(A) different views on the status and role of teachers and students in the teaching process

What is the status of students and teachers in the teaching process, and what is the relationship between students' learning and teachers' teaching? This issue is a heated debate in the history of modern education. Generally speaking, there are two completely different views on this issue, one is "student-centered theory" and the other is "teacher-centered theory". In order to correctly understand the position and role of students and teachers in the teaching process and the relationship between teaching and learning, it is necessary for us to investigate and analyze these two viewpoints.

1. "student-centered theory"

The student-centered theory is represented by Rousseau, Dewey and others. First of all, they regard the development of students as a natural process, and think that teachers can't dominate this process but are just "natural servants". At the same time, they also believe that children's development is an active process, and the role of teachers is only to guide students' interest in learning and meet their personal needs, rather than directly interfering with students' learning. They also believe that students can only develop from individual experience and acquire the knowledge they need from direct experience. Therefore, the education process should not be carried out directly by teachers, but should be experienced by students themselves. For example, Dewey believes that teachers should only act as "observers" and "helpers" in teaching. He should not stand on the platform in front of the students, but should stand behind them.

"Student-centered theory" generally holds that students are an independent variable in the teaching process and the subject that can completely determine education, teaching process and its results. From a philosophical point of view, they emphasize the role of students' internal factors in the learning process, and belittle or even deny the role of external factors. From a psychological point of view, they tend to be humanistic and think that students have inherent potential and can show harmonious social behavior without outside help. Their learning theory attaches great importance to students' needs, attitudes, emotions and other factors such as motivation system or internal mechanism, and thinks that the changes of these internal factors mainly cause the changes of learning behavior. They advocate that teaching should try to exclude all kinds of external conditions, including teachers, and create a teaching environment that allows students to make personal choices and give full play to their initiative. Most of these people hold an idealistic attitude towards education, and generally they are not practitioners from the front line of teaching but educational thinkers.

2. "Teacher-centered theory"

Teacher-centered theory represented by Herbart and others. Herbart resolutely opposed the idea of "nature education" that appeared in the enlightenment period of18th century, and thought that "it is just a stupid thing to give people to nature, or even lead people to nature and exercise in nature". He compared the natural nature of human beings to a big ship in sailing, and thought that for students, the role of teachers is like a helmsman, and the mental growth of students depends on teachers' deliberate efforts and fixed guidance on teaching forms, stages and methods. To this end, he attaches great importance to the authority of teachers, emphasizes the absolute dominant position of teachers in the teaching process, and asserts that "in any other function of education, students are directly in the minds of teachers, and because teachers must play a role in them, students must maintain a passive state towards teachers".

Teacher-centered theorists generally attach importance to the decisive influence of environment and education on students' development, regard the relationship between environmental change and behavior change as a functional relationship, regard teachers as the representative of social or educational influence as the absolute dominator of the teaching process, and simply emphasize that students are the object of education, ignoring students' subjective status. From a philosophical point of view, most of them are externalists or mechanical materialists. From the psychological point of view, they tend to behaviorism, thinking that we should not seek the explanation of human behavior from the internal world, but from the external conditions that determine behavior. Teachers can completely correct or form students' behavior according to the expected goals through their own reactions in the activities organized by them. Most of these people have a realistic attitude towards education. They are not romantic thinkers, but professional educators with rich educational experience.

The above two schools are biased in theoretical analysis, but in practice, they are of little benefit to improving teaching performance. The key is that they can't treat the position of students and teachers in the teaching process from a dialectical point of view, and regard the relationship between teaching and learning as a direct and simple relationship between educators and educatees, or a spontaneous relationship between subjective activities and external conditions.

From the perspective of subject and object, "student-centered theory" and "teacher-centered theory" can be summed up as "the only subject of students" and "the only subject of teachers". These are two extreme views on the status and role of both teachers and students, which are rare at present. In recent years, there are the following four viewpoints. (1) dominant subject theory, in the teaching process, teachers are dominant and students are the main body. (2) Double-subject theory, teachers and students are the subjects of the teaching process. (3) The theory of process subjectivity, teaching has two parallel activity processes, and the teacher is the main body; Students are the main body of the learning process. (4) Stage theory, in different stages of students' growth or different links of teaching activities, the undertaker of the subject will change. In addition, there are three-body theory, compound subject theory and hierarchical subject theory. Generally speaking, these views can be regarded as an understanding between two extreme views, and their influence and scope cannot be compared with these two views in history, so I will not repeat them here.

(2) Students are the object of teaching and the subject of learning.

1. Teachability is the physical and mental foundation of students as the object of education.

To put it simply, education is the activity that society cultivates natural persons into social persons through various channels. The object of this activity is people, not people's body and mind. Furthermore, it is the body and mind of the younger generation that have not yet completed socialization. As far as teaching is concerned, as the basic way to implement education, its object is undoubtedly the educated.

The reason why human body and mind constitute the object world of human practice is first determined by the nature of human body and mind. The teachability of human beings is the physical and mental basis for people to become the object of education. It can be said that because of its teachability and great development potential, people can become the object of education and qualified members of society by accepting various social influences. Except for people, most animals are not teachable. Since birth, organs and their functions have matured, and many genetic behaviors are instinctive and fixed. This instinctive behavior is a simple and rigid behavior that has been encoded in genes. Because of this, their development possibilities and acquired behaviors under the influence of acquired environment are relatively limited. Humans are not. "The basic characteristic of human beings is that their quality is not specialized." In the long evolutionary process, many innate special abilities have disappeared, and the extreme fragility of newborns is the result of this evolutionary process. On the contrary, in the process of evolution, the human brain is increasingly developed, which makes people have a plasticity mechanism in physiology. There are as many neurons in the human brain as10 billion ~1500 million, and countless pathways are formed by their synapses. These pathways constitute the physiological basis of infinite diversity of human learning results, making human behavior plastic and diverse. Because of this, people can develop in social life or educational activities under the influence of the same kind, improve their physical and mental functions and become the spirit of all things.

It can be seen that teachability is one of the fundamental characteristics of human beings and an "innate character", and teaching is the basic way of teaching. It can be said that children or students who participate or are accepted in the teaching process system first exist and act as educational objects. In the process of teaching, the status or identity of students is the object of teaching first, which is also the primary role played by students in the teaching process.

2. Initiative is the primary feature of students as learning subjects.

As teaching objects, students are influenced by education in teaching activities, not passively, but actively. In teaching activities, teachers do not simply process and transform, but guide students to learn actively. Students do not passively accept in teaching activities, but actively participate, and acquire knowledge based on their own knowledge experience system and interest motivation, thus transforming it into their own cognitive structure and making it "personalized", which constitutes the basic part of their personality. Regardless of knowledge preparation, cognitive ability, attitude and motivation, students' learning does not start from scratch. In the process of teaching, they will gradually realize their position in teaching and some educational goals set by society, and participate in and promote teaching activities through their own efforts. It is in this sense that students are both the object of teaching and the subject of learning.

Because students participate in and promote teaching activities with active learning, students' active learning constitutes another activity system that is parallel and interdependent with teachers' teaching. In the process of teaching, students' learning and teachers' teaching are inseparable, and they interact with each other, and make students accept the influence of education in this interaction, thus approaching the teaching goal step by step. Without teachers' teaching, there would be no teaching activities different from other human activities; Without students' study, there will be no real teaching activities. Teaching activities are only formal and superficial at best, and have nothing to do with the realization of teaching objectives. Although there are also students' self-study activities in schools, in essence, these learning activities are still restricted by the guidance of teachers through teaching objectives, the constraints of teachers' requirements and the provisions of teaching syllabus and teaching materials. Therefore, although we emphasize that students are the main body of learning and have subjective initiative, the nature of the object of education determines that their learning is still restricted by teachers' teaching.

(c) Teachers are educators and play a leading role in teaching.

1. The professional characteristics of a teacher determine his guiding and organizing role in the teaching process.

The most fundamental duty of teachers is to teach and educate people, which is the basic requirement of society for teachers. Teachers' social roles are the source of knowledge, the embodiment of morality and the representative of social values. In the teaching process, teachers are required to design, organize and implement teaching activities according to social requirements and educational objectives that reflect social needs, so as to guide and help students master knowledge through active learning. Skills, develop various abilities, and form certain concepts, values and personality qualities. Facts have also proved that successful teaching activities must also be designed, organized and implemented by teachers. This responsibility and professional characteristics of teachers can not be replaced by any other factors in teaching activities.

2. Teachers' quality makes it possible for them to play a guiding and organizing role in teaching.

As educators, teachers are generally specially trained. They have a certain understanding of children's development and teaching principles, and have a strong sense of social responsibility for their work. They are superior to students in thought, knowledge and ability. This enables them to be competent in guiding and helping students' learning, to design, organize and implement activities and environments that are most beneficial to students' learning scientifically and reasonably, and to guide students to consciously accept social or educational requirements and strive to meet these requirements. If teachers' responsibilities determine what teachers should do in teaching, then teachers' literacy means what teachers can do in teaching. Generally speaking, a specially trained teacher with a strong sense of social responsibility can guide the teaching direction by virtue of his knowledge, ability and teaching art, thus guiding and promoting students' learning and development.

3. The concrete manifestation of teacher-led organization.

What a teacher should and can do in the teaching process does not mean what he is doing. Do teachers play a guiding and organizing role in the teaching process? By investigating the main activities of teachers in the teaching process, we can think that teachers (as far as most teachers are concerned) do play a guiding and organizing role in the teaching process, which is embodied in the following aspects: First, teachers design, organize and implement teaching activities according to the principles of pedagogy, psychology and teaching methods; Secondly, teachers put forward various teaching objectives that reflect social requirements and make students accept these requirements, so as to effectively bring students' learning into a certain direction and track, thus promoting the development of teaching activities; Thirdly, teachers help students directly or indirectly to improve the efficiency of learning, and make students' learning step by step towards the teaching goal.