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I am not completely familiar with learning/teaching in foreign countries. I was raised in America and we have some different teaching methods here. I do have my experience teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) courses in Egypt.
I believe the Egyptian children and adults adapted well to the styles of teaching methods I used. I tried to make my classes as interesting and fun as I could. I did a lot of research to find various ideas to reach my students. As we all may know, the books or resources we choose have a big impact on how interesting or accurate the course(s) can be.
I noticed most of the Egyptian teachers used memorization to teach subjects. Just drill it in their heads and they will remember it eventually. I think introducing the subject and giving them practical, hands-on experience will help them to be interested and retain what they are learning. To engage your students in the subject, you can make the exercises fun; such as competition, encouraging creativity, humor and group evaluations/critiques. These methods encourage everyone to participate.
I have noticed in my culture that some of the students of this generation tend to be less respectful to authority. For example: We have so many laws that take away the rights of parents and teachers. We can't use any physical discipline on our children in USA. They will threaten to tell social services and parents may end up in jail. My theory is, due to the secular influence (in public schools), they don't allow religious teachings or guidance. With these practices, it seems to encourage rebellion from some students. I believe this is why we have so many children that bring weapons to school and start randomly shooting at their teachers and classmates. They are angry and neglected from the lack of guidance, discipline and attention. The laws give them the idea they are invincible. The parents are so busy competing with their neighbors to have the newest car and other toys, that the children become less of a priority. They don't have time to focus in on raising their children properly, because they are always working to try to earn the big bucks and impress everyone with material things.
I also heard from a colleague, who was teaching in KSA, that he had many spoiled, wealthy college students that would expect to be passed through, due to their financial status/class. They were disrespectful and rude to the teachers because of their status.
Personally I had some standout teachers that I remember from school days. I know what methods they used that reached me. Try to recollect who reached you and what they said or did to accomplish that. Students can learn a lot from a teacher. When you earn their respect and attention, don't forget to reward them!
That's my two cents!
1. An increasing number of college students do not study seriously.
2. Their attitude is increasingly a “Gimme!” one: they expect good grades without working for them.
3. The students expect to be respected even as they offer their instructors little respect.
4. With the rarest exceptions, educational administrators and leading spokespeople have not acknowledged these circumstances.
5. Morale among teachers is low and getting lower, as they are caught between the rock of declining studiousness and the hard place of getting no support from their institutions if they try to maintain standards.
There are some necessary caveats that ought to be understood whenever one generalizes in so sweeping a fashion:
1. A general tendency is being described, which affects some students more than others and some hardly at all; thus:
2. I continue to encounter students whom it is a true pleasure to have in class.
3. Moreover, the failings that I draw attention to, which reflect the characteristics of a large and increasing proportion of students, are surely not the simple fault of those students. We are facing a new cultural phenomenon.
But those caveats make the problems no less real or worrisome. The first necessary step is to “raise consciousness”, to use a fashionable phrase: to bring to wide public realization the fact that college students in increasing numbers do not study in appropriate college fashion. Only when that comes to be widely enough recognized will we then be able to go further: by attempting to understand first, the priorities and values of the non-studying students and second, why this has come about; and finally to conjecture how to rescue education as a socially useful activity.
There is another reason for publishing this collection of experiences. I had been getting quite demoralized, especially since my ratings by students had fallen below3 out of4 for the first time in more than3 decades of teaching, indeed by1993 to less than2.5. I found it difficult not to presume that it was my fault that the students were becoming less and less interested and were learning less and doing less well. Through the correspondence following my letter in Chemical & Engineering News, I have come to realize that there are many others around the country who also feel it is their fault that their students are working less; and who are encouraged in that belief by administrators. When a member of the physics faculty at George Mason University read my preprint, he realized that perhaps it was not, as they had thought, a problem unique to that university which has recently increased its enrollment very rapidly – earlier they had thought the speedy growth might have been responsible for the high proportion of students who seemed unready for college. It has finally saved my self-respect, to know that professors all across the country are having the same experience – including demoralization through not knowing that the problem lies in the culture, in the students, and not in the instructors. I think it is important to spread this awareness.
