Dear Debra,

According to Biggs levels on teaching, learning methods, I believe it has to be student centered pedagogy, it is the most successful way of teaching, and the students must to be sole responsible for their class.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266261565_Assessing_Teaching_Methods_in_Programming_A_Case_Study_Salahaddin_University

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266262204_SUGGESTED_STRATEGIES_FOR_TEACHING_SCIENCE_IN_KURDISH_UNIVERSITIES_USING_ENGLISH_AS_A_MEDIUM_OF_INSTRUCTION

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266261973_Assessing_Learning_Teaching_and_Thinking_Levels_in_Y7-13_in_Science_Biology_and_Chemistry_at_Tarawera_High_School_New_Zealand

Conference Paper Assessing Teaching Methods in Programming A Case Study: Sala...

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Dear Debra,

As an academic teacher who loves own job I'd say I definitely teach students, as the bond and relation that I strive to establish with them is essential in taking the further step- opening up their minds to the new ideas, facts, etc. I can't force them to learn it, I can only invite them to think it over, to reflect on that and broaden their intellectual horizons. I don't believe, however, this is possible without personal engagement and relation that makes it feasible to pass on the knowledge. I think your question is important and gives rise to a key issue of the mission of a teacher, priorities of academic teaching and the quality of work we provide. The latter, I believe, relies not only on our professional knowledge but on our soft, interpersonal skills, that let us share the knowledge with others. That's why I love the mutual inspiration of teaching, and learning from students at  the same time.

Best regards!

Dear Debra,

If I understand the question,

I think by default, we tend to teach the content, the content has a low frequency of change, but when the teacher begins to think about how to teach the content in a easy way than we teach students.

Teaching students is not obvious because it consumes time and energy (e.g. monitoring the progress of each student), in addition, for every new class, we need to review our approach to improve it.

The integration of technology in teaching aims to help the teacher to teach students, this integration requires teacher motivation.

Finally, I think we teache both, in the condition that  "see the message Justyna Pilarska "

Sorry my English is not good J

Plan is to "pass the message" and in this way we are trying to teach the subject. The way though which it is done differs. In the student-centered pedagogy we have to "twist" the way of teaching, trying to accommodate every single of the students. All depends on the way somebody will choose to teach. Teaching is not blindly passed the same way to all. Need to understand them; asking students' feedback and reflection will help the way we choose to approach them. We will learn abut them this way. This is how, they will be stimulated and learn their own way the subject. They have a previous life and cognition that we need to consider.

Hi Debra

I think  that we should be teaching students not subjects although this is conflicting with the our some school’s view to education.

Regards

Debra,

I hope we teach students, but I tend to agree with Mestadi and with Ali, we teach content, and that is troubling.  While content is important in some subjects, truth is more so in those subjects which challenge students to critically think.  Notwithstanding that perspective, how much sophistry is introduced into our curriculum which represents one ideological position or another rather than truth.  It provides a slippery slope for teachers whose intention is well placed to raise the capacity of those in their charge but who must respond to curriculum with which they may not agree -- it becomes important how we frame our examples for students when caught in an ideological web.  I am thinking, for example, of the textbook controversy in Texas, in the United States, wherein unsupportable historical claims are made which lead children to believe other than the reality.  After having been the subject of much discussion which concluded that the texts which Texas is promulgating are incorrect -- intentionally incorrect-- the legislature voted down a measure that would put academics in the position of fact checking these texts.  Hey, let's not expose our children to the truth, eh?  It is another example of politicians controlling educative content and context, and that makes it impossible to teach with intentional emancipatory outcomes within a system that imposes false consciousness on students.

Given the curriculas and modules in which we teach, we are obviously expected to teach subjects, but as some of you already mentioned we should teach students - noit instead, but as the best method to teach the subject. There is a certain tendency to overrate the subject, it is also way easier to learn how to teach a subject, than how to teach students. The preperation for the latter is far more difficult, it needs a lot of experience, so teaching is a learning job, and we learn from our experience and our students.

 Accountability (results) often makes teaching to the test take over ('easier' to measure, but prescriptive). This shift produces a situation where many schools/teachers are driven by rushing through the syllabus and making this their primary priority, translated in teachers 'telling' the subject to their students. thus, teachers teach a subject and not develop learners ie teach the students. 

Making students the subject vs teaching the subject leads to effective learning (curiosity, connections between subjects and with the real world).

Thinking made visible (Hattie, Hyerle, Burden) = gives students the how to learn; then they can learn ANY subject for the rest of their lives.

Dear Debra,

The answer to this question differs according to the different context involved. Although many stressed that students are the sole focus of teaching, certain circumstances do not allow that to happen.

Hence, an assessment oriented teacher may focus more on the subject (content) to ensure that students grab as much information they could to prepare them to sit examinations/tests/etc. This happens when academic calendar does not allow ample time for student teaching.

Similarly, in teacher training institutes, teaching of content prepares trainees to be better equipped in their subject content. However, one can also argue here that teaching of student (trainee) is involved in delivering the content.

Moving away from the normal classes... Children and young people with vision impairment deserve high quality teaching to become independent learners and to reach their full potential.... in such cases both people and content assimilation is important.

http://www.rnib.org.uk/services-we-offer-advice-professionals-education-professionals/guidance-teaching-and-learning

I try to stimulate students to learn & to want to learn the subject and it is only through use of knowledge in concrete cases that it is possible to address in-depth understanding. Further, I try to harmonize objectives, content, delivery, examination, outcomes and prerequisites of courses to the context of the subject, the students, the study program and available resources. I have been through re-working 4+ courses (software engineering, distributed systems, research & development (preparatory courses for final year projects)) together with my colleagues and, in general, we have improved the courses. I have also spent over two decades on supervision/examination of final year projects at B.S. and M.S. levels as well as co-supervising Ph.D. students.

Given this, the answer is, and I agree with Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, both, but for a different reason. I want to teach the subjects, but psychological aspects addressed by, for example, Dr Kahneman & Dr. Steel, are the main reasons for emphasizing students in various aspects such as:

• the framework, interpretation: often students have problems to look outside their individual boxes and it is hard to understand the limitations of their individual boxes unless you see the students in action (in presentations, in reports, during their actual work, planning etc.)
• motivational: to enable students to do things, to make them see the value of something as well as enable them to see the rewards are important aspects of motivating students; students are individuals with different needs and without meeting them in situation where they use the knowledge, it is hard to understand what their short-coming in terms of skills are, what they value and what they consider to be rewards 
• the framework, methodological systematicity & stringency: with proper guidance & training as well as sufficient checklists, it is possible to stimulate students in their progress to become more self-regulating and critical thinking individuals; again, it is hard to understand how students interpret concepts (e.g., hypothesis, theory) unless you see this in use, hard to understand how they apply things etc.

In some topics, I believe this is equivalent to train students in research. However, in computer science, informatics etc. development of systems in teams is in focus and research is not as mature as in other disciplines. This can be seen,  for example, in the various disagreements in issues such as "Is a software engineer, an engineer?" and "Should software engineers be taught the same way as other engineers?". Among the problems is that we build systems that can be human-intensive, data-intensive, computational-intensive, critical in various aspects (mission, economical, safety) etc. and that as the artifacts evolves, the needs of society and companies change so we are facing a moving target with out education. 

Atlee, JM, LeBlanc, RJ, Lethbridge, TC, Sobel, A & Thompson, JB 2006, ‘Reflections on Software Engineering 2004, the ACM/IEEE-CS Guidelines for Undergraduate Programs in Software Engineering’, in P Inverardi & M Jazayeri (eds), Software Engineering Education in the Modern Age, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 11–27, viewed 19 April, 2013, .

Bruegge, B 1992, ‘Teaching an Industry-oriented Software Engineering Course’, in C Sledge (ed.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, pp. 65–87.

Bryant, A 2000, ‘It’s engineering Jim \… but not as we know it: software engineering \— solution to the software crisis, or part of the problem?’, Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Software engineering, ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 78–87, viewed .

Shaw, M, Herbsleb, J, Ozkaya, I & Root, D 2006, ‘Deciding What to Design: Closing a Gap in Software Engineering Education’, in P Inverardi & M Jazayeri (eds), Software Engineering Education in the Modern Age, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 28–58, viewed 19 April, 2013, .

We teach the students "how to learn & how to think " 

According to this approach, the teacher is focused more on the student rather than the subject. The rationale behind this approach, especially in Science and Engineering, is that many concepts which were considered important in the past has now become redundant, and some of them are now even proved to be "in correct". The teaching would have been fruitful if teachers had focused on grooming students rather than inculcating concepts in to students brain"

Actually, we are teacher subjects to the students...

Teaching students may be right option, but when the intake capacity of the student's are less, then the teacher needs to customize (creatively) the learning aspects in such a way it could be understood by the students. However, for a common university exam the syllabus needs to be covered.