Teaching and Research Aptitude Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The key gives Teaching is a dependent process.

Teaching is not carried on for its own sake. What the teacher does depends on the learners, their prior knowledge and the objectives, and it is judged by its effect on them, so it is not an independent process (option B is therefore wrong). I could not trace this exact wording to a named textbook, so the keyed reading rests on that general account of teaching.

Option C is the closest rival: teaching aims at learning, but it does not guarantee it, since there can be teaching without learning, so 'must be' overstates the link. Option D is also too strong, because people learn from experience and reading with no teacher at all.

Answer: C

An effective teacher provides a variety of learning experiences.

Students differ in abilities, interests and ways of learning, and a single method reaches only some of them. An effective teacher therefore varies the experiences: explanation, discussion, demonstration, group work, projects and use of media, so that each learner has a way in and the class stays engaged.

Allowing questions is good practice but is only one feature. Completing the syllabus on time measures coverage, not learning. Explaining everything to absent students is neither practical nor a mark of effective teaching. Variety of learning experiences is the broadest and most essential quality listed.

Answer: D

Reflective level teaching is neither teacher-centered nor subject-centered but is learner-centered.

Bigge's three levels of teaching run from memory level (teacher-centred, rote learning of facts), through understanding level (teacher and subject both central, grasping principles), to reflective level, the highest, where students identify problems, frame hypotheses and think them through for themselves. At that level the learner is at the centre, and the teacher only creates the situation.

Options calling reflective teaching teacher-centred or subject-centred describe the memory and understanding levels instead.

Answer: C

Reflective teaching is a cyclic process of thinking about teaching.

In reflective practice a teacher plans a lesson, teaches it, observes what happened, thinks critically about why it went as it did, and uses those conclusions to plan the next lesson. The last step feeds back into the first, so the process is a cycle rather than a straight line, and what the teacher reflects on is his or her own teaching.

The 'linear' options miss the repeating loop that defines reflection. 'Thinking about learning' shifts the focus to the learner; reflection certainly considers how students learned, but the object of reflective teaching is the teacher's own practice.

Answer: C

The answer is (i) and (iii), memory and insight.

In Morrison's levels of teaching, the memory level is rote learning of facts. The understanding level builds on it: the learner must remember the facts and also see the relationships, principles and generalisations behind them, which is insight. Teaching at this level is often summed up as 'memory plus insight'.

Aptitude is a person's potential to learn, not a component of a level of teaching, and creativity belongs to the higher, reflective level (Hunt), not the understanding level. So the options pairing aptitude or creativity are wrong.