Teaching as Facilitation of Learning : Successful Approaches, Course Design and Implementation

Myint Myint Thein

Change and innovation in educational thought and practice is deemed necessary to respond effectively to the changes and opportunities of the twenty first century. Hence, developments are taking place throughout the world and new developments are seen in teaching, in teacher education. In planning and in new approaches to the administration of educational systems and in programs of education.

One of the new developments is the paradigm shift in teaching as transmission of knowledge to facilitation of learning. Regarding teaching as transmission of knowledge, teachers play the role of knowledge providers and students passive consumers and this type of teaching is often labeled as one way teaching. The paradigm shift calls for many changes in various aspects among which regarded as essential include curriculum design, its implementation, method of teaching and role of the teacher. It is obvious that the traditional style of each of these does not suffice for the purpose of teaching as facilitation of learning. To serve the purpose, a set of goals and related objectives need to be accordingly stated, a set of methods to achieve these aims devised, and techniques of assessment developed to assess whether or not the course has been successful.

If we aim at the successful implementation of the planned course, curriculum, method of teaching, techniques of assessment should not have discrepancies with stated objectives, a description of what the students should be able to do as a result of the course. It is almost imperative that the course would not be as successful as one would wish in the case of finding discrepancies and we may end up finding the expected learning outcomes disappointing. Examples of such discrepancies are an aim high in the course objectives, for instance, is "critical thinking" and yet in observing teaching the finding may be that students have little opportunity to practice the necessary skills, that is to ask questions or to take part in discussions ; critical inquiries into examinations of the same course may also show similar discrepancies with stated objectives, for example, examination questions could be answered by recalling information alone thus encouraging memorization rather than thinking.

Equally important is selecting appropriate tasks and the relevance of particular approaches for the courses and skills. If what is aimed at is teaching as facilitation of learning, taking the course should teach students to be able to learn on their own and thus changing the role of the teacher form teacher to facilitator. The notion that students should take responsibility for their own learning has drawn much attention because all learning can in any case only be carried out by the students themselves and also because it is important for them to develop the ability to continue learning after their formal education. Taking responsibility is taken to be associated with the notion of autonomy since this involves learners in taking either partial or total ownership of many processes such as selecting ways and means of completing a given task, making decisions at each step and assessing their own work which have traditionally been under the control of the teacher. Thus, while changing towards teaching as facilitation of learning, students, should be provided opportunities to engage themselves in tasks that will help them to develop in a number of key competencies such as those mentioned above.

This presentation will address curriculum design issues within the context of innovation and change in development contexts. The participants will get practical experience from this session as it aims to offer successful approaches, course design and implementation aspects of teaching as facilitation of learning.