The+Process+of+Education+Chapter+6

The Process of Education Chapter 6
 * Return to Reading Response and Discussion

Summary**:

This chapter discusses the many devices that can be and are used to help teachers present material to their students. Among these are some simple devices, such as film, TV and sound recordings. However, more complex devices, such as laboratory experiments, rely on materials that provide a more hands-on experience like Stern blocks, Cuisenaire rods or models of molecules and the respiratory system. Together these devices help to produce clarity within the material for the students.

With the advancement of technology, “automatizing devices” were developed to present practice problems to students and gave them instant feedback regarding their answers. The difficulty of the problems increase gradually in order to prevent the students from becoming discouraged. These teaching machines were programmed in the same way a teacher would go about planning a curriculum, but it was commented that programming the teaching machines helped teachers to become more aware of the sequence in which they present material.

Around the time that this was written, a common type of film presented in classrooms was an “enrichment film” which only introduces the basics of a particular subject matter in order to make the film useful by many different classrooms with a different level of knowledge and understanding about the topic. The introduction of films by the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) replaced enrichment films by presenting all of the material within a course, which minimizes the need for the teacher. However, these films leave teachers with classroom activities that go along with the video in order for the teacher to retain the respect from his or her class. A danger that comes to the forefront with the use of films as a teaching device is that the films sometimes are not related to any other teaching device, which obscures the original objective of the teacher.

A teacher’s task is to communicate the material to the students, and with the aid of devices, the students are able to expand their experience, gain more clarification of the material and are given a more personal significance of it. As long as a teacher can keep his or her eye on the aims and requirements of teaching, the use of teaching aids should never be a problem.


 * Key Passages**:

“Films and television as well as adroitly illustrated books can be adjuncts to the effort at producing clarity and concrete embodiment.” Page 82

“It has been remarked by teachers who have written tapes for teaching machines that the exercise has the effect of making one highly conscious of the sequence in which one presents problems and of the aims of the sequence.” Page 83

"In sum, then, there exist devices to aid the teacher in extending the student's range of experience, in helping him to understand the underlying structure of the material he is learning, and in dramatizing the significance of what he is learning. There are also devices now being developed that can take some of the load of teaching from the teacher's shoulders. How these aids and devices should be used in concert as a system of aids is, of course, the interesting problem." page 84

“Yet there is always a question as to the purpose of any particular device – be it a film of paramecia or slide projection of a graph of a television show on the Hoover Dam. The devices themselves cannot dictate their purpose.” Page 87

"Limiting instruction to a steady diet of classroom recitation supported only by traditional and middling textbooks can make lively subjects dull for the student. The objectives of a curriculum ad the balanced means for attaining it should be a guide." page 88

"The teacher is not only a communicator but a model. Somebody who does not see anything beautiful or powerful about mathematics is not likely to ignite others with a sense of the intrinsic excitement of the subject." page 90


 * Important Terminology**:

Devices for vicarious experience – things, like film and TV for example, used to present material to students that give him or her a “direct” experience of events.

Laboratory experiments and demonstrations – these help students grasp the underlying structure of a phenomenon.

Sequential programs – used to help lead students to the conceptual structure of the things he or she observes. This is achieved as a result of the order in which the teacher presents the material to help lead the student to the main idea.

Model devices – the range of learning aids from the laboratory exercise through the mathematical blocks to the programmed sequence.

Dramatizing devices – devices that lead the student to identify more closely with a phenomenon or idea.

Automatizing devices – a teaching machine that presents students with problems.

PSSC films - films designed to teach an entire course and minimize need for teachers.


 * Discussion Guiding Questions**:

1) Since this book has been written, there has been a great advancement in technology, which opened up doors for many other teaching devices. With the ability of teaching devices to do much more, what problems are we now presented with?