Teaching Behaviour
Teaching is a broader action effort, where the teacher's teaching behaviour is refined through instruction, encouragement, and stimulation by the teacher. In this case, the teacher's behaviour affects the student's learning process. This type of teaching behaviour of the teacher is obtained through training and experience. Plans are made to refine the teaching behaviour of these teachers through various educational and psychological aspects. The characteristics of a teacher are often imitated by the students, so the teacher will be the possessor of the ideal character.
According to D.G. Ryan, Teacher’s behaviour is defined as the behaviour or activities of persons as they go about doing whatever is required of teachers, particularly those activities that are concerned with the direction of guidance of the learning of others.
Types of Teaching Behaviour
The type of teaching behaviour is based on classical theory of organization task-centered. It has an assumption that members of an organization are primarily passive instrument, capable of performing work and accepting direction but not initiating actions.
1. Authoritarian Teaching Behaviour
In this type of teaching behaviour, the teacher exercises a firm centralized control. He directs every action of his students. He does all the planning for the class and gives all the directions. He tells the students what to think as well as what to do. He thinks and regards himself as the only active agent in teaching and considers students passive listeners of instruction and information.
H.C. Morrison has defined teaching according to authoritarian model of behaviour: "Teaching is an intimate contact between a more mature personality and a less mature which is designed to further the education of the later."
This type of teaching confines to memory level. There is no place for developing feelings and attitudes of the students. There is no scope of criticism in this type of teaching. Even a teacher can teach wrong things to the students. Thus, the teaching behaviour is influenced by the authoritarian form of government.
2. Democratic Teaching Behaviour
Teaching in the democratic form of government which is based on 'Human relations theory of organization-relationship'. The main assumption of this theory is that members bring to their organization attitudes values and goals; that they have to be motivated to participate in the system of organization behaviour. The attitudes and morale of the workers are important in the explanation of the organization behaviour.
Edmund Amidon has defined the term 'teaching' in view of the democratic model of behaviour: "Teaching is defined as an interactive process, primarily involving class-room talk which takes place between teacher and pupils and occurs during definable activities".
N.L. Gage also defines according to the democratic model of behaviour: "Teaching is a form of interpersonal influence aimed at changing the behaviour potential of another person".
In this type of teaching, the teacher plays the role of democratic group leader. His main aim is to lead his students in the study of significant problems in the area in which he is teaching. There is always a scope in such a classroom for interchange of ideas, evidences, and insights, give and take, and respect for one another's ideas.
The teaching activities in this model recognized here are: motivating, planning, counselling and evaluation. Classroom talk which can be classified and analyses.
3. Laissez Faire Teaching Behaviour
Teaching behaviour in laissez faire form of government is based on Modern Theory of Organization: Task and relationship centered'. It has an assumption that members of the organization are decision-makers and problem solvers and that perception and processes and central to the explanation of behaviour of organization.
John Brubacher has defined the term teaching according to the laissez faire model of behaviour: "Teaching is an arrangement and manipulation of a situation in which there are gaps and obstructions which an individual will seek to overcome and from which he will learn in the course of doing so."
It is evident from the above definition of teaching that students is more active than the teacher. Teacher's job is to create the situation for the learner. The teacher leaves students 'on their own'. Here students but not the teacher decide what they want to do and how they will do it. This type of teaching may be organized even at reflective level.
Teaching is that activity which influences learning but interpersonal. relationship is an essential situation. The main focus of teaching is to enable the student to learn in all type of situations but the nature of interpersonal relationship may vary from situation to situation. It seems to be a comprehensive definition of teaching.
Functions of Teaching Behaviour
Teaching behaviour have important in the process of teaching. The independent and dependent variables perform three major functions: 1. Diagnosis, 2. Prescription and 3. Evaluation.
1. Diagnostic Functions:- The teacher as an independent variable is more active in the function. He has to diagnose the entering behaviours of the learners and structure of the content for writing teacher objectives in behaviour terms. This function helps the teacher to take the decision about the following aspects of teaching:
- (a) Entering behaviour of pupils
- (b) Analyzing teaching problems, and
- (c) Content analysis is view of learning conditions.
The teacher uses two approaches in the diagnostic function:
- A diagnostic test is administered for the entering behaviour of the pupils.
- The content is analysed into elements and they are arranged logically in a sequence.
The student as a dependent variable diagnoses on the basis of his perception for his activities and response. The language comprehensions, abilities, skills and expressions are the main comments of dependent variables. In the process of interaction teacher and both diagnose for initiation and response.
2. Prescriptive Function:- The teaching learning objectives can be achieved by the appropriate interpersonal relationship between the teacher and the students. The teacher takes decision about teaching strategies and tactics to be used.
The main objective of this function is to bring desirable change in learner's behaviour. Therefore, techniques of reinforcement are used for this purpose. In selecting teaching techniques and feedback devices, teacher has to keep in mind the individual differences among the students. The teacher attempts to organize the intervening variables in such a way so that learning objectives may be achieved. It has two main elements:
- (a) Teaching skills are taken into practice, and
- (b) The feedback devices are used appropriately.
The teacher performs more prescriptive function in the presentation of the content whereas student is less active. The student helps the teacher in demonstration.
3. Evaluation Function:- The evaluation function is the most important aspect of teaching and its main objective is to examine the effectiveness of prescriptive functions. The criterion of evaluation is the realization of objectives. If objectives could not be realized, it shows that prescriptive functions are not appropriate. Therefore, the weakness of the second function should be diagnosed students should not be blamed for this weakness but prescriptive functions should be modified and improved. The evaluation function has two main activities:
- (i). Construction of criterion test, and
- (ii). Evaluation of change of behaviour.
Characteristics of teacher Behaviour
Certain environmental influences and the learned and unlearned characteristics of the individual teacher determine the nature of teacher behaviour. Some postulates that evolve from this assumption may include the following:
- Assertive:– the teacher has a strong personality, is independent, competitive, and forceful.
- Responsive:– the teacher has compassion, is helpful, sincere, friendly, and sensitive to student needs.
- Clear:– the teacher presents content in ways that students can understand, answers questions, has clear course objectives.
- Relevant:– the teacher uses examples, explanations, and exercises that make the course content relevant to students‟ careers and personal goals.
- Competent:– the teacher is a content expert, intelligent, and knows how to teach.
- Trustworthy:– the teacher is honest, genuine, and abides by ethical standards.
- Caring:– the teacher cares about students, understands them, and has their best interests at heart.
- Immediate:– the teacher's nonverbal behaviours are expressive; the teacher smiles, nods, uses gestures, makes eye contact, and doesn‟t speak in a monotone.
- Humorous:– the teacher uses humour frequently.
- Discloses:– the teacher reveals an appropriate amount of personal information when it‟s relevant to the topic.
Variables of Teaching behaviour
Teaching is affected by a number of factors. All these factors which influence the process of teaching are known as variables of teaching. Main factors which are responsible for determining the strategy of teaching are discussed below:
1. Nature of the objectives to be achieved:- Nature of the objectives influence the nature of teaching to a large extent. Teaching depends upon what types of objectives are to be attained. Objective is only to provide information or to acquire knowledge and skills attitudes and values. On the basis of these objectives teacher decides about the level at which teaching is to take place, whether teaching will be taken at memory level or understanding level or reflective level. Objectives also help the teacher to decide about the strategies of teaching.
2. Nature of the content:- Teaching is a triadic activity. It is the result of interaction among teacher, learner and learning material. So. content or learning material is an important component of teaching. Nature of content helps in deciding the type of methods, media to be adopted for effective teaching.
3. Characteristics of the learner:- To make teaching successful, teacher must assess the learner's entry behaviour. He must know intelligence level, aptitude, interest and previous achievement of the learner in order to design effectively the process of teaching.
4. Instructional Procedures:- Instructional procedures also influence the process of teaching to a great extent. Success of teaching depends upon the choice of appropriate instructional procedures. Choice of instructional procedures is guided by types of objectives; nature of the content, teacher's competence and learner's learning style.
5. Characteristics of a teacher:- Teaching is a result of interaction of teacher with the learner in the classroom. Nature of this interaction depends upon agreement between teacher's characteristics and learner's characteristics. A teacher having good personality, possessing good mental health, a lover of children, objective, reasonable and tolerant, will produce good teaching. The teaching is influenced by the teaching style and other passage variables including training as a teacher.
Relationship between Teaching and Learning
It is essential to establish the relationship between teaching and learning. The understanding of relationship between teaching and learning requires the understanding of meanings of these two. The meaning of learning can be explained by these definitions.
1. Woodworth defines learning as. "The process of acquiring new knowledge and new responses."
2. Pavlov's view is that learning is "habit formation resulting from conditioning."
3. Crow and Crow consider learning as "the acquisition of habits, knowledge and attitude."
In brief, learning may be defined as a relatively permanent change in behaviour (excluding the influence of growth, maturity or lesion). The teaching process is also related to realise the same objective as may bot clear from the definition of teaching given by Clarke's definition teaching, i.e., "activities that are designed and performed to produce change in student's behaviour" relates teaching process to realise the same objective. It can be concluded that teaching consists of all those activities or system. of actions that are intended to produce learning.
But cause and effect relationship does not exist between teaching and learning. It is not essential for a teaching to be ended with some or other types of learning. Similarly, for learning it is not essential for a learning to be initiated or handled by some or the other type of teaching. Learning may also take place without involving the formalities of teaching process.