Teaching is a job with a serious purpose and soul. The kind of influence that teachers have on the future generation cannot be put into words. It is safe to say that it is one of the most difficult professions in the world because of the multiple layers that it has. Teaching demands dedication, commitment, and passion. Of course, all professions demand commitment and dedication, however, teachers have the added responsibility of molding generations and the future.
There is a misconception that teaching is an easy job. Teaching is a challenging job as each kid is different and each kid requires different kinds of teaching strategies and teaching techniques to ensure that they learn.
We have talked about teaching methods and teaching strategies previously. Today, we will be looking at the levels of teaching and how to teach using these levels of teaching.
Levels of Teaching
Let us take a look at the following diagram.
As the diagram depicts, there are three levels of teaching.
- Memory Level
- Understanding Level
- Reflective Level
Let us look at these levels of teaching more closely:
1.Memory level
Memory level of teaching, as the name suggests, is a level of teaching where the objective is just to impart the textbook knowledge and make the students memorize it rather than learn it per se. It is not the best practice. For example, mugging up the multiplication table without understanding the concept can be categorized as the memory level of teaching. Memorization is not always the best way to learn something.
The students need to relate to the concepts and process it rather than just memorizing things in sequence. However, memory level teaching helps to exercise the memory and increase the memory power. The teacher plays an authoritative and dominating role in the classroom when it is the memory level of teaching that is being followed. This works in lower classes and the involvement of students is not much as compared to the other two levels. It is more of a mechanical process and facts are recorded in the brain. Teachers use various activities such as revision, drill Q & A, etc to take across this form of teaching.
2.Understanding Level
Understanding level of teaching is a more thoughtful teaching process wherein the students connect with the concepts and as the name suggests, understand the subject matter. Based on the previous knowledge of the students and their level of comprehension, they analyze the concepts and put together the facts and other notions associated with it. The teachers and students are equally involved in this process and teachers make use of discussions, lectures, explanations and similar methods in this teaching level. The classroom environment is inclusive and engaging.
Suppose if the teacher is talking about addition and teacher draws real life examples such as take a pencil from your box now take another one, how many do you have now likewise, the students would understand the concept better and draw connecting lines. Now that teaching has moved online, it is important to incorporate all levels of teaching into the classroom to ace classroom management.
3.Reflective level
The Reflective Level of teaching is also called the introspective level of teaching. This is considered the highest form of the teaching-learning process. This is primarily because the teaching does not stop after making the students understand the concept. It goes beyond understanding and expects students to reflect on what is learned or what they have understood.
This is a deeper level where, the learner takes one step ahead into the concept to understand the different, various dimensions that the concept has. This is the level of teaching where the teacher inspires and urges the students to reflect and introspect on the material and concepts that they have been taught. For instance, let us say that the concept taught was the hazards of plastic. The lesson might cover aspects such as the chemical composition of plastic and how it degrades and its hazards. In a reflective level of teaching, the students would give up or at least try to minimize the use of plastic and take initiative to find alternatives to plastic.
Conclusion
As mentioned, the reflective level of teaching is the highest. However, the memory level of teaching has been proven beneficial in some situations. The teacher has to choose the level of teaching based on the concepts and the intensity of the subject matter. A teacher takes different roles in a classroom based on the situation. We have discussed in detail the roles of a teacher and how the different roles help in classroom management.
If you have any questions, drop them in the comments section. We will be back with yet another informative blog, until then, stay tuned.
Keep learning, keep growing.
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