Sunday, October 7, 2012

Teaching Style & Learning Outcomes


In my point of view, changing teachers to some extent will have effects on the formation of students' learning habits, attitude, even grade. When we talk about teaching style, it relates to a systematic teaching methods that a teacher present in class like how to interact with students to help them master the target knowledge. Whether the new teaching style that brought by the new teacher is suitable for students or not, it will cost students' time to get used to it, rather than let students fully focus on the content they are learning. Assume that students are taught by a teacher who tend to provide a comprehensive context first then leave students to predict grammatical rules, and the next teacher tend to explain grammatical rules first then leave students to solve grammar problems. Apparently, students lose the thinking process from grammatical phenomena to grammatical rules. They may feel confused and waste time on figuring out how to apply rules to grammar problems, and on the contrary, if they are accustomed to the second teacher's method, they may not be able to make hypothesis on grammar rules. It is dangerous to make students feel frustrated when confront this kind of difficulty, which may lead them to form a passive attitude towards learning, and even affect their grade.
However, changing teaching style is not always a bad thing for students. At students' early stage of a learning process, where learning habits are developed, they need a phase to find and grasp a basic way of learning that can help them master the knowledge, but after this, they should try other methods to improve and make their ways of learning more efficient, and during this phase, different kinds of teaching styles are needed. And it won't hurt students' motivation of learning.

3 comments:

  1. I agree that the grades and attitudes will change. Do you think that in most cases the change benefits the students? I know from personal experiences that I can get along with some teachers really well and adapt quickly to their teaching method. However, there are some teachers that I didn't mesh with which caused a negative correlation in my grades. Do you think that if one student isn't grasping the method that the teacher should change his/her teaching style?

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  2. I agree, switching teachers can definitely be time consuming for the students. When they are trying to adjust to a new teaching style, it's hard to get any real learning accomplished, and so the first several weeks are spent fruitlessly. And once they are adjusted, they then have to catch up on all the things they were supposed to have been learning from the beginning.

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  3. I feel that changing teaching styles can have a good effect on student learning and grades. If a student is being taught by a teacher in a way that they don't connect with or understand and then they are taught by a different teacher in a new way they understand, their grades could improve as well as their interest in learning.

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