Teaching children at home and school

Abstract

Patricia P. Olmsted Rodman B. Webb William B. Ware Institute for Development of Human Resources College of Education University of Florida Gainesville, Florida T eaching is not a bag of tricks and anyone who sets out in search of iron laws on how to teach is likely to return empty handed. Learning is neither promoted nor explained by immovable rules. On the other hand teachers have a right to expect from educational theory more than utopian schemes that are impossible to implement in the real world setting of home and school. The wide gap between theory and practice was made clear to those of us at the Institute for Development of Human Resources (IDHR) when we launched the Florida Parent Education Follow Through Program in 1968. The program grew out of the realization that parents are the child's most important teachers and that much of what a child accomplishes in school is predetermined by what has gone on in the home. At first our effort was to provide parents with specific activities designed to enhance a child's affective and cognitive growth. As time went on, however, we learned from parents and school personnel that we needed to provide something beyond specific activities. Teachers and parents were not asking us for inflexible rules to follow but they were asking that we provide guidelines that would help them determine how to proceed with children in different learning situations. Our response to these requests was to search the literature in the area of teacher-child and parent-child interaction. What resulted was the development of a list of ten specific teaching behaviors which both research and theory confirmed were related to the cognitive growth of children. This list became known as the Desirable Teaching Behaviors (DTBs). They are a diverse but congruent set of behaviors that could be expanded. However, they have proved to be a good beginning set of behaviors which effectively guide the actions of parents and teachers alike.