WORKING IN THE CLASSROOM

TEACHING , TIME AND SPACE

 INTRODUCTION
Purpose : To provide the student teacher with
knowledge on how to arrange school and classroom
time and space in a way that best enables systematic
learning.
Contents
Unit1: Time and space in teaching
Unit 2: School time and space
Unit 3: Classroom time and space
Unit 4: Making learning time and space for large
classes
Outcomes : By the end of this unit you should have gained an
understanding of the following concepts:
•External time and space
•Internal time and space
•Activities, agents and intentions
•Formal purposes
•Elements of teaching
•Practices
•Institutions
•Regulative and constitutive rules
Time and space shape, and are
shaped by ordinary activities
Time and space are shaped by external
arrangements and internal arrangements of
activities
An activity determines the organisation of time and
space
Activities: An activity involves people and the
things that they do , rather than things which simply
happen. People take part in activities intentionally ,
there is human action and intention in every activity
 Human action and intentions
Jumping off a cliff is different from falling off a cliff, and both of these are
different from being pushed off a cliff. Here are the differences:

1. Jumping off a cliff is something that someone does, it is an action performed

with an intention, and the person who jumps can be called the agent of
that action. The agent of an action is the person who has the intention and
does the action.

2. Falling off a cliff is something that simply happens to someone, it is an

accident, not an action, and there is no agent or intention involved.

3. Being pushed off a cliff is not an accident, there is an agent involved, but the
agent in such a case is not the person who is pushed but the person who did
the pushing. Something happens to the person who is pushed, she/he is not
an agent but the victim of someone else's action and intention.
Human action and intentions
 Shaping the external time and space of an activity is
not under the control of the participants during the
activity. The agents of the action are not necessarily
the participants of the activity in question .
 Shaping the internal time and space of an activity is
also a human action but the agents here can only be
the participants themselves
Teachers are the responsible agents in the shaping of
the internal time and space of teaching – they can do
this well only if they understand the activity of
teaching
Teaching as an activity
Common Picture
 Teaching is an activity which is constantly present in
the everyday lives of normal human communities
 Most teaching takes place outside the walls and
timetables of schools, and most teaching is done by
anyone who knows something that someone else does
not, and not only by people called “teachers”
 Teaching is an activity ,and as such, is done by an
agent (or agents) with intentions
How can we tell that someone is
teaching?
 A person who is teaching must be engaging in some
appropriate action, and must be engaging in that action
with appropriate intentions
 We can tell what the appropriate actions and intentions are
only in terms of formal purpose that defines the activity of
teaching
 Teaching is a polymorphous activity. Polymorphous
activities are defined by their formal purpose, and that
purpose draws the boundary around what could count as
appropriate actions and what could count as appropriate
intention for the agent
 The formal purpose of an activity is a concept that is shared
in a community, it is neither personal nor subjective
 The formal purpose of the activity
of teaching
 Teaching requires a double object;
- someone being taught(L)- [Who are you teaching?]
- something being taught(C)- [What are you teaching them?]
 Basic components of a teaching environment
The formal purpose of the activity
of teaching
Teaching is a co-operative activity between a teacher and
a learner:
Learners are not passive but active participants of a
learning process
Teachers need to encourage active participation of
learners
Teaching is a dynamic activity and its success depends
on the teachers’ ability to stimulate and engage learners
in actions of learning
Conditions of learning- time and space
In order to bring about that someone tries to learn
something , the conditions for learning need to be
taken into account:
 The time it takes different learners to learn something
 What is being learnt?
 Appropriate space for learning
When teachers arrange the internal time and space of
teaching , they need to think about which
arrangements will best enable learning
The practice of teaching
To call something a practice is to claim that it is an
activity , but an activity with some special
characteristics
Some special characteristics of school teaching are :
 It is an activity
 It normally takes place in the context of an institution
 It involves teaching a number of learners
simultaneously
 Those who do this kind of teaching are usually
professionally employed in this capacity
The practice of teaching
The characteristics of practices in general are:
 Practices are necessarily social
 Practices have histories and traditions
 Practices are flexible in relation to changing
conditions
 A practice can change , but only within the boundaries
of our understanding of what makes it a distinctive
practice
 Practices have their own internal standards of success
and excellence
School teaching as a practice
 Schooling is concerned with a particular kind of learning
 This kind of learning leads to the development of
conceptual frameworks in terms of which to understand
the world we live in
 Such learning needs to be systematic for it to be successful
 Learning needs to be organized by those who already
understand those conceptual frameworks
Definition: School teaching is the practice of organizing
systematic learning
Meaning : An agent(s) i.e. teacher(s), need to arrange
sequences of learning tasks that gradually enable the
learner to grasp more and more complex skills and
concepts and this sequence unfolds through time .
Institutions and rules
 Institutions are established, and maintained, to provide a
home for practices
 A school is an institution that provides a practice of
education
 In the heart of a school are the practices of teaching and
learning
Rules within the schooling practice :
➢ Regulative rules regulate behaviour and actions that are
possible entirely independently of the rules
➢ Constitutive rules create the possibility of actions that are
not possible without the rules
THANK YOU