Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn

Originating from different readings of contemporary authors, mainly doomed analysis of education and particularly teacher training staff presents a compendium of reflective-critical intentions, linked to the contributions that each one of these investigations and experiences generated the field of teaching and learning.

"Teaching has become very complicated, and one does not even know what to teach, or how to teach or to teach.? - Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1910), Spanish writer.

THEN AND NOW: EDUCATION

Back in five hundred BC, the Chinese philosopher Confucius stated: "Learning without thinking is wasting energy?. Much later, in mid-1800, a Spanish writer and journalist, called Severo Catalina, said: "Most people confuse education with training.?

Paradoxically, at the beginning of this century, if one refers to smooth, flat dictionary definitions, you can find the verbs "to indoctrinate? And" remember? as synonyms of the respective "teach? and "learning?. To paraphrase the philosopher Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of modern sociology: Teaching is not preaching, not to inculcate: to explain.

Explicitly showing a reality known by teachers and students, these synonyms dictionary reflect everyday situations we experience daily in classrooms, libraries and other places of study: memory as the sole mechanism to bypass exams, courses based solely on instructional practices, the absence of reflective spirit, the disconnect between program content and requirements or work requirements, no association of teaching practice to social conditions, lack of "intellectual openness and the absence of a responsible attitude and sincerity? * 1 .

Obviously, there are countless cases where antagonistic to those exposed primarily taught for true understanding, not superficial, and reflects actively on this learning.

Certainly, the changing context conditions differently teaching in educational settings. There are several challenges associated with social problems, technical, educational and even ethical, it must be considered in its full dimension of complexity to analyze, reflect and build teaching strategies and meaningful learning.

This reality, marked by a "growing lack of knowledge and professional training? * 2, is also hampered by an uncertain and random.

Since the beginning of formal education, has been working on how best to teach. Authoritarian techniques to democratic processes in the teacher-centered to learner-focused and direct to indirect teaching. They have developed countless studies and research aimed at finding the best teaching practice, and yet the conclusion is overwhelming, "there is a way to teach it the best? * 3

It is very complex to detect a current paradigm of teaching and learning, a model that will prevail over the rest, a pattern shared by the community of teachers

combines basic concepts and common procedures under a framework of "best practices?, serving as a path leading toward the goal of" best teaching?.

Quite the contrary is easily detected the coexistence of different perceptions about what the issues are legitimate and therefore, what are their solutions. Is that true, as t Kauchak Eggen concluded, "there is a unique teaching approach suitable for all situations? * 4. Hence, the disparate modalities developed according to the inner context (classroom), outside (socio- economic) and dozens of other factors that impede the construction of a single model unquestionable, immutable and effective.

From the knowledge of this reality, it is essential to the use of prescriptive strategies designed to meet teaching goals of each particular, as tools to facilitate the task of teaching to efficiency through the standardization, but not this mean the substitution of knowledge and skills that have their own teaching.

From all these obstacles, teachers must develop an "active teaching?, According to the term coined by Thomas Good and reused by Eggen and Kauchak in the text" Teaching Strategies?. This philosophical orientation means the commitment of teachers with the process of learning through modeling, questioning and monitoring of student progress.

It is here, start taking the didactic relevance, or in the words of Edith Litwin: "the particular way that is deployed to further the knowledge construction process? * 4, enhance learning, through criteria

content of the vast selection of disciplinary field, overriding both the significance and meaning of learning, as the intention of teaching.

SIGNIFICANT TEACHING AND LEARNING ACTIVE

Teaching is a baseline asymmetric

where a person has some skill and / or knowledge and other presents a gap in the

matter. As a compromise, under some kind of relationship and type of media, a person passes his knowledge to another.

This generic concept as outlined by Passmore (1983), Fenstermacher (1989) and accepted by Daniel Feldman * 6 avoids specifying what actions are appropriate for learning to occur. Likewise, although the domain of knowledge by the teacher is seen as an enabler, not as essential to understand the student, devoid of it, you buy it.

It is not mere "assimilation flow of information stored?. This process is not synonymous with knowledge or understanding.

David Perkins and Tina Blythe, in his "Guide for the Teacher? * 7, described as the ability to understand, beyond the knowledge, you can perform a number of activities that require thought on the subject understood, such as: explanation, generalization, application, presentation of analogies or illustration. As Edith Lewin says in his "Reflections on teaching in the university? (1996)," learning involves a genuine understanding?.

While these concepts underlying ideas of early twentieth century authors such as Dewey Claparede or, in other of the 70, as Bruner, stands out most strongly in critical writers such as Maslow made the intrinsic learning (content acquisition taxes and unrelated to the identity of the person).

In its publication "School Learning and Building of Knowledge? * 8, César Coll, based on these ideas and framed in constructivist theory, specifies that the creation of meaning only happens when you are able to establish non-arbitrary and substantive relations between that is learned and what is already known.

The degree of learning then it is subject to prior knowledge and the complexity of relationships that we are able to establish. It can be seen then as a major tissue where, frame by frame, new knowledge is woven and the previously acquired. Without the latter fail to build new learning and creates a vacuum of substantive relationships.

In the same way, Pérez Gómez * 9, refers to significant assimilation of content that not only refer to what he calls "propositional knowledge? (Data, concepts and theoretical structures) but also what he calls "algorithmic knowledge? (Processes, procedures and structures). This assimilation of a significant nature, not only generates the development of organized bodies but also of processing strategies.

CONCLUSIONS

It is essential to the continued rethinking of current practices, their gneosología, its contrast with those used in the past and the consideration of those first words that anticipate new forms and assessments, aimed at breaking existing paradigms, to travel the road in eternum into new designs for teaching and learning.

Also, as is stated Gary D. Fenstermacher, in his book "Research on teaching? * 10, should not fail to be a connection between research on teaching and the moral task of educating their fellow human beings.

It substantially narrow the gap between professional profiles-often non-teaching-taking decisions regarding educational programs and teaching in general, and the teachers themselves who experience the practical experience of the classroom, making clear the relevance of reflection of the teachers expressed by Kenneth M. Zeichner

As teachers, so that this rethinking current practices possible, we insert in our routines and our bounded time, a small space for "reflection in action?, To help build knowledge and provide a" meaningful learning ?.