ITEC 2013 - Teaching and Learning Strategies

Changes necessary in teaching and learning strategies

The article was taken from Rosnani Hashim (ITEC 2013, University of Lampung, Indonesia)

Institute of Education, International Islamic University Malaysia

In the past our learning and teaching strategies were basically concerned on cognitive understanding and retention of facts or content. At most we would like our students to be able to apply these facts in solving some problems in their daily lives, in examinations and in most cases as foundations for further higher learning. Basically it is the lower order of the Bloom’s taxonomy i.e. knowledge, understanding and application. It rarely attempts to do much analysis, evaluation and synthesis which are the higher order of the Bloom’s taxonomy that are crucial for critical and creative thinking, for proper judgement and good decision making. This are only provided at the end of high school or in the university. This was alright for a system of education that desires to sort out students based on grades to fit into the available occupational positions. Moreover the system was elitist then and meant to choose the best brains.

But today with technological changes and innovation, where information is accessible to all and the world grows more competitive, leading to a different kind of worker i.e the knowledge worker, the focus on education is not only on the products or the contents but more importantly on the process or the skills necessary to enable the formulation of a solution. As educators, we need to adapt our lesson presentations to these digitally “programmed” students. There is little hope that these digital natives will “power down” their minds to become more engaged with traditional learning styles (Pensky, 2001).

It is interesting how the changes of the present era was envisaged as early as 1916 when Dewey published his seminal work "Democracy and Education", which acknowledged that learners should become active participants in the educational process. The idea is that in learning from their own experience, students become, in a sense, their own teachers. The changed role of the learner has, in turn, implications for that of the teacher. Instead of the source of knowledge, teachers become facilitators of the learning process; that is, their role is to create the set of conditions under which students can best learn from their experiences. Moreover, teachers can fulfill this role only by becoming learners themselves, and a primary source of their learning must be their students. In a nutshell, teachers who learn become better teachers, and learners who teach become better learners. Although this idea seems straightforward enough, educators have been very slow to put it into practice. However, the rapid technological changes of the last few decades may well provide the catalyst that finally brings about these needed reforms in the field of education (Florin, L.& S. Sugioka, 2007).

Teaching and learning strategies today have to foster communication skills which in this century would mean proficiency in the English language, critical and creative thinking skills, and inter-personal and collaborative skills. The issue is how to foster these skills through teaching and learning. Good communication skills require the students to speak up and not just to listen and digest all that the lecturer informs them. Thus, a lecture is not suitable all the times. There ought to be discussion where students can express their ideas and also their views – however sloppy it might seems at first. The conversation should also be between students and students and not only between teacher and students. Only when the proper language is used will it be alive. Discussion can also be taken up into small group.

To foster critical thinking skills, students ought to be trained to reason well and be analytical. They must be able to give reasons for their belief. They must be able to provide evidence for their argument, give examples to illustrate, identify fallacies in reasoning, to think logically, through induction or deduction and to recognize valid and sound arguments. This can be done through analytical written exercises or in classroom discussion. To foster creative thinking, students have to be taught to sometimes think outside of the box or to be imaginative.

To foster collaborative skills and work as a team, students need to be encouraged to do some form of group or project work where each member is given a task to be worthy.