Friday, 9th November 2012 I attended the fifth meeting of
MMSEL course. At that time, the class were divided into some groups consists of
three members. We discussed about what skills are should be mastered by a
teacher in conducting a lesson. Actually, I just directly thought about how
effective teacher should be that I learned in the third semester in PETA course.
I believe that the teacher has to mastered or have four kinds of knowledge.
The first, the teacher should has “knowledge of content”. It is the main
knowledge for us to teach the content of the subject to our students, so they
will learn and get the right information or concept from us to be applied in
their life. If we do not master the content, we can give them wrong information
or concept unconsciously, it will make them confuse and misconception and it
will bring them to the wrong way. They will get hard to learn the continuance of another
concept in the next chapter or topic.
For example, in mathematics class we will teach about the concept of limit. If we don’t master the concept of limit, so we just give them the patterns without don’t know the step by step how to get those patterns. We will tend to direct them to use this pattern for this kind of problem, those patterns for that kind of problem, this one for this, etc. However, when they face another problem, they will get confuse to solve because they don’t know the main concept of the limit. So, they only can solve the problems based on patterns which have given.
The second, we have to master “pedagogical content knowledge.” It is the knowledge for presenting our content or topic in the appropriate ways which understandable. So many teachers present their material in conventional way. They only use lecturing to teach their students. We know that sometimes it is really needed to do when we have to deliver the difficult concept. However, do not always use the same methods in our classroom, the students will interested to learn if we use the various methods. We can use students’ presentation, group discussions, etc. So it requires the teachers to be very creative to present their material or topic.
The third, as an effective teacher we have to have “general pedagogical knowledge,” such as instructional strategies, how to manage our classroom, how to deal about the rules or agreement with our students, etc. So many teachers difficult to manage their class, it is because they don’t master this knowledge. Many teachers in Indonesia that background are non-education, so they did not learn how to be a teacher but they are becoming a teacher. For example is elementary teachers in Indonesia, most of them are non-educational or non-PGSD graduate, but they tech so many subjects. It’s related with “knowledge of content”, they don’t master the content and also the general pedagogical about being a teacher.
The last is “knowledge of learners and learning.” It’s about how to understand our students’ learn, their needs, their motivations, etc. It requires our metacognitive ability, as a teachers we know that our students have different characteristics in learning; visual learner, audio learner, and kinaesthetic learner. We have to know how to teach the material with the methods that cover all students. It requires our higher order thinking to present our material to them, so it’s really related to the “pedagogical content knowledge”.
In short, as an effective teacher we have to master four kinds of knowledge. We cannot only master some of them because all of them are interdependent. If we only master the knowledge of content only, we will get difficulty to manage our class, present our topics appropriately and understandable, etc. If we only master the general pedagogical knowledge without knowledge of content, we can give a wrong concept unconsciously to them. So, let’s learn to be an educator teacher that educates our students, not only being a teacher who teaches the students without understanding. Believe in ourselves, and make a change for a brighter future.
