1. The document discusses the roles of teachers and learners in the learning process based on the example of a parent teaching a child to ride a bicycle. While a parent may think they are "teaching" the skill, they are actually facilitating the child's learning by providing encouragement, advice, and ensuring safety. 2. The actual learning is done by the child through their own effort, practice, and active participation. No amount of effort by the teacher can impart skills without engagement from the learner. 3. An effective teacher focuses on the affective domain by helping students feel comfortable, motivated, and overcoming obstacles, rather than directly imparting knowledge or skills. Their role is to facilitate conditions for learning.

1. Teaching and Facilitating
Presentation by Mark Feder, October 2007; revised September 2013
# 1
Extensive exploration of the learning process in general and the second
language acquisition process in particular played a crucial role in
developing the instructional plan. This presentation focuses on the role
of the teacher, based on our understanding of how skills are learned.

2. Teaching and Facilitating
# 2
To understand what we can do as teachers to promote successful learning in
our students, it may be helpful to consider a familiar learning experience,
such as swimming, driving a car or playing an instrument, that occurs outside
of the classroom. A common skill that many of us learn as children with a
parent playing the role of teacher is riding a bicycle.

3. Teaching and Facilitating
# 3
In our examination of the process of learning to ride a bicycle,
we will give special attention to two questions:
What is the role of the
parent or teacher?
What is the role of
the child or learner?

4. Teaching and Facilitating
# 4
A parent might assert, “I taught my child to ride a bike,” but perhaps the
statement, “I helped my child learn to ride a bike,” would be more accurate.
What, actually, can a parent do to teach a child to ride? A parent can:
•provide a bicycle;
•find a good place to practice;
•demonstrate and model how to ride;
•encourage the child and give assurances of success;
•give tips and advice;
•suggest ways to correct problems;
•make the child feel safe and secure;
•try to catch the child and prevent spills;
•congratulate the child for attempts and successes.

5. Teaching and Facilitating
# 5
But the actual learning is done by the child. Through the child’s effort alone
the jump is made from not being able to ride to being able to ride. Without the
child’s effort and active participation in the learning process, nothing that a
teacher can do would be sufficient, regardless of how eager the parent may
be for the child to be successful. It is up to the learner. As the saying goes:
You can lead a horse to water
but you can’t make it drink.

6. Teaching and Facilitating
# 6
Learning, ultimately, can be done only by the learner. Perhaps, the most
helpful things the parent can do is encourage the child to put effort into the
task and remove as many obstacles as possible to the child’s commitment to
the task. The parent or teacher can facilitate learning, but not actually teach
the skill of riding a bicycle. Perhaps when we speak of teaching, we really
mean facilitating learning.
According to Carl Rogers, “all human
beings have a natural propensity to
learn and the role of the teacher is to
facilitate such learning.”

7. Teaching and Facilitating
# 7
It is important to distinguish between teaching and facilitating. If we make
teaching the prime element in the process, learning is seen as an adjunct or
result of that activity. The teacher is the active component and the student is
relatively passive and only absorbs what is being taught. This, in fact, is the
prevalent model followed by schools around the world, even though it
contradicts our common experience of learning, which confirms that learning
is done by the learner, while the teacher can only try to facilitate the process.
This understanding of the relationship
of teaching to learning is at the root of
Caleb Gattegno’s insistence on “the
subordination of teaching to learning”
which is a fundamental principle of the
Silent Way approach.

8. Teaching and Facilitating
# 8
Learning to ride a bicycle is, of course, not the same thing as learning
algebra or a foreign language. Is there anything about learning to ride
a bicycle that applies to learning in an academic environment, and to
language learning? Perhaps the lens of Bloom’s Taxonomy of
Learning Domains can shed some light on this question.

9. Teaching and Facilitating
# 9
AFFECTIVE DOMAIN
PSYCHE - FEELING:
Confidence
Motivation
Anxiety
Using the three domains identified by Bloom, let’s consider what skills are
involved in riding and learning to ride a bicycle.
COGNITIVE DOMAIN
MIND - KNOWING:
Parts of bicycle
How to pedal, stop
Safety rules
PSYCHO-MOTOR DOMAIN
BODY - DOING:
Balance
Strength
Coordination

10. Teaching and Facilitating
# 10
AFFECTIVE DOMAIN
PSYCHE - FEELING:
Confidence
Motivation
Anxiety
Now, let’s compare them to the skills involved in learning and speaking a
foreign language.
COGNITIVE DOMAIN
MIND - KNOWING:
Vocabulary
Syntax
PSYCHO-MOTOR DOMAIN
BODY - DOING:
Producing sounds
Receiving verbal signals

11. Teaching and Facilitating
# 11
Traditionally, the dispensing of information, knowledge, and skills has been
considered the main role of the teacher. The transfer of information from
teacher to student is not only the oldest pedagogical model, but still the most
prevalent one. In the field of language teaching, the central position of the
cognitive domain is apparent in the venerable Grammar-Translation Method.
Cognitive

12. Teaching and Facilitating
# 12
Behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner viewed learning as stimulus-response
conditioning. Instructional methodologies based on the Skinnerian view focus
on the psycho-motor domain, utilizing repetition (reinforcement) and
programmed instruction rather than understanding and cognition. In language
teaching, this approach is reflected in the Audio-Lingual Method.
Psycho-motor

13. Teaching and Facilitating
# 13
Affective elements have always been a part of pedagogy in an incidental
way, and teachers have always encouraged, coaxed and cajoled their
students to learn. But the elevation of Affect as the primary focus of the
teacher is relatively recent. In the field of language teaching, Community
Language Learning, Suggestopedia, Silent Way, and the Natural Approach
all define the teacher as facilitator rather than teacher.
Affective

14. Teaching and Facilitating
# 14
All three domains are undeniably important, indeed, indispensable to the
learning process, but the question is whether they are equally important for
teaching. In the bicycle experience, it seems pretty clear that the role of the
parent or teacher is to deal primarily with affective matters.
The bicycle must be
provided – but providing a
bicycle is not teaching.
The teaching consists of
helping the child to ride it.

15. Teaching and Facilitating
# 15
A sense of balance and coordination are absolutely imperative for the rider,
but those are not things the teacher can impart. The rider herself has to
develop those abilities.
What the teacher can do is provide
support, assistance, advice,
encouragement, and a safe environment
to allow the child to take risks and
develop those skills. In other words, the
teacher’s role is almost entirely occupied
with the affective domain.

16. Teaching and Facilitating
# 16
No amount of skill and diligence on the teacher’s part can magically
transfer to the learner the ability to speak a foreign language. Only the
learner can make learning happen through active engagement.
The teacher cannot dispense
wisdom and skills in the manner of
filling an empty vessel. Learners, in
words of Alfie Kohn, “are not
passive receptacles into which
knowledge is poured.”

17. Teaching and Facilitating
# 17
Where the teacher can really make a difference is in the affective domain –
helping the student feel comfortable and overcome obstacles.
In the words of linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, “A language
cannot be taught. One can only create conditions for learning to take place.”
Albert Einstein extended this view beyond language learning by saying, “I
never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they
can learn.”

18. Teaching and Facilitating
# 18
Once we understand that the function of the teacher is not to teach (i.e.
dispense information) but to facilitate learning, we arrive at a very different
notion of what a class should look like. It is the learner that must be at the
center of the learning process, and not the teacher, materials, textbooks,
curricular objectives or prescribed methodologies.
THE END