6 - Classrooms and Teachers in the 1990s

Summary

The Classroom in the 1990s

What will a classroom look like in the 1990s – how should we like it to look?

The first part of this question can be readily answered – a wide variety of ways of organising classrooms will doubtless be found in the 1990s. But what will be the trends; what would teachers, educators and others wish to see; and what is likely to prevent desirable changes from happening?

In the last chapter we remarked upon the divergences between the curriculum as intended and implemented. The disparities which exist in relation to content are, however, small compared to those concerning teaching methods. For, despite what is urged by educators and in official reports, and what can be seen in the classrooms of some outstanding teachers, experience suggests that in the bulk of secondary school classrooms one is likely to find a stereotyped form of teaching which relies heavily on the textbook and the traditional teaching pattern of exposition-examples-exercise. Apparatus is rarely used, and class-teaching is still the norm. Traditional teaching exerts more of a stranglehold the further up the school one goes and the more specialised the students. At least, it prepares students for university!

Yet, of course, there are many classrooms in which traditional teaching is not the norm, and in which students spend much of their time working individually or in groups. It must be emphasised here, though, that completely individualised work can be just as formal as ‘chalk and talk’ lessons.