Teacher’s Presence in the Classrom
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ProIndex Publishing House
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The demands of modern education on standardized performance pull us further and further away from a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of what it means to teach. Simple explanations of teaching and learning now run like this: excellent instruction leads to excellent learning, which is correlated with high test scores. Low test scores are a clear indication that poor instruction leads to poor learning. The voices of instructors and students are being marginalized, and we are losing sight of what it means to educate as less time, money, space, and value are allocated to a more complicated idea of education.
This article offers an alternative paradigm and defines teaching as a genuine connection in which educators get to know their students and their learning, and they respond to them with compassion and wisdom. We characterize this involvement as "presence"—a condition of attentive awareness, openness, and connection to the psychological, emotional, and physiological processes of the individual and the group within the framework of their learning environments, as well as the capacity to react in a way that is most thoughtful and caring.