The task of teaching

 

3.      Directing learning activities 

 

In the previous section, we insisted a lot on how the teacher has to bear the students in mind when designing and constructing the curriculum, but in this function he/she does not interact directly with them. It is when the activities are actually carried out that teacher / student interaction is to the fore and that the teacher's influence is decisive in the learning process. 

 

It is clear that the teacher's role during learning activities depends on the teaching and learning model adopted, on the subject-matter and on the type of activity. We have already explained our preference for a holistic teaching model and it is also clear that we are interested in technical education -- but what is our learning model? What kind of activities are we thinking of? 

  

3.1.            The learning model 

In the previous chapter we saw that research into the teaching of technology is very poor. However, the models used in science teaching and the projects set up on the basis of this research are governed by a dominant general theoretical framework. This is based on Piagetian constructivism and Vygotskian socio-cultural psychology. In our view, this theoretical framework is completely acceptable for technical education and we want to highlight four aspects of it that are especially significant for this education:  

   

- The student has his/her own knowledge and cognitive competences. 

 

- For the child, new knowledge appears first at the social level and is later internalized.  

 

- The acquisition of knowledge is understood as a creation of meanings.  

 

- The creation of meanings requires active and voluntary involvement from the student.

    

Without questioning the internalization of knowledge, this theoretical framework highlights social intervention in the learning process and thereby emphasizes the importance of students’ relationships with their teacher, with classmates and with their socio-cultural environment. 

 

3.2.            Kinds of activities 

First, we should note that the concept of ‘activity’ is extremely broad. It may refer to a didactic unit programmed over several days, to the various parts of a didactic unit, or to the tasks students carry out at any given moment. We will use the same word for all these meanings, and we are sure that the context will make the sense clear in each case.  

Several criteria exist for distinguishing kinds of activities. For example, if we look at their function in the narrative thread, we can speak of activities of introduction, of synthesis, of reinforcement etc. But we are interested only in criteria that are useful for characterizing activities for teaching technology to children. For that reason we will focus our attention on well-known experiences in technological education and children’s education.  

 

In the previous chapter, we commented that technologists use three methodologies which have also become didactic methods for teaching technology in secondary education: the analysis of objects, the project method and the use of case studies.  

 

We have no references to experiences of using case studies with children. It seems that experiments with activities based on this method are needed.

However, the analysis of objects and the project method can be the basis for many activities in technical education for children, as we do have prior experiences that justify these methodologies.  

The analysis of objects is a kind of activity very close to traditional observation and exploration activities. It has been widely used in nursery and primary classrooms and is similar to the Research on technique that is used in primary education in the Netherlands (see previous chapter). It is an activity that stems from concrete objects and places emphasis on the function, composition and structure of objects and the way they work. This kind of activity encourages students to look at things analytically: parts of a general system are separated from each other and then put together again in new systems.  

 

The project method has important antecedents in the history of education, since it is based on the pedagogic method of Dewey (1938), which has its basis in what is known as the “scientific method". Dewey distinguished five stages:  

1) recognition of the existence of a real or significant problem that creates a need or doubt in the students,  

2) definition or delimitation of the doubt or problem,  

3) formulation of possible solutions,  

4) complete analysis of the future consequences of each solution and selection of an option, 

5) testing out the hypothesis or the selected plan of action.  

As can be seen, the above is very similar to the project method which we explained in the previous chapter. 

 

There are also several parallels between the project method and the method of teaching sciences called problem solving that has been used in many primary schools. It is only necessary to look at the diagram in Fig. 2 to see the many similarities between the two methods (extracted from Johnsey, R., 1986). 

 

A further methodological approach linked to the projects method is the discovery method. This is an approach to science teaching based on pure constructivism, which has been criticized because of the excessive isolation of students and for ignoring the social aspect of learning.

 

With these precedents, it does not seem rash to see the projects method as the kind of activity most appropriate for technical education. In fact, it is very similar to the Making technique used in the Netherlands (see previous chapter). Moreover, this method, like the analysis of objects, also fits perfectly with the pedagogic principles of activity, of autonomy and of the play-work duality that are strongly rooted in nursery and primary schools.  

Turning now to young children’s education, we also find important scientific and technical experiences. Some examples are the physical knowledge activities of Kamii and DeVries (1978), of a clear Piagetian orientation and with the aim of facilitating development through action; or the activities in scientific education developed by Arcà, Guidoni and Mazzoli (1990) with their strong socio-cultural perspective on learning; or those based on experiments carried out by Lück (2000). 

As these experiences, along with many others, have been found to be valuable for the scientific education of young children, they can provide us with guidelines for working out suitable technical education activities.  

 

Lastly, we want to refer to another kind of activity that is based, on the one hand, on the view of learning as the development of the capacity to explain and act and, on the other, on the analogy that Ogborn (1996) set up between scientific explanation and the narration of a story, in which the protagonists are the concepts and laws of science.

Tales are a traditional way of teaching children. What we propose as an activity is the scientific or technological tale, i.e. to use the narrative rules of tales for talking about scientific or technological topics. Why must tales always present social or moral stories of bear cubs and rabbits? Why shouldn’t they deal with coloured lights that collide with glass and change colour when they pass through it, or that collide with mirrors and are thrown back? And we also have the advantage that these stories can be illustrated through real experiments.

 

These kinds of activities, and the teaching and learning framework assumed, imply that teachers should have a large fund of interesting situations to be worked on in class. They also need technical and reasoning skills, and considerable talent in relating to and communicating with students.  

 

3.3.            The teacher's role in the classroom 

When we discussed curricular design, we dealt with the importance of teachers’ cultural and psychological-pedagogical skills. We will not dwell on these any further, although it is clear that these skills are also important in the teacher's task of directing learning activities. 

 

The skills that we discuss in this section are those related to direct contact with students and that correspond to several functions of the teacher in class. Although most of these teacher functions -- management, communication, diagnosis etc. -- are not specific to technical education, we will bear this context in mind when discussing them. 

 

The following focuses on teachers and, though we will often use expressions such as “the teacher decides", it should not be thought that the sole voice and will in the class-room is the teacher’s. What we mean is that the teacher has the ultimate responsibility for decisions taken in class, but that she/he often decides to do what the student proposes.  

 

First, the teacher is an authority in the class and is responsible for managing all the learning and social interaction processes: 

 

Social management. - A class is a micro-world with a social organization, in which the teacher represents the world of adults. He/she is the source of knowledge and is responsible for good social functioning, which are all facts recognized by the students. Social management implies both making sure that the rules of behaviour are respected, and looking after students’ autonomy. In addition, it implies organizing work in teams and encouraging the participation of everyone. 

 

Management of the learning process. - The teacher is responsible for choosing the activities that have to be carried out, either for the class as a whole or for individual students. In order to ensure educational progress, he/she tells them when to start and when to finish, what we do now and what later. At a more concrete level, he/she also has to decide what values, experiences, concepts and new ideas need to be introduced, what has to be remembered, which proposals must be accepted, which have to be rejected, etc. We want particularly to highlight the management of the specific language that has to be introduced into technical education activities. 

 

During the last decade interesting research has been done into the performance of science teachers in the class-room. This research has emphasized the communicative value of the various languages (verbal, body, visual, actions etc.) that are used to construct meanings and the teacher-student relationship. From this point of view, we want to distinguish the following functions of the teacher:  

 

Motivating. - For many educational specialists, this is the first and most important function of the teacher in the class-room. We have already said that often students' and teacher’s interests do not coincide, but there are certain contents that the child must learn. The teacher has to be careful to create and to maintain the student's interest so as to ensure that he/she learns these contents properly. In the case of technical education, the teacher has to pay particular attention to motivating girls and to be very sensitive to their reactions, since, in general, the social environment does not favour equality between girls and boys in this area.  

 

Rhetorical skills. - That is to say, teachers must understand their "audience" and have sufficient empathy to understand feedback from students. They must be able to adapt their performance (verbal, gestures, visual, actions etc.) to the ZPD of students. However, teachers should also be able to modify their performance according to the feedback received and should have the resources to diversify their arguments. Professional skills would probably improve if rhetoric and reasoning components were introduced into teacher training.   

 

Seeker after knowledge. - The teacher must get students to communicate their knowledge and explain the reasons for their actions. We should not forget that making students’ knowledge explicit improves learning significantly.  

 

Responsible for maintaining the narrative. - We have already spoken of this function when discussing the sequence of contents: the teacher has to try to help students understand what they are doing, why they are doing it, what they will do next and how they will carry on their technological activity. He/she has to offer summaries of what has been done and to try to relate the various activities to each other.  

 

Manager of the communicative approach. - The teacher has to be aware of and to manage, in a way that suits his/her educational purposes, the kind of communication that is set up between him/her and the class. In his/her task of planning communication, the work of Scott and Mortimer (2002) is relevant. These researchers posed four possible communicative approaches based on two dimensions: interactivity (an approach is interactive if it allows the participation of others) and dialogic character (an approach is dialogic if it accepts more than one opinion or point of view). The dialogic and non-authoritative approach is good, but it is not always the best. At this point we want to insist once again on the importance of children’s gender, because in teaching science and technology topics the teacher must take care not to prejudge, and to overcome possible communication barriers caused by social and/or cultural factors.  

 

Observer. - There are also moments when the teacher is an observer picking up information. In fact, the teacher must always adopt an observant attitude, but he/she has to foresee moments that are particularly apt for the collection of information. 

 

For this reason, it is important to prepare charts for systematic observation of students’ activity and to plan several kinds of observation, depending on the purpose of the data collected. The teacher may sometimes collect data in order to illustrate a presentation of the activity to their colleagues, but usually the collection of data serves a diagnostic or evaluative purpose.