Traditional Teaching Methods and Innovation - Essay Example

Comparison between a traditional educational practice and an educational innovation. [Pick the Education is an important part of our lives. It is not only important in making us better humans but also plays a vital role in making us competent enough to succeed in this race of progress that is based on the principle of the “survival of fittest”. As educational is the key to excel in this race and provides a basic framework on which a person’s whole life depends, education has now developed into a complicated discipline. The traditional teaching methods are now constantly being replaced with newer and better methods that aim at providing better education to help the individuals compete effectively in the modern world. There have been a lot of modern innovations in the traditional pedagogy in the last two centuries. The twentieth century is especially important in revolutionizing the traditional educational systems. After the advent of psychological studies and their subsequent educational theories, educationists and teachers became more aware of the students’ mental and psychological makeup and so they started designing educational systems accordingly (Kyriacou, 2001). Similarly with the advent of technological era and the advancements in the fields of IT, educational systems were molded accordingly and they became more and more reliant on technology. So overall the modern education system in most parts of the world and especially in the developed countries is very different from the traditional education systems and traditional educational practices (Goodson & Anstead, 2010). This paper is aimed at comparison of a traditional educational practice with a modern or innovative one so I have chosen the traditional lecture method to compare it with modern interactive classroom methodologies. Classroom environments have changed drastically in the past few decades all over the world, especially in the developed and modern countries. This is mainly because of the fact that learning is no more considered as a passive skill but rather as an active skill. Previously for a considerable time in the history all over the world, it was thought that learning is a passive process and teaching is an active skill. Therefore, a student should just sit and concentrate on “listening” ( that is again a passive skill) to what the teacher says and occasionally it meant note taking as well. But the main task of the student in the previous teaching arrangement used to be just concentration on what was being said and occasionally noting it down. This method is known as the traditional lecturing method. In a traditional lecture classroom, the teacher plays the pivotal role and acts as a nucleus around which the whole lecture or class revolves. That means that the teacher literally used to be the only one who mattered. The classrooms or lecture halls meant places full of students who dumbly sat and listened to whatever the teacher had to say about a certain topic, with little or no participation at all. Thus the teachers had to be good orators and performers because the lectures were one man show and the better you put up the show, the better teacher you become. Lecture system is almost as old as the formal education itself. It is still practiced in some great universities but at school level this system did not prove out to be a good one. But because this system was a hit in the past and is still practiced to some extent that means it had its own advantages. For example it is efficient for large class systems i.e. in classrooms or lecture theatres containing 60-80 students. In some universities, large number of students is grouped together so this system helps the teachers to teach a bigger number of students at a time in an efficient manner. This system is also very fast as it saves a lot of time. In interactive learning classrooms a lot of time is required for activities etc but this system is useful in teaching larger courses in shorter time. Lecture system failed because of a number of reasons. First of all , as mentioned above, it takes learning as a passive skill and so it is based on the same framework of methodologies that are designed keeping this passive view in mind. While actually, on the other hand, it is a proven fact that learning is an active process so basically traditional lecture method has a faulty framework on which it is based. Secondly as it focuses on seeing the imparting of education as a one man show, it ends up inefficiently because not everyone can grab the attention of students and keep them glued during the whole lecture. So, traditional lectures used to be actually long hours of boredom in which the students often got distracted and wouldn’t even listen to teachers most of the time. It was also inefficient because the teachers couldn’t gauge the students’ response during the lecture. As it was a one way communication so the students had no chances of actually showing any traces of learning before exams and the teachers continued one-sidedly. Thus it did not develop students’ communication skills and could not boast their confidence in their learning. Active learning method or interactive that is used in the modern classrooms is a totally innovative form of teaching and learning as compared with the traditional lecture methods. As the word “Active learning” itself says, this method of teaching believes that learning is an active process. Thus it is based on the fact that teachers and students both are equally important stake holders in learning process. This method of teaching in class rooms is based on interaction between the teachers and students and so this method utilizes this interaction and communication as a tool in learning. In modern classrooms, teacher is not the sole responsible factor who is supposed to lead the class’s proceedings; rather the teachers and students collaborate in the class together during the lectures (Keengwe et al, 2014). In the interactive classroom environments, students are not supposed to sit in a dumb manner and listen passively to whatever the teacher says. Rather the students are expected to play an equal role in the class while the teacher teaches. This interaction is done through a number of innovative techniques and methods. Sometimes the students are given hand outs or materials from the book that they are supposed to read before the class and this is the “pre-teaching” stage of the class proceedings. This helps the students to grasp the main idea of the topic that the teacher would teach. During the class, first of all, the students are asked to brain storm the information that they have gathered from the readings. Then during the lecture or while the teacher teaches, the students’ constantly and actively relate it with their previous knowledge. Similarly the teacher keeps asking questions or opinions during the class to engage the students actively. In active participation and interactive learning, presentations and quizzes also play an important role in the two way communication between the teachers and the students. Sometimes the students are asked to present certain topics in the class which the teacher elaborates later. This boasts the students’ confidence and helps them to actively learn with all concentration and focus. Short oral quizzes at the end of class are also organized by the teachers to gauge the students’ learning and their response (Sutherland et al, 2002). The class activities in interactive teaching are also spontaneous ones sometimes, for example the teacher may ask the students to make a model or chart of what he teaches or he can utilize realia in class to arouse students’ interest and to ignite a discussion among the students. In any ways the students are meant to be an important active and contributing factor in the class room. Active and interactive teaching creates a more friendly and collaborative environment in the classroom. It creates a more interesting environment that proves out to be less boring than the traditional long boring lecture hours. It acts at two different levels (Robertson et al, 2008). For good students or those who actually and willingly want to learn during the class, interactive learning makes the class more interesting and they can play their part because of interest. On another level, it also acts as a motivating force for the otherwise dull or uninterested students. Those students do not pay attention during lectures because they can ignore the teacher, but in interactive learning the activities act a s a threat to make those students active because they know that they are going to get asked during the class in front of everyone. So this system eliminates fair chances of passivity and lugubriousness from the class environment. So in a nutshell, the interactive class room environments are better than the traditional lectures and are an innovation in the set traditional patterns of teaching. While the traditional lecture methodology focused on the teacher as the only active and contributing factor in educating the students, the modern interactive environments take teachers and students as two important and equally responsible stakeholders in class room. The interactive methodology involves maximum student participation in the class to make their learning an interactive, interesting and active process and thus it has totally and radically changed the previously existing methods of teaching that focused just on teachers and looked upon the students as passive objects that were meant to sit in the class and just listen passively to the teacher. This avant-garde method of pedagogy has made the class rooms more interesting and suitable for effective learning. References Goodson, I., & Anstead, C. J. (2010). Through the schoolhouse door. Rotterdam: Sense.  Keengwe, J., Onchwari, G., & Oigara, J. N. (2014). Promoting active learning through the flipped classroom model. Kyriacou, C. (2001). Essential teaching skills. Cheltenham [England: Nelson Thornes. Robertson, D. R., Nilson, L. B., & Professional & Organizational Development Network in Higher Education. (2008). To improve the academy: Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sutherland, T. E., Hobson, E., Bonwell, C. C., Eison, J. A., & American Accounting Association. (2002). Active learning toolkit. Sarasota, FL: American Accounting Association. Read More