Since productive teaching occurs only when "intended learning outcomes" (Cooper 3) are reached, the effective teacher must understand the subject being taught, the student in the class, the learning process, and the interrelationships that exist in the components of education. William Ward says "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires" (Cory 383). The effective teacher assists each student in reaching the learning outcome while the student builds self-esteem and confidence. True learning is based on relationships: teacher with student, student with subject, and learning with memory. Memory is the vital link between the student learning and retaining information and the cognitive process of applying that which is learned.
Cognition is defined as "the mental process or faculty of knowing." To help the students reach a cognitive state about a certain subject should be one of the goals of both teaching and learning. Bryce Hudkins divides the learning process into three stages: cognitive, practice, and knowledge of results. "Practice will not really make perfect unless the person...receives feedback regarding performance. Without feedback, performance does not improve while others, whose performance of the same skill includes feedback, do improve" (Cooper 10). The teaching process continues throughout the teaching session which includes any practice time allotted the student while in class. Therefore, this state of awareness which involves memory links is reached only after the teacher encourages the student to put the curriculum into a perspective that can be entered into memory.
Cognitivism is concerned with the mental events of the student while behaviorism deals primarily with the external conditions that affect the student's behavior. While it is important to consider external or environmental forces and their impact on learning, the teacher must present material so that the student will be able to commit important data to memory. The teacher who accepts all students as initially different will be more successful in conveying material to the class because realizing these difference the teacher will vary teaching methods while presenting the information. Incorporating different perspectives in one lesson will give variety to the students and foster an inquisitive interest by the class as a whole. However, the effective teacher must recognize the mental processes happening in the minds of the students so that the student can be helped in retaining the presented material.
Teaching and learning can begin once the knowledge base of the student is established. This can be accomplished with questions, pre-tests, or profiles filled out by the students. The cognitive approach, which recognizes the close relationship between that which is known and that which is to be learned, proceeds to build on this knowledge base by helping the students associate new material with something that is familiar. Productive teaching occurs when this new link is established. Therefore, the effective teacher who uses cognitive strategies will incorporate many devices into a lesson to assist the student in this linking process. Audio-visual aids, demonstrations, rhymes, acrostics, acronyms, and patterns are some linking devices available to the teacher. A summary of effective teaching is that the teacher teaches for retrieval so that the student can remember what is learned on test day and in the future.
A student's self-esteem and confidence are two good reasons for the teacher to desire success in the student's progress. The effective teacher can control the presentation strategies of material while many environmental and external conditions are beyond the control of the teacher. A teacher is better equipped to handle the teaching situation if he/she accepts conditions that cannot be changed and produce a change in the lives of each student. The advantages of a student's knowing about knowing (cognition) are self- evident. Self-esteem and self-worth have been mentioned earlier. In addition, mastering even a small amount of material fosters future accomplishments by the student, encourages others to reach for similar goals, and helps the student truly learn instead of simply memorizing. Helping students learn how to think, one student at a time, should be the underlying goal of education.
Memory is defined as "the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences." Memory can be divided into three phases: sensory, short- term, and long-term. Sensory memory is fleeting and momentary lasting for less than one second. It is important for the teacher to realize that while sensory systems (i.e. hearing, smell vision, etc.) are bombarded with an overwhelming amount of information, it is sensory input that is the door to the students memory and, therefore, his learning. The second phase, short- term memory, is working and active but is maintained primarily by rehearsal. Rehearsal means to repeat. This explains why students can review notes before a test, do quite well on the exam, and three days later remember nothing from the material. Short-term memory is limited to approximately seven items in adolescents and higher grade students. However, the younger children will remember far less. "Six-year-old [students] are not likely to remember more than two or three" items in short-term memory (Lefrancois 64). Teachers should consider age and maturity levels of students to set reasonable goals for the class.
Long-term memory is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for both the teacher and student. Once information enters sensory memory and processes in short-term memory, it can enter and be organized in this unlimited and highly stable area in the student's mind. Learning has truly taken place when information can be recalled from the student's long-term memory. Using a computer as a metaphor for memory, the short-term phase is RAM (highly volatile and easily lost when something else is entered) while long-term memory is the hard drive or diskette (the information is there even after the machine is turned off). This metaphor is especially helpful because a computer knows the address of each bit of information because of the manner information is entered. It is essential that information placed into a student's long-term memory be linked in a way that the student can retrieve it later. The teacher who understands the relationship between memory and retrieval can gear a lesson plan to assist the student in the process which enhances learning.
There are several processes available to the teacher to help the students enter material into long-term memory. While rehearsal is important to short-term memory, it can also be used to transfer information to long-term if it is linked with something meaningful to the students. A teacher might, for example, link an important person's name with a physical characteristic. Repeating this link several times with the class will enter it into long-term storage where it can be retrieved because of the link with the physical characteristics. Elaborating or making material memorable will also enhance the student's learning process. Putting on a demonstration of how baking soda and vinegar react when mixed will illustrate far better the reaction than simply telling the class. The effective teacher will elaborate and rehearse material so that the student can remember the information more easily.
Television is surely among the most controversial modern conveniences. Most people have very strong opinions of its use in the classroom ranging from love to pure hatred. However, the use of video presentation strengthens the long-term memory process. In July, 1987, an inservice study of the use of video presentations to enhance comprehension was conducted at the North Central Regional Laboratory in Elmhurst, Illinois. The students were shown thirty-minute programs and then tested for retention of material. The study indicates that video presentation does increase comprehension. However, "learning one new strategy every other month may be the most many...students can manage" (Wilsman 8). This study shows two important facts to the teacher. First, students are limited in the speed at which information can be entered into long-term memory. More important, however, is that adults "need to be more aware of the dynamic relationship children have with television and its special significance to children..." (Palmer 25). The memory process is so important to the learning process that teachers must use every available source to enpower the students with working knowledge.
Organization of material into long-term memory involves sorting, relating, arranging, and grouping information so that it can be remembered. It is important to note that most students have more trouble remembering than they do learning. Therefore, the effective teacher will help the memory process by introducing the student to various organizational techniques. Sorting material by logic and rules will help most students in synthesis problems. For example, spelling is based on remembering rules, exceptions, and language. It is ridiculous to memorize all the words where "e" is placed in front of the "I". However, the rule of "i" before "e" except after "c" and in words like weigh will help the students spell the correct way most of the time. Research indicates that spelling errors happen at a patterned rate. A study conducted at Indiana University "revealed that a small number of different words constitute the majority of misspelled words" (Farr 3). This list of commonly misspelled words would be of great usefulness to an English or Spelling teacher. Chunking is another useful organizational device. A good example of chunking is a telephone number. It is much easier to remember one number (with seven digits) than to recall seven unrelated digits. Chunking will help students in every subject area to recall information more readily.
If great teaching is effecting intended learning outcomes, then learning is achieving those intended outcomes. However, the teacher's role is more than presenting material. The teacher enpowers the student with knowledge and how to retrieve and apply what has been learned. As master of the material, the teacher can quickly leave a class in a cloud of overwhelming information if the cumulative process of education is not considered. Teaching is a building project. As one brick must be laid on the previous one so one fact must be related to the previous and the next. The teacher's role in learning is to help the students acquire a mastery of the material. Bits and Pieces says "the object of teaching is to enable those taught to get along without a teacher" (Cory 384). Teachers can accomplish this monumental task of enpowering students only after realizing that the role of a teacher is to produce intended learning outcomes.
Children need to participate in their own learning experience if true education occurs. "Children co-create their...expectations about...cognitive capabilities" (Saarni 15). Learning is a dynamic process that involves both teacher and student in a united effort that leads to "emerging cognitive skills [that] facilitate the child's development" (Saarni 16). The teacher who recognizes the role that memory plays in cognitive learning will be more effective in the classroom and, more important, more effective with each student. M.J. Berrill said "a great teacher is not simply one who imports knowledge to his students, but one who awakens their interest in it and makes them eager to pursue it for themselves. He is a spark plug, not a fuel pipe" (Cory 212). While teacher's roles are varied, one thing remains clear. It is the teacher's ability to enpower the student and enhance the student's skill to remember that will ultimately shape tomorrow because today's students are the leaders of tomorrow.