Learner-Centered Teaching Book- Chapter 3.

The Role of the Teacher.

Pngimg. (2013). The Role of the Teacher. Teaching Early Reading and Phonics: Creative Approaches to Early Literacy. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473914728.n3

This chapter describes the different roles that the teacher needs to achieve in a classroom and the different principles that the teacher do at the moment to teach. Also, in this chapter, we will answer the questions: What can one learn from this? And, How teachers or future teachers can apply that knowledge in a teaching situation?

 

To start with, teachers are an essential part of any student because they facilitate their learning and help them to acquire knowledge. According to the book “Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice”, Chapter 3, (Weimer 2013) in the learner-centered class, one of the major roles of the teacher is as a facilitator because students’ learning efforts need to be supported and being a facilitator of learning is a more a requirement and less an option. However, there are other roles that the teacher has to play such as assessor, monitor, planner, manager, etc, but it is important to take into account that the role of the teacher depends on learners’ motivation, needs, attitude and in the class size. Moreover, in a class is important that the teacher finds teaching ways that work for students. For this reason, there are some principles that teachers develop when they teach. First, teachers let students do more learning tasks. In here, teachers need to stop doing the tasks for learners due they need to do practice and improve their knowledge. Second, teachers do less telling because students need to discover to increase knowledge and it is not necessary for the teacher to always say what students have to do. Another principle is that teachers have to do instructional design work more carefully because if the teacher does authentic and legitimate work motivates students to learn. Additionally, there are more principles that a good teacher need to do in their classes in order to do a better job. (Newton, Strayer, Frazier, & Armentrout, 2006)

 

To sum up, once we already know the different teachers’ roles and a set of teaching principles, it is important to apply them in a classroom in order to get good results in students' learning. For this reason, there are some examples:

1. Before to start any activity, to give clear instructions about how to do the activity to our students, in this way, during the development of the activity will be easier for us not to help them all the time and students will discover things by themselves.
2. While the students are developing activities base on any language skill, the teacher should walk around the class monitoring and guiding the activities in order to avoid students’ mistakes.
3.  According to Jagtap, (2016) the teacher can work in his/her classes as a facilitator in order to have a practical class. Students can do any activity and the teacher will facilitate the subject material for the development of the task.

Extra information:

Weimer, M. (2013). Learner-Centered Teaching : Five Key Changes to Practice (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uta-ebooks/reader.action?docID=1119448&ppg=162

Jagtap, P. (2016). Teachers Role As Facilitator in Learning. Aug-Sept, 3, 3903–3905. Retrieved from www.srjis.com

Newton, M. E., Strayer, G. D., Frazier, G. W., & Armentrout, W. D. (2006). Principles of Teaching. The American Journal of Nursing, 36(12), 1294. https://doi.org/10.2307/3414292