What is Teaching and Learning?

Posted by Kuljeet Singh on July 17th, 2021

Education is the fundamental aspect, and teaching and learning processes play a crucial role in it. Learning and teaching are the vital processes that are deeply associated and comprise the foundations of growth. Both teaching and learning are imperative in attaining success. 

What is teaching? 

Teaching originally comes from an old English word, “tǣcan”, which means showing or pointing out. 

Undoubtedly whenever you hear the word “teach”, it is not uncommon to think about the traditional classrooms, teachers, and students. But teaching is not only limited to this only, but yes, it is an act of communicating skills, ideas, and emotions to the students or learners.

Teaching is defined as imparting knowledge to someone or causes them to understand or learn something knowledgeable by using examples and experience. 

It can be of two forms. One is formal, and the other is informal. And that is where it gets the vision that teaching is not confined to the classroom only.  

Formal Teaching 

Formal teaching is classroom-based teaching that qualified professionals facilitate. Traditional teaching is governed by the educational systems that have to follow a specific curriculum, working hours, and other standards. 

Informal Teaching 

The teaching procedure usually occurs outside the classroom regulations and does not even require licensing. But yes, the online tutorials, home-based teaching are some examples of informal teaching. 

What is learning? 

The term learning originated from an old English word, “leornian”, which means “to think about” or “to get knowledge”. Learning is acquiring new information and modifying existing knowledge, expertise, preferences, and other behavioral aspects.  

The primary goal of learning is to understand and apply knowledge, whereas teaching imparts knowledge and monitors behavior change. Learning is an indispensable term and tool that nourishes the mind and soothes the soul with knowledge. It is a continuous process that encourages acquiring knowledge, skills, and competencies to develop future opportunities. 

There are several attempts made on mapping and explaining the learning process. It is commonly recognized that the learning process takes place as a repetitive cycle. Here is the generic learning cycle that uses the acronym PACT. Let us get familiar with PACT. 

PACT learning cycle 

P stands for PROCURE 

It is the first stage of the learning cycle where new theoretical knowledge and skills are acquired.  

stand for APPLY 

The acquired new knowledge is practiced in some manner 

C stands for CONSIDERING 

The outcomes of practice are then assessed or evaluated 

T stands for TRANSFORM 

The ability or original knowledge is then modified accordingly. 

Bottom line! 

The learning process is shared between the teachers, students, and parents; it is not something that is only done to you. Earlier, during the traditional classroom sessions, teaching was an active process, whereas learning was passive. But now, the scenarios have changed, and learning and teaching require focus and purposeful activity.  

Adopting effective teaching and learning activities can boost self-confidence, enhanced problem-solving activities, and critical thinking. Effective teaching can make the student learn the concepts for a longer time, and effective learning builds interpersonal skills and contributes to the overall development and TEL Gurus is efficiently providing online learning.

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Kuljeet Singh

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Kuljeet Singh
Joined: January 6th, 2021
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