2.1 Concept, Objectives & Levels of Teaching

Concept, Objectives & Levels of Teaching

Quick Answer: Teaching is an intentional, interactive tripolar process comprising the teacher (independent variable), learner (dependent variable), and curriculum (intervening variable). It functions across three cognitive levels: Memory Level (Herbart: factual recall), Understanding Level (Morrison: conceptual comprehension and mastery), and Reflective Level (Hunt: problem-solving and critical reflection). It differs fundamentally from indoctrination and conditioning by fostering autonomous, reflective thinking.

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1. Nature and Concept of Teaching

Teaching is a specialized, systematic activity designed to facilitate learning, foster cognitive growth, and cultivate desirable behavioral modifications. In educational philosophy and instructional design, teaching is characterized as both an art (requiring interpersonal sensitivity, creative delivery, and pedagogical intuition) and a science (grounded in psychological principles, systematic planning, measurable objectives, and empirical evaluation).

The Tripolar and Bipolar Frameworks

Historically, educational theorists conceptualized teaching through two distinct structural models:

1. Bipolar Process (John Adams): Early educational theory viewed teaching as a direct, two-way interpersonal transaction between two personalities—the Educator (teacher) and the Educand (learner). This model emphasized the psychological relationship between the instructor and student but overlooked environmental and curricular context.
2. Tripolar Process (John Dewey): Modern educational pedagogy adopts Dewey's tripolar formulation, recognizing that teaching cannot occur in an abstract vacuum. It requires a dynamic interaction among three essential poles:
   • The Teacher (Educator): Initiates, scaffolds, and facilitates learning encounters.
   • The Learner (Educand): Actively assimilates, accommodates, and constructs knowledge.
   • The Curriculum / Society (Environment): The structured body of knowledge, cultural values, skills, and sociological context mediating the educational experience.

          [ Teacher ] (Independent Variable)
             /     \
            /       \
           /         \
   [ Learner ] ---- [ Curriculum / Environment ]
(Dependent Variable)   (Intervening Variable)

Variables of the Teaching Process

In the formal teaching-learning ecosystem, three operational variables interact continuously:

• Independent Variable (Teacher): The educator plans, organizes, sequences, leads, and assesses the instructional environment. The teacher possesses the agency to modify instructional strategies to optimize learning outcomes.
• Dependent Variable (Learner): The student's cognitive state, comprehension, behavioral change, and skill acquisition depend upon the instructional interventions and learning environment structured by the teacher.
• Intervening Variables (Instructional Environment & Content): These comprise the curriculum, learning materials, instructional technologies, teaching methods, physical or digital classroom infrastructure, and motivational techniques that facilitate interaction between teacher and learner.

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2. Distinction Along the Teaching-Learning Continuum

To master teaching aptitude for higher education, one must distinguish teaching from related instructional and behavioral concepts that occupy different positions along the cognitive and autonomy spectrum.

Critical Distinctions for the Exam

• Teaching vs. Conditioning: Conditioning (exemplified by Pavlovian classical conditioning or Skinnerian operant conditioning) modifies overt behavioral responses through repetition and reinforcement without requiring conscious intellectual insight. Teaching seeks conscious comprehension, conceptual transformation, and intellectual self-determination.
• Teaching vs. Training: Training focuses on building specialized, uniform physical or procedural competencies (e.g., operating a laboratory centrifuge, coding syntax). Teaching encompasses broad cognitive paradigms, conceptual problem-solving, values, and abstract theorization.
• Teaching vs. Indoctrination: Indoctrination embeds dogmatic, closed ideas where beliefs are accepted as absolute truths exempt from critical analysis. Teaching represents the highest democratic educational ideal—encouraging open inquiry, empirical skepticism, cross-examination of evidence, and intellectual autonomy.

3. The Three Levels of Teaching

Educational psychologist Morris L. Bigge categorized teaching along a continuous cognitive spectrum ranging from "thoughtless" to "highly thoughtful" learning encounters. This hierarchy comprises three foundational levels.

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Level 1: Memory Level of Teaching (MLT)

• Chief Proponent: Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841)
• Nature: Thoughtless level; focuses on rote memorization, factual retention, and rapid recall of data, terminology, formulas, and historical chronology.
• Classroom Climate: Teacher-dominated, authoritarian, and highly structured. The learner functions primarily as a passive receiver.
• Psychological Mechanism: Relies heavily on conditioning, associationism, and verbal chaining.

Herbartian Five-Step Formal Steps of Teaching:

1. Preparation (Introduction): Activating the student's existing knowledge base (apperceptive mass) to establish readiness for new content.
2. Presentation: Delivering new facts, data, or principles systematically using clear illustrative aids.
3. Association / Comparison: Establishing deliberate cognitive links and comparisons between newly presented facts and previously mastered concepts.
4. Generalization: Formulating universal principles, formulas, laws, or overarching definitions from the associated facts.
5. Application: Providing structured practice exercises to verify that students can apply the memorized rules in familiar contexts.

Evaluation System at MLT:

Evaluated through objective-type recall tests, multiple-choice recognition tests, fill-in-the-blanks, oral questioning, and short-answer vocabulary quizzes.

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Level 2: Understanding Level of Teaching (ULT)

• Chief Proponent: Henry Clinton Morrison (1871–1945)
• Nature: Thoughtful level; emphasizes comprehension of meaning, grasping structural relationships, understanding underlying concepts, generalizing principles, and applying rules across varied contexts.
• Classroom Climate: Interactive, guided inquiry. The teacher structures materials into cohesive instructional units, but students actively engage in explanation, comparison, and synthesis.
• Psychological Premise: Mastery learning—students must achieve full conceptual mastery of a unit before advancing.

Morrison's Five-Step Teaching Cycle (The Mastery Formula):

$\text{Pre-test} \rightarrow \text{Teach} \rightarrow \text{Test the Result} \rightarrow \text{Adapt Procedure} \rightarrow \text{Teach Again to Point of Actual Learning}$

1. Exploration: Assessing prerequisite knowledge and entry-level conceptual frameworks through diagnostic questioning.
2. Presentation: Introducing the overarching unit structure, major principles, and conceptual architecture; followed by a presentation test.
3. Assimilation: Intensive independent and guided study where learners digest the material, conduct laboratory work, explore reference texts, and integrate concepts into personal cognitive schemas.
4. Organization: Systematic synthesis where learners assemble their assimilated understanding into a coherent, structured written or graphical outline without external reference.
5. Recitation: The student verbally presents, explains, and defends the mastered unit before the class, demonstrating complete internalization.

Evaluation System at ULT:

Evaluated via essay-type analytical questions, explanatory problem sets, comparative essays, and objective items testing conceptual application rather than verbatim recall.

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Level 3: Reflective Level of Teaching (RLT)

• Chief Proponent: Maurice P. Hunt and Lawrence E. Metcalf
• Nature: Highly thoughtful and reflective level; engages learners in open-ended problem-solving, critical investigation, creative hypothesis generation, and metacognitive evaluation.
• Classroom Climate: Democratic, learner-centred, open, and unstructured. The teacher acts as a facilitator, co-investigator, and intellectual provocateur.
• Prerequisite: Effective functioning at RLT requires a strong foundation in both Memory Level (factual grasp) and Understanding Level (conceptual mastery).

Hunt's Reflective Model Architecture:

1. Creating a Problematic Situation: Presenting authentic, complex, real-world dilemmas or cognitive dissonances.
2. Formulating Hypotheses: Students formulate multiple speculative hypotheses to solve the identified problem.
3. Data Collection & Evidence Gathering: Learners independently search literature, design experiments, gather empirical data, and test assumptions.
4. Testing and Verification: Hypotheses are critically evaluated against evidence, leading to reasoned conclusions, novel solutions, or policy recommendations.

Evaluation System at RLT:

Evaluated through open-ended essay examinations, research papers, project reports, seminar presentations, defense of original hypotheses, self-evaluation, and peer-review rubrics.

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4. Taxonomies of Educational Objectives

Educational objectives define the intended cognitive, affective, and behavioral transformations resulting from instruction.

Bloom's Classical Taxonomy (1956)

Benjamin S. Bloom and his committee categorized educational objectives into three major domains:

1. Cognitive Domain (Bloom, 1956): Mental skills and knowledge acquisition, organized from simple to complex: $\text{Knowledge} \rightarrow \text{Comprehension} \rightarrow \text{Application} \rightarrow \text{Analysis} \rightarrow \text{Synthesis} \rightarrow \text{Evaluation}$
2. Affective Domain (David Krathwohl, 1964): Emotional growth, values, attitudes, and character development: $\text{Receiving (Attending)} \rightarrow \text{Responding} \rightarrow \text{Valuing} \rightarrow \text{Organization} \rightarrow \text{Characterization by Value Complex}$
3. Psychomotor Domain (R.H. Dave, 1970; E.J. Simpson, 1972): Physical coordination, motor execution, and technical skills (Dave's Model): $\text{Imitation} \rightarrow \text{Manipulation} \rightarrow \text{Precision} \rightarrow \text{Articulation} \rightarrow \text{Naturalization}$

Anderson-Krathwohl Revised Cognitive Taxonomy (2001)

Lorin Anderson (a former student of Bloom) and David Krathwohl revised the cognitive framework, converting noun categories to active verbs and transposing the top two hierarchical tiers:

$\text{Remembering} \rightarrow \text{Understanding} \rightarrow \text{Applying} \rightarrow \text{Analyzing} \rightarrow \text{Evaluating} \rightarrow \text{Creating}$

[!NOTE] The revised taxonomy introduces a Two-Dimensional Matrix crossing the Cognitive Process Dimension (the 6 verb levels above) with the Knowledge Dimension (Factual Knowledge, Conceptual Knowledge, Procedural Knowledge, and Metacognitive Knowledge).

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5. Core Maxims of Teaching

Maxims of teaching represent universal, time-tested pedagogical heuristics derived from empirical classroom observation that optimize instructional sequencing:

• From Simple to Complex: Introduce elementary concepts to prevent cognitive overload before presenting multifaceted theoretical structures.
• From Known to Unknown: Anchor new instructional content in the student's existing cognitive schema (prior knowledge) to facilitate apperception.
• From Concrete to Abstract: Begin with tangible, sensory, real-world objects and physical examples before introducing generalized mathematical formulas and abstract philosophical concepts.
• From Particular to General: Present specific illustrative examples first, guiding students through inductive reasoning to deduce universal rules and generalizations.
• From Whole to Part: Derived from Gestalt psychology, introduce the holistic overview or conceptual framework before deconstructing it into granular sub-components.
• From Empirical to Rational: Guide learners from direct observational experience (empirical) toward systematic logical reasoning and theoretical formulation (rational).
• From Analysis to Synthesis: Break down a complex problem into its constituent variables (analysis) before integrating those components into a unified whole (synthesis).