Journal #2 - Accommodation

What it means to be an effective teacher.

One of the most important things that I've learned over my five years at the University of Victoria is that everyone learns differently; not every student will take in the information and learn from it in the same way.  I’ve discovered, both through personal experiences as a student as well as through my education courses, that being able to adapt and accommodate to individual learning styles is an essential and critical part of being an effective teacher.

Throughout my years at UVic I’ve discovered that as a student there are different ways even within different subject areas and disciplines that I learn best.  Sometimes I find that hands-on experience is the most effective way that I learn, while other times it’s through very traditional styles such as visual and auditory; even within a single student there can be a wide variety of learning styles that all need to be catered too.  Because of my experience within my own learning styles I can understand how there can be such a wide variety of learning styles within a class, as well as within individual students.

Woolfolk, Winnie and Perry (2011) have defined three different traditions of learning styles which incorporate the wide variety of learning styles (i.e., cognitive styles, problem-solving styles, decision-making styles, thinking styles, etc.) that individuals may have: cognitive-centered styles, personality-centered styles, and activity-centered styles.  Throughout my educational courses I’ve be exposed to a number of different teaching styles which help cater to the these different traditions of learning.  Bloom’s Taxonomy of Teaching Styles is one way that I’ve been exposed to different ways to teaching a class; the spectrum of teaching styles incorporates styles such as command and practice which are more teacher lead styles, and divergent discovery and reciprocal styles which give the students’ more decision-making power and control of their learning.

Using these different teaching styles effectively is essential in helping students to learn to the best of their ability.  I believe that many students who may struggle in different classes don’t understand the content simply because it’s not presented to them in a way which they understand.  Although it’s difficult to cater to all individual needs all the time, I believe that as a teacher it is my responsibility to adapt and accommodate my lesson plan to help those students who may be struggling with traditional visual or auditory learning.

I think that because my background is in Physical Education, I really understand the importance of having students becoming actively involved in their learning; the process of learning is continuous and reciprocal, so it’s crucial that students take part in how they learn and how the learning may be structured.  I believe that having students being actively involved in their own learning and giving them a choice in how they learn the material, you can effectively help all students see success. 

I believe that being an effective teacher means being able to accommodate a variety of different learning styles within your classes.  Being able to help every student in your class understand the material by the way that they learn best is going to help increase the success of the students and make for a very positive learning experience for everyone.  Effective teachers can cater to the needs to all of the students by offering a variety of different teaching methods, styles and assessment options to students.



References:
Woolfolk, A.N., Winne, P.H., & Perry, N.E. (2011). Educational psychology (5th ed.). Toronto, ON: Pearson Canada

Journal #1 - Availability

What it means to be an effective teacher.

One of the reasons that I think this is such a difficult statement to define is because it is so fluid; the answer is constantly changing. Not only does the definition of an "effective teacher" vary from person to person, but it may also change for an individual over the course of their teaching career. I'm hoping that this journal will help me to discover what being an effective teacher means to me at this point in my schooling/teaching career, although I'm sure it will continue to change throughout my career as an educator.

I've chosen to write my first journal entry about something that I found, as a student, was one of the most important things I noticed about the effectiveness of my teachers growing up; this was the availability of the teacher.  I've examined a number of different academic articles to try and come up with some sort of definition of what an effective teacher is that includes the notion of the teachers being readily available to the students when they need them, both for academic reasons and other. The closest definition that I found was written by Devlin and Samarawickrema (2010) who defined effective teaching as teaching that is oriented to and focused on students and their learning. It's a fairly broad definition of effective teaching, but because it states that it is focused on students as individuals as well as their learning it was the best one I could find to fit into my idea of availability as being a part of being an effective teacher.

I think back into my own career as a student and one of the ways that I separated the teachers I thought of as "effective" and the ones who weren't, was their willingness to speak to students and be available to their students outside of the classroom. It was the teachers that made the effort to let students know that they were free to chat outside of class time; regardless of what it was about, they were there as a resource to their students.  If a student was struggling with homework or having difficulty understanding a concept, it was the teachers that were willing to stay late after school to help them that really had an impact on that student's learning experience.

 

I remember having talks with some of my teachers about jobs and family, trouble with boyfriends or friends... it was meaningful to me to be able to have that sort of relationship and support system with some of my teachers. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a strong family support system at home and I think that sometimes it was those teachers, the ones willing to take the time to have a one-on-one talk with those students who were struggling, that really made a difference in their lives.  By being available to students you are helping to create meaningful relationships and becoming a stable system of support for your students both in and out of the classroom.

 

Being an effective teacher is more than simply knowing your subject area and keeping students engaged in the classroom; I believe that it’s also about helping to become a support system for students outside of the classroom as well.  By being available to your students outside of the class time, whether it is for help with homework or just to talk, you are creating meaningful relationships and I think that that is a major part of what I would consider to be an effective teacher.

References:


Devlin, M., & Samarawickrema, G. (2010). The criteria of effective teaching in a changing higher education context. Higher Education Research & Development, 29(2), 111-124.