Learning & Classroom Discourse
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Teaching is a demanding profession in which no two students are alike and no two days are alike. Teachers are responsible for motivating, liberating, educating, and inspiring their students. Ira Shor in Empowering Education suggests that good teachers do not talk at their students - they talk with them. Similarly, a good teacher will not impart information unilaterally to students, but will dialogue with students and encourage students to share their opinions. Ideally, such discussions will be simultaneously spontaneous and structured (Shor 85). David Reynolds in Educational Review disagrees with Shor. Reynolds suggests that the one factor which distinguishes effective teachers from less effective teachers is their academic orientation. Reynolds explains that effective teachers will emphasize academic instruction and see learning as the main classroom goal. This means that they spend most of their time on curriculum-based learning activities and work hard to create a task-oriented but supportive classroom environment for their students. He adds that research has proven that children learn more in classes where they spend time being taught or supervised by their teacher rather than working on their own. In such classes teachers spend most of their time presenting information through lecture and demonstration. Teacher-led discussion as opposed to individual work dominates (Reynolds 147). Good teachers are charismatic and enthusiastic about their chosen vocati
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leaders of relatively small groups of students and they are responsible for controlling disruptive behavior in their classroom. Michael Medland suggests that teacher's verbal discourse with students has two important consequences - reinforcement and punishment. A teacher's goal should be to correct inappropriate behavior and at the same time to encourage appropriate behavior. Unfortunately, it is possible that in a good faith effort to manage their classroom and control disruptions that a teacher will stifle interpersonal interactions and discourse (Medland 5).
Medland acknowledges that teachers must create consequences for inappropriate behaviors, but if the consequences are not standardized, the teacher may be accused of discrimination. He suggests that teachers must be aware that the way they correct inappropriate behavior will have a different impact on different students, and that disciplinary action can have a profound impact on some students. For example, what one student might consider to be a mild rebuke that to be forgotten in a matter of hours or days, another might treat far more seriously -- resulting in that student largely withdrawing from any future discourse and interaction with the instructor, or his or her
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3633
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)
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