La zona del encuentro con el otro: las víctimas y los victimarios

The role of the current classroom teacher remains, in many ways, very similar to the roles of teachers during the 19th _{century. In the 19}th _{century, schooling mainly} involved didactic instruction taught by “poorly trained individuals who relied on

textbooks as the primary means of instruction and recitation as the main check on student progress” (Reese, 2013, p. 323). Students were often bored and not engaged in learning (Reese, 2013). Classrooms were teacher-centered with teachers standing in front of the students and lecturing for hours (Reese, 2013). Teachers did not collaborate with others and they taught the same lessons to different groups of students year after year, without much modification (Wagner, 2008).

A turning point came in the 19th _{century as new ideas about shifting schooling} toward child-centered instruction were promoted by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (Reese, 2013). However, because classrooms had more than 50 students and one teacher, individualized attention was limited, resulting in uniformity for all students who passively received instruction (Reese, 2013). John Dewey, in critiquing the traditional form of teaching students, claimed that children were being forced to “memorize material they frequently did not understand” and “knowledge was abstract and removed from their experiences” (as cited in Reese, 2013, p. 327). For example, in Dewey’s Laboratory

school which experimented with new ways of teaching, students gained hands-on experience with clay modeling which helped them construct buildings in which they learned math and physics concepts (Reese, 2013). Even though many educators praised child-centered education, implementing it throughout the majority of schools was, and still remains, a challenge (Reese, 2013). In fact, throughout the 20th century, research found that 90% of all students were enrolled in teacher-centered and textbook focused classrooms (Reese, 2013).

Though minor reforms occurred to focus more on the needs of the child, traditional teaching practices are still the driving force within schools in the 21st century. According to Reese (2013), this is due to the fact that the public was more comfortable with schools that ensured that students had the basic reading, writing and math skills that could easily be measured by report cards. As traditional teaching methods took hold, they not only influenced local schools, but entire systems that were formed around them. In fact, schools were described as factory-like whereby they could easily produce educated children more efficiently than the one room schoolhouse (Cuban, 2008). These factory- like school systems were “organized around age-grading, traditional curricular

sequencing, accepted professional accreditation and long-standing funding models” which have also led to schools struggling with “adapting to new, learner-directed technologies” (Collins & Halverson, 2010, p. 18).

Traditional teaching methods rarely provide opportunities for student initiated inquiry and flexibility. In many of today’s classrooms, direct instruction, where the teacher does most of the explaining, occurs on a regular basis, and in some cases, almost exclusively. In fact, because of the rigidity of traditional teaching methods, John Dewey argued that “American schools prematurely stifled childhood curiosity and, therefore, students were not prepared properly for life’s challenges” (as cited in Day & Harbour, 2013, p. 111). Herrington and Kervin (2007) describe a traditional model of education as

one in which “students are seated in rows at their desks facing the teacher at the front and they are taught in a largely didactic and decontextualized manner” (p. 2).

Wagner (2008) found that the teaching that actually goes on in classrooms varies widely despite uniform policies that aim to make teaching more even throughout different school districts in each state. As an example of a lesson being applied uniformly, a school board member described her experience observing a writing lesson: “All you have to do is go in and watch some of our teachers teach writing. And it would make your hair curl. Very formulaic and incredibly repetitive so as to drum any glint of creativity from a child’s heart” (p. 123). This statement provides evidence of the existence of heavily didactic teaching methods developed in the past in that all students are expected to learn at the same pace with rules that govern exactly how students are supposed to write. To help mitigate situations such as these from happening in today’s classrooms, teachers should be able to recognize that each student has different creative potential and that there are technology resources available to help individualize instruction for each student.

Direct Instruction

Magliaro, Lockee, and Burton (2005) claim that “direct instruction is the strategy of choice when the learning objective requires that the learners have direct practice in what must be done, or said, or written” (p. 43). The teacher-student interaction is the key to direct instruction and teachers can guide individual students through learning new material. Teachers can give “a clear analysis of the task, constant assessment of understanding and provision of support when and as needed” (p. 51). However, in the traditional style of teaching, teachers mainly lecture or give information to students. Thus, there are fewer opportunities for student contributions and discussions (Brewer, 2015).

Following direct instruction, students are usually given opportunities to practice the information they have received from their teachers. With technology, there are an

exhaustive number of drill and practice games available for students on computers, tablets, and iPads that reflect this most basic type of teaching method. Students can login to computers and begin practicing math or literacy skills on any of the numerous websites and apps. For example, the National Geographic website is widely recognized as a

reputable learning outlet for students to learn about geography. In its attempt to engage students, the National Geographic website uses many drill and practice quiz games for students to test their knowledge. Many of the games are strictly fact based as the example question in Figure 1 below shows.

The question asks students to recall an exact date in history when Hillary and Norgay reached the summit of Mt. Everest. Although the significance of the achievement and its date may be important, the factual data is information that students can easily look up on their own with the Internet. A more challenging question for students would be to consider the implications of having achieved such a feat to future mountaineers and explorers.

Learner-centered Environments

In contrast to direct instruction, many researchers advocate instruction with technology that builds students’ higher-order thinking skills and focuses on the needs of individual learners (Bransford et al., 2000; Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Polly, 2011).

Higher-order thinking skills are more likely to lead to higher-level thought processing and a deeper understanding of curricular material and they are not as easy to develop as rote skills that develop through memorization and repeated drills. Additionally, the needs of individual learners can be addressed with technology through the creation of learner- centered environments. Bransford et al. (2000) define learner-centered environments as those that “pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that

learners bring to the educational setting” (p. 133). Teachers can use this information from their students as a diagnostic tool to verify what they know or whether they have

misconceptions in their knowledge. Some researchers have found digital technology tools that are effective when conducting formative evaluations of students’ knowledge

(Thissen-Roe, Hunt, & Minstrell, 2004).