Teaching & Learning Goals

Dr. Mok, Y.F.

Conceptions of Teaching

Instrumental

Knowledge is external

Teachers own learning tasks

Instruct, transfer knowledge

Achievements as products

Developmental

Knowledge is subjective construction

Students own learning

Direct interaction w/ knowledge

Learning as a process

from Keiny, 1994

Engineering Conception of Teaching

• Teachers possess the knowledge & design what to learn, how to

learn, how to measure (precise & certain).

• There should be efficient coverage of content & productive time

management.

• Content is reduced, broken down, & organized for efficient

delivery & testing.

Teacher

ContentStudents

Pratt, 1992

Developmental Conception

• Teachers cultivate the intellect of the students.

• Activate students’ inquiry & thought about the content.

• Knowledge is not an external entity. It can be interrogated.

TeacherStudents

Content

Pratt, 1992

Nurturing Conception

TeacherStudents Content

Potentials, interests

Personaldevelopment

• Teachers tap on students’ potentials and personal interests to develop learning tasks aiming for the utilization of students’ potentials.

• Students’ personal development is not the application of content knowledge but the realization of the personal being of the students, reflected in the subjective choice of knowledge formulated and acquired by the students.

Social Reform Conception

• Teachers have strong beliefs & ideas of what is important in the subject domain.

• Teachers attempt to add and change the subject content.

• Teachers attempt to teach students think and act according to the their perspectives.

• Perspectives are related to the improving and even reforming of the society.

Teacher

ContentStudentsContent

Do teachers really differ because of their teaching conceptions?

Often teachers do not appear to hold one single teaching conception.

Teachers’ conceptions may be affected by the subject discipline they are in, the students they are teaching, and the work environment they have to handle.

Nevertheless, teachers do differ, if you carefully examine how they approach their teaching and students. The difference is mostly because of the difference in what they believe about teaching.

What is Your Teaching Conception?

You can check your teaching conception by thinking about the following components:

• What is the nature of my subject discipline?• What is knowledge? How does it come from? • What is my role as a teacher?• What do I think of my students as learners?• What are the teaching goals I really want to

accomplish?• What teaching approaches do I usually use?

The following two blue slides show • the perception of the nature science, and• the corresponding teaching and learning

approaches for the science domain.

The other gray-brown slides show• some teaching behaviors of teachers who

employ an experimental (or developmental) teaching approach.

• See if these slides can help you analyze your teaching conception.

Science

Indeterminate View of Science Epistemological Orientation

scientific enquiryobserving & inferring

theorizing under-determination of theories

rival hypothesesa human endeavor

core themesideas about science

epistemic, cognitive, or social goals epistemic dialogue

Osborne, Duschl, & Fairbrother (2002 )

Teachers of science need to:

to organize and establish an environment that support dialogic discussion

to define cognitive, epistemic & social learning goals

authentic activities which enable student engagement and ownership

1. Teacher organizes learning around students’ problems or questions.

2. Teacher involves students in uncertain or incomplete situation.

3. Teacher asks students to judge comparative value of answers or suggestions.

Experimental Teaching Approach

4. Teacher encourages students to guess or hypothesize about the uncertain or untested.

5. Teacher has students make their own collection and analysis of subject matter.

6. Teacher encourages students to put their ideas to a test.

(Brown, 1968)