April 1998 — Editorial

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The Changing Teacher / Student Relationship

By Dr. Sylvia Charp, Editor-in-Chief

  • Key parties working together -- positive support from the superintendent, Board of Education and the Teachers Union.
  • A strong base of teacher support, involvement of teachers at every level of the curriculum reform and restructuring process, and the voluntary nature of this effort.
  • Teachers at the center of curricular revision and school decision making. They identified and integrated technology resources, participated in professional development, and helped allocate resources.
  • Sufficient funding from a variety of sources including local and state monies, the National Science Foundation and Bell Atlantic.
  • Importance of public relations, allowing business partnerships to communicate success.

Impact of Reforms

The preliminary findings, which deal primarily with teacher reactions, are interesting. A survey was conducted with 125 middle and high school teachers who have regular classroom access to technology. The technology resources they have available include the Internet and World Wide Web; word processing, spreadsheet and database software; and classroom libraries of content-specific software. Their comments include the following:

  • The reforms have impacted strongly on classrooms becoming more student-centered and student-directed. Teachers are better able to support their students in working cooperatively, conducting their own research and seeking advice from each other.
  • Students more frequently offer advice and seek advice from one another.
  • Teachers teach units and lessons that are interdisciplinary, using topics in other courses.
  • Teachers find themselves more often in the role of coach or advisor and less often in the role of instructor.
  • Students are better able to revise and review their work.
  • More students are taking initiative outside of the class time doing extra research or finding other resources.
  • Teachers spend more time working with other teachers on curriculum and instructional planning.

As teachers give students more responsibility for their own learning, provide them with a variety of sources of information, and encourage them to work collaboratively, the teacher lecturing to the class becomes obsolete. Eliminating the lecturing paradigm is resulting in greater interaction between students and information. Collaborative learning is engaging the student in active learning experiences. This involves cooperation among teachers, administrators, parents, community leaders, business partners and students. It also requires an allocation of sufficient time and sustained effort. Better learning will result.