THREE VIEWS OF TEACHING: TRANSMISSION, TRANSACTION, AND TRANSFORMATION

Good teaching starts with an operational definition of teaching. There are three common views of what constitutes teaching: teaching as transmission, teaching as transaction, and teaching as transformation (Miller, 1996).

Teaching as Transmission

From this perspective, teaching is the act of transmitting knowledge from Point A (teacher’s head) to Point B (students’ heads). This is a teacher­-centered approach in which the teacher is the dispenser of knowledge, the arbitrator of truth, and the final evaluator of learning. A teacher’s job from this perspective is to supply students with a designated body of knowledge or set of skills in a predetermined order. Academic achieve­ment is seen as students’ ability to demonstrate, replicate, or retransmit this designated body of knowledge or set of skills back to the ...