Teaching Perspectives

I am a part of over ninety percent of teachers who share same thoughts as far as teaching is concerned. According to "Teaching Perspectives Inventory" (Pratt and Collins, 2000) over ninety percent of teachers holding only one or two perspectives as their dominant view of teaching.

The Developmental Perspective:

The primary goal of education or training is to develop increasingly complex and sophisticated ways of reasoning and problem solving within a content area or field of practice. With that information teachers try to build bridges from the learners’ way of thinking to better, more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking and reasoning. The assumption behind this strategy is that learning brings about one of two kinds of change inside the brain: First, when a new experience fits with what someone already knows, it builds a stronger and more elaborate pathway to that knowledge. Second, if a new experience or new content doesn’t fit the learner’s current way of knowing, s/he must either change the old way of knowing or reject the new knowledge or experience. The goal is to change the way learners think, rather than increase their store of knowledge

Developmental teachers employ two common strategies: first, the judicious use of effective questioning that challenges learners to move from relatively simple to more complex forms of thinking; and second, the use of examples that are meaningful to learners. Indeed, from this perspective, sometimes less (telling) means more (learning).


The Apprenticeship Perspective:
Learning, therefore, is a matter of developing competence and identity in relation to
other members of a community of practice.

The Nurturing Perspective:

The Nurturing Perspective assumes that long-term, hard, persistent efforts to achieve
come from the heart, not the head. People will become motivated and productive learners when they are working on issues or problems without fear of failure. Learners are therefore nurtured by the knowledge that (a) achievement is a product of their own effort and ability, rather than the benevolence of a teacher; and that (b) their efforts to learn will be supported by their teacher and their peers. To do this they promote a climate of caring and trust, helping people set reasonable but challenging goals, and supporting effort and achievement. Above all else, they are cautious not to sacrifice self-efficacy in favor of academic achievement.

Nurturing teachers provide a great deal of encouragement and support, along with clear expectations and reasonable goals for each learner. And, their assessment of learning often considers individual growth or progress, as well as absolute achievement. caring does not negate having high expectations.

Texts and practices are interrogated for what is said, what is not said, what is included and what is excluded, and who is represented and who is not represented in the dominant discourses of practice.