3. What are the differences between Teaching Approach, Teaching Method,Teaching Technique, and Teaching Strategies?

Sometimes we get confused with the terms “approach”, “method”, “technique”, and “strategy” in language teaching. Well, let´s try to make some understanding about them.

Approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the nature of the subject matter to be taught.

Method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the selected approach. An approach is axiomatic, a method is procedural. Within one approach, there can be many methods.

Technique is a very specific, concrete stratagem or trick designed to accomplish an immediate objective. It is an implementation which actually takes place in a classroom. It is a particular trick, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective. Technique must be consistent with a method and therefore in harmony with an approach as well.

Strategy is the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal. A strategy is a style of thinking; a conscious and deliberate process; an intensive implementation system; the art of ensuring future success.

Thus we can conclude that approach is translated into method that contains technique, and this technique into strategies.

2. Self-fulfillment

How can we help our students reach their potential to the fullest?

“Self fulfillment is defined as the ability to make yourself happy and complete through your own efforts.”

Self-fulfillment is the most important purpose of education. As teachers, we want our students to be successful. We teachers must squeeze our students’ potential, and must help them succeed little by little. Sometimes students think they do not have potentials at all, and our job consists on making our students discover their abilities and talents.

Everybody is good at something, so they are not the exception. Great teachers really believe in their students and in their potential. We need to challenge our students to do their best in activities such as homework assignments, group works, and exams among others. Teaching can be view as holistic. The simplest acts of teaching and the well-chosen words of a teacher constitute spiritual action. The message is that we as teachers can attain these lofty goals if we have the will to seek them.

“A concern for issues that affect the human spirit is an integral part of a teachers’ calling” Teachers with courage to believe they can connect to the transcendent can realize goals beyond the academic and even the social. “Teachers who contribute to encouraging students to desire lives of fulfillment meet a most worthy teaching goal” We can help our students to reach their potentials by believing in them. We, teachers, need to be “transformers”.

Transformational teaching is a higher standard for teachers, and it places more demands on learners’ potential. We must help our students to identify their personal strengths, to identify their areas of personal interests, to identify how they learn best; moreover, we need to help them to set academic goals incorporating their strengths, interests, learning style and personal ability. We need to teach them the skills they need to achieve their goals: organization, planning, study skills, self-discipline, etc.

We as teachers should consider spiritual goals as an integral part of teaching and learning because motivation and hope are part of the spiritual goal dimension. “For our purposes we choose simplicity: Transformation is an illuminating change in head and heart that helps learners achieve their potential and their purpose.” Head and heart work together to animate who we are. Belief in the human spirit’s potential can include the world of how teachers think about, perceive, and relate to their students; and illumination, whether intellectual or spiritual, can include how learners feel inside as a positive response to their teachers’ belief in them. There must be trust and respect in the relationship between teacher and student. 

How can we, teachers, be a source of inspiration to our students?

We teachers can be a source of inspiration for our students by being great teachers. We have to do our best every day, and we have to be good models for our students. We need to be a good inspiration for our pupils to make tremendous changes in their lives. “WE MUST TEACH TO INSPIRE. LEARNERS NEED THE INSPIRATION OF TEACHERS TO FIND AND REACH PURPOSE IN LIFE.”

1. The Transformational Pedagogy Model

THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PEDAGOGY MODEL

Why do I want to teach?

I really want to teach because teaching is the best job in the world. I want to teach because I want to inspire my students. I do want them to feel that they are very special, and have many abilities. I want them to feel that I really believe in them and make them believe in themselves. I want them to know that they are capable to do whatever they decide. I want them to know that it is okay to make mistakes because that is how we learn, by making mistakes. I want them to know that they are not alone in the learning process, that I am with them to facilitate it.

I want to teach because I want to make a lot of changes in my students´ lives for the better. I want to teach because I want them to remember me as a great teacher that really worried not only for their learning, but also for their feelings.

Definitely I want to teach to inform, but more than that I do want to teach to inspire. Students need the therapeutic power of a transformational teacher who “touches” and transforms lives.

What does transformational pedagogy model mean for me?

A teacher using the transformational model is aware of his or her students’ feelings, so he or she can detect the changes in a student’s mood and adapt the environment in the classroom so it can be more supportive for the student and unconsciously enhance the bonds between them. There must be something inside the person that makes him or her have the desire to teach FAR BEYOND A PERSONAL GOAL.

“If we believe that teaching is a mere imparting of information, we have surely aimed too slow”. We need not only to impart information, but to care about our students´ feelings. Students´ feelings are a response to what the school or the teacher has done to satisfy or fulfill their needs as unique individuals. Teachers need to be encouraged and affirmed in their roles, in their potential of transforming lives, and in their calling to the real needs of learners. How students feel in a classroom may be, in the long view, more important than what they know. We, as teachers, need to make our students feel that we care about them, and that we are there to help them to find self-fulfillment through enriching knowledge.

“Transformational pedagogy is an act of teaching designed to change the learner academically, socially, and spiritually.”

  

Transformational pedagogy integrates teaching the whole learner, rather than attending separately to academic, social, and spiritual goals. These three goals are united. Miller (1997) says that holistic education is “based on the premise that each person finds identity, meaning and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to spiritual values such as compassion and peace”

Transformational teaching begins with the learner, and transformational learning involves deep understanding and occurs in classrooms where teachers have high expectations. Students need teachers who communicate that they believe in students and all their potential.

The transformational pedagogy model might impact positively the lives of pre-service and in-service teachers. Pre-service teachers may learn about how to treat their students when it comes to teach. In-service teachers may change the way they treat their students if they were not doing it in a good way. They must have clear that they need not only to impart information, but to care about their students´ feelings.

To wrap up, the transformational teaching model allows us to be a source of inspiration for our students as they do not want someone TO TEACH them, they want someone whom they CAN TRUST IN and LEARN FROM. Good teachers can make great sources of inspiration for their students, and good students can make teachers as the ones they ARE INSPIRED to imitate. All students need is someone to lead them through the way to success.