Fundamental Elements in Teaching

Abstract

This note, an introductory conceptual framework for a doctoral seminar on pedagogy, outlines seven key contributors to effective learning and discusses the relationships among those elements. The seven elements are institutional culture, program culture, instructor, students, materials, setting, and methodology.

Excerpt

UVA-PHA-0046

FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS IN TEACHING

Students in the back row of a class in Japan are reading the newspaper while the instructor in front drones on about his subject. Across the Pacific at the one of the world's most renowned universities, a calculus instructor spends his entire class talking to the chalkboard while writing formulae. Three thousand miles away, another professor reads to his students from the textbook for most of the hour. In Africa, a college professor cannot get the overhead projector to work and spends 15 minutes of a 60-minute class wrestling with his audiovisual aids. At a high-level executive program in England, the room is filled with round tables and medieval columns, so that participants cannot speak to each other. And at a meeting of the Southeastern U.S.-Japan Society, the former chairman of Nissan Motors declares that the reason more Japanese firms don't build plants in the United States is that they can't find enough well-educated candidates.

Effective teaching—that is, teaching that results in long-term, usable learning—is much more than just a teacher's attributes.

All of these situations highlight the importance of effective teaching and learning. Most people look to the teacher to try to understand what makes a good learning experience. We often talk and write about how effective this or that teacher's style is and remember teachers who taught us well. But effective teaching—that is, teaching that results in long-term, usable learning—is much more than just a teacher's attributes. There are many other elements that contribute to learning. If we take a systems view of a teaching situation, we can identify at least seven basic elements that are essential if we are to understand and implement effective teaching: institutional culture, program culture, students, faculty, methodology, materials, and setting. These elements are closely linked (see Figure 1). The sum of their effects determines the quality of learning that emerges in a teaching situation. Effective teaching and learning are functions of the confluence of these various influences; they work together to help students learn intellectually, emotionally, and behaviorally.

Each element in Figure 1—and each link with another element—has important characteristics. Harmony among these elements facilitates learning. If one or more elements contradict one or more of the other elements, the effectiveness of the learning will be diminished.

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Keywords: case method, teaching problems, institutional culture, program culture, instructor, students, materials, setting, and methodology