A Publication of the
RCC: ECD Programme
RCC: ECD Programme
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A Publication of the RCC: ECD Programme |
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ECD: A role of a teacher
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"We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to the words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child."
Dr. Maria Montessori
Understanding and enhancing the role of a teacher is one of the fundamentals to facilitate the holistic development of a child. Since Early Childhood Development is a relatively new concept in our local setting, people are generally not aware of its basic components and benefits. Therefore, the responsibility of spreading awareness regarding ECD both in schools and in communities invariably rests with the teacher, who is one of the primary stakeholders in the ECD approach.
ECD demands a different kind of professional development for teachers which enables them to not only present the ideas of ECD successfully to parents and communities but also convince them to integrate ECD approaches in their day-to-day lives. Teacher development for ECD should fundamentally be geared towards enhancing their potential to help children grow and develop into healthy, well-nurtured individuals. The teachers must become change agents within the classrooms as well as beyond schools. Research suggests that the early years are critical for the development of intelligence, personality and social behavior of a child. A child who develops well during early years will have greater opportunities in life, be more productive and very likely become a better citizen. In contrast to primary school education, which has become largely a public responsibility throughout the world, child care and early education directed towards the healthy development of young children is also essentially the collective responsibility of people and teachers play a key role.
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Raising awareness and increasing enrollment are not the only tasks to be achieved by the teachers. Their actual work starts when the child enters in an ECD environment. The teacher has to prepare the enabling environment for the children. According to Jean Piaget’s (1896 – 1980) developmental theories, learning and thinking involves the participation of the learners, “knowledge is not merely transmitted verbally but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner. For a child to know and construct knowledge of the world the child must act on objects and it is this action which provides knowledge for those objects.” Sigel (1977) said that the mind organizes reality and acts upon it. Children need to explore, to manipulate, to experiment, to question and to search out answers for themselves. Teachers should be able to assess the child’s present cognitive level, their strength and weaknesses and should individualize instructional material accordingly. They should ensure that children have ample opportunities and spaces in the classroom to communicate with one another and exchange ideas and experiences; the teacher here becomes a facilitator of knowledge. He/she becomes a guide to stimulate and motivate the students. The children should be allowed to make mistakes and learn from them, learning is much more meaningful if the child is allowed to experiment on her own as opposed to silently absorbing the information being transferred from the teacher. The teacher must also assume the role of a guide, exposing children to different situations, allowing them to experiment and try their creativity whereby enhancing their learning potential.
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In active learning, the teacher must have confidence in the child’s ability to learn on her own, the traditional teaching methods which require the teacher to be a sole information giver to passive students is outdated and does not reap positive results. To help children become adaptive learners it is important that the learning environment they experience is relevant to their cultural context so that they are able to relate their knowledge to their surroundings. Obviously the traditional teacher would adopt textbook guided methodology in classrooms which has failed to produce thinking and productive individuals. If the ECD intervention in the classrooms has to work, the focus will have to shift from teacher dominated classes to children centered learning spaces.
Once the classroom activities become student centered, the children will be encouraged to ask questions, to explore and draw their own conclusions. The teacher’s role will logically become that of a facilitator who will assist the students in developing new insights and connecting them with their previous learning. Classroom also transforms into physical space within which the teacher interacts with the children, transfers knowledge, facilitates learning activities and helps them form inter classroom relationships with other children and their surroundings. For this purpose, the teacher has to develop her classroom. This may prove a difficult transformation since most instructors are prepared for teaching in a traditional setting. According to Susan Hanley, “classes are usually driven by ‘teacher talk’ and depend heavily on text books for the structure of the course. There is the idea that there is a fixed world of knowledge that the students must come to know. Information is divided into parts and built into a whole concept. Teachers serve as pipelines and seek to transfer their thought and meaning to the passive students. There is little room for students – initiated questions, independent thought or interaction between students. The goal of the learner is to regulate the accepted explanation or methodology expostulated by the teacher.” ECD also demands from teachers to build a strong relationship with the parents of children and community. The parents have the responsibility of pro- viding children with the love and nurturing they need from the moment of conception to the day they venture out on their own, but no parent can do it all on their own. It takes an entire community to raise a child and as a community, one must have the vision to ensure that children have the right support and services in place to help them develop and grow. Therefore, effective ECD teachers must become liaisons between the schools and communities, ensuring parental involvement, providing support to the communities and helping both to facilitate the process of children’s healthy development. Henry Giroux, in his book “Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals” (1988) argues that teachers must take on the role of transformative intellectuals who are committed to understanding and engaging the struggles for equality and justice specific to their classrooms, schools and the communities they serve. This holds true for ECD as well, where teachers have to meet various challenging demands of dealing with children to ensure their holistic development. References: • Jeanne. Ellis Ormrod, Educational Psychology, Developing Learners, Second Ed, Chapter 4, “Adapting to Individual and Group Differences”, Library of Congress Cataloging – in – Publication Data 1998 Prentice Hall, Inc.N.J, New Jersey. • Howard Gardener,“ Frames of Mind”, The theory of multiple intelligence Chapter 5, Aesthetic Sense. New York, Basic books. • Stenberg, R. J. & Wagner, R. K (1994), “Minds in context”: Internationalist perspectives on human intelligence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University. • Jeanne. Ellis Ormrod, Educational Psychology, Developing Learners, Second Ed, Chapter 2, “Adapting to Differences In Cognitive and Linguistic Development” Library of Congress Cataloging – in – Publication Data 1998 Prentice Hall, Inc.N.J, New Jersey.
• http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/piaget.shtml.
Compiled by Saima Maheen |