The Teacher as the Facilitator of Learning.

My Education Foundation was Teacher Centered!

Sterehe High School students during an exam.

Education in Kenya, especially at primary and high school levels, is mainly teacher centered and exam oriented. The teacher is the central figure of authority in the classroom. For instance, the teacher is responsible of the entire learning process, designing classroom policy, and the sole decision maker regarding classroom activities. Furthermore, the teacher is to be respected, even feared, and cannot be challenged. There are less classroom activities that require students’ direct participation, and lessons are designed in such a way that all students do is listen to lectures and take down lesson notes dictated by the teacher or from a textbook. In high school, some learner centered practices such as group discussions are encouraged; however, the teacher remains the know-it-all-can’t-be-challenged figure that the students are often afraid of. Basically, the role of the teacher is more or less dictatorial. A “good” teacher is stern and provides all the information that is to be learned in a classroom. The role of the teacher is to teach and administer examinations. The students sit and take notes, they then cram for examination and give back this content on their tests. I went through this process and never questioned it, well, this actually is very normal in most schools in Kenya especially public schools. In fact, if you had a teacher who did not dominate the learning process, then the students would often be disrespectful and consider him/her incompetent.

The Role of the Teacher in the Classroom.

In college, I came to experience and appreciate the role of the teacher as a facilitator of learning in a classroom. Reading through the chapter on “The Role of the Teacher” in Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice by Maryellen Weimer, I was reminded about how my professors handled the learning process of two almost the same courses on Linguistics Syntax. In my junior year I took a syntax course which was an introductory course that was to lay the foundation for the advanced syntax course that I was to take in my senior year. Looking at the textbook to the course prior to the beginning of classes, I already presumed that the course was hard. I went to the class with this attitude which was made even worse by the professor. The professor would lecture us the whole time and dictate lesson notes. He would then give us examples of syntactic structures which we copied in our books without any clear knowledge of how to apply the rules of syntax on the various sentences. Every day I stepped in the classroom and stepped out almost the same way I came in. There was little learning going on. This meant I had to do most of the learning on my own using the textbook. Since this was a practical course, it was hard for me to understand the unit on my own. During our final exam, I pretty much crammed the syntactic terminologies, formulas and procedures that I applied on the various questions. Somehow, I actually passed the course, but then, I also forgot almost everything I had learned.

Experience with Learner-Centered Teaching.

During my senior year, I took the Advanced Syntax course. My previous experience with the introductory unit made me nervous about this course. It was a highly practical course and there was no way I would make it through if I had to be lectured on it. My perception was that since it was advanced, it was going to be much harder than the previous one. However, this turned out to be one of my best classes that I took that year. The lessons were majorly learner centered and the professor facilitated the learning process rather than dominating. At the initial stages of the course, the professor provided the necessary theoretical information that we needed to know to go about the course. He would then demonstrate the various concepts we were to learn during every lesson. These included rules of syntax, syntactic processes, constituency tests and constituent structures, disambiguation and so on. The professor then delegated the learning process to the students as he let us do more learning tasks under his supervision. He placed us in groups and facilitated the activities we carried out. This relates to Weimer’s principle of faculty encouraging students to learn from and with each other (81). The professor made it clear that our success in the course partly depended on how well we collaborated in our groups and with the entire class. With this responsibility on us, we worked hard in our groups. Group discussions were normally followed by presentation where a group which, for example, was able to apply a particular constituency test successfully would demonstrate to the rest of the class how to go about it.

We also, by the professor’s guidance, often designed the classroom activities and assignments for our groups on areas we found difficulty in and we felt we needed more practice. The students were more cooperative in class and many participated in classroom activities which was unlike the previous syntax class. I found this course much easier than the previous one.  Another concept which was at play was “Teachers do less telling so that students can more discovering” (Weimer74). The professor let us strike out on our own to discover new knowledge. We carried out research and brought our findings to class. We would share this information with our group members and then with the entire class. I personally found this course much manageable and, surprisingly, fun. The various assignments and activities the professor designed for the class were useful in building on our knowledge from the previous class on syntax. Though it wasn’t easy, I took the various challenges I experienced in this course more positively and worked towards improvement. I learned a lot that I could apply effectively from this class.