Subordinating Teaching to Learning

Cynthia S. Wiseman shares her experience of letting students learn

My entire life has been dedicated to teaching and learning. I think of myself as a perennial student—always learning—not only because I thirst for knowledge and truth but also because I understand that it is only through learning that we who have been called to this vocation of teaching can actually teach.

I think that I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a teacher. My first experience in front of a class was at five years old. Even then, I remember thinking it was important to engage everyone in a journey of discovery through an intense dialogue, a back-and-forth of questions and answers.

Teachers indeed serve as powerful mentors in our lives. They shape and inspire us through their stories. They plant seeds of inquiry that nurture intellectual curiosity and a search for truth and knowledge. They feed our minds, souls, and spirits to enrich our lives with a love of knowledge, truth, and beauty. I too have had many teachers, who have in turn influenced me as a teacher. Dr. Gattegno, a mathematician and physicist who developed "the silent way," a method for teaching language based on the association of sound and color, was more than a teacher. He was a spiritual guide for many of us—he was a seeker, a lifelong learner, a scientist, an educator, a guide, a mentor, and a guru. He dedicated his life to an almost monk-like embrace of self-awareness and to the pursuit of truth and knowledge in his relationship to the world and with the people around him.

For me, the fundamental notion of teaching is that it s the subordination of teaching to learning, as Dr. Gattegno stressed throughout his career. To that end, I try to be more facilitator than teacher. This is easier said than done in education systems in which teacher and students must comply with standards and student learning outcomes established by the federal government, state, city, or university. In higher education, time and credit constraints are also in play, and it is a challenge to dedicate resources to activities and lessons that subordinate teaching to learning, bur this principle is foundational to my teaching. An important dynamic in the subordination of teaching to learning is autonomy and inoeoerdence in the learning process, which often involves individual choice. In ESL Intensive Writing, for example, I have struggled on an upstream path choosing portfolio assessment over the final timed, impromptu n-class essay writing that most of my department has embraced. In my view, writing is a process, and it is through that process that writing skills are honed. In these portfolio classes, students choose topics, spend more time on some essays than on others, select the work that they feel best represents their writing skills, and personally invest in the process of writing, thinking, and learning. The syllabus is largely determined by the students in the class—their skill levels, their interests, their choices. With this type of engagement, students assume some responsibility for their learning, are mere engaged, and get a greater return on that investment of time and energy. In critical thinking, I take the same approach. The major project in my CRT100 class is a research paper on some aspect of society that influences the way we think. Students are encouraged to investigate a topic of their choice, something that interests and excites them. Learning occurs when students are engaged and irvested—independence and choice are key in that process. There are other pedagogical practices in the subordination of teaching to learning that are more difficult to describe but play a key role. One example can be illustrated by an approach to lesson planning. Dr. Gattegno always said that effective lesson planning occurs after the lesson, when we review what has just happened—what the class did that day—what students already knew or had just learned and what students needed to learn, based on what they had demonstrated in class that day. It is the mental reflection on class activities that provides insights to guide us in planning the next day.

The notion of planning each week's lesson at the beginning of the term runs antithetical to this approach in some ways. While it is a reasonable challenge that a teacher be able to provide a syllabus the first day of class, outlining overarching class objectives and student learning outcomes for the semester, the realization of those outcomes over the course of three and a half months will inevitably take circuitous routes to accommodate the particular academic and personal needs of students. A flexible approach in response to those unexpected needs is a way to subordinate teaching to learning. I amend the syllabus, revise the assignments, and adjust to the unexpected detours that any particular class may take based on the particular learning environment that presents itself.

Subordinating teaching to learning also requires some adjustments for both teachers and students in their perceptions of their roles as teachers or students in the classroom. A traditional approach often calls to mind a more teacher-centered lecture format, whereas a more contemporary approach embraces the notion of the student-centered, active learning environment. It is easy to say that the latter is preferable, but subordinating teaching to learning means that we make a decision regarding the structure of a class based on the needs of the individual students in the class or perhaps with regard to the discipline or subject that we are teaching. There is no one hard, fast rule regarding the structure of the class. In accounting, for instance, a teacher may effectively conduct a very teacher-oriented class that is structured in a very orderly and predictable progres-sion to positive effect. There are prescribed principles of accounting and practices that must be followed with some precision. In an introductory-level accounting class, a teacher-centered lecture approach may answer the needs of the students with a clear, methodical structure that provides a sense of security that actually frees the students to learn.

The highly structured syllabus of the introductory accounting course offers the student a chance to master each level before proceeding to the next, and mastery of the material frees the student to learn. The student-centered approach, on the other hand, may meet the needs of students at some point in their accounting major study—perhaps in a capstone course in which they must apply the various accounting skills that they have acquired as a foundation. In ESL, pedagogical approaches and methods fad in and out of fashion. We went from a grammar-translation approach to the audiolingual method popularized by the Defense Department after Sputnik to an era of boutique methods to the communicative approach. The subordination of teaching to learning requires that we be sensitive to students and the constraints of the learning context and have the flexibility to adjust our teaching practices to accommodate their needs.

In the 21 st century, we as teachers and learners are challenged to create a rich, productive learning environment. So much of what is expected in higher education is determined by its relevance to career readiness.

If what we are learning in the classroom is not relevant to getting a job, it is not relevant—a violation of the principle of the subordination of teaching no learning. To overcome this, one can include topics that are contemporary, interesting, and relevant, not only to the students on a personal level but to their professional and academic aspirations. In critical thinking classes, I concentrate on the development of critical thinking through research in the humanities and social sciences, requiring students to identify an issue, do a literature review, create a hypothesis, and design a study in which they collect primary data and analyze that data for patterns regarding the impact of social dynamics on the way we think and act. In linguistics, I take the same approach, asking students to do a mini-research project that requires application of the research methods in linguistics to explore the interaction of language and culture in areas of their own lives.

As a perennial student and teacher, I have ruminated long and hard on teaching and learning. My experience as a student of business management and leadership—a field that is completely alien to my educational and professional background—while difficult, has provided some insights into subordinating teaching to learning. First, I have tried to incorporate some business-style approaches in the humanities classroom to help accommodate the expectations of students who want a degree to get a better job. I make a conscious effort to envision my linguistics or critical thinking course over the semester, define the student learning outcomes, think about the ways to measure those outcomes, create assignments that are clearly designed and explained, and provide feedback and grades as soon as possible. My recent experience as a student in business classes has taught me the value of this structure to the student. As a student, if I know the requirements and parameters for grading and get feedback in a timely fashion, I have more control over my performance.

While this is not a particularly revolutionary pedagogical approach, it challenges my propensity toward principles of experiential learning as practiced in language learning and teaching I earned a master of arts in teaching ESL and French at the School for International Paining (SIT), the school that developed an experiential approach to teacher training for the Peace Corps. My expedience at SIT served to refine my pedagogical philosophy cf learning as experiential and of the value of the subordination of teaching to learning.

Studying online has also reinforced tie value of embracing new technologies and new approaches to learning that adapt to student learning. Resistance to technology is not productive, because students are living with and depending on technology in every part of their lives—education is no exception. Instead of getting upset that a student emails or texts me at any time of the day or night, I have accepted that this is part of modern discourse and that a response to the student's email or text as soon as possible meets the needs and expectations of that student and facilitates his or her learning. As teachers, being more open to communications today that we might have thought were unorthodox in the past can answer the needs of students, relieve affective dissonance, grow the interpersonal relationship, and thus promote learning.

Technology has assumed increasing importance in the classroom, as it engages students in their own learning. Learners today come ready to use the technological savvy they have cultivated. They can pick up new apps quickly—creating wikis; subscribing to, reading, and responding to Tweets; creating digital stories; and assembling ePortfolios. To meet students where they are, I have integrated various technologies into my class. In ESL, my students form independent reading groups, reading a novel of their choice together. Each group creates a wiki page about the book they are reading. They also write a critique of the book and do an oral presentation about the book using PowerPoint or Prezi. Another project entails the creation of a digital story about the immigration journey of someone in their family. In linguistics and critical thinking, students are asked to create an ePortfolio of their work. All courses are housed on Blackboard (Bb), and all assignments are submitted electronically. While this use of technology presents a challenge for some students who have limited access to technology or who have never used Bb, the eLearning center and Learning Resource Center are there to support them.

Some may argue that the extra challenges may inhibit academic performance and violate the principle of subordinating teaching to learning. Indeed, there is clearly a tension between holding students to high expectations and pushing them to reach and adapting the teaching situation to meet the learner wherever he or she is at that moment. While I hold myself accountable to adapting my teaching to student learning, I hold high expectations and standards for my students and believe that they can achieve more than even they believe they are capable of. I hope that my faith and belief in the learner comes through in my relationships with my students. I refuse to accept that any of my students are not capable of achieving academic excellence and success, and I refuse to pity anyone because of his or her circumstances. That does not mean that I have no compassion or empathy, but it means that I do not want to lower my expectations. I trust that they can and will perform, and I will go to great lengths to work with those who are facing difficult situations and need extra help. I feel that seeking to maintain that tension between expectations and available resources is just another dimension of the subordination of teaching to learning, the foundation that has supported a lifelong journey in education.

Cynthia S. Wiseman, EdD, associate professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, has been teaching for over 40 years. She completed her MAT at the School for International Training, where she participated in a silent way workshop with Dr. Caleb Gattegno, who maintained that the subordination of teaching to learning was one of the key principles in language pedagogy.