Me As A Dream Teacher: Methods And Why I Want To Be A Teacher

What does objectivity mean? It often connects with truth, reliability and reality. A simple definition is that anything exists that is out of our conscious awareness; an object would be always there even without one’s perception. The term of being objective in our life is to view things based on the facts and without bias, and without the influence of one’s feelings, prediction or offering one’s personal opinion. Eisner (1992) states that ‘to be objective or to have an objective view is to see things the way they are’. Therefore, we can understand how everything truly operates without the preconception from our assumptions or projections that are based on our experience and sensations. While globalization promotes people awareness of a more intensify connection between the local and the distant in a rapid way (Steger, 2017), the conflict of difference arises. It requires people to see things objectively in order to understand different perspectives before stereotype is taken in the first place. In the educational field, research has to be done by selecting and analyzing a range of survey data and previous literature or research to draw conclusions. A teacher must be an objective observer in order to truly understand student’s strength and weakness and the progress of the whole classroom.

However, humans as its limitation of subjectivity form our cognition by our own personal experience, therefore it is difficult to see things in a completely objective way. A teacher may have more observations about those preferred students and fail to do so for others, or simply label students through their behaviors and actions.

Being objective often requires people to be less emotional and think rationally instead. Therefore, a robot (Artificial Intelligence is not in the discussion, while AI is still on its own way of development and its possibility is still being discussed) would be a perfect objective actor as it doesn’t have emotions and feelings, and the decisions it makes are based on program data. A robot teacher may treat every student equally, patiently answer every question that students come up with. Therefore, would a robot be a perfect teacher?

The purpose of this assignment is to argue if a robot would be a perfect teacher, as its objective. The argument will be discussed in three aspects: education on child development, education on globalization and one’s own philosophy education. The perspective of a future teacher who specifically commits to global citizenship education will be examined here.

Before the argument is being discussed, we need to understand the importance of teachers’ understanding of child development. Shumow (2002) states that the common ideas of the developmental and educational theorists mentioned on his research include that understanding the child is the basis of effective teaching. Each theory has its own implication for education even though developmental psychology is still controversial whether development is a continuous process or a discontinuous process, stability or change, maturation versus experience and theories are being criticized (Keenan, Evans & Crowley, 2016).

In Piaget’s theory (1964), child’s cognitive structure occurs in various stages, each stage occurs in a specific age group and prepares for the next stage. Piaget also viewed children as an active explorer, that is child forms their knowledge through their interactions with physical and social worlds (Keenan el al, 2016). The application of Piaget’s theory for teachers embodies that teachers record children’s behaviors and process and plan specific actives for children based on their level, and foster children to be more creative and a critical thinker through children’s own exploration.

Vygotsky believed Piaget’s view that children were an active explorer in their worlds (Keenan el al, 2016). However, Vygotsky (1978) stressed that teachers’ guidance can help children mature their functions that are in the process of maturation, which is called the zone of proximal development. Keenan, Evans and Crowley (2016) indicate two applications of Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development: reciprocal teaching and cooperative learning. Both applications have one thing in common, that is, people with more experience help people with less experience achiever their actual developmental level.