Academic environment for students, teachers, ministry and other education subsystems

WHAT IS TEACHING?

25/5/2020

WHAT IS TEACHING?

Teaching is the process of telling or showing someone how to do something either through talking, telling, explaining, and showing, illustrating and demonstrating. The ‘something’ is contents, facts, skills and processes. Although teaching is a process, the word is sometimes used to represent a system.In this connection, when one refers to another as a teacher’, we automatically take this to mean someone involved in teaching. This involves a series of steps which the teacher has to go through for effective teaching to take place. Some of the steps are

For effective teaching to occur, a series of steps need to be followed by the teacher. Such as;

Consultations of the syllabus
Choice of topics to teach
Interpretations of the objectives
Selections of the teaching methods
Selections of resource materials
Actual class interpretation of the lesson.

“Teaching is an intimate contact between a more mature personality and less mature one which is designed to further the education of the latter.” H.C. Morrison (1934)

“Teaching means many different things, that teaching act varies from person to person and from situation to situation.’(Bar 1961)

“The behavioral activities of a person as they go about doing whatever is required of teachers particularly those activities which are concerned with the guidance or direction of learning of others.”(Ryan, 1965)

“Teaching is the arrangement of contingencies of reinforcement under which students learn. They learn without teaching in their natural environment, but teachers arrange special contingencies which expedite learning and hastening the appearance of behavioural which would otherwise be acquired slowly or making scene of the appearance of behaviour which might never occur.” (B.F. Skinner. 1968)

“Teaching is an act of interpersonal influence aimed at changing the ways in which other persons can or will behave” (N.L. Gage, 196)

Teaching can therefore be said as a process of imparting knowledge or a skill.

For teaching to take place, there must be harmony among the various components involved. The teacher should be motivated to teach and adequately equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills on the other hand, the learner should be interested to learn.

Therefore, for teachings to occur there must be at least a learner, content and a teacher as a facilitator of the learning process (with his intentions or objectives).

It is commonly said that learners are taught by a teacher, but they also acquire information from other sources such as books.

In a teaching-learning situation, resources are very useful.