Teaching and learning are actions necessary to accomplish a goal in education. Effective learning is the one that brings intended learning outcome. Teaching stimulates, directs and guides the learner to gain and finally evaluates the learning outcome. A change that occurs in individuals behavior either because of the experience or self activity, either intentionally or unintentionally, is the learning outcome.

Combined processes where an educator assesses learning needs, establishes specific learning objectives, develops teaching and learning strategies, implements plan of work and evaluates the outcomes of the instruction. It is the real action time or period of imparting knowledge, skills and attitude to adult learners by the adult facilitator or through the electronic media.

Leagans (1961), defined “teaching is the process of arranging situations that specify desired changes in behavior of people. Teaching consists of the attention brought to the learners, their interest developed, desire aroused and action promoted.” According to him “learning is the process by which an individual through his own activity, changes his behavior.”

The following framework is an attempt of Huitt (2003) to consider most of the possible answers to questions of teaching learning process, such as:

1. How do students learn?
2. What should be the focus of learning?
3. Why do some students learn more than others?

According to the framework, the reasons can be classified into four categories.

Context	All those factors outside of the classroom that might influence teaching and learning
Input	Those qualities or characteristics of teachers and students that they bring with them to the classroom experience
Classroom Processes	Teacher and student behaviors in the classroom as well as some other variables such as classroom climate and teacher/student relationships
Output	Measures of student learning taken apart from the normal instructional process.

Output

In his opinion, desired student outcomes can be considered as falling into one of three broad categories: vision, character and competence. Vision deals with ideas about who we are as human beings, our expectations about what is possible, and more specifically, our dreams, goals and desires for our lives. Character deals with issues of the direction and quality of life and is often considered in conjunction with morality and ethics. Competence, in turn, deals with issues of success and expertise. It might be said that vision defines what is possible and what we want, character is a consideration of doing the right thing, while competence is a consideration of doing the thing right.

Classroom processes

This includes all the variables that would occur in the classroom. There are three subcategories: Teacher Behavior, Student Behavior, Other/Miscellaneous. The category of Teacher Behavior consists of all the actions a teacher would make in the classroom and incudes three additional subcategories: Planning, Management, and Instruction.

Planning refers to all of those activities a teacher might do to get ready to interact with students in the classroom. Management refers to controlling student behavior, while instruction refers to actually guiding student learning. There are a variety of specific teacher classroom variables that have been related to student learning. For example, Walberg (1986), in a meta-analysis of teacher effectiveness research found support for the following individual variables:

• Use of positive reinforcement
• Cues and corrective feedback
• Cooperative learning activities
• Higher order questioning
• Use of advance organizers

Input

Input, refers to descriptions of teachers and students prior to their coming into the classroom. There are again two important subcategories: Teacher Characteristics and Student Characteristics. Some important subcategories of teacher characteristics includes the teacher’s values and beliefs, knowledge, thinking and communication skills, performance skills, and personality. Of course, there are many more possible subcategories, but these seem to be the most important.

Context

The category of context includes all of those variables outside of the classroom that have an impact on teacher and student characteristic, classroom processes, and output. The most immediate subcategories of context variables include school characteristics and school processes.

School characteristics include variables such as organizational structure and school size, School processes include factors related to activities such as leadership, supervisory practices, and school climate.

There are a wide variety of other context variables that influence the teaching/learning process. Some of the subcategories of these variables include Home, Peer Groups, Community, Religious Institutions, Society, Culture, and International Conditions. Variables related to the home environment seem especially important and include such variables as the education levels of parents, family income/socioeconomic status (SES), other parental characteristics (such as age or marital status), and a group of miscellaneous variables which includes the amount of technology in the home, the number of books and magazines in the home, and so forth. One of the variables that best predicts student achievement seems to be the level of mother’s education–especially if she did not graduate from high school (e.g., Campbell, 1991; Voelkl, 1993; Zill, 1992). This may be because the mother is the first educator of the child and the level of language usage she uses with the child is an important predictor of the child’s language usage and school achievement. A second important factor is the amount of technology in the home (Perelman, 1992). This may be because technology is such an important factor in today’s society and the more familiar the child is with technology, the more likely the child will feel comfortable in the modern classroom.

Other important context subcategories include the community (Location, Emphasis on education). peer groups, the society (including TV/Movies, social institutions, etc.), state and national policies (including laws, programs, and funding, the culture (including values, language, art, music, etc.), and international/global conditions.

The following is a simple example of how some of these variables might interact. Context variables such as the size and region of the community impact teacher and student characteristics while the context variables associated with the family impact student characteristics. Of course, there are other important context variables that could also be considered as described above. Additional context variables associated with school and state policies combine with teacher and student characteristics to impact teacher behavior. Teacher behavior along with student characteristics influence student behavior, especially those variables associated with Academic Learning Time. Student classroom behavior then influences teacher classroom behavior in an interactive pattern. Student classroom behavior, therefore, is the most direct influence on student achievement as measured by instruments influenced by state policies. Student achievement at the end of one school year then becomes a student characteristic at the beginning of the next. Additional outcome variables that are important for success in the information age can be considered in the same manner.

This framework has been developed from the perspective of systems theory. There are a variety of other mental representations that have been developed to organize the variables of interest in educational psychology. McIlrath and Huitt (1995) provide a review of previous models of the teaching/learning process and compare it to this proposed framework.

Experiential Teaching and Learning model

Centre for Excellence in Interprofessional Education (CEIPE), Queens University, Belfast, from the Learner-Teacher Interactions (LTI) research project proposed the following diagram, which illustrates the experiential learning process envisaged by the Experiential Taxonomy.

Experiential Taxonomy

Developed by Norman W. Steinaker and M. Robert Bell in 1979, the Experiential Taxonomy is grounded in the experiential learning theory which is itself underpinned by constructivist conceptions of teaching and learning. Although it does not presume to offer an answer to the question of what is good teaching-learning experience, it responds to it by offering a tool for planning, sequencing, implementing and particularly evaluating the human experience of teaching and learning through use of taxonomic teaching strategies. It is therefore easier for teachers to:

• Plan objectives appropriate to the needs of an individual learner or group of learners as the teacher can deal with needs in a succinct and logical manner (curriculum development)
• Recognise and understand where students are in terms of a particular experience, thus enhancing their ability to develop new strategies and activities designed to help each individual through additional levels of experience (engaging students)
• Self-evaluate their professional development (self-evaluation)

The Experiential Taxonomy proposes a sequence to the learning-teaching act which begins when a learner is first exposed to a learning experience and continues to the point where the learner has internalised it and is disseminating to others. The process is sequenced into 5 levels (Exposure, Participation, Identification, Internalisation, Dissemination), each of which has a number of sub-categories and progress across these is associated with the development of deep/self-regulated learning.(next page).

Within the Learner-Teacher Interaction (LTI) research project the Experiential Taxonomy was selected as an appropriate taxonomic framework for coding the gathered data. It was preferred to other formulations such as the cognitive taxonomy (Bloom, 1964), the affective taxonomy (Krathwohl, 1968), and the psychomotor taxonomy (Harrow, 1972) as it is a more unified and broadly-based taxonomy, which encompasses the broader human experience. Steinaker & Bell conceived this taxonomy as “a functional vehicle for providing the complete classification of human activity from the moment the learner is exposed to the possibility of an experience to its highest level of completion” (Steinaker & Bell, 1979:19).

It identifies:

• Five key levels (Exposure, Participation, Identification, Internalisation, Dissemination) in experiential learning;
• The changing roles of teacher and learner across these levels;
• The sub-processes that facilitate the development of higher-order experiential learning.

It needs to be noted that the process is not necessarily a linear/circular process. This means in the first instance that the starting point of a lesson does not necessarily need to be at the Exposure level (structured introduction to the topic, inviting the interest of the learners). Secondly, it is not necessary for the learning experience to go through each stage of the taxonomy to be successful and effective. It is therefore a dynamic process and progress can skip one or more categories.

Teachers and students roles

References

Huitt, W. (2003). A transactional framework of the teaching/learning process. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved [date] from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/materials/tchlrnmd.html
http://www.qub.ac.uk/elearning/public/mttl/Introduction/
Steinaker, N.W. & Bell, M.R. (1979) The Experiential Taxonomy: a new approach to teaching and learning, London: Academic Press.

Assignment

1. Expand on each role of experiential teaching and learning.