Hello there,
Nice to have you here! I thought it might be interesting for you to read about what educator really means. When asking around in my communities, usually there is a picture that people describe: a smart-looking man or woman that teaches something to a group of people in front of a board with a chalk in hand. Something like this:
Looks familiar, right? These wonderful people might be teachers. But while all educators are teachers, not all teachers are educators. It’s undoubtable that traditional teachers of our childhood have taught and gave us a lot, but were they our educators? Let’s see! An educator is not a performer and knowledge-transformer for a group, instead is a guiding professional who learns together with the group while facilitating learning processes or experiences. A great educator has four hats, and depending on the learning needs they are able to decide which hat suits the best and wear that one with confidence! These four hats are connected with educator roles that are defined as the following:
FACILITATOR hat: “When facilitating, educators help learners to get in touch with their personal experience and reflect on it. They adopt a warm affirming style to draw out learners’ interests, intrinsic motivation, and self-knowledge. They often do this by facilitating conversations in small groups. They create personal and trusting relationships with learners.”
SUBJECT EXPERT hat: “In their role as subject expert, educators help learners to organise and connect their reflections to the knowledge base of the subject matter. They adopt an authoritative, reflective style. They often teach by example, modelling and encouraging critical thinking as they systematically organise and analyse subject-matter knowledge. This knowledge is often communicated through lectures and texts.”
STANDARD SETTER / EVALUATOR hat: “As a standard-setter and evaluator, educators help learners master the application of knowledge and skill in order to meet performance requirements. They adopt an objective results-oriented style as they set the knowledge requirements needed for quality performance. They create performance activities for learners to evaluate their learning.”
COACH hat: “In the coaching role, educators help learners apply knowledge to achieve their goals. They adopt a collaborative, encouraging style, often working one-on-one with individuals to help them learn from experiences in their life context. They assist in the creation of personal development plans and provide ways of getting feedback on performance.”
Each educator has a preferred (let’s say default) educator hat, any maybe now it’s time to get back from metaphors to the jargon, meaning that there is a dominating role in the educator profile. A great educator is aware of their dominating role and is able to identify the needs of switching roles and doing so. The Kolb Educator Role Profile (KERP) is a framework, deriving from Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), that helps teachers, trainers, coaches, facilitators, educators, leaders to understand their approach to educating others (dominating educator role) and learn how to confidently apply other educator roles (learning flexibility) to maximise the learning outcome. Successful educators adopt the four educator roles to help learners maximise their learning capacity by passing through four stages of experiential learning (experiencing – reflecting – thinking – acting).
So when you meet an educator, you’ll have an expert in front of you, who is full-heartedly committed to their learners, who defines learning as a “continuous process grounded in experience” and who surely has the four hats needed to design and lead successful learning experiences.
Are you curious to experience this yourself? Feel free to reach out, you know where to find me.
Stay well,
Nóra
Note: The article combines my personal opinion (f.i.: teacher vs educator) and academic theories.
Resources:
Kolb Educator Role Profile (KERP)
Experiential Learning Theory (ELT)
Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb (2017), The Experiential Educator – Principles and Practices of Experiential Learning
