Throughout the 20th century, educational theorists such as John Dewey and Maria Montessori, encouraged greater focus on individualization of instruction and experiential learning.

Fast forward to the 1990's. On the left side of the chart under "The Instruction Paradigm," you can see the primary roles and responsibilities of educators in the past. Teachers delivered knowledge to students in the form of lectures and acted independently of students.

FROM INSTRUCTORs to facilitators

Despite everything in our world changing, much of our current system of public education has remained the same since its inception in the 1850’s. Many teachers today continue to teach using the same strategies of the 1990's. However, educators cannot continue teaching using teacher-centered principles of the past. Instead, teachers must prepare for their new roles and responsibilities as 21st century educators. The essence of what teachers do has not changed over time. Teachers still help students learn relevant skills, knowledge, attitudes, attributes, and behaviors. However, the way they go about their daily tasks is ever evolving (Jukes, McCain, & Crockett, 2010).

In the past, teachers were the ones lecturing on different topics. Now, students explore ideas together in Socratic Seminars where students themselves prepare questions about a topic. They listen, affirm, and respond to each other. The teacher only observes and evaluates without participating (Kipp-Newbold, 2010).

Additionally, technology has dramatically shifted educators’ roles in the classroom. When the internet was first available to teachers in the mid-1990’s, it was primarily used to represent content. Websites were simply an additional classroom resource that communicated information. Now, teachers can use the internet to facilitate participatory, collaborative, and distributed practices. Students create and publish their work to share their knowledge with the world (Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009).

Now what?

As our group began to research these changing roles and responsibilities of educators, many questions came to mind. The role of an educator in the 21st century is substantially different than the roles of the first public educators in the 1850’s or 1990's. Defining the best practices of an educator is an ongoing, wicked problem. In order to help our colleagues become a facilitator in a student-centered environment, we used our questioning skills and design thinking abilities.

We began this process by brainstorming any question to help us understand our wicked problem of Rethinking the Role of Educators. Then, we poured through research articles determined to learn why this problem is so wicked. We read articles that addressed topics such as student-centered learning, motivating 21st century students, and educational technology plans.

To develop a solution to our wicked problem, we chose to focus on these three questions:

These questions sparked our curiosity but left us pondering our next steps. How could we learn more about educators and their perspectives on changing roles and responsibilities? How could we find a manageable solution that truly represented the voice of K-12 educators? Learn more in our next segment, The Educator’s Perspective!

References:

Angelabroz87. (2010). Boring Economics Teacher [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxPVyieptwA

Barr & Tagg. (1995) "From Teaching to Learning-A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education." Change 11 1995: 12. ProQuest. Web. 16 Feb. 2018.

Eblcommunications. (2011). Imagine This - Teacher as Facilitator of Learning [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsb8m0hPcGE

Greenhow, C., Robelia, B., & Hughes, J. (2009). “Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship in a Digital Age: Web 2.0 and Classroom Research: What Path Should We Take Now?” Educational Researcher, vol. 38, no. 4, 2009, pp. 246–259. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20532540.

Jukes, I., McCain, T., & Crockett, L. (2010). Education and the Role of the Educator in the Future. The Phi Delta Kappan, 92(4), 15-21. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27922480

Kipp-Newbold, R. (2010). That's Fierce! Collaboration in the English Classroom. The English Journal, 99(5), 74-78. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27807196

Lillard, A. (2005). Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius. Cary: Oxford University Press.

Nationaal Archief / Spaarnestad Photo, SFA001008027. Counting-frames in classroom. 1930 [Image] Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Telramen_op_de_bank_in_de_klas_Counting-frames_in_classroom.jpg

OWP/P Architects, VS Furniture, & Bruce Mau Design. (2010). The third teacher: 79 ways you can use design to transform teaching & learning. Retrieved from http://thethirdteacherplus.com/s/Ch2-TTT-for-Web-0y6k.pdf

Seaton P., Leslie P., (2016) Practice makes pedagogy-John Dewey and skills-based sustainability education. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 17 Issue: 1, pp.54-67, https://doi-org-proxy2-cl-msu-edu.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/10.1108/IJSHE-09-2014-0127