Causing children to learn is hard and complicated work. We use the word “teaching” to generalize how a teacher does the work of causing learning. Teaching, though, infers the one doing the teaching understands and uses a method of instruction that is chosen and honed to cause children to learn specific educational outcomes. If there is no teaching method applied, then a child could learn anything from anyone with the same likelihood of learning success. Or a child could be fully self-taught, who needs a teacher. Teaching methods matter and teachers need to understand their methods.
I teach in the manner I was taught.
Teacher preparation curriculum includes courses in teaching methods. Check the curriculum of any college, university, or other approved teacher prep program and one or more courses in “methods” are needed for program completion. Candidates for a teaching license must do student or supervised teaching to confirm their ability to teach students in the subject or grade levels of their license. However, once a licensed teacher is employed as a teacher, most find that their baseline of teaching reflects how they were taught when they were a student in K-12 schools. Predominantly, this method is labeled traditional teaching.
Traditional teaching is teacher-centered, emphasizes rote memorization and recall of information. It is structured within class time, uses textbook and publisher materials, and assigns children to work independently. Children read/watch/listen, do practice assignments based on the information presented, and take a quiz. The teacher is the source of information and skills children learn.
Teachers learn multiple methods in their prep programs.
An AI-study (Gemini and Chat GPT) says that teacher preparation programs today stress student-centered teaching methods with the key characteristic being learner-centered teaching. These methods include include strategies that
- are tailored to student needs, abilities, and interests,
- encourage active participation,
- use the teacher as a facilitator of learning not the source of information,
- are culturally responsive and inclusive of student background, and
- use differentiated strategies that meet the needs of all children in the class.
As students, teacher candidates learn the theory and best practices for engaging children in their own learning. They can try these theories and practices in their student or supervised teaching. Teachers are academically trained to be student-centered.
Realities of the classroom are not academic.
Even after working in classrooms as a student-teacher, the realities of being THE TEACHER are overwhelming. I do not diminish the student-teaching experience, because it is essential for building confidence in oneself and learned teaching practices in a safe and controlled environment. Without student teaching or other forms of pre-licensing practice teaching, too many children would experience shaky instruction from untried first-year teachers. In student teaching there always is the presence of a hovering veteran teacher who will correct, fill-in, and polish instruction that a student-teacher left unsatisfied. Not for an employed teacher.
The first days and weeks in a classroom of your own is momentous for most first-year teachers. While a handful of rookie teachers claim to be wonderfully fulfilled by the challenges they face, many rookies spend sleepless nights and tear-filled morning drives to school worried about their ability to teach. The reality is that dozens of children sit and wait to be taught while a rookie teacher finds their way. A first-year teacher is alone in a classroom with a tremendous responsibility that feels like a burden.
Reality brings the rookie teacher to traditional teaching methods for several reasons. Creating learner-centered instruction is complicated. At the get-go, it requires time, trust, and confidence in a method. A teacher does not just announce “Today, children, we are going to use an inquiry method to discover why ancient and modern people migrate around the world.” It takes time to “set the table” for discovery-type methods of teaching. A series of lesson plans that model how children will “inquire” are necessary. The teacher needs to assure that all children are confident in the background knowledge necessary for inquiry into unfamiliar information. Children need to be prepared for collaborative learning. Student-centered methods become richer over time but every first experience with student-based learning requires thorough preparation, or it will flop. On the other hand, traditional teaching is very concise, straightforward, and teacher controlled.
When a teacher chooses an inquiry or discovery method, the teacher explains or demonstrates what the children will do to discover the unfamiliar information they are about to learn BUT the teacher does not provide conclusions about their new learning. The teacher helps children in drawing and confirming their own conclusions about their new learning. Facilitation skills are honed over time and can be a little messy as students drive the timeline. On the other hand, traditional teaching is concise and straightforward.
If the teacher chooses to use problem-based teaching, children must be pre-taught how to suspend elements of reality to make a teacher-contrived problem worthy of their time and effort. Once children learn what it means to suspend reality, PBL opens them to a multitude of learning situations – but it takes training and time.
If the teacher chooses project-based or outcome-based teaching, teacher and children must set up rubrics they will use to assure their student-centered learning meets grade level or course curricular standards.
Using non-traditional teaching methods puts a lot of planning, preparation, and facilitation pressure on a first-year teacher. To compound that pressure, children in student-centered methods are given responsibility for their individual and group learning. In the gradual release of responsibility from teacher to student there are inherent fears that children will not learn as much as they would have with teacher-controlled learning.
Lastly, traditional teaching aligns with rule-based classroom management systems. It is part of the “control feature.” Children abide by the rules or are disciplined. When principals make spot visits to classrooms, seeing all children seated and “working” fits traditional views of good teaching. Seeing children milling about, talking to each other, doing different things in the same classroom requires the principal to dig deeper into the teacher’s lesson planning and teaching methods.
The Big Duh!
Teaching methods matter. As methods, they are methodical in how specific strategies in each method cause different learner outcomes. These are outcomes beyond tested knowledge. We should expect and encourage rookie teachers to appropriately use methods of direct and explicit teacher-led teaching AND a variety of student-centered methods in their first year(s) of teaching. If they are not expected and encouraged to do so, it is too easy for a young teacher to become a traditional, single-method teacher.
It is possible to imagine a grade level K-5 and a subject course teacher in grades 6-12 being only a traditional method teacher. It is more difficult to imagine children sitting through their K-12 years experiencing only traditional teaching. It is even more difficult to imagine how a traditionally taught curriculum prepares children for this 21st century.
Principals and curriculum directors, please hire and nurture teachers who are prepared to use a variety of teaching methods. Coach them along their way. Your students and our future will thank you.