Teaching

A Psychological Analysis

C.M. Fleming

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351980975
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Psychologie de l'éducation

Originally published in 1968, the findings of modern psychological research had contributed much that was directly relevant to the problems of all who taught at the time. Dr Fleming here presents both recent and past conclusions in a survey that would have been useful to all who were called upon to give instruction. Since its first appearance in 1958 this book had been entirely revised and brought into line with the most modern research. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

PART I

INTRODUCTORY

I

THE TEACHER IN THE ACT OF TUITION

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TEACHING MAY BE studied in any situation in which a certain excess of skill or prestige prompts a human being to try to pass on to another something of his competence – in knowledge (belief), feeling (appreciation), purpose (value), or action. The contact may be between two adults or two children. It may be between a child and an adult, an employer and an employee, a parent and a child, or an officially appointed teacher and a pupil. The phrasing may differ in different circles. ‘I'll show you.’ ‘I think I am right in supposing . . .’ ‘I guess that's so.’ ‘Take it from me.’ The response is surprisingly similar in all. ‘Do you know what you are talking about?’ ‘Is that style of play any good?’ ‘Is your taste to be trusted?’ ‘Are those values relevant?’ These questions may be asked by those who are being ‘taught’. They may occur to the teachers themselves as they ‘teach’. Always they imply an inquiry as to personal qualifications and commonly they are followed by some form of search for professional skill. ‘How can this teaching be done?’ ‘What method is the best?’

Conscious concern with such questions is behind the centuries-old belief in teacher-training exemplified in the gathering of disciples round a Master in Galilee. It found modern elaboration in the writings of Erasmus, Ignatius, Mulcaster, Comenius, Pestalozzi, and Herbart; and it reached institutional form in the eighteenth-century seminaries of Halle and Stettin, and the nineteenth-century training colleges of many lands.[1] The standard of competence required from professional teachers may vary from country to country and its content may be differently interpreted in different social settings. General awareness of its importance is indicated by the provision which is made not only for initial preparation but for continued education through ‘refresher courses’, ‘in-service training’, quin-quennial testing by national teachers’ examinations and the like.[2] The studies relevant to such professional skill were offered in earlier centuries through philosophic appraisals of the teacher's art. Now they are to be found chiefly in the interpretations of psychologists who have accepted the challenge of the educators and have sought to study the processes of learning and teaching in experimental investigations and through observational records of long-term development in various fields.[3]

Prior to entrance to a school most teachers have thus deliberately made some attempt to answer the two questions:

(a)Have I something to teach? (Do I know the subject?)

(b)How can the teaching best be done? (How do I propose to present my subject?)

Upon beginning to teach a change occurs. The door of a classroom opens. Fifteen to fifty pairs of eyes are focused upon the newcomer. There is a silence laced with expectancy; and self-examination as to knowledge of content and method drops into insignificance before the more immediate challenge: ‘Can I win and hold their attention?’ ‘Will they follow me, like me, obey me?’ ‘What sort of person will be successful in this situation?’ ‘Am I that sort of person?’

Classroom procedures and good teaching

On this topic, could the prospective teacher pause to study it, a considerable amount of evidence is available.[4] In its simplest form it is to be found in the answers given by pupils to direct questions of the type: ‘What sort of teacher do you like best?’ ‘What, in your opinion, are the qualities of a good teacher?’ Replies differ somewhat from school to school; and the range of available adjectives is very wide. Birchmore, for example, in a recent London inquiry collected from three hundred and forty pupils statements which included one hundred and five good qualities and sixty-four bad qualities. These could be grouped under such headings as order and discipline, knowledge, personal attributes, ways of handling class-work, and ways of dealing with boys; but there remained a wide variety of opinion within the general framework of an emphasis on the importance of decency and kindliness on the part of the teacher as a human being – friendliness and an absence of fussiness and bossiness.[5]

More subtle methods have been used by those who, interviewing boys and girls, have extracted by incidental means evidence as to the accepted stereotypes of good or bad teachers held by groups of pupils in differing circumstances.[6] Similar material has been collected through the analysis of pupils’ essays on superficially neutral topics.[7]

From all of this a composite picture may be painted. Pupils declare that they prefer teachers who conform to something like the following pattern:

has no favourites,

has patience,

goes out of his way to help backward pupils,

is fair and considerate,

does not punish the whole class because of one boy,

admits when he is wrong,

does not get angry when asked to explain,

can explain a difficult subject simply,

does not control the class by fear,

does not snoop,

has a thorough knowledge of his subject.[8]

Most of this, it will be noted, is in terms of what good teachers do and say. It is a matter of general procedures rather than of personal characteristics.

A similar descriptive approach has been followed in many studies made by adult observers. These are in direct succession to the philosophic fiction of Rousseau and the didactic prescriptions of Pestalozzi and Froebel; but they now offer an analysis of actual happenings supported by photographic and sound recordings and elaborated by techniques derived from nineteenth-century reports on the speech development of infants.[9] The latter were admittedly concerned with the observation of one child at a time and they encouraged too rigid a labelling of individuals as egocentric,[10] socially blind, independent, dependent, unresponsive, self-assertive, submissive, and the like.[11] About the third decade of the present century, however, interest began to be taken in the responses of children to the attitudes and actions of their parents and teachers; and a beginning was made in what can now be described as the scientific study of the teaching process.

Four books are of importance here. Bühler in the 1920s broke new ground by her use of methods of concentrated observation by trained observers and her classification of their recordings under predetermined headings (contacts in approach and response according to observable purposes—social, pedagogical, organizational, charitable or economic, and expressive either of friendly or unfriendly intentions).[12] A not dissimilar classification was offered by Murphy in a descriptive reproduction of the sayings and doings of nursery school pupils in their relationships with one another;[13] and the relevance of such methods to the observation of relationships between teachers and older pupils was next made clear by several investigations reported by Lewin and his students in the fourth decade. Bühler had shown that the observational methods currently used by anthropologists could be applied to the observation of children. Murphy had drawn attention to the variations of behavio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• PREFACE
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF TABLES
• PART I. INTRODUCTORY
• PART II. THE TEACHER AS A STUDENT OF MOTIVATION
• PART III. THE TEACHER AS A PROMOTER OF LEARNING
• PART IV. THE TEACHER AS AN OBSERVER OF GROWTH
• PART V. THE TEACHER AS CRAFTSMAN AND TECHNICIAN
• PART VI. THE TEACHER AS EXPERIMENTER
• PART VII. THE TEACHER AS ADMINISTRATOR AND THERAPIST
• INDEX