The Research About The"Practice-Feedback-Explanation"Teaching Approach

The long-established Chinese teaching philosophy believes there is a distinctive division between those who educate and those who are educated. Teachers are regarded as authority figures and the knowledge is never challenged. As a result, this conventional educational belief creates academic standards and test-oriented systems that divide students into various levels. However, education is also widely believed to be a student-centered practice. In other words, educators should consider children’s developmental features as the point of departure, inspire the children’s autonomous learning abilities and nurture their interests and creativity. A case in point was the original differentiating teaching practiced by Confucius thousands of years ago. Current research reveals that education is undergoing a reform, with more practitioners experimenting with flexible approaches to teaching so as to make learning enjoyable for the children. The educational reform requires motivation, vision, determination, courage, exploration and problem-solving abilities; more importantly, it cannot be simply labeled as ’right’ or ’wrong’. In the midst of the educational reform, the pedagogical approach ’Practice-Feedback-Explanation’ became the center of attention. In the past five years, this pedagogy has been experimented in teaching, and it allowed the opportunity for the students to be accountable for their own study. The outcome may not be perfect, but it was a breakthrough in teaching practice and was a thought-provoking process for the practitioners. One of the most significant German Educationists, Friedrich Adolph Wilhelm Diesterweg, once said that an ineffective teacher would present truth to the students, while an effective teacher would guide the students to discover truth. Similarly, the’Practice-Feedback-Explanation’ approach places the teacher in the facilitator’s position instead of the authoritative position. The teacher serves as a mentor and provides guidance for the students to learn. This pedagogy is challenged, examined and improved in the negotiation between the old and new teaching philosophy. After five years of investigation, this pedagogy illuminates the importance of student-centered teaching and continues to be revisited. Even though the result is still unknown, the process is valuable and enlightening.