one within education. If it’s all about intelligence, then some children will never attain, this is what the old grammar school system was based on.

If learning is all about your mindset, then we would have no need for specialist interventions and dyslexia interventions would be unnecessary for students to succeed. All educational failures could be pinned down personality characteristics.

Discovery/instruction

This theme examines whether children and students learn thorough self-discovery and exploration, or whether they learn through direct instruction from a teacher or tutor.

If it’s discovery that enables a student to acquire knowledge, then the learning emphasis needs to be on the environment and the learning aids. The tutor’s role would just be to make the students environment rich with things to discover.

In the 60’s ‘reading ready’ was very popular in state schools. This meant no instruction was given to children until they were a lot older. Instead, hundreds of books were made accessible. These books were designed to capture the interests of all children and to motivate them to read.

Instruction is how you speak when you are tutoring, how you give directions and guide the learning process.  Instruction is all about the educator’s involvement. The tutor becomes the key person in the learning process. Without the tutor’s instruction, the student will not learn no matter how many interesting things there are available to discover in the environment.

Active/Passive learning

This theme concerns whether students need to think about and engage in the material they are learning, or whether they can be passive and let the educator tell them what they need to know.

Educators who advocate active learning believe that learning only happens if it is processed deeper in the mind. Thus, the student has to organise what they are leaning in their mind and think about it to learn it. Essays are a form of deeper learning; students are encouraged to take notes and process what they have read. The next step is to organise those notes into an essay format and share their own ideas.

Passive learning is the opposite. Students just need to listen and be told information to learn things, they do not need to process it and think about it. They just need to focus and allow information to go into their minds.

In the 80’s it was common for spelling not to be focused on in schools, children would just pick it up as their reading got better. The improvements in spelling were said to be gained from passive exposure to words.

Atomisation/application

Atomisation is about how we can learn things in small packets, join up the learning into a whole. Think of an atom. It is the smallest piece of any substance. This theme asks if that’s what knowledge is; small packets of information that form wider concepts.

Application is all about our ability to take what we know and apply it to new topics or contexts. Driving is an example of this, we learn the skills for driving then apply those skills on new untraveled roads.

As you proceed through this course and examine each theorist and how they view how children learn and acquire knowledge, ask yourself what themes has the theorist addressed, but IMPORTANTLY, what themes have they left tout? What have they not thought about, where is the limitation within their research?  This critical thinking skill is a valuable academic skill.