ninth blog

WHAT IS A TEACHER´S STYLE OF DELIVERY AND WHAT IS YOUR STYLE OF DELIVERY?

Every person in the world is unique and no one is the way you are. At schools there are different types of students and of course, different types of teachers. Every teacher has his own style of delivery.

I found four different teachers ´style of delivery; two of them are teacher-centered approaches and the others are student-centered models.

TEACHER-CENTERED APPROACHES.

1-Formal authority: The teacher feels responsible for providing and controlling the flow of the content and the student is expected to receive the content. One type of statement made by an instructor with this teaching style is "I am the flashlight for my students; I illuminate the content and materials so that my students can see the importance of the material." Teachers with this teaching style are not as concerned with building relationships with their students nor is it as important that their students form relationships with other students. This type of teacher doesn’t usually require much student participation in class.

2- Demonstrator model: This type of teacher acts as a role model by demonstrating skills and processes and then as a coach/guide in helping students to develop and apply these skills and knowledge. A teacher with this type of teaching style might comment: "I show my students how to properly do a task or work through a problem and then I'll help them master the task or problem solution. It’s important that my students can independently solve similar problems by using and adapting demonstrated methods." Instructors with this teaching style are interested in encouraging student participation and adapting their presentation to include various learning styles. Students are expected to take some responsibility for learning what they need to know and for asking for help when they don’t understand something.

STUDENT-CENTERED MODELS

1- Facilitator: These teachers tend to focus on activities. There is much more responsibility placed on the students to take the initiative for meeting the demands of various learning tasks. Teachers typically design group activities which necessitate active learning, student-to-student collaboration and problem solving. This type of teacher will often try to design learning situations and activities that require student processing and application of course content in creative and original ways. While course content is obviously essential, the facilitator does not make them the principal focus of the course goals. Rather, the goal is to learn how to use the content in a problem-solving way.

2- Delegator: Places much control and responsibility for learning on individuals or groups of students. This type of teacher will often give students a choice designing and implementing their own complex learning projects and will act in a consultative role. Students are often asked to work independently or in groups and must be able to maintain motivation and focus for complex projects.

We can notice that the first two approaches are student-centered while the others are teacher-centered. Each of them has advantages and disadvantages. Let´s take a look to each of them.

Pros of teacher-centered approaches are:	Cons of teacher-centered approaches are:
A large amount of information can be shared in a short amount of time The teacher has control of organization The teacher has control of pacing and content Accommodates large numbers of students Allows for quick and easy assessment methods	Knowledge controlled by the instructor One-way communication Not necessarily conducive to critical thinking Promotes passive learning Not an optimal way of learning for many students

Pros of a student-centered approach include:	Cons of a student-centered approach include:
Engages students in the learning process Encourages student ownership of knowledge Provides real life connections Promotes active learning Fosters critical thinking Addresses multiple learning styles Allows for varied assessment strategies	More difficult to implement with large numbers of students Can be more time consuming than lecturing Not effective in all subject areas Students may resist new approaches

After reading this information, I think I am a demonstrator model because I like to guide and help my students to develop and apply the four kinds of skills (writing, speaking, listening, and reading) and knowledge. As a conclusion I can say that the best I can do is to develop my own effective teaching style and I don’t necessarily try to mimic my favorite teachers from the past. I need to take into account my strengths and weaknesses. Develop an approaches that I am feel comfortable with and that maximize student engagement and learning in my classes. And by the way, I don´t have to forget the different students´ learning styles. So I have to take it into account when I develop my own teacher style of delivery.