Can Technology Replace a teacher?
Belio Kipsang, a PS in Basic Education, has stated that the teacher continues to play a significant role in education.
Although ICT has emerged as a significant educational technology for learning, according to Dr. Kipsang, it can only supplement, not replace, the critical role of a teacher in schooling.
The teacher is the guiding star of all educational institutions, including schools. The teacher cannot and will never be replaced by ICT and all of its educational powers.
Only teaching and learning can be improved by technology; the teacher cannot be replaced.
Any education reform, or curriculum architecture, must start with the teacher. With his or her education and training, society expects the teacher to instruct students in a formal curriculum or syllabus that lawmakers set.
Computers and their byproducts are only tools—techniques or technologies and media that support the teacher in communicating knowledge, skills, attitudes, and other key factors at the center of learning or the curriculum.
“No technology can replace teachers,” said a lecturer at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. Only one of the teaching tools can be utilized with it.”
With the introduction and growing acceptance of ICT as education technology, I questioned her if the function of the teacher in education would decline.
The Internet of Things and ICT may have their benefits. The internet can house a staggering amount of instructional and educational content.
To browse the web and differentiate between what is relevant and what is not for educational reasons, learners require the intellectual direction and coaching of a teacher.
“Students require teachers and one another for the most part. Students require a wise and experienced person who provides encouragement, presents the material in an engaging manner, sets personal behaviour standards, and monitors more than the blinking screen.
Diane Silvers Ravitch, an American education historian, writes in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, that minds develop in response to the social interaction of a lively classroom, where learners debate, discuss, and exchange ideas.
Educational technology cannot inspire learners, deliver the subject in a compelling manner, or set personal behaviour norms.
Only the traditional teacher, the human teacher with flesh and blood, who has been around since the beginning of formal schooling, can.
During the nine-month shutdown of schools in 2020 as a result of COVID-19, Kenya grappled with the possibilities and limitations of virtual learning enabled by modern information and communication technology.
Teachers were essential figures in virtual learning for school communities with the resources to support the learning.
Students were unable to interact with their various schools and teachers if their families were not connected to the national grid and had no internet access.
The socialization and structure of traditional education were also taken away from learners by virtual learning. In other words, before the emergence of Covid-19, the teacher had a greater impact on formal learning.
And the school, where the teacher is the unchanging figure, is the greatest leveller or equaliser of iniquities that define the unequal situations from which children come.
What policy consequences do these have? That the teacher will continue to play a central role in the formal curriculum’s instruction of learners; that, given the critical role of the teacher in education, society should be vigilant in exposing the teacher to a rigorous education and training program as children rely on them for instruction; and that society should make efforts to train the teacher in using ICT as a teaching tool.
The other policy conclusion is that, in addition to providing the teacher with the subject matter and pedagogical skills, society should integrate the teacher into the sophisticated and complicated educational technologies characterized by rising gadget complexity and sophistication.
That is the only way to acquire the best of both worlds: teacher education and training on the one hand, and his or her socialization into education and technology on the other.
Educational technology continues to advance in exciting new ways, motivating and astonishing teachers and learners alike.
Examples include the ancient abacus, handheld calculators, slide projectors, classroom film strips, and educational television.
Adaptability is required of teachers. The distinguishing characteristic of a top-notch teacher, however, is still the ancient truth about the teacher as the master of his subject.
To comprehend scientific phenomena, learners must still acquire the necessary knowledge. They must be developed into civic obligations and an understanding of society’s dynamics.
Strong reading and writing skills that are taught to students in basic education must be understood and used.
They must foster and build their numeracy skills, as well as develop their quantitative thinking and reasoning skills.
It indicates that a teacher must be suitably competent in the subject matter or master the necessary learning areas at a deeper and broader level than the primary and secondary education curriculum specifies.
The shortage or deficiencies in the knowledge that the teacher is expected to impart or aid learners’ acquisition cannot be made up for by educational technology.
Knowledge of the subject topic is the sine qua non of competence, as John Silber, emeritus president and former chancellor of Boston University, put it.
Technology is a tool, not an end, in the process of schooling.
Can Technology Replace a teacher?
