=> Go Mars! <= The Future is NOW!: 2017-12-03

From being a Teach-er to becoming a Teach-smith:the transformation of the Century.

(originally posted at http://www.gomars.xyz/teachsmith.html).

An English dictionary grows every year. An English language is alive. Many words we use today have been invented some time ago. A linguist knows that a structure of a word often reflects the original meaning of the word even if over time that meaning has evolved. Many English verbs end with “-er”; a speaker, a driver, a teacher. Often verbs like that express a simple action: a speaker is one that speaks, meaning – puts words forward; a driver is one that drives, meaning – moves thing ahead; a teacher is one that teaches, meaning – instructs students (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teacher), tells students what to do.
The meaning of teaching as “telling what to do” has been known for thousands of years. A teacher had specific knowledge and skills and in order to gain that knowledge and skills students had to follow the instructions, and they had to do it word-by-word, literally.
Social and economic development, world exploration, industrialization had led to the growing need in more and more literal workforce. Eventually, teaching has become a professional practice which structure reflects the economic structure of the society.

Up to fifty years ago, or by a historical scale “just yesterday”, the economic structure of the society has been changing reality slowly. One could learn one profession and keep working until the retirement using almost the same set of skills.

Things are very different nowadays.

Globalization, robotization, informatization, the Internet have led to the creation of fast and constantly changing social and economic environment. More and more professionals will have to relearn their profession or even change it during their professional life time; maybe even more than twice. More and more professionals will have to go through the process of professional re-adaptation (retraining) during their professional life time; maybe even more than twice.

That means that more and more people will need to have not just specific professional skills (learned once and forever), but also meta skills, required for being able to adapt to the changes in the environment (professional environment, social environment, economic environment, political environment, physical environment – a.k.a. a climate).

That means that nowadays, teachers need to teach students not just specific practical skills (how to read, to write, to count, etc.), but also meta-skills, required for being able to adapt to the changes in their future life (due to the changes in their professional environment, social environment, economic environment, political environment, physical environment – a.k.a. a climate).

The discussion of how to teach students and at the same time help them with developing and advancement of those meta-skills is not new, and has no single point of view (I also address it in my book: “Becoming a STEM Teacher”, www.GoMars.xyz).

But one thing is clear for sure; one cannot learn how to adapt to a changing environment if the environment where one learns does not change, if it is still, steady, stationary, fixed. One more time - because this statement contradicts ALL teaching approaches, strategies, and even desires of teachers, parents, administrators, and researchers.

Many teachers would tell us that classes today are not the same as twenty years ago. That includes the fact that the student body has been becoming more fluid, more diverse (https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/cultural-diversity-at-school/), less uniform (by all possible measures). More and more ideological emphasis is being placed on individualization of teaching (which is a hot and controversial topic: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9781402036194).

In theory, many educators already say that they are for the individualization of teaching. But the practical realization encounters many difficulties and obstacles. One such obstacle is ideological: individualization of teaching requires a new view on the role of a teacher, which is completely opposite to the old-fashioned well-established view “a teacher is one who tells students what to do”.

Creating for students evolving, progressing, individualized learning environment requires – before all – being professionally creative, progressive individual.
Interestingly, English language uses a different word structure for (at least some) professions which have a creative nature. Take, for example, a professional who makes locks. This profession does not exist anymore, but the in the past, one who made locks was called a locksmith. He was not called a locker (or unlocker), because that would mean “one who locks or unlocks locks”. Those days every lock had to be created.
There are other professions, like blacksmith, tunesmith (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tunesmith) which presume from a professional some creative work. In Merriam-Webster one finds that “smith” means “a person who makes things” (http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/smith).

Following this pattern, a person who creates learning environment for students should not be called “a teacher” but should be called “a teachsmith”! (I wish I was the first one to come up with this term, but Google said I wasn’t :)

Using this terminology, we can describe the goal of the currently undergoing education reform in one short sentence:

“The reform is a transition from being

a teach-er to becoming a teach-smith”.

If we accept this meaning of the education reform, we have to take a closer look at the current state of the field of teacher professional development (www.GoMars.xyz/cash.html).

Like many other contemporary professionals, teachsmiths will also need robust meta-skills required for reoccurring need to re-adapt to the changes happening in their professional field (a.k.a. education). That means, that teacher professional development should also go beyond providing training in just specific content knowledge, or class management skills.

My professional journey from a teacher to a teachsmith was long and wavy, but not unique, and has many shareable elements common to every professionally growing educator (and summarized in book “Becoming a STEM Teacher”; www.GoMars.xyz).
One of the most efficient methods for advancing a new type of teacher professional development is called “Professional Designing”

(http://www.teachology.xyz/pd.htm).

To learn more about my professional experience: http://www.GoMars.xyz/evvv.html

https://teachologyforall.blogspot.com/2017/09/cash.html

https://youtu.be/xd3IM1cSASQ

Thank you for visiting,
Dr. Valentin Voroshilov
Education Advancement Professionals
GoMars.xyz

To learn more about my professional experience:
The voices of my students
"The Backpack Full of Cahs": pointing at a problem, not offering a solution
Essentials of Teaching Science

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Educational logistics is a thing!

According to Google –

As a teacher with many years of successful teaching experience (http://www.gomars.xyz/evvv.html), I assure everyone, that education is also based on “a detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities and supplies”. Even an individual teaching practice involves a lot of coordination, and involves many people (for example, students). However, what many people (even teachers) do not realize is that for a teacher, the most important “facilities” he or she uses are his or her intellectual and physiological abilities, and the most important “supplies” is the knowledge relevant for successful teaching.

And that knowledge does not come overnight after getting a teaching license; it comes as a result of a thorough systematic reflection on everyday teaching actions and their results, shared and discussed within a team of colleagues.

The basic theory of learning and teaching has been developed for decades (http://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/learning-overview/).

There is no yet a science of education in the same sense as the science cine of natural phenomena.

But when chemistry and physics were in the stage of alchemy and fun experiments for royalty, engineers were building, well, buildings, using machines they built for that.

To be a good at something one does not have to be a scientist in the field. A good practitioner is at least or even more important for human practice as a good theoretician.

Every teacher should gradually become a teach-smith (or switch to a different profession; http://www.gomars.xyz/teachsmith.html), but no teacher has to become a researcher (unless he or she wants to do it).

Logistical approach to teaching (a.k.a. “Educational Logistics” – do not confuse with “Education logistics”, which is a transportation company) makes teachers to navigate through their own practice by assessing students’ potential, setting achievable goals, and designing effective teaching tactics based on proven educational strategies.

For more information on Educational Logistics, please follow to

www.GoMars.xyz

and click on the link to “Professional Designing” (or “Structuring Continuous Teacher Professional Development”).

The science of education, however, currently is in the state of a transition from a pre-science (alchemy-like) stage to a true science. This transition is happening due to serious advances in such technological areas as computer-based learning, internet-based learning, communication networks, data analysis.

There is a new emerging field, titled

Network Learning (or, Network Cognitive Psychology)

A new field is initiated to understand how learning states, structure, stages, functions, and conditions of an individual learner emerge out network interactions among diverse intellectual, verbal, and motoric actions of an individual (a) with a system of various teaching instruments, and (b) with other individuals, characterized by distinct output dynamics and scales of operation. The aim is to consider a learning individual as a host of a system of mental elements communicating with each other, and as a subject within a system of communicators, and elucidate basic principles of internal and external communication, and how such systems dynamically integrate as a network to coordinate and optimize their functions, and to generate learning outcomes (new knowledge, new skills). The long-term goal is to build the first atlas (a broad set of blueprint reference maps) representing intellectual, verbal, and motoric network interactions of a learner (within specific age, gender, race, subject, topic limits).

(the description of Network Learning is a modification of the description of another very new scientific field – Network Physiology: https://sites.google.com/site/labnetworkphysiology/home).

The links below lead to some of the publications on the matter:

· “Brain-Base Learning: a Myth or a Reality?

http://teachology.xyz/lumosity.htm

· Mapping Physics Content Knowledge

http://teachology.xyz/mocc.htm

· What does Thinking as a Physicists mean?

http://teachology.xyz/sp.htm

· Critical reading of “Making Sense of Confusion”

http://gomars.xyz/msm.html

· A General Algorithm for Solving Physics Problems

http://teachology.xyz/general_algorithm.htm

· Learning Aids for Students Taking Phsyics