Introduction
The first question a student teacher may be asked in an education program is "Why do
you want to teach?" Invariably, the response is "I want to help people learn." The conversation may continue: "What would you like to teach?" "Well, if I had a choice I'd like to teach high school chemistry next fall back home." This conversation, one which probably takes place many times each year, answers all of the important questions about a teaching career - who, what, when, where and why. All, that is, except the question which commonly is forgotten - "How are you going to teach?", or "How are
you going to get your students to learn?"
If teaching is a process of communicating information and strategies to others, learning
must be the process of receiving what is taught. If, for example, a teacher's goal is to
demonstrate the proper technique for mixing water and acid in a chemistry lab, and after the
demonstration a student can walk to the lab bench and correctly repeat the procedure, has
teaching occurred? Has learning occurred? Can teaching and learning be reduced to a simple
(teacher) output - (student) input model? Does a student learn by listening and observing or
must he / she be actively engaged in the process?