Introduction
I have taught for years and my teaching philosophy has been based on inductive, deductive, and constructivist instructional design. As a mathematics and physics teacher, I try to combine these instructional designs with respect to the learners' experience and knowledge. As I teach adult basic education now, and as I examine my teaching preferences, I see that, I usually use transmission perspective teaching style because my teaching beliefs, Intentions, actions and strategies (BIASes) are important to determine the learners' achievement, my teaching perspective inventory (TPI) reflects who am I, and my learning style corresponds to my teaching style.
Teaching BIASes
BIASes stands for beliefs, intentions, actions and strategies (Pratt, The Art of Teaching Adults, 2005). For example, I am going to teach about gravitational acceleration. As an instructor for adult learning, I have to be confident that my teaching process will ensure learning. The intention will be for example that the learner will learn about gravitational acceleration. In addition, I have to ensure that the outlines of the subject contains the outcomes. In addition, taking into consideration will be the tools and technique I will use to make the learner understand about gravitational acceleration. By combining my beliefs, intentions and actions then I can come out with clear strategies on how to make the learners learn about gravitational acceleration or any topic that I will be teaching. In order to accomplish this as a teacher I need to know what my teaching perspectives are.
Examining Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) Result
There are different types of teaching styles as long as the teacher uses the style that make the students learn. That means there are many BIASes, which means that my teaching beliefs can be different from another teacher or my intentions of teaching can also be different from another teacher. These BIASes are set of five different philosophical orientation to teaching called perspectives on teaching. These five perspectives are transmission, developmental, apprenticeship, nurturing and social reform (Pratt, The Art of Teaching Adults, 2005).
In order to know your dominant teaching perspective or style you need to take Teaching Perspective Inventory (TPI) and this is available online (Pratt & Collins, Teaching Perspectives Inventory Take Survey, 2001). The purpose of taking TPI is to help you prepare for teaching and evaluation and know other teaching styles. For example, the inventory will ask you questions related to different educational beliefs such as learning is enhanced by having predetermined outlines
and you choose from strongly disagree (sd) to strongly agree (sa). You will also get similar questions for different educational intentions and actions. The TPI database will analyze all of your answers and provide you with the result with the highest and lowest score. The highest score will be your dominant teaching style. Fig. 1 shows My TPI profile results.
Figure 1: Abdul's TPI results
Transmission Perspective Teaching Style
My highest score, which was 38, means that my dominant perspective teaching style is transmission. This accurately represents me as a transmission instructor because I do believe that to be an effective instructor you need to master your subject. As I teach adult basic education learners, I follow the curriculums for secondary education. I make sure that the objectives and outcomes are met. I assess the students using assessment for learning and assessment of learning, and do periodic evaluations like quizzes, tests and exams. I am a very enthusiastic teacher who loves to see students learn and pass the course.
As I use assessment for learning, I try to interact with students, make them feel comfortable to answer questions. Descriptive feedback is important in my teaching as I assess which areas students need to improve or what topic I did not cover. All of it is my interaction between my teaching style and student learning styles.
Examining Learning Styles Inventory
As I discover my teaching styles, I wonder about my own learning styles. I used Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI) to determine my learning style. There are four learning styles as defined by (Kolb, 2007) which are diverging, assimilating, converging, converging, and accommodating. In diverging learning style, people tend to observe rather than take action, enjoy brainstorming and gathering information. In assimilating learning style, people try to be logical; less focused and prefers logic rather than practical. They try to think things on their own. With converging learning style, people prefer to deal with technical tasks, do experiments, or laboratory works. With accommodating learning style, people prefer hands-on, group work and test different approaches to complete a project (Kolb, 2007).
Learning Style Inventory (LSI) result
The learning style inventory has 12 questions asking you different ways of how you learn. Kolb categorizes your answers to four categories; concrete experience (ce), reflective observation (ro), abstract conceptualization (ac) and active experimentation (ae).
"A typical presentation of Kolb's two continuums is that the east-west axis is called the Processing Continuum (how we approach a task), and the north-south axis is called the Perception Continuum (our emotional response, or how we think or feel about it)" as presented in Fig. 2. (McLeod, 2010)
Figure 2: Kolb's Learning styles
My LSI result showed that I belong the assimilating learning style. This is true of me as I prefer logical approach for solving problems and I am an abstract person. That is why I like Mathematics and Science, as I need time to think through concepts.
Conclusion
After analyzing the results for teaching and learning styles, I found that my teaching styles falls under transmission and my learning style falls under assimilation. Knowing who I am will help me be a better instructor as I will be able to improve my instructional technique. As a mathematics and science instructor, I should be able to adapt different learning styles, be able to do and demonstrate activities and experiments and to not only watch but also think. I need to go through a complete learning cycle to become an effective learner, and by understanding my students' learning styles I should be able to adjust my instructional technique to either developmental, apprenticeship, nurturing, and/or social reform.
References
Kolb, D. A. (2007). Kolb Learning style Inventory. In LSI Workbook. Hay Group.
McLeod, S. (2010). Kolb Learning Styles. Retrieved from Simply Psychology: http://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html#style
Pratt, D. D. (2005). The Art of Teaching Adults. Vancouver: Training Associates Ltd.
Pratt, D. D., & Collins, J. B. (2001). Teaching Perspectives Inventory Take Survey. Retrieved from Teaching Perspective Inventory: http://www.teachingperspectives.com/drupal/
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