What do you want from a teacher?

[pmb]

Nowadays, there is so much information available at everyone's fingertips that teachers giving students facts is a dead and dying model of education. I'm pretty sure that having a teacher is essential to the learning process, but the contents of a lecture/class/lab/whatever now have to be ... what? Certainly different in some way - slowly dealing

Comments

[conform]

i am a huge, huge, tremendous fan of the socratic method. my high school math teacher, a brilliant and totally bipolar man, spent the first two or three weeks of my calculus class gradually nudging us toward solving a simple problem involving a car accelerating. we didn't open a book or use the word "derivative" in class until at least the second month. can you do that with online course work? maybe, sort of... but it's challenging to do with a live teacher (nobody said teaching was easy) and my suspicion is that you almost always need a live teacher to moderate the impulse, when frustrated, to skip ahead and look up the answer, when what you're really trying to overcome is often a conceptual, not factual, block.

((longer rant impared by consumption of 2^-1 bottles champagne))

[auranja]

This is the model I've been working in (and loving) lately, although it's maybe not applicable to your field

[auranja]

Sometimes, within this model, I'll realize that I won't be able to have the performance I want without acquiring some specific skill. So I'll have to search out a teacher who will lead me through the necessary drills to get the skill.

For a lot of years I did drill and assignment-based skill-building, with no sense of how I might put those skills to interesting use.

I do use some of those skills now, and they did help orient me to the fundamentals of my field, but I don't use a lot of those skills now.

I find my current way - letting the bigger project dictate which skill-drills I'll devote myself to - much more satisfying.

I wonder if this would work for most students? It requires having a passion for a project. Maybe that's not a common thing to have.

[freyley]

a different point of view, often with an eye toward intent and a good knowledge of how structure supports intent, is the defining characteristic of a good editor, and I suspect that the term editor could be widened to include teaching any creative endeavor.

I think teaching is probably very different based on what you're trying to teach, but I think the important generalities are methodological, not subject: teaching someone scientific inquiry is pretty similar regardless of biology, psychology, or physics. Teaching them creative endeavor or mathematics is very different. There are probably other useful areas.

[akjdg]

Hmm. Well, to me as a student, education would serve the following purposes:

1) to learn facts
2) to understand processes, theories, methodologies, philosophies.
3) to learn how to learn, think, and do.

Helplessly, educational methods are irrelevant, just so long as they are effective.

Also, this horse wants to drink. Just getting that far can raise a whole different host of issues, problems, and discussions.

[clipdude]

Nowadays, there is so much information available at everyone's fingertips that teachers giving students facts is a dead and dying model of education.
Was this ever a vibrant model of education? I could always get facts out of a book, and most classes have always had assigned textbooks with most of the facts in them. I don't think a teacher's job has ever been to merely restate facts for the students. Rather, teachers have always been putting this information into perspective, providing feedback, interacting with students, facilitating class discussion, and so on.

[dragonmudd]

Yes.

[mary919]

What would be missing? A dedicated environment in which to practice without distractions. I don't think education is just about retrieving information or being able to retrieve information. Getting your beginning chops in any field is going to be... boring! But you've got to have them, even if it's just to have a sense of belonging to the tradition of the discipline and knowing the history.

So I guess that's what I think would be missing-- context.