When I think of "teaching", words and phrases like imparting knowledge, instructing, sharing, and explaining come to mind. But when I actually think about what I am doing when I am teaching, very little of my time is spent "instructing" and "explaining", or otherwise spewing out information and facts to be absorbed by my students.
Rather, I find most of my teaching time is spent asking questions, showing, leading, and managing, and coaching.
In my view, the role of a teacher is to provide students with learning opportunities and a rich learning environment. As much as I can, I let students do things, try things, touch things, see things, and talk about things, and I spend very little time imparting knowledge to them.
Certainly I do not neglect my role as an instructor; I provide instructions and parameters to work within, but as much as possible I let my students figure out as much as they can on their own. I provide direction, discipline, and motivation as needed. The rest comes from them.
That's not to say that I am not a big proponent of direct teaching. I am. I have found from experience that some of the best learning follows from extracting out the important information that students need to know and explicitely stating it for them. This works particularly well with students who have learning or attentional difficulties.
On a teaching scale though, direct teaching might be considered the polar opposite to the learning "experiences" I try to provide students that I have described so far.
Perhaps.
But there is room for both approaches within the classroom. Well, not only is there room; both are necessary. It's the balance between the two that makes for good teaching. The direct teaching that I do is only a small part of how I spend my classroom time. Typically, I arm students with the information and knowledge they need and then, once they have that, I give them opportunities to explore, try, see and do things with that information. It is the point in the lesson at which the teaching ends, and the learning begins. My role changes from "teacher: imparter of knowledge", to "teacher: manager, director, supporter, and guide".
I think this makes students better problem solvers, better communicators, better life-long learners, gives them confidence, and makes them more curious.
