TEACHER EDUCATION (6)The craft of teaching: Its genesis and development [Archives:2006/994/Education]

Dr. Ramakanta Sahu
Associate Professor
Department of English
University of Science and Technology, Sana'a
Education is the process by which a person's mind and character are developed through teaching, or through formal instruction at a school or college. It is the process in which our thoughts get structured and refined. Educational system in any country, contrary to being amorphous lacking substance and direction, is modeled on the matrix of the traditional value system so as to inculcate in the individual a self-generating motivation for self-actualization. This is supposed to be the end product of teaching.

What is teaching

Cambridge Intellectual Dictionary of English defines teaching as giving (someone) “knowledge or to instruct or to train (someone).”According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, teaching means “to show somebody how to do something” or to “change somebody's ideas.”

Teaching is an activity, which is characterized by a definite character. If we try to understand the history of the term “teaching”,the word “teach” comes from the Teutonic term “taikjan” meaning “to show”, “point to”, “call attention to acts, events, objects by signs or symbols”. Obviously to teach implies showing someone something.

Teaching is an indigenous behavior, an ancient behavioral structure with its origin lost in antiquity. The need for education emerged out of the compelling need to transmit the folk culture, habits, customs, to successive generations. In the dawn of civilization, when there was no language as a symbolic system to communicate ideas, the primitive man must have learned non-instinctual behavior by imitation. Subsequently, as the complexity of culture increased, the need was felt for evolving a more organized system of transmission of ideas and information, leading to the beginning of more systematic procedure of teaching.

This system was initially confined to showing and telling. Eventually, it evolved into a more complex behavioral structure or pattern to serve the interests of tribal welfare. The modern system of teaching is an off-shoot of this.

To teach is to “show”. It appears to be simple, but has complex ramifications, some of which are as follows:

To show implies

– to reveal one's feelings

– to direct a person attention to something

– to guide behavior

– to make clear analytically

– to make clear by comparing

– to make evident by logical steps

Historically, trial and error, showing and telling, intervention and improvisation were the elements of ancient mode of education which were retained through the ages and became integral parts of education in culture after culture.

The earliest teacher were the medicine men, sorcerers, priests although they were not designated as such. As primitive societies advanced the craft of these professionals became institutionalized and, consequently, teaching became more formal and more explicit as a distinct form of behavior.

Components of teaching

Teaching is not only a natural form of behavior but also an inter-connected, inter-dependent and composite system. As the present sophisticated or developed form of teaching consists of teacher, learner, materials and learning context, similarly the primitive form of teaching included agents, subjects, ends and circumstances. The circumstances consist of learning tools over which the agent (teacher)has control. Conditions are the setting under which the material means (learning tools) are used and over which the agent has much less control. The ends are the learning dividends or outcomes consisting of the skills to be developed in the subjects. The agent is a jug full of knowledge. He is the bearer of knowledge superior to that of the subjects (learner). It is he who is the torch-bearer and who guides the learning.

In the advanced stage of teaching, the components became much diversified so much so that teaching became a complex phenomenon with lots of new insights from related fields such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, applied linguistics, so on and so forth.
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