Firstly we define the term facilitate which stands for to promote, to
help forward, to make easy. Hence, the context of instruction, a teacher’s role
would be to promote learning, to help students, to develop more and more by
learning, by providing a conductive environment to interact with, in order to
bring about learning and further development.
When a teacher is part of the environment in which students are learning
or is participating in the process of instruction, he/she is an instructional
input when he/she is in providing certain guidance in order to bring about learning of students by way of their
interaction with relevant instructional components.
He/she are a facilitator of learning. There are different methods to
promote learning. Some are student-centered like library work, project work,
experimentation home assignment etc. where major focus is on how student
organize their steps of learning by interacting within different environmental
components like printed matter, natural realities etc.
The
Facilitator
i.
The
Learning Facilitator:
The move to a more
student-centered view of learning has required a fundamental shift in the role
of the teacher. No longer is the teacher seen predominantly as a dispenser of
information or walking tape recorder, but rather as facilitator or manager of
the student’s learning. The more responsibility and freedom given to the
student, the greater the shift required in the teacher’s role. Not all teachers
adapt to this different role.
The introduction of problem-based
learning with a consequent fundamental change in the student teacher relationship
has highlighted the change in the role of the teacher from one of information
provider to one of facilitator.
·
Barrows
& Tamblyn (1980), Davis & Harden (1999) -
The teacher’s role is not to inform the students but to encourage and
facilitate them to learn for themselves using the problem as a focus for the
learning.
·
Brooks
& Brooks (1993) – This changing role of the teacher is
also reflected in the constructivist approach to learning, in which knowledge
is ‘constructed’ in the mind of the student and is constantly evolving.
Schmidt & Moust
(1995) looked at the characteristics of an effective teacher
in a problem-based curriculum. Teachers
needed the ability to communicate with students in an informal way in the small
group sessions and to encourage student learning by creating an atmosphere in
which open exchange of ideas was facilitated. Teachers were able to function
most effectively if, in addition to those skills, they also had subject-based
knowledge.
The facilitative relationship between students and teachers is perceived
by both as a key element in student learning and one that distinguishes goods
from poor clinical teaching (Christie,
Joyce & Moller 1985). This role of the teacher as a facilitator in the
clinical setting has been referred to as
the ‘supervisor’ role, with the teacher providing the student with
opportunities for working in the clinical context, observing the student and
giving the feedback (Ullian et al 1994).
ii.
The
Mentor:
The role of mentor
is a further role for the teacher which is in vogue. Everyone has a mentor or
is beginning to want one, suggest Morton-Cooper
& Palmer. The role however is often misunderstood or ambiguous. There
remains ‘considerable semantic’ and conceptual variability about what mentoring
is and does and what a mentor is and does.
Megginson
& Clutterbuck (1995) have identified mentoring as - “Offline help by
one person to another in making significant transition in knowledge, work or
thinking”. Mentorship is less about reviewing the student’s performance in a
subject or an examination and more about a wider view of issues relating to the
student.
Mentoring can be viewed as a special
relationship that develops between two persons with the mentor always there for
support but not dependency (Ronan 1997).
Lingham & Gupta (1998) defined
mentoring as a process by which one person acts towards another as a trusted
counselor or guide. It is not for educational supervision. It is about helping
a person to learn within a supportive relationship.
