Renewing Traditional Teaching Methods in Educational Institutions

The rapid growth of information technology has driven innovation in teaching methods. Still, we cannot deny the results that traditional teaching methods deliver. Traditional teaching methods are the foundation, and they are extremely important in teaching. In this article, let's MONA Media look at the information about innovation traditional teaching methods in educational institutions.

What are traditional teaching methods?

Traditional teaching means the familiar ways and methods of teaching that have been around for a very long time. With this approach, information technology is used very little in lessons, or almost not at all. Traditional teaching methods fall into three groups:

• Verbal methods: lecturing, question and answer, and so on
• Visual methods: illustration, observation, and so on
• Practical methods: lab experiments, exercises, and so on

Put simply, this method of teaching is teacher-centered. Teacher is the person who directly explains the knowledge to students. As for students, they only need to focus on listening, taking notes and then memorizing all the knowledge.

Traditional teaching has been used for a very long time and has brought many positive results. Traditional teaching places particular emphasis on passing on knowledge , so the lesson content is highly systematic and logical. As a result, the teacher passes a lot of knowledge to learners. In addition, at the end of each module there is an oral or written test to check how well learners remember the material.

Some traditional teaching methods in use today

Traditional education is divided into three main groups of teaching methods, as follows:

The lecture group

• The first method in the lecture group is inform and recall. It reflects the teacher giving information and the students absorbing it. Inform-and-recall lets learners learn only at the level of recall, so it is highly passive.
• The second is the problem-posing lecture. With this method, the teacher presents knowledge logically in the form of open-ended problems. This sets the direction of the problem for students and for the teacher's presentation. The problem-posing lecture stimulates and builds students' thinking as well as it can.
• Third is the discussion method. This method is used often in traditional teaching. The teacher asks questions for students to answer. Students can talk with the teacher or debate with each other to pick up knowledge quickly.
• Last in the lecture group is working with textbooksand reference materials. Studying with textbooks and reference materials helps students master the knowledge and build skills through books.

The visual group

The visual method is when the teacher uses visual aids and techniques to reinforce knowledge for students. This way of teaching takes two forms: presentation and illustration.

• Illustration: this means displaying visual aids that illustrate, such as maps, pictures and drawings on the board.
• Presentation means choosing models that represent objective reality and are carefully selected from a teaching point of view, which can be technical devices, videos and so on. This is considered the basis of students' cognitive process, a bridge between theory and practice.

The practical group

Among the traditional teaching methods this is the most active method. Through practical activities, teachers help students explore and apply new knowledge to reinforce and train their skills. The practical group include revision methods and lab work.

Pros and cons of traditional teaching methods

Every teaching method has its own strengths and weaknesses side by side. Traditional teaching is no different. Here are the pros and cons of traditional learning:

Advantages

Traditional education delivers results such as:

• Traditional teaching makes instruction uniform and suited to large classes.
• Subjects and skills are taught in a specific, strict order.
• It is also much simpler for teachers to assess students.
• Assessment by schools and school boards is also easy to carry out.

Disadvantages

Alongside those strengths, traditional learning also has some weaknesses when applied rigidly, specifically:

• Because the teacher holds the initiative in this method, the curriculum is not flexible.
• Although uniformity is a strength of traditional teaching, here it means a system that is slow to change and rarely keeps up with students' needs.
• Traditional teaching focuses only on memorization and rarely cares about building higher-level thinking skills in students. So it is a big obstacle for students who have trouble memorizing knowledge.
• Lesson plans in traditional teaching are laid out in a straight line from top to bottom. Because the knowledge is academic, the content is highly systematic and logical. Putting too much weight on the teacher also makes students passive, and lessons become monotonous and dull.
• Most knowledge is theoretical, with little attention to students' practical skillsand creativity, so the skills they can apply in daily life are also limited.

Renewing traditional teaching methods at educational institutions

Innovation does not mean we throw out the classical methods entirely. Instead, we start improving with modern teaching methods to limit the weaknesses and raise learning results as much as possible.

Improving traditional teaching methods

The first thing a teacher needs to do is master the requirements and use the techniques skillfully to prepare and run lessons in class. Techniques here can include how to open a lesson, present, explain, ask questions and handle answers throughout the lesson. Pay attention to encouraging students to be active and creative.

Combine a variety of teaching methods

This is an important direction that helps teachers be more effective and raise the quality of their teaching. Combine whole-class teaching, group teaching, pair work and individual teaching, because each form has its own function.

It is also necessary to fix the habit of showing off the teacher's “ego ” in whole-class teaching and overusing lecture methods; instead, push more teamwork skills for students. Even so, teamwork takes many forms. It does not stop at solving small learning tasks between lectures; it can fill one or several whole lessons.

Apply situation-based teaching

This means teaching is organized around complex topicstied to real situations commonly met at work and in life. This is an important way to bring school training closer to real life. It also fixes the academic education that is moving away from real life in schools today.

Apply problem-solving teaching

The problem-solving teaching method is teaching meant to develop the ability to recognize and solve problems, as well as thinking skills. With this innovation, students are given a situation that holds a cognitive conflict. By solving the problem, students absorb knowledge, skills and ways of thinking.

It is also a way to promote students' active thinkingand can be applied in many forms of teaching, depending on how independent the students are. The problem situations can be tied to real life or to a subject's specialist science.

Even so, if the focus is only on solving the cognitive problems of the specialist subject, students will not be well prepared to deal with real-life situations. Besides problem-solving teaching, teaching theory also needs to be built around situations.

Use teaching techniques that promote activity and creativity

In essence, a teaching technique is the way teachers and students act in small action situations to carry out and steer the whole teaching process. Specifically, teachers will apply active teaching methods in their teaching so students are active and creative in learning, for example:

• Give an open-ended prompt and encourage learners to discuss together and reach a conclusion
• Game-based options
• Role-play
• Case studies
• ….

For active teaching techniques to work well, the teacher has to guide and open up problems for students. Teachers also need communication skills and subject expertise to handle any issue. It can be said that this is a teaching method rated as difficult, one that requires teachers to invest time and design detailed, interesting lessons.

Make sensible use of teaching aids and IT to support teaching

Teaching aids play an extremely important role in teaching method innovation, strengthening the visual, practical and experimental side of teaching. Teaching aids need to fit the relationship between the aid and the teaching method. Today, educational institutions use not only multimedia but also need to make more use of software for online teaching.

Applying information technology in teaching brings many benefits.

• With teaching apps and software, teachers can add video, images and sound to make lessons livelier.
• In particular, using information technology to present on a projector or TV screen usually saves teachers the time of copying onto the board.
• Learners are also more interested and focus much better.

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Frequently asked questions

1. Why renew traditional teaching methods?

Renewing teaching methods in place of traditional ones brings many benefits. For example:

• Get access to information technology to keep up with the times and with how today's students and university students learn.
• Combining teachers' traditional teaching skills with IT skills makes lessons more interesting and builds learners' worldview and thinking better.
• Learning is no longer limited to white paper and black ink, or a blackboard and white chalk, but moves to online learning, which makes the most of study time, cuts infrastructure spending and gives learners more flexibility in choosing their schedule.

2. How do traditional and modern teaching differ?

Modern and traditional teaching differ in many ways. One of the biggest differences is:

• The learning environment of a traditional class is more limited. A modern learning environment can be learning from a community, on forums or in online classes.
• The study plan in a traditional class usually has one teacher teaching a set curriculum. In modern learning, learners can pick the class they want and the teacher they like.
• In traditional teaching, students are graded at the end of their study through exams. In modern learning, students can keep learning and expand their knowledge from the many sources of knowledge on the internet.
• Traditional learning is teacher-centered. The teacher lectures, and students listen, copy and memorize. Modern learning adds more information technology, which gives learners more motivation to study and helps them concentrate better.

3. What does it mean to improve traditional teaching methods?

Improving traditional teaching means bringing information technology and many new teaching methods into the lesson. For example:

• Let students learn from real experience and watch more videos and images to reinforce knowledge, broaden their worldview and stimulate thinking and creativity.
• Instead of blackboard and chalk, add lessons through presentations with slides or integrated teaching software to insert effects, sound, video and lively images.

This article from MONA Media has given everyone information about Renewing traditional teaching methods at educational institutions. We hope this helps schools raise the quality of their teaching.