The displacement of frontal teaching in the teaching and learning process
introduction
This essay aims to demonstrate that frontal teaching in higher education is not currently applicable in the teaching and learning process.
II. Development
Talking about frontal teaching implies referring to traditional teaching in which the teacher teaches a group of students giving information to the average student and sometimes asking them, even if they do not know, within the framework of the transmissive-repetitionist paradigm, teaching as transmission of information and learning as passive reception of such information. In practice in the frontal method, the central element is the teacher, we identify this type of teaching, both in the order of the seats or desks accommodated towards the teacher or the blackboard, and with the distribution of time in 45-minute sessions and with the teacher as the central point with power to monopolize most oral expressions. This frontal teaching method is also known by other names: expository class,frontal teaching, classroom teaching, traditional teaching, classroom teaching, whole class teaching, direct instruction, expository teaching, frontal teaching, lecture method, talk and chalk, teacher directed learning, thelling method.
Frontal teaching has a long tradition and has been constantly differentiated and developed. It is useful to remember that since the 17th century Kepler, Descartes and Newtón, compared the universe with a clockwork mechanism, expressing the fascination of the time for the operation of the machines. Taking this model Frederick the Great King of Prussia in the 18th century, he revolutionized the concept of military training, establishing criteria of standardization, uniformity and training in his own army, turning the soldier into an automaton, similar to a piece replaceable by an identical one. In the 19th century, industrialists used this same reference to design their productive organizations, instituting the so-called “assembly line” capable of obtaining at increasing speeds an equally increasing number of equal objects,supported by workers who are also interchangeable and prepared to carry out respective tasks. At the dawn of the 19th century, they did not resist the temptation to draw up a school system following the criteria of the assembly line. The educational process was organized in separate stages called grades, distributing students according to age and assuming that each class would move on to the next level in the same period. Schools were designed to operate at uniform speeds, with rigid activity schedules and common schedules based on standardized curricula. Braslavsky points out that at the end of the 19th century, national educational systems were organized on the basis of two axes: The sequentiality of levels according to age and intellectual abilities.
This frontal education system, conceived and organized, entered into crisis in the 20th century for four reasons: 1. The expansion of the System. 2. The overflow of frontal learning. 3. Post-war social changes. 4. The change of the scientific paradigm. During the first half of the 20th century there was a deep crisis in frontal teaching and the classic concept of an "ultimate science" began to be questioned, which implied the possibility of an objective description of the world, based on two theses that represented a twist in scientific thought: First. The observations of reality are not absolute but relative to the point of view of the observer (Einstein's Theory of Relativity). Second.These observations affect what is observed until eliminating the observer's prediction hope (Heinsenberg uncertainty principle). The criticisms of the frontal method were directed especially against the command of the word, against the lack of activities of the student and against the neglect of social relations.
For all these aspects, according to the educational research on education in Chile by Ernesto Schiefelbein and Paulina Schiefelbein, in most teacher training institutions in Europe they do not currently use the frontal teaching method in the preparation of future teachers; In the text of the same research they point out that “81.4% of the country's secondary education teachers resort to the expository class and prioritize the verbal transfer of information (frontal teaching method) and passive memorization to an entire group or course. This minimizes: i) The use of the students' prior knowledge. ii). The effective study time, since the teacher needs to keep the room in order (which translates into 30% less actual class time. Iii).Reflection on alternative interpretations. iv) Applications related to the context in which they live. and v) The opportunity to express in writing both in class and in homework ”. Due to this situation, this method of frontal teaching is displacing from the educational system.
The dilemmas of educational change in Peru by Luis Guerrero Ortiz, reveal the displacement of the educational system of the frontal method, noting that "There are abundant signs collected in schools throughout all these years that show the persistence of the old frontal education, repetitive and homogenizing, disconnected from life, as well as from authoritarian, impersonal, rigid and regulatory institutional contexts, which serve as a daily environment for learning ”. Similar situations occur in the educational system and the teaching-learning process in our country.
III. conclusion
Due to the criticisms and questions pointed out, frontal teaching does not have a logical correspondence with scientific and technical development, if we also understand that the key current resource is not capital or human resources, but knowledge and information as source of ideas that constitutes the essential. Carlos Marx said “since the supreme act of liberation to which each human being arrives, is the one in which he becomes aware that the social structure, knowledge and everything cultural are constructions of him, he can rebuild or rework new and different possibilities ”.
Consequently, the need arises to displace frontal education in higher education, so that the culture of debate, demonstration and contrast of the respective heuristics is established between teachers and students, generating the space for reconstructions and conceptual and methodological elaborations in light of a global constructivist perspective that does not admit superiorities. The idea of conceptual errors merits a redefinition, especially if a unitary and universal truth is no longer accepted, generating significant learning for application in everyday life and especially in professional practice.
Bibliography
- ESTEPA, J. and OTHERS, 2002, New Horizons in Teacher Training. Editorial Libros Activos SA Spain. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION 1998. Reform in March: Good Education for all, Santiago de Chile. PFFID 2000. Initial Teacher Training Project, University of Los Lagos - Osorno, Chile. IVAN NÚÑEZ PRIETO, Magazine Enfoques Educacionales Vol 2 1999. Department of Education Faculty of Social Sciences University of Chile.ERNESTO SCHIEFELBEIN AND PAULINA SCHIEFELBEIN. Educational Research. Evolution of the Repetition, Dropout and Quality of Education in Chile, 1960 - 1997. Models of the Gottingen Catalog for Latin America.KARK-HEINZ FLECHSIG AND ERNESTO SCHIEFELBEIN. Frontal or Traditional Teaching - Face to Face Teaching.LUIS GUERRERO ORTIZ. The Dilemmas of Educational Change in Peru. 2001.GALLEGO - BADILLO, ROMULO.Discourse on Constructivism. RE. Rojas Eberhard Editores Ltda.. Santafé de Bogota, 1993.
