Teaching Glossary: ​​25 Terms All Teachers Should Know

Education is an area in which endless terms are used, to which many others are continually added derived from emerging pedagogical methodologies and trends. Because of this, it is difficult for teachers to keep up with the meaning of all these concepts.

In this article we share the definition of some of the most used terms in the pedagogical environment, it is necessary to specify that this glossary includes definitions of terms and concepts that have been used for a long time, as well as others referring to trends that have appeared recently , especially those related to the digital age.

Teaching Glossary: ​​25 Terms All Teachers Should Know

AUTHENTIC ACTIVITIES

They are activities that emulate reality as closely as possible: that is, they build a bridge between school and life. Likewise, they allow students to implement their knowledge, skills and attitudes in environments similar to those they will face in everyday life.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

They are scenarios built to intentionally promote learning situations. They involve the organization of space, the arrangement and distribution of teaching resources, time management and social relationships.

SIGNIFICANT LEARNING

It is a type of learning in which the student associates the new information with what he already knows, readjusting and reconstructing both information in the process. This term was proposed by David Ausubel in his theory of reception learning and is within the framework of constructivist psychology.

SITUATED LEARNING

Situated learning refers to the sociocultural context as a fundamental element for the development of competences. It takes place in and through interaction with others, in a context of authentic problem solving. Learning occurs through reflection on the experience, from dialogue with classmates and exploring the meaning of events in a specific space and time.

FLIPPED CLASSROOM

Also called Flipped Classroom, it is a strategy in which traditional teaching is turned around, since the contents are studied at home and in the classroom, what has been learned is applied in significant situations such as debates, or group projects.

COMPETENCE

A competence in education refers to the capacity or set of capacities that are achieved by the combined and interrelated mobilization of knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, motivations and skills, in addition to certain dispositions to learn and know. Someone is considered competent because in solving a problem or question he mobilizes a combined series of factors in a specific context or situation.

CONNECTIVISM

It is a theory of the digital age that indicates that learning is generated from various connections within a network. Its origin comes from the analysis of the limitations of behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism in the current context. It seeks to explain the effects that technology has had on the way we communicate and learn.

DIDACTICS

It is a discipline of the pedagogical field whose objective is the study of teaching practices. It allows, in turn, to analyze and design the schemes and plans to deal with the different pedagogical theories.

UNIVERSAL DESIGN LEARNING (DUA)

It is a pedagogical proposal that makes curricular design more flexible and in which the purposes, methods, strategies and evaluation are based on the characteristics and needs of each student. Therefore, it is sought that when planning and implementing the activities, teachers take into consideration at the same time the different forms of representation, expression and involvement of all students.

EVALUATION STRATEGY

The term evaluation strategy refers to the set of actions, techniques and instruments that are used to assess the level of achievement of learning in students.

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DIDACTIC STRATEGY

They are the set of procedures (methods, techniques and activities) by which teachers and students consciously organize actions to build and achieve the goals set in the teaching-learning process.

AUTHENTIC EVALUATION

Authentic assessment emphasizes the importance of assessing contextualized learning, thus requiring students to actively solve authentic real-life problems and tasks. In the same way, it highlights the fact that teaching and evaluation are a binomial in which there can be no break.

GAMIFICATION

It is the application of the principles of the game in the educational field, in order to promote motivation, cooperation and participation of students in activities and thereby promote learning. Although this has been implemented in the classroom for years, with the rise of video games, applications, as well as the use of mobiles and tablets, it has been taken up again as a teaching method in schools.

METACOGNITION

Metacognition refers to the ability of human beings to understand their own behavior and that of others. It involves knowing and self-regulating one’s own cognitive processes to learn to learn.

HYBRID OR MIXED MODEL

The hybrid model, also called mixed or Blended learning, refers to an educational program in which the student performs a part of distance learning, where he can have a certain control over the time, space and rhythm of the activities. The other part is carried out in a physical space other than at home, this is normally in the classroom where you can have the teacher’s accompaniment.

MOOC

Massive Open Online Courses are designed to be taught to a large number of people at the same time. They are characterized by promoting autonomous learning, allowing synchronous or asynchronous interaction between students, and the use of resources such as documents, forums, links and videos.

NEURODIDACTICS

They are the set of didactic methods that allow optimizing the teaching process from the practical application of the knowledge generated both by neurosciences and neuroeducation.

PORTFOLIO OF EVIDENCE

It is a concentrate of written, graphic or digital evidence that collects important information about the performance of students during a specific period (didactic sequence, block, project or unit). It allows students, through their periodic review, to reflect on the learning process, assess their strengths and what they need to improve. Similarly, it is an important input for teachers to assess the level of achievement of learning.

TEACHING PORTFOLIO

It is an instrument that allows the teacher to objectively document the teaching process. Through his analysis, he reflects on the proposed activities and performs a self-evaluation of his own practice in order to improve it.

LEARNING SITUATIONS

They are defined as forms of organization of teaching work that seek to offer meaningful experiences to children that generate the mobilization of their knowledge and the acquisition of others.

TAC

The term TAC (Learning and Knowledge Technologies) refers to the exploration of the didactic possibilities that ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) have for teachers. It emphasizes not only the mastery of technology, but the pertinent use of it as a resource to promote learning.

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BLOOM’S TAXONOMY

It is a set of three hierarchical models that are used to classify educational objectives, it was designed in 1956 by a group of pedagogues headed by Benjamin Bloom. This taxonomy is divided into three dimensions: cognitive, psychomotor and affective. Of these, the cognitive dimension is the one most used in education, which Bloom’s team ranked as follows: knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

TRANSVERSALITY

Term that refers to a set of knowledge or skills that are present in different areas, moments of the curriculum or subjects, such as reading, writing or calculation.

WEBINAR

It is a seminar, workshop, course or web conference (hence the name of webinar) that is usually broadcast live via video conference. It allows interaction between the participants, likewise while the webinar is being carried out, the speaker can share documents on the subject being discussed.

ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT

Term proposed by Lev Vygotsky to refer to the space or gap between the skills that the student already possesses and what they can learn through the guidance or support provided by an adult or a more competent peer.

CONCLUSIONS

These are just some terms of the large number that are used in education, for any teacher it is necessary to be clear about their meaning since they help to have a better reference when developing in the profession. Without a doubt there are many others that can be included, but we will leave them for a future publication

by Abdullah Sam
I’m a teacher, researcher and writer. I write about study subjects to improve the learning of college and university students. I write top Quality study notes Mostly, Tech, Games, Education, And Solutions/Tips and Tricks. I am a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue.

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