Wiki Response 10: How People Learn - Teaching as Coaching
Effective teachers know when to shift gears from providers of information and lecturers to facilitators of learning and coaches. There is a time and place for the whole spectrum of delivery formats, from socratic lecturer to coach, to discussion facilitator.
If we were to conduct observations across LAUSD classrooms tomorrow and track the proportion of teachers asking questions versus teachers giving answers, I would predict that we would discover a disproportionate large amount of answers given in relation to questions asked. This entails the issue of wait time as well as asking the right types of questions that prompt and push students to explain their ideas, justify their claims, and present their views. (E.g., "how do you know that?", "how did you decide?", "why do you believe that?") (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 181).
In order to become an effective coach, teachers need to learn how to listen actively to students' responses and have sufficient content and pedagogical knowledge to identify misconceptions in content or alternative/non-traditional solutions (such as algorithms for long division) and choose the right way to correct said misconceptions or to challenge students to look for similarities and differences in alternative solutions.