Faking understanding

Tshwarelo Hosia | Tuesday August 5, 2025 09:22

Teachers can only gauge the strength of their teaching prowess if students give them immediate, honest and genuine feedback. Students are the very centre of the instructional process, and what they say and do in the classroom and as soon as they step out of the classroom matters a lot. Perhaps one should delicately add a word or two to what teaching is not. Teaching is not a circus, nor is it a showcase of what the teacher knows about the subject matter. It is not about a classroom or public display of the teachers’ teaching prowess, which may not necessarily cause a behavioural change on the part of students. Teaching is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Teachers do not go to class and teach for their own sake but they interact with the students in the presence of content for the sole purpose of creating a harmonious relationship between the three core elements of teacher, student and content, which must forever be present if a classroom instructional operation is to be executed successfully.

The point one is driving home is that students should be the epicentre of teaching and learning activities. There can never be any other consideration assuming precedence over the students themselves. At this juncture, I should perhaps bring in one’s personal teaching experience as a novice teacher. This is an experience which I think could benefit all rookies and new entrants in the teaching profession. I started my teaching journey without any induction programme. Raw and fresh from the University of Botswana, I can honestly say I was thrown into the deep end, literally left to my own devices to navigate the unfamiliar teaching terrain. It was not that I was not educated enough to teach. Without necessarily losing modesty, I was perhaps too educated for the target group I was teaching.

With all my lofty qualifications, I was not able to properly measure the academic dose consistent with the level of the students. With the benefit of hindsight, I think a Bachelor’s Degree in Humanities was too heavy an academic dose to be deployed at the then two-year junior certificate programme. As stated, I was on my own. Naive and inexperienced as I was, I gave my all, my whole self to the job, but I did not immediately achieve the impact and learning outcomes one expected so badly. This was due, principally, to the fact that I had not fully gained knowledge of the world of students. That, out of reverence for the teacher or fear of the unknown, students can fake understanding when they do not understand anything. When asked, “Do you catch my drift?” as classroom practitioners often say, the response would normally be an unequivocal and emphatic yes. To some section of the students, this may be a correct reflection of how they truly feel about the lesson but many students join the chorus to be seen to be compliant and not necessarily a true expression of their understanding of the performance objectives instruction. One wonders whether teachers must ask students whether they generally understand. Any question soliciting a response from a chorus is too general and cannot gauge the true pulse of classroom instruction. Classroom practitioners should be intentional about asking very specific questions targeting individual students and not necessarily a group. A chorus may not capture different students and their peculiar strengths and challenges.

Differentiated approaches cannot only be developed when students are allowed to be different and to freely express their various stages of learning. As in my case, my students flattered to deceive. Visibly, the students had fun and enjoyed the teaching and learning interactions. And I thought students and I had chemistry, but the learning outcomes disproved the assumption and impression I had formed. Now and then, my teaching was positively encouraged by students with clapping of hands in appreciation of the solid presentation, one thought he was doing. Little did I know that having fun and displaying signs of excitement was not synonymous with understanding.

Fun they had, but the learning outcomes demonstrated that they had not necessarily absorbed and understood what they were taught. To be a good teacher, one has to be a fast learner, to adapt quickly to circumstances.

To be an effective teacher, one should respond positively to data, especially student performance data. The outcomes of tests, quizzes and half-yearly examinations speak volumes more about the character of the teaching process and less about the students. Students are essentially good and can absorb and understand what the teacher delivers on condition that the right environment, a positive climate, is created for students. Patients respond well to the right medical dose and students also respond to the right academic dose. An academic underdose or overdose is unhelpful to students. This is the stuff that novice teachers should know before walking into the teaching theatre. And this makes an induction programme very fundamental at the very beginning of a teaching career. It should be mandatory and never an option. An academic degree, no matter how senior it may be, without an appreciation of the practical realities of classroom teaching and the world of students, may be a serious impediment to the achievement of intended and desired learning outcomes.

The issue of a teacher’s dominance of classroom instruction is being addressed and will soon fade away.

There is a new kid in the block - the outcome-based curriculum, which rightly imposes a learner-centred approach to teaching and learning. The old approach is no longer consistent with modern educational trends and this necessarily challenges teachers to adapt. Adapting, however, is proving to be a tall order for veteran teachers schooled in the old and now discredited school of thought. It is no longer about how well the teacher is doing, but how well students are doing. It is essentially about what competencies students have mastered at the end of the programme of study. Those who watch and observe instruction should watch less what the teachers are saying and doing but should place emphasis on what the students are saying and doing.

The new curriculum demands the active participation of students in the teaching and learning process. The examinations focus more on testing high cognitive skills such as application, creation, analysis and synthesis. The days of students sitting on the fence and watching teachers performing are over.

The advent of an outcome-based curriculum brings about a paradigm shift intended to make every student the epicentre of a teaching and learning process. Teachers are still on a learning curve, and with a positive mindset, they will eventually catch the letter and spirit of the new curriculum. Those showing pockets of resistance will come to the party with a bit of training and empathic understanding from oversight agencies. After all Rome was not built in one single day.