The Nature of Teaching and Learning

1. Teaching

Brown (2007:8) states that teaching is guiding, facilitating, establishing, and

setting the conditions for learning. It cannot be defined apart from learning. Teaching is a

system of action involving an agent, a situation, and an end-in-view, and two sets of factors

in the situation: one set over which the agent has no control (for example, size of classroom

and physical characteristics of pupils) and one set which agent can modify with respect to

the end-in-view (for example, assignment and ways of asking questions) (Smith on Gage,

2009:4).

Teaching refers to activities that are designed and performed to produce change

in students (pupil) behavior (Clark on Aggarwal, (2001:16). Aggarwal (2001:18-21) states

that teaching has several characteristics as follows:

a. Teaching is giving information.

b. Teaching is causing to lean.

c. Teaching is a matter of helping the child to respond his environment in an effective

manner.

d. Teaching is helping a child to adjust himself to his environment.

e. Teaching is stimulation and encouragement.

f. Teaching is guidance.

g. Teaching is training the emotions of the child.

h. Teaching is both conscious and unconscious process.

i. Teaching is a means of preparation.

j. Teaching is formal as well as informal.

 From the explanations above the researcher concludes that teaching has three

main elements such as system of action, the way to accept the goal, and occurred in a

situation with some factors. In other word, teaching refers to the systematic action occurred

in a situation (classroom) as the way to accept the goal which is done by several factors.

2. Learning

Brown (2007:7) states that learning is acquiring or getting of knowledge of a

subject or a skill by, experience, study, or instruction. Oddly, an educational psychologist

in Brown, (2007:7) defines learning as a change in an individual caused by experience.

Basically, learning has been placed on seeing, doing, hearing, and saying (Patel

and Jain, 2008:16). It means that language is still learned by imitating, and good language

is largely judged by its sound. A child learns his mother tongue by imitation. Learning is

not only related to language but also to the attitude. What the children see from their

parent’s attitude will be imitated by the children. According to Pritchard (2009:1) learning

can be defined as:

a. A change in behavior as a result of practice.

b. The acquisition of knowledge.

c. Knowledge gained through study.

d. To gain knowledge of, or skill in, something through study, teaching, instruction or

experience.

e. The process of gaining knowledge. A process by which behavior is changed, shaped or

controlled.

f. The individual process of constructing understanding based on experience from a wide

range of sources.
 Considering the term “learning” above, the researcher tries to put the term of

learning in educational world. When talking about educational learning, of course, the

experience here is specified as a result of the process in the context of education. Looking

forward to the concept of teaching stated by Brown, teaching and learning cannot be

defined apart. So, learning can be defined as process of acquiring or getting knowledge of

subject or skill from the facilitator (teacher) through educational experience, study, or

instruction.