From teacher to facilitator: A new role for the teacher

Apathetic students, illiterate graduates, incompetent teachers, impersonal schools - so rolls the drumfire of criticism towards education. More than twenty years of reports have spelled out the problems. States have been quick to respond by holding out carrots and beating with sticks! There are neither

enough carrots, nor enough sticks to improve education without the commitment and action of students and teachers. They are the precious resources on which the improvement of education depends. But how can students and teachers improve education? Many schools around the country are asking this question. One thing that is known for certain is that the "traditional" role of the teacher is no longer traditional!

Schools, teachers, and communities must be willing to accept new standards that address the need for long-term intellectual growth in a world that is rapidly changing. Teachers will be teaching fewer facts and figures and more in-depth explorations ("less is more") of larger themes such as change, patterns, models, and systems. Emphasis will be less on definitions and classification skills and more on student-directed exploration and theorizing ("hands-on/minds-on" approaches). New knowledge will be built on the experiences and understanding that students bring to the classroom ("constructivism").

Furthermore, the influence of constructivism in classrooms is expected to change the role of the teacher in the classroom from the expert dispensing knowledge, to the facilitator of student learning (Dwyer, Ringstaff, & Sandholtz, 1991). The notion of the teacher as a facilitator in a student-centered classroom may have been useful to advance pedagogical thinking, but limits attempts to create a knowledge-building community. Scardamalia and Bereiter (2002) argue that where a collaborative knowledge-building approach is adopted, the work to be done in schools becomes the construction of collective knowledge in which students become participants in the learning organization. A teacher in a constructivist classroom will act as a facilitator, guiding learning, and not just teaching facts.

Thus, it is clear that the role of the teacher will become less that of an expert and more of a facilitator, a guide to student exploration. The role of the facilitator is to accept a position of leadership - to shape the environment and guide discussion so that learning can take place. As such, our goal as teachers is to assist students in taking responsibility for their own learning and the application of that learning in their daily roles.

The facilitating teacher begins the lesson with an essential question. Essential questions are not questions that can be answered in one or even two sentences. They are far reaching, thought-provoking questions. These essential questions begin the quest for knowledge and understanding.

Because essential questions are so global in nature, the facilitating teacher then provides more guidance by providing subsidiary questions. The subsidiary questions are more unit specific questions that combine to help build answers to the essential question. With the subsidiary questions in hand, the students are then able to research, using technology, to discover some answers. By creating an open, questing atmosphere in the classroom, the facilitating teacher allows the learning to be student driven. Students are investigating areas of learning and providing answers. The facilitating teacher guides and encourages the student in the process, without directing the student in what to do. This process allows the student to be actively engaged in his/her learning.

The temptation has always been to provide a lot of "how-to's." Some "how-to's" are important, but most important is to provide processes and the environment which encourages students to go beyond the confines of a few hours in a classroom, make use of the many resources available to them, network, and explore their own interests. It is important for us to think of ourselves as facilitators rather than teachers. Some of the differences between the common perceptions of "teaching" and "facilitation" are outlined in Table 1.

The differences include some of the following: A teacher traditionally controls the process and the content of learning by defining the situation and the procedures and by specifying what is right and what is wrong. Facilitation environments, on the other hand, are those in which the teacher still has specific content to teach and still defines the process through which the learning takes place, but the teacher uses processes which are designed to guide the learners in determining the relevance of the learning for their own lives and work. The learners are encouraged to use their own judgment and decision-making capabilities.

These changes are not easy. Teachers may find it difficult to place the responsibility for learning in the hands of students. Using student's, rather than teacher's, knowledge is an unsettling, and for some, a counterintuitive idea. However, teachers need only to think about the influence of the outside to realize that no one comes to the classroom empty of experience and knowledge, be it formal or non-formal. Students can take their current conceptions and build on them with new experiences from the classroom to produce a powerful and lasting understanding.

IMAGE TABLE 1

Table 1. Operational Differences Between Teaching and Facilitation as used in the Classroom

REFERENCE

References

Dwyer, D., Ringstaff, C., & Sandholtz, J. (1991). Changes in teachers' beliefs and practices in technology-rich classrooms. Educational Leadership, 48(8): 45-53.

Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (2002). Schools as knowledge building organizations. In Keating, D. and Hertzman, C. (eds), Today's children, tomorrow's society: The developmental health and wealth of organizations. New York, NY: Guildford.

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Jamie Cano is an associate professor of Agricultural Education in the Department of Human and Community Resource Development at The Ohio State University.