What Is Your Teaching Style?

by Valorie Delp | More from this Blogger

10 Sep 2007 04:22 AM

A few days ago, I talked about why I felt it was important to identify your teaching style. I think new homeschoolers should really spend some time thinking through their philosophy of education. During their first year of teaching, I think new homeschoolers would do well to consider how they like teaching best. Today I'm going to describe the four teaching styles.

Formal Authority

Formal authority teachers feel like it is their job to illuminate the content for their students. Their job is to teach the content and the student's job is to receive it. Teachers who have this type of teaching style, prefer to deliver information via a lecture. In a home school setting, this type of teacher will spend months pre-planning their instructional time. They are probably very comfortable with workbooks and not very comfortable with open ended activities. If this type of teacher has several children, each child would do their own, separate, grade appropriate curriculum.

The Demonstrator

Teachers who are demonstrators see value in having children model learning after the teacher. For example, demonstrators may write a paragraph correctly in order to teach their child how to do it. This is still a 'teacher focused' manner of teaching, with the student following or practicing based on the model given. In a home school setting, a teacher who demonstrates is probably most comfortable with pre-planned unit studies, or a curriculum that is not solely focused on workbooks, but uses a variety of modalities.

The Facilitator

A facilitator type teacher is comfortable with lots of activities. The learning environment is definitely child focused. Most of the responsibility for learning lies in the hands of the students but the teacher still really tries to guide the learning outcomes. In a home schooling setting a facilitator type teacher likely has a classroom full of manipulative (or even a box full of manipulative) set up, and is probably very comfortable with a unit study approach. Since the emphasis is on learning by doing, a facilitator who has several different age groups would likely teach them all at once as is feasible.

The Delegator

The delegator teacher will give students much control over what they are learning. They feel that children learn best when they are ultimately responsible for their own learning outcomes. Delegator teachers are most comfortable with an unschooling style of home school.

So which type of teacher are you? There isn't a better way to be--all of the methods are valid and help students learn.

Related Articles:

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Learn more about Valorie Delp

Hello everybody! My name is Valorie and I am one busy lady! When I'm not writing or editing for families, I am busy trying to get my brood of 5 in line.

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