The debate about whether teachers should focus on content or processes, such as study skills and critical thinking, has been ongoing within academic circles for a long time now. However, I think schools should emphasize more on processes as compared to content. First, content focuses on who and what, thus majoring on facts and occurrences. In most cases, it teaches students what to think. On the other hand, processes focus on why and how, which allows students to interrogate concepts and become creative moving from the known to the unknown. As such, processes teach students how to think, and I believe this should be the essence of learning. Bombarding students with facts without showing them how to process such information and derive meaning out of them and apply such information encourages rote learning, which is poor form of learning. Teaching critical thinking allows students to contextualize facts, analyze information, and marshal evidence to defend a position, coupled with questioning and identifying biases. In other words, teaching processes advances intellectualism, which is now needed in the modern world more than ever.
In addition, the Internet revolution of the 21st century is slowly replacing the need for teaching content. A student will not be required to memorize facts that could easily be obtained within a second from the Internet (Office of Educational Technology, 2017). Therefore, I think that moving forward into the future, the emphasis will continue to be on teaching processes over content. As such, the increasing use of computers in the future will play a central role in entrenching this emphasis. As explained earlier, the unabated proliferation of the Internet is becoming a game-changer in the debate about content vs processes in education. While the Internet can store data for easy retrieval, it cannot teach students how to think. Therefore, soon students being taught content will start wondering why they should cram historical dates when they can refer to the Internet for such information.
However, I am not downplaying the role of teaching content to students. The present and future are rooted in history, and learners should be taught about what came before them as a way of understanding today and tomorrow’s events. Content allows students to understand the actions of others on top of teaching important aspects such as the value of citizenship and morality, which, makes them better people. In addition, as Eggen and Kauchak (2020) argue, most of the problems faced in the current world are ill formed. Therefore, content allows learners to know which questions to ask and offers critical tools in the assessment of truth and meaning.
Therefore, I believe that educators should look for ways on how they could use both content and processes in an integrative manner that drives the two approaches forward, but with the emphasis being on processes. This assertion is not subject to the developmental level of a student, be it in first grade or in high school. Regardless of the level of study, students should be taught less of what to think and more of how to think. This approach ultimately creates a healthy balance whereby, on the one hand, learners have the right tools to understand their present and future within the context of the past, while on the other hand, they can reason critically, interrogate concepts, and derive meaning out of it (Galvis, 2018). As such, teachers should have a repertoire of instructional strategies, approaches, and methods to equip their students adequately.
References
Eggen, P., & Kauchak, D. (2020). Using educational psychology in teaching (11th ed.). Pearson Prentice Hall.
Galvis, Á. H. (2018). Supporting decision-making processes on blended learning in higher education: Literature and good practices review. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 15(25), 1-38.
Office of Educational Technology. (2017). Reimagining the role of technology in education: 2017 National Education Technology Plan Update. Web.