Key Questions
How do we as teachers facilitate learning?
How do we apply educational technologies with our students?
Examples in Reviewed Articles
Tools of this realm focus on how the teacher interacts with materials and students during the act of teaching. They naturally overlap with tools of Methodology, as a heuristic for how to act with or react to a student answers questions within this realm as well. Yet, I make a distinction here not to attempt to draw a line between different technologies, but to hone in on the tools, Methodological or not, that specifically deal with how teachers act and interact.
The key questions for this realm, How do we as teachers facilitate learning? and How do we apply educational technologies with our students?, focus directly on teacher action. To distinguish Teaching from Lesson tools, which similarly focus on practice, consider a class discussion. The topic, the format, the timeline for the class discussion are all part of the Lesson artifact, and they serve to shape the activity. But the demeanor of the teacher, whether they should intervene in the discussion and when, how they should present themself physically and intellectually, all fall outside of the Lesson artifact itself and belong to the realm of Teaching.
Unfortunately, tools that address this realm directly are rarely discussed in the literature, critical or otherwise. Though much time is dedicated to addressing the structure and content of interactions, the mode and tone of interventions is most often left to the reader’s imagination. Despite this relative silence in academic literature, we should not assume that this type of tool is either inexistent or unimportant. In my conversations with both teachers and students, it is always teacher demeanor that stands out in people’s memories, and I remember most fondly those teachers who not only had a good program, but also a good mode of interaction. Thus, let this be a call to highlight Teaching tools more explicitly, to discuss them more openly, to perhaps advance them more intentionally.
Analysis of reviewed articles
Only two authors reviewed explicitly address teaching questions. For Blikstein (2008), the way the teacher interacts with the students is a central concern, and it forms a key part of his framework. He leverages his active Research stance to pay attention to how his and other teachers’ demeanors affect how his students relate to the content. Then, he replicates attitudes that facilitate further engagement, while attempting to change those that create hierarchical divisions between the teacher and the student.
Meanwhile, McLean (2020) focuses on how her time and attention conversing, advising, and most importantly listening to students is a crucial element of her pedagogy. By going out of her way to provide alternative routes for the students to engage with her, she transforms her classroom into a space of open and free discussion.
Both McLean and Blikstein recognize actively that the mood of their students and the relationships they develop with the content are determined by their own interactions and demeanor. So, they take active steps to recognize what works, and they moderate their attitudes based on these observations. Thus, they actively cultivate the environment they wish to see.