Needed Attributes for Teachers

¶ … Teaching The author of this report is asked to offer a brief treatise about the subject of the definition of teaching. Specifically, the author is to use some scholarly references that are to include the work of J.S. Atherton. As part of this research, the author will reflect on what teaching means to the author both personally and in light of the scholarly research that has been conducted.

While many people feel many different things about teaching and while not all of them are positive, it is without question how pivotal and important a role that teaching plays in our society and our world and scholars like Atherton knew that full well. The author of this report found a webpage that was authored by and that details the ideas and positions asserted by the aforementioned James Atherton.

Atherton's page first points to the model put forth by Kolb (who was inspired by learning visionary Kurt Lewin) that learning can be divided into four major realms. Those realms are concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. In other words, learning can take on several major forms but it will typically fall under one of those four broader categories. For example, the author of this report would observe that one could learn about science by conducting an experiment but there could also be learning through abstract learning.

The four dimensions obviously would overlap and interface with each other in many ways (Atherton, 2015). Atherton expands the model described above by point to the typology of learner and their styles when it comes to the four types of learning. Concrete experience lends itself to activist learners. These are people that learn by doing and experiencing. Reflective observation people are known as reflectors as they observe and reflect on what they just saw.

Abstract conceptualization is where theorists fall under because they want to understand the underlying concepts, reasons and relationships. Finally, a person that falls under the active experimentation dimension would be a pragmatist because they like to "have a go" to see if things work as they would expect or think.

To take that and extend it to what it means to be a teacher, it would mean to the author of this report that people can (or prefer) to learn in multiple ways and that teachers should be adaptable based on the needs and strengths of the people they are teaching. Indeed, some people "learn by doing" while others would rather look at things conceptually and from a theoretical standpoint.

To put it simpler, there are those that can read something and learn about while others want to just get out and do it (Atherton, 2015). As for other sources, the Kingston University of London asserts that teachers need to meet three major competencies to be considered proper teachers. They say that the knowledge and use of the learning strategies, the ability to assess what pupils know, the tendency to think highly of their students and the knowledge of how to motivate the same are all imperative.

Indeed, the author would sum that up by saying that teachers should indeed know where their students stand, where they could or should be and then they should get them from point A to point B (KUL, 2015). The reputable and well-known Carnegie-Mellon University says that "effective teaching involves acquiring relevant knowledge about dents and using that knowledge to inform our course design and classroom teaching" (Carnegie-Mellon, 2015). This says much the same thing as the prior source but in a slightly different way.

Conclusion If there is a point to the above, it would be that teaching is all about knowing what is being taught, who is being taught, what is known.