Closed Teachers vs Closed Teaching

 

A closed teacher is unwilling to consider new ideas, suggestions, and improved teaching methods. Instead, they prefer to maintain traditional values and resist progressive ideas. A closed teacher is comfortable with the status quo and may be resistant to improvement. This type of teacher strictly adheres to traditional or old teaching methods rather than embracing improved, active teaching and learning skills. With traditional teaching methods, the teacher leads the learning instead of the students, who are often confined during lessons. Interaction among students is sometimes seen as a distraction, when in reality, it enhances learning by encouraging active brainstorming.

In a closed classroom, students are confined to what the teacher wants them to know instead of what they should know. Students benefit from peer interactions, collaboration, and individual contributions, all of which make learning more engaging.

I remember a colleague condemning my interactive teaching method as a distraction, until I used the analogy of noise versus music to illustrate that noise-making and positive contributions serve different functions, even though they both produce sound. My colleague's closed mindset prevented him from understanding that effective learning occurs in an active atmosphere. Like begets like.

In a closed classroom, it's difficult for learning to progress from lower-level critical thinking skills to higher-level skills, because learning is passive rather than active. While students may remember and understand in closed teaching and learning settings, they may struggle to analyse, create, and evaluate. When learning occurs this way, students find it challenging to apply what they've learned in real-life situations. This contributes to the prevalence of passive professionals in today's workforce. What use is education if it cannot be used to solve problems? Society needs problem solvers.

As teachers, our impact on learning is significant. Let's update and upgrade ourselves to deliver effective education. You cannot give what you do not have. Aim higher and do yourself a favor by not being found wanting, because the system is always evolving. If you lag behind, the system will leave you behind