Using different teaching approach in class

By Chong Liu
College of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
March, 2011

About these three instructional approaches, it's hard for me to say which I identify the most right now. The best way for me, may be the combination of all those three.

From the mini-lessons we had in class, you can see that every group was using a little bit of each of the three approaches. It's difficult to stric only to one approach today. For younger kids, praise and compliments in terms of stickers, stamps and stuff like that are definitely useful for getting them motivated,involved better.

And I have to say cognitive approach is the best way for students to learn, if we don't have to take other factors, such as emotional problems, all kinds of issues and so forth into consideration. I really give my credit to this approach for delivering pure knowledge to students. To them, everything may start to make sense.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that many reasons can lead to students losing their interests in learning.Thus, being a humanistic teacher may allow you to be aware of those situations. But from my point of view, I feel that this kind of teachers are taking too many responsibilities. If you care too much, you will get your emotion involved which may get in the way of your judgement. And also, even if you are able to give them a 40 minutes' loving and comfortable learning community, but after class, they still have to face with their real problems in their lives which you have no idea or have nothing to do with them.

In addition, teachers today are supposed to teach students not only knowledge, but also help them become a good person. So being a humanistic teacher may achieve that goal by playing a role as a counselor and friends. Nevertheless, I have my concerns. First of all, what makes you think that your value, and beliefs are worthy enough of being followed by your students? Isn't their parents' job to do this? Second of all, being a teacher doesn't mean that you are a good person or good enough to give others' advice in their life.

So, I'm confused. Other than that, I really believe that the combination of those three approaches may work if we also take the real situation into consideration.