Week 2 - History and Philosophy of Teaching - Blog Assignment

 


Assignment:


Pick two of the following questions and answer based on the perspectives of philosophy, and your personal understanding. Respond back to two peers: 


Questions: (PICK TWO) (Noddings, 2016, p. 59-60). 


1. Does teaching imply learning?

2. Does teaching consist primarily of intellectual acts? 

3. Can teaching be separated from learning? Why might we want to do this? 

4. Can a television teacher 'go on teaching' if the power fails? 


Does teaching imply learning? 


The classic definition of teaching, according to Bruce Joyce (2015),  is “creating environments to facilitate learning” (p 5).  Interestingly he does not define the teaching / learning link more definitively.  He goes on to suggest that “effective teaching is made up of a toolkit of ways to reach students and help them build their reservoir of knowledge, skills and enduring values” (p 3).  Again stopping short of directly stating that teaching implies learning or perhaps that teaching leads to learning.  As educators our goal is for our students to walk away with knowledge and skills they previously did not possess, however, there is no guarantee our efforts will end in a transfer of knowledge, more commonly known as, learning.  Dorthy Sayers (2017)  suggested in a speech she gave at Oxford University in 1947  that students learn “everything except the art of learning” (p 7).  While this sentiment was shared over 75 years ago, it still holds true today.  We often find ourselves so busy teaching our students how to pass a test, that we have little time left to provide tools of learning.




Can teaching be separated from learning? Why might we want to do this? 


Absolutely!  Teaching does not imply learning, in fact Noggins states that at a very basic level, “teaching is an occupation” (p 47).  According to Aristotle (350 B.C.E), “the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts”.  It is clear that teaching does not always lead to learning.  By separating these terms, teaching and learning,  from their perpetual pairing, educators are able to focus less on what they need to teach and more on what students need to learn.


Works Cited

Aristotle. (350 B.C.E..). The Internet Classics Archive: Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. The Internet Classics Archive | Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. Retrieved January 14, 2023, from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.2.ii.html  

Joyce, Bruce R., et al. (2015). Models of Teaching. Pearson. 

Noddings, N. (2019). Philosophy of education. Routledge. 

Sayers, D. L. (2017). The lost tools of learning. GLH Publishing.

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