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Understanding & Guiding Whole-person Development


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Session Three: Teachers as facilitators

What are the important qualities of a facilitative teacher?
- The context of adolescent development: Teacher-student relationship
- Building an effective teacher-student relationship
- Enhancing students' problem solving skills
- A facilitative teacher
- Humanistic teaching

RAWS2

Learning Outcomes

At end of the session, the participants will be able to:
1. Equip themselves with skills and mindsets to become a competent facilitative teacher
2. Apply theories and give sufficient rationales for any intervention plan
3. Develop different skills (e.g. communication, helping, critical thinking and problem-solving skills) to tackle novel situations 
     and ill-defined problems

Task: Using Reflecting Skills (see above) 

Example: (The task below is just selected from those tasks assigned in the Learning Guides.)

Study the following conversation between a class-teacher (Mr. Jones) and his student (June).
Mr. Jones: Hello, June, you wanted to see me about something. How can I help you?        
June:           I want to drop one of my subjects¡KPhysics. 
Mr. Jones: You've decided to drop Physics? You do that with Mr. Wong. 
June:           I know it¡¦s not your subject, but I wanted to have a chat with you about it first. 
                     He'll go mad when I tell him, but I¡¦m so far behind with my assignments,  I feel I'll 
                     never catch up. We've got another one to do today and I've not done the last two yet. 
Mr. Jones: You feel Mr. Wong will be angry with you for dropping Physics, but somehow you don't see any alternatives? 
June:          Yes, he told me when I started how hard it was going to be and I only got a C in my HKCEE, so he said then 
                     I would have trouble keeping up. 
Mr. Jones: You expected it to be hard, but you still wanted to do Physics. 
June:           I really want to be a children¡¦s doctor, I always have, so I need three science subjects...... and I used to enjoy 
                      Physics. We had a great teacher there who explained things properly, and you could ask him questions without 
                      being made a fool of. 
Mr. Jones: So you need Physics to go on to medicine, but you¡¦re not enjoying the subject as much as you did at school? 
June:          It's not that I'm stupid, but Mr. Wong seems to skip over things quickly, saying that we¡¦ve already covered 
                     this somewhere else, and when I said that I hadn't  done it, he just looked at the boys in the class as though......
                     well you know ....... it makes me feel uncomfortable.  

[adapted from MT Yuen, 2005, HKU PGDE ES Strand 1 Learning Guide (2005-06)]

References (see

above)

Further readings and resources:

1. Personal Qualities and Positive Beliefs of Facilitative Teachers
  
- Patterson, C. H. & Purkey, W. W. (1993). The preparation of humanistic teachers for schools  of the next century. Journal 
   of Humanistic Education and Development, 31, 147-155.
2. Student-Teacher Relationship and Communication/ Helping Skills
  
- Bor, R., Ebner-Landy, J. Gill, S., & Brace, C. (2002). Counselling in schools. London: Sage. (Chapter 5: Overview of 
   essential counselling skills)

3. Humanistic Education
  
 - Aloni, N. (2002). Enhancing humanity: the philosophical foundations of humanistic education. Boston: Kluwer Academic 
   Publishers.

4. Useful websites:
  
- Facilitative Teacher/ Good Teacher 
   http://scied.gsu.edu/Hassard/mos/10.2.html 
   http://www.highlandschools-virtualib.org.uk/ltt/inclusive_enjoyable/teacher.htm
5. Video Recording and VCD (Available at HKU Main Library, AV 158.3 I61 c)
  
- Knijff, A. (Producer). (1985). Introductory counseling skills [video recording].  Leicester, England: AVS, University of 
   Leicester for the Universities of Leicester &  Groningen.