Teaching as creating opportunities for learning 

The term teaching refers to a specific type of pedagogical action aimed at supporting pupils' learning. It is a deliberate and planned activity in which the teacher provides pupils with stimuli (e.g. information, examples, tasks) in order to develop their knowledge, skills and other dispositions or potentialities. At the same time, teaching is a moral activity because it develops pupils' attitudes and value orientations towards learning, school and the world.

Teaching always implies a certain division of roles between teacher and pupils. There are many metaphors that aptly describe these roles: the teacher as craftsman, artist, researcher; the pupil as tabula rasa, empty vessel, constructor of his knowledge, etc. These metaphors suggest that conceptions of teaching and learning, as well as conceptions of the roles of teacher and pupil, may be different.

Although the notion of teaching depends on the theoretical concept behind it, it is possible to define it in some general terms. Teaching - like other educational activities (education, training, etc.) - grows out of the care of the older generation for the younger generation. This is aptly expressed by the image in Comenius' Orbis sensualium pictus, where the adult takes on the role of the child's guide with words: "Come here, child, learn to be wise." Traditionally, teaching has been practiced by the older generation in an effort to help the younger generation acquire the culture of the society in which they are growing up. And this statement is also true in reverse - the younger generation looks after the older generation (cf. education of the elderly, university of the third age, etc.).

In the modern perspective, teaching is seen as a holistic process consisting of a number of components. It is directed towards promoting learning and guided by certain objectives. It is based on a confrontation with a certain factual content (the curriculum). It is characterised by interaction between teachers and pupils. It takes place under certain conditions (local, temporal and other), and involves certain teaching methods, organisational forms, didactic means and media.

Although teaching is usually associated with the school, the concept can be understood on several levels (Steindorf, 2000, cited in Janík, 2009, p. 179):

In the broadest sense, it is any action (even unintended or accidental) that results in someone (re)learning something - "teaching and life", "giving us lessons".

In a broader sense, it is a more or less intentional action that does not claim a school character - the action of authorities (e.g. religious), prophets, preachers - often related to extra-curricular activities (master-apprentice model).

In a narrower sense, it is a deliberate, reflective and methodical influence on the learning process (usually school teaching - it takes place in a specific form - during teaching).

In the narrowest sense, it is the verbal-narrative presentation of certain knowledge - lecturing (docere - to teach).

Teaching or instruction?

The broad definition of teaching brings certain issues. The main one is the overlap between the concepts of teaching and learning. In recent years, the terms teaching and teaching have come to be used in two subtly different senses. The term teaching is attributed the meaning of 'teacher's activities'. In contrast, the term teaching refers to the collaboration between teacher and pupils.

 Teaching is the creation of learning opportunities, it is both an offer and an incentive to learn. Teaching is about professional support and management of the pupil's learning process.

 The processes of teaching and learning take place in the classroom. According to J. Maňák (2003, cited in Janík, 2009, p. 179), teaching is the main form of educational activity in which the teacher and pupils enter into certain relationships and the aim of which is to achieve the set goals. Thus, teaching can be understood as a space for teaching and learning in which the teacher and pupils pursue certain goals and thus meet certain expectations of society. The objectives are concretised in the educational content (curriculum). Educational action does not come directly from the teacher, but from the confrontation with the content, i.e. with what the curriculum (syllabus) expects to be the knowledge, skills, competences or other dispositions of the pupil.

Instructional situations as graspable parts of learning

What does a teacher actually do when he/she teaches? School teaching is a specific type of his/her action, which is realized in pedagogical (teaching) situations. These represent a certain time-limited period in which the interaction between teacher, pupil and learning takes place. Pedagogical (teaching) situations are characterised by their complexity, dynamism, simultaneity, unpredictability and a number of other features that shape the totality of the conditions in which the teacher teaches.

 The nature of the pedagogical (teaching) situation influences the nature of teaching. The situations into which a teacher enters are on an imaginary continuum from the unproblematic to the almost intractable. The former the teacher is able to handle on the basis of routines or 'recipes' - then teaching is a craft. Conversely, in problematic situations, routine procedures fail and the teacher has to 'improvise creatively' - teaching is then an art. Such teaching can be imagined as a rational, purposeful and planned activity of the teacher, which is based on deciding (weighing alternatives) what to do in a given pedagogical situation.

 Teachers not only manage pedagogical (teaching) situations but also shape them. This is where his/her pedagogical creativity comes into play. 

 From this perspective, teaching is a creative, dynamic process  involving three phases:

(1) The preparation/planning phase - involves the teacher's preparation for teaching, the core of which is the didactic analysis of the curriculum.

(2) Implementation of teaching - involves the teacher's and students' own activities in teaching and applies various:

Teaching styles (command, task, peer-assessment, self-assessment, offer, guided discovery, independent discovery),

teaching methods (verbal, demonstrative, skill-practical, activating, complex),

organisational forms of teaching (group teaching, independent work, pair work, group work),

didactic means and media (e.g. textbooks, school pictures and models, information technology).

(3) Reflection on teaching - involves reflective activities by the teacher to evaluate the teaching that has taken place in order to provide a basis for planning further teaching. 

Teaching as didactic transformation

A deeper insight into the problem outlined above is offered by L. S. Shulman (1987, pp. 12-17; cited in Janík, 2009, p. 181), who understands teaching as a cycle of pedagogical reasoning and action (see Shulman's Model of Pedagogical Reasoning and Action in Table 1).

Table 1 

Model of pedagogical reasoning and action.

Understanding - Teaching presupposes, first and foremost, that the teacher understands in depth the curriculum he or she is to teach, that is, that he or she understands the goals toward which work with a particular curriculum may be directed, the structures of the curriculum, and the ways in which ideas within and outside the discipline stand in relation to one another.

Transformation - the teacher must transform his or her understanding of the curriculum so that it becomes comprehensible to students. This transformation involves several steps:

Preparation - critical analysis and interpretation of the material, structuring and unpacking the material with respect to the learning objectives.

Representation - reflection on what representations of the learning (analogies, metaphors, examples, demonstrations, explanations, etc.) to use in teaching.

Selection - the elaboration of the representations of the material into forms and methods of teaching; the teacher selects from his/her repertoire of teaching approaches and strategies appropriate ways of organising and managing teaching.

Adaptation of the curriculum to the learners - taking into account the learners' learning difficulties and ideas about the curriculum (preconception, misconception), taking into account the language, culture and motivation, gender, age, ability, interest, self-concept of the learners, etc.; the curriculum is then adapted and differentiated with respect to the individual.

Self-teaching - involves a range of teaching activities including classroom management - managing the class, presenting and explaining the material, checking homework, developing interaction with pupils through questioning, questioning and giving answers, managing discussions, giving praise and punishment, organising group work, disciplining, using humour, experimenting etc.

Assessment - ongoing assessment of pupils' understanding of the material during the lesson. This includes checking pupils' understanding at the end of the lesson. Assessment also focuses on the teacher, their actions in the classroom and how they have worked with the material.

Reflection - is looking back on teaching and learning, based on reconstruction and critical analysis of the teacher's actions and classroom behaviour. It enables the teacher to learn from the experience.

New understanding - through the lesson, the teacher gains a new understanding of the goals to which the work with a particular curriculum can be directed, understanding the structures of the curriculum, the pupils and himself. Through experiential self-learning and 'aha-experiences', the teacher develops a new understanding with which to enter further teaching.

According to Shulman, the teacher's work with the curriculum is a key part of teaching. According to the author, the teacher possesses didactic content knowledge that enables him or her to take into account the student's abilities in the didactic representation of the content of the subject area.

(abridged from Janík, 2009, pp. 180-181)

Self-regulated learning

There are situations in which one is one's own teacher, i.e. situations of self-teaching (self-education). The term self-regulated learning captures the essence of this - see figure below.

According to Kulic (1992, p. 59), it involves "external control gradually turning into an internal process of self-regulation of learning, so that external control and other interventions gradually liquidate themselves".

Similarly, Průcha, Walterová and Mareš (2009, p. 24) explain that self-regulated learning represents a level of learning in which the learner becomes "an active agent in his or her own learning process in terms of activity, motivation and metacognition".

Self-regulated learning is "an active, constructive process in which the learner sets goals for his or her learning and attempts to monitor, regulate, and control his or her cognition, motivation, and behavior, guided and prompted by his or her goals and contextual environmental factors" (Pintrich, 2000, p. 453; cited in Janik, 2006 - chap. 1)

Competence to learn

The term competence to learn (according to Lokajíčková, 2012) expresses:

The ability to learn, to persist in the learning process, to organise learning and to manage time and information effectively, both independently and in groups.

Awareness of one's own learning processes and needs, and the ability to identify available opportunities and overcome obstacles in order to be successful in the learning process.

Acquire, process, assimilate, seek and use new knowledge and skills.

For a more detailed idea of what specifically learning competences include, see the model developed by V. Lokajická (2013) with support in the Framework Curriculum for Primary Education - see table below.

Quality of instruction: quality of teaching and learning

The quality of teaching is the commitment of every teaching professional. It cannot be fully described in terms of a list of characteristics, i.e. through statements such as 'to be of good quality, teaching should be clear, structured, active, etc.'. For a complete description, it is necessary to specify what the above characteristics are supposed to refer to, i.e. statements such as 'the delivery of learning content should be clear and structured, learning tasks and their processes should be cognitively activating, etc.'.

Research (see Janík et al., 2013 - chapters 1 and 4) points to four components/characteristics that underpin the quality of teaching:

Classroom organisation and management: time use, appropriate pace, structure,

Conveying objectives and content: clarity, structure, coherence,

Learning tasks: cognitive activation,

Supportive learning climate: constructive error handling, adaptive teaching practices.

Summary

In this chapter we have discussed two basic didactic processes: teaching and learning. We assigned teaching to the teacher, learning to the learner. We then explained teaching as an interaction between teaching and learning (between teacher and learners).

We showed that teaching needs to be analysed, planned, implemented and reflected upon through teaching situations.  

During the explanation we repeatedly pointed out the interdependence of the processes of teaching and learning. We presented teaching as creating opportunities for learning. Regarding learning, we paid special attention to self-regulated learning. We placed this in the broader context of internal regulation by the subject and pointed to the importance of competence to learn.  

Finally, we outlined the issue of quality of learning, distinguishing its components and characteristics.