Korean Job Discussion Forums

[lastat06513]

This is my first post after returning to the U.S., hi y'all

I had an interesting conversation with a "bright" Yalie a few days ago in which he began to brag about his "flashy" Yale education and how much he has learned based on his professor's theories.
Keep in mind, he is an education major...
After I let him shoot off his big mouth, I began my seemingly mild retort by implying that I have some considerable time teaching ESL in Korea and that all the theory in the world never prepared me for what lied in store once I landed there. He remained quiet after I sputtered about how some of the theories he mentioned would never work in a foreign ESL environment (especially his total disregard to cultural sensitivity in the classroom and country-specific lesson preparation).
His only defense to it was....his professor never told him about this aspect of teaching.

I live in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural city where people from all four corners of the globe live in close proximity. To meet a person like him who would someday be in the classroom and possibly teaching my child is kind of a travesty to the education field. and worse yet, they are being taught by professors who have spent a small portion of their careers in the field and the rest of it thinking of ways to guide us "in the right direction" (so to speak)

Now, I want to ask; When does theory give way to practice? And can teaching practicality mean more than theory.

Most of us on this site know the answer; Most of us are/were thrown into a classroom and told to teach with great expectation put upon us for REAL results. True, most of us do learn to be good and even exceptional teachers if we stick with it long enough, but I feel a sense of animosity when a bright eyed-bushy tailed youngin' comes and claims that with theory, he can be a better teacher than me or you or both of us put together.

So which is better; learning the theory of teaching or "learning as you go"?

[Grotto]

At the school that I just started working in back home in Canada we had a gentleman with a doctorate in Education who was mentoring another guy who was working on his doctorate in education. They came up to the school to tell the teachers that the fault in getting the students to learn lies with the teachers themselves(neither one had taught children for over 30 years)

So the younger one asked if he could teach one of the classes in oder to show us how it was done...so the teachers smiled and said 'have at er!'

Well within 5 minutes the heads of the students started dropping like dominos, within 7 minutes the egghead was getting twitchy because he knew he was losing them.

Asking questions of the students he was answered with alot of "I dont knows" and "sucks".

At the end of the day he was asking us how we cope with such student apathy. that ite impossible to teach under these conditions.

Welcome to the real world

[splok]

I can't yet speak specifically to teaching, but I would think that the question would be similarly applicable to most fields. On one hand, someone who has spent a great deal of time studying theory but who is unable to skillfully implement those theories to fit the various situations one might encounter in the real world will likely have a dificult time producing the desired results. On the other hand, someone who has studied theory exhaustively could have a much larger bag of tricks, so to speak. I would assume that the most sucessful people will be the ones who are both well versed in theory and able to adeptly implement the correct theory for each situation.

While someone with a fresh load of motivation and head full of theories might be a bit offputting for the more experienced, a better thing to wonder about might be the long term results. Who is going to produce better aggregate results over the next 20 years, the person who learned as they went, or the person who studied the theory first? I'd put my money on the latter, even if they may be hard to deal with in the short term hehe.

[Big Mac]

I think in any field, education is merely preparation for the real world. I learned a hell of a lot more in three years actually working as a journalist than I did in four years of journalism school. But like a lot of people, after j-school I thought I knew it all. I was quickly humbled.

I'm sure it works the same with teaching.

[laogaiguk]

The best teachers have both experience and theory. But the ones with a lot of experience and no theory tend to be much better than the ones with theory and no experience, and the ones with no theory usually don't come with the ego baggage)
Especially Master of Linguistic grads who have never taught anything before. They are usually completely useless for a year or two.

People should work first, then go get the Masters and Doctorate (actually I think this is the best way for almost any discipline).

[Old fat expat]

Does false dicotomy mean anything to anyone? How about sampling error?

Has it occured to anyone that theory is nothing more than anothers experience. Only a fool would discard the experience of others. Alternativly, only a fool would blindly believe another. Yep, question everything.

The trick is to utilize both. I have seen English monkeys with years of experience be nothing more than entertainment, and bad intertainment at that. It's not all about theory, it is about understanding the theory (includes understanding research results) and being able to apply them in a practical way. If you are good enough to do this you are way ahead of anyone who can only do only one or the other.

As far as the egghead comments go; there is a difference between a good researcher and a good teacher. This is a discussion that occurs amounst academics all the time ... opps, getting back to theory. Damn.

[Old fat expat]

Sorry to ramble on but:

Skinner once said "the rat is always right". This very simple statement from a theorist acknowledges the teacher is part of the environment the children may or may not respond to. Anyone that comes out of school and thinks they can impose their theory without taking into account the reactions of who/what is being taught is missing the point of education.

Perhaps this is what laogaiguk means when he/she talks about ego; ego is about imposing your will without taking into account the learner. I do not think only post grads have cornered the market on ego. Perhaps you all acknowledge it is what is learnt-not what is taught.

Theory OR practice that excludes the learner is just plain wrong.

[red headed stranger]

My wife had many years as a classroom teacher in the states. She is now an education professor, who primarily works with people going through their student teaching.

One thing that she concentrates a lot on with her students is classroom management. This is what can make or break even the most intelligent and motivated teacher. Unfortunately the importance of classroom management is given short shrift in most education programs. This is unfortunate, as it is classroom management that can make or break you in those first few years.

In my personal experience, (And that's all it is. MY personal experience) the education professors that I had during my undergrad who had Ph.Ds from Ivy League schools were the most out of touch with the classroom experience. I learned a lot from those people, (classes in assessment, curriculum design, and developmental psychology) but I had to make the leap to the application of that knowledge myself. There are a lot of people that need someone to help them "connect the dots" when they are first starting out.

[jacl]

Yale. Hmm. Isn't that where the students had to buy their own soap for the community showers? Isn't that the ivy league school that everyone makes fun of?

[memorabilis]

[joe_doufu]

I have experience but hardly any training... and I think I would feel much more confident about teaching if I had a little of both. I think you are looking at the common belief among fresh college graduates that they know everything, and older people are so out-of-date their knowledge can't be as good. I'd like to say I was better than that at age 21, but no...

[some waygug-in]

Not that I have a lot of training...........I don't.
I do have 5 years EFL experience though.

But the small bits and pieces of training that I did pick up along the way seemed always to be the opposite to the way things are done in Korea.
I'm not sure why that is, but I have to say that a lot of things that I should be doing as a teacher never seem to get done.

I can make excuses all day I suppose, but for me the biggest hurdle has been to get schools/directors on side. If you have to spend half your time doing things that you know are useless.......but the director says it must be this way..........it really makes it hard.

[Otus]

Like others here, I can really only speak from experience - 10 years ESL, although it will be apparent from what follows that I don't add that up to much.

There were only a few times I really felt I succeeded in a teaching venture. The first was prior to ESL. After completing a Masters in Philosophy, I found some part time teaching work tutoring logic to first year philosophy students. For a few it was really quite traumatic 'cause they had to pass a paper that was really designed for computer science students (Logic A) in order to go on to a second year. Anyone with a background in Math found the paper quite easy. Me, as a freshman, I just sat down and memorized all the theorems and practiced like crazy solving the problems. No one really taught it to me.

Well, I found a couple of students who only had 25% going into the finals and said if you follow me for three weeks, I'll guarantee you over 50% in the final. Almost tears of joy and shoe kissing followed. First lesson - told them until you memorize these first ten rules I can't help you any further. After that I gave them problems I hadn't previously solved myself and worked through them at the same time. After solving it myself, I looked at the way they had tried to solve it and step by step questioned why one inference was chosen and not another - explaining the inferences I had used. Within 2 weeks, they were looking at well over 50% in the finals. I felt a little resentful never having been taught like that myself - but damn it! There's nothing to this teaching game I thought. One guy even called me over a year later continuing to convey thanks.

Walked into my first ESL class and found a whole different ball game. Forget about a goal, just retain interest for the alloted time. I guess that's what most of the education theory must be helpful in accomplishing - increasing learner motivation? I could only motivate through achievement, and to achieve something a clearly defined goal had to exist: non existant in most ESL systems.

A few times I worked with students to develop a research paper. Clearly defined goal and then socratic questioning. But similar to the logic tutoring, I had to take a big risk. That is, let the student see my thinking process while applying themselves to the task. You may even be prepared to let them improve on it and see more expedient methods. Only in these cases with ESL teaching did I feel as though I accomplished anything as a teacher in terms of a learning goal.

WARNING: Do not try this in Korean university classes. They can be highly adverse to the teacher being anything less than omniscient and will devastate you in evaluations - not realizing until about 10 years later what you were trying to accomplish if at all.

Not sure how well this fits with any education theory - just reflecting on experience.

[jacl]

Give the kids pizza, candy, and play games. The latter may not be necessary.

Teacher training over. Cost = zero dollars.

[lastat06513]

I have to say that theory is not all that bad, but going around and bragging about it is not the key to influencing people and make friends.

One of the problems I have is that many professors and instructors teach theory as STONE- unmovable, unbreakable and is the ONLY way to do something.....which is totally B.S.

It should be taught as a guideline that is flexible so the teacher can use it to help the students obtain a workable learning goal.

Theory= sharing personal experience

I have to totally agree that theory is one of the ways to grow in every field because personal experience does help someone from making the same mistakes their professors or instructors made before them.

But everyone's experience will be different and should be treated as such.

Thats why I feel that practicality can be alittle bit more valuable than learning just theory.