3. By providing examples discuss how a teacher can help become life long learners?
As teachers we should all know that each individual will be different, hence the very first task of the teachers should be to make the children believe that each and every one of them has a value regardless of their background, interest or dreams. Each and every one of them have the opportunity to contribute to the society. Without this inspiration, the goal to help the students to become life long learners is impossible. In order for this to be embedded in children, teachers should know the individual differences and should help the young ones to know their potential. For example a particular student might be very good with musical instruments and may not be very good at subjects such as mathematics, biology etc. In this case the student may feel that he/she is not good at anything as he/she is getting lower results. This is where the teacher make the student realize his/her talents and help to develop it, increasing his/her self confidence and value of the student in his/her belief. Students should also be given the opportunities for meaningful interaction between the teachers and them, as teachers play a huge role in guiding them and motivating them. The next thing teachers can do is stimulate the imagination and creativity of the students through challenging activities. Engaging the students in more activities that can capture their interest than just making them sit and listen to the lectures and memorizing them is one of the way to achieve this. Such examples include assigning the students to build up a small machine within a group while teaching the topic machines. This enjoyable and useful means of learning will develop positive attitudes towards learning within students.During the activities the students should be given opportunities to build relationships with the peers by emphasizing on team works. This is important because in the future, the means of their learning will be through the people around them. The other very important thing that most of the teachers have neglected today is making the students aware of the relationship between learning and real life. Even though the circumstances are like that nowadays, this is something we have to include in our activities and also while assessing. An example of this can be, giving to label a parts of a real flower rather than a drawn diagram. The result of this will be that the students will recognize the need for lifelong learning and is highly motivated to engage in the processes. After assessing ,teachers should encourage students to reflect on their learning giving them constructive feedback to improve their ways as the students will be responsible for their leaning in the future. Throughout the application of the above ways the teachers can act as a role model showing to the students that he/she is a life long learner. This can be shown by accepting that he/she did not know the answer for a specific question asked by a student and by telling that he/she will look up and will let know of the answer in the near future. By this the students will realize that the teacher herself/himself is not a person who knows everything and no matter how old or how knowledgeable you are you always have to keep gaining knowledge.
8. In what ways do you think teaching has become more professional than it was in the past? justify your answers with examples from the profession.
Due to the four new trends in education , it has made the teachers to become more professional at teaching compared to the past. One of the trend was the increased in the language diversity in schools. This has resulted the teachers to arrange their lessons in a way that all the students can understand at the same time improve the English language of them. Doing both together will not be a very easy task and will need more practice. Also children with special needs have been included in classes with non disabled peers. This will obviously be a very big challenge to the teachers as within 35 minutes they have to teach both the disabled and non disabled children. In the past parents did not think that the disabled children can contribute to the society resulting them to being left out with no education. Times have changed and now the teachers have to face this challenge with a lot of difficulty and hard work as special services and procedures also individualized educational plans has to made for the students with disabilities. The broadening of the age range of individuals who could be counted as students has also made to increase the professionalism of teachers , as they have to find ways to arrange and carry out their activities related to the ages and their daily lives. The another trend was the increased usage of technology to support learning, this has made the teachers to move away from delivering information towards facilitating students own constructions of knowledge. Also Teachers has to learn more about the computer and the internet and use them in their lessons.The accountability in education has lead the teachers to require more numerous and higher levels of qualifications and more practice . Due to the above specified reasons the responsibilities of the teachers has increased which resulted in the increased requirements to be a teacher. Even after being a teacher, the teachers has to keep on improving their own knowledge in order to meet the demands of the society.
