Impact of teacher absence on student learning and educational philosophy

Educational Theories Guiding Educational Experience

Description of an education event experienced

I am a dentist, and I have started a course on teaching dentistry. My experience with education was never a particularly encouraging one as my teacher was always absent. When I was at school, the teachers went on strike, and that left us with no attention from them. We had to do much of the studying alone, and all required research lay squarely on our shoulders in the absence of teachers for as long as they were striking. Whenever the teachers came around school, they applied a work to rule strategy and that was extremely devastating. Lecturers were never available for any extra consultation, and we had to take our learning as individual responsibilities instead of waiting for support or guidance from lecturers. Any difficulties, which we may have faced during the study never, had a chance in the lecturers mind. They only offered the basics of teaching and left us on our own.

Many are occasions when we could depend on our own efforts and one day, we sat in a room with a book and had to teach ourselves. The teacher did not provide homework and clearly had no lesson plans. Teachers provided what they thought and felt was essential without any clear concern for our fate. The effect their actions had on our educational experience was extremely negative and, furthermore, as students, we had nothing to do with their reason for going on strike. It was an unusually unethical move for our teachers to leave us grappling with education in the absence of their guidance. Worse, more, even on occasions when they appeared in class, their interest in our performance remained questionable. This was because of their lack of guiding materials like lesson plans and assistive experiments through assignments. It affected me and made me promise myself never to be like him and always do my best for whoever is relying on me. When we could never have our teachers in class, learning took a new angle, as we had to find means of making up for the hours lost when our teachers went on strike. The interaction with fellow students became an experience, which has influences our educational lives. Teachers' performance influences the ability of students to improve their educational lives by giving them a safe environment for learning.

Feelings about the event

This event is something that has changed my view about education. I find it that it is essential to help students with the learning using the facilitation theory (Buchanan & Hyde, 2008). On most occasions, students need the presence of the lecturer to give them social support through learning. Through facilitative learning, the teacher uses the humanist approach whereby an educator facilitates the learning process. Our teachers overlooked this need by neglecting us and leaving us to struggle on our own. In the absence of our teachers, we had to rely on the social learning theories. That promoted our taking up of the learning process as personal responsibilities, after which, we helped each other with the required needs for our educational needs. We had to emulate the learning tactics of each other, and through group work, we managed to make up for the lectures lost during the period when our teachers were on strike (Booker, 2008).

The social learning theory promotes the ability of learners to take up a combination of cognitive learning theories and observational learning theories into practice. There was serious absence of our teachers, but students were always present meaning we had the opportunity of learning from the influences of our classmates (Buchanan & Hyde, 2008). Those who proved interested in learning acted as motivators to those who had no skills of how to go about learning in the absence of the teachers. With time, all the students had learnt to emulate the proper study deeds of the other students through observation. This experience made me realize that education can be taken as a social development approach. As much as we did it in a desperate effort for making up for the absence of our teachers, it is still relevant to realize the effects, which group work, have on learning. Group work helped us into appreciating the efforts of each other in the classroom. Learning became a social effort, which every member collaboratively took part in with dedication.

Teacher led education comes with many restrictions and rules for students to follow. When teachers are absent, and students must make up for their educational excellence, learning takes the angle of becoming a personal initiative (Buchanan & Hyde, 2008). The facilitative theory makes students overly dependent on teachers and in cases where teachers are absent as it was in our case, students begin understanding the basis of education from a different angle. Teacher led education requires that the teacher creates the environment of teaching students. This form of learning gives students a comfortable means of considering new ideas without any emotional stress concerning external influence. Should a teacher be absent, the student always has to face all challenges in a solitary way and that may cause serious psychological effects on the learning of the students (Baker, 2010).

It reduces the preparedness of the learner as the fear of facing new aspects individually present themselves. Facilitative learning enhances the natural eagerness that students have for learning without the imposition of any threats. The teacher, therefore, stands in to bridge the gap of the need for learning by giving the student easy means for grasping concepts. In situations where students are absent, the eagerness to learn may drop drastically, as students grapple with the confusion of lack of guidance (Buchanan & Hyde, 2008). When the teachers came to class in our case, it was evident that they had no working plans and they never even provided homework. It just took the confidence that we could have on them, and that compromised their delivery of education to us whenever they appeared. This is typical with any learning situation, because, students learning through the facilitative theory guidelines base all their learning on the expertise of the teacher. With the lack of lesson plans, there exists a lack of preparedness on the teacher, and that can cause massive disconnection in the learning processes (Baker, 2010).

A positive thing that learning on our own accord brought to us is the development of the skill of research. This is contrary to the fact that facilitative theory encourages the submission to the directions of a lecturer. It is always challenging to accept the concepts, which teachers introduce into learning on some occasions. However, when a personalized learning process becomes the option for students, the student does not have any conflicting information to deal with while learning. The student does personal research and assimilates the findings, which produces a personal understanding of the concepts. It may be hard to take up such learning, and concepts may be confusing at some points, but this all helps the student to develop critical thinking (Baker, 2010).

Kolbs model promotes learning through experiments that produce experiences in the learning process. These experiments are proof of concrete solutions and applications, which a learning process brings about. It takes the convincing of students to have them in concurrence with the facts that a lecturer gives (Buchanan & Hyde, 2008). With the absence of teachers in a learning process, such experiments are invalid, and that leaves students without any concrete experience to base their learning. This was the case with our learning, which lacked assignments from teachers, who were never present to provide challenging aspects for observation of results. That means that there was no conceptualization of results from any experiments and students have to create personal assumptions (Carbonneau, Vallerand, Fernet & Guay, 2008).

Application of educational theories on learning situations

The learning theories that guide education can be assimilated, into education, to promote a smooth running of the learning process (Carbonneau, Vallerand, Fernet & Guay, 2008). Research, into the influences of teacher presence on the performance of students, shows positivity in learning and improvement of student performances. Educational delivery in situations of facilitative models depends on the presence of the teacher to give students the motivation necessary for their excellence. The involvement of teachers in the teaching process shows their passion on the students' education and leads to improvement of the students' performance. Taking on our situation when teachers had no lesson plans and gave no assignments, it showed that they lacked the passion for teaching (Carbonneau, Vallerand, Fernet & Guay, 2008).

It would be extremely motivating for students if their teachers showed passion when teaching them. The passion, which teachers use to give assignments, show students that it is important, to understand the concepts taught to them, and they prove that by performing effectively in assignments given by the teachers (Carbonneau, Vallerand, Fernet & Guay, 2008). Student performance, therefore, need the passionate involvement of teachers because it is the promoter of enthusiasm in learning. The presence of teachers in class creates an emotional connection between students and teachers. It is, therefore, vital that teachers save their students from psychological strain caused by the absence from lecturers. Situations like strikes keep teachers away from teaching their students who are in need of their guidance, and that leaves the students in remote conditions, which do not permit them to have an evaluator assessing their performance and encouraging them forward (Carbonneau, Vallerand, Fernet & Guay, 2008).

As teachers absence increases, perceived psychological distance increases because of lack of interaction. Teachers must develop an interest in the learning of their students by giving them the due attention, which they deserve. However, in the absence of teachers, in the learning process, teacher student interaction is overtaken by student-student interaction as it happened in our case. Student content interaction is also a means of learning, which can help students in forging forward in their learning without necessarily waiting on their teachers (Carbonneau, Vallerand, Fernet & Guay, 2008). Students can be trained on modes of interacting with their peers through discussions, as that promotes learning and discoveries from a relatively equal level of understanding. Students' interaction with content is also beneficial to the learning process, as students take their personal time to research and assimilate their findings; these scenarios can help students into facing teacher absence in class in a more mature way. It reduces the effects of psychological distance caused by the absence of teachers during lessons.

Incorporation of passion in pedagogy is harnessed by rationale and cognition, which promotes friendship between the teacher and student. This aspect also promotes the same social aspect between students creating harmony during studies. When passion is incorporated into a learning process, friendship develops promoting the advancement towards the achievement of educational excellence as a shared purpose (Carbonneau, Vallerand, Fernet & Guay, 2008). To incorporate passion into earning, it would take the promotion of teacher involvement in the teaching process. This requires the motivation of teachers, whereby, their needs are handled amicably before any problems they may be facing get out of hand. Motivated teachers transfer the positive view of learning into the education process making their students as motivated to learning as they are to teaching.

Normative theories are a provision of goals, standards and norms of education. These must be observed by teachers when carrying out their duties, for students to benefit from learning. Lesson plans; make teaching approachable as they guide the teacher on the aspects of learning to promote at any given time. In addition, lesson plans give teachers a glimpse of the expected outcomes for students they teach through the plans of teaching they have. Teaches much make sure that they have their lesson plans effectively organized so that the learning process follows a specific direction (Annand, 2011). The use of assignments after lessons helps teachers in determining whether their students grasp what they teach or not. Teacher facilitated learning helps in creating a unity in the learning process, and it further has predetermined outcomes. Te sameness quality in this teaching method of teaching assumes that lecturers and teachers are conversant with various teaching using educational theories, and would use them effectively in the presentation of their teaching processes.

Conclusion

The experiences that students have in their educational lives affect their performance educationally. Improvement in the educational system also requires the improvement if the social aspect between teachers and students (Annand, 2011). The social aspect of learning missed in the case presented in this study led to negative results towards the educational system. The absence of teachers gave the students no chance for interacting with their teachers, and that is very detrimental to the educational performance of students. There are educational theories, which guide educators in their provision of quality education to students. Through the research, it came out that there is a need for psychological closeness with students. That would encourage students to have an interactive session with their teachers, promoting their learning and educational achievements (Buchanan & Hyde, 2008).

The normative educational theories would be used to guide the behavior of teachers in their service provision. Teachers must know their ethical requirements, so they can give the best to their students. By that, teachers can ensure that they meet all standards of teaching students. Things like lesson plans and assignments become easy for them to give to their students the best during educational service provision. The social learning theory also guides the students in means of assimilating cognitive aspects into their learning (Buchanan & Hyde, 2008). When students cannot manage to find information through their teachers, group work can always be used to give them the chance of performing better in their studies (Baker, 2010). Education becomes a sensitive field that teachers must be careful when handling always. The problems, which may affect the teachers' performance, must be evaluated in good time so they do not affect the studying lives of students (Buchanan & Hyde, 2008).