According to Biggs (201 2), there are three theories of teaching, which includes teaching based on student differences, based on what the teacher does and hat the student does. This paper will introduce the theories with references to my experience. The first level is on student differences, which depends on their commitment in learning and willingness to a better learning outcome. Thus, students are treated individually without regarding whether the information is fully transmitted or understand by them.
This conception illustrates if students aren’t willing to learn, it’s their problem, either they’re not interested in the subject or they just don’t want to learn. As an experience, when I was in high school, while I’m preparing or final year before university, there’s a music teacher that gave us all the notes about the music score without giving any further explanation, as such we all know nothing and didn’t score a good grade in exam. This type of teaching decrease motivation and curiosity of the subjects, in fact it causes a negative impact to students’ learning because their attitude and the way they learn has changed.
The second level is on what the teacher does, Biggs (2012) indicates teaching is more proficient with clear procedural rules established, clear visual aids and having eye contact. On contradictory, the way of perceiving knowledge is based n students, however if teachers don’t obliged with their roles, the blame will be on them. In Manchuria University, majority of classes are in lecture halls, one of the class I find interesting is business law. The lecturer projected his voice clearly and provided different Youth videos to understand cases easier; he even created quizzes to review before class start.
Other than being beneficial to students’ learning, it also helps teacher to feel confident and recognition in their teaching. Lastly, the final focus is what student does by contributing in learning activities. It helps to understand concepts and principles thoroughly. Biggs (2012) states that what students do is the important thing to achieve their goals. One of my experiences is in PAL session, where we did a role-play on marketing strategy and created a campaign for Principles, the tutor gave us some research data to look at and assisted us in analysis, identifying main strategic.
However what I realize the difference is the way of how students understand information, according to Biggs’ (2012) theories, level 3 is probably the best way to comprehend knowledge, however some students may prefer readings or note-taking in lecture to build up their familiarity towards the context. Good learning outcomes derive from learning activities, which also correlate with teachers’ teaching methodology to establish a good learning environment for students.
