The Nature of Teaching Learning Resources

By Marsigit
Yogyakarta State University

John Munchak (2004) indicated that in order to provide lessons that are both engaging and challenging to each individual, it is necessary to know the students as people. Each individual will come to my class with their own set of abilities, motivations, attitudes, goals, and cultural background. Further he stated the following:


“Getting to know these various facets of my students will allow me to excel as a teacher because I can tap into their talents, resources, and knowledge to make the classroom more interesting, dynamic, and personal. Establishing a familiar bond and some trust between me and the students, as well as among the students themselves, contributes to a safe and caring learning environment. Learning their interests, the activities they enjoy, their academic strengths and weaknesses, their future plans and motivations informs how I will teach each individual. This personal information is important in order to differentiate learning in a classroom with students of various levels of motivation, career goals, and academic abilities. Caring for my students means I will "honor their humanity, hold them in high esteem, expect high performance from them, and use strategies to fulfill their expectations"

Related to the resources of teaching, Ernest (1991) suggested that due to the learning should be active, varied, socially engaged and self-regulating, the theory of resources has three main components :
(1)the provision of a wide variety of practical resources to facilitate the varied and active teaching approaches;
(2)the provision of authentic material, such as newspaper, official statistics, and so on for socially relevant and socially engaged study and investigation; and
(3) the facilitation of student self-regulated control and access to learning resources.

The nature of teaching learning resources can be perceived differently by different doer of teaching practice in their context of society; and they are closely related to their ideology and philosophy of education. The map created by Paul Ernest indicated how different perception of the nature of teaching learning resources as an implication of its ideology of teaching. The perception stretches from just to have chalk and paper, teaching aids, students' creativity, teachers' creativity, schools' environment, and its whole society.

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