Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning of French as a foreign language in any Anglophone country such as Ghana is an extremely difficult task to undertake both on the part of the teacher and the student. This is evidenced in the general low performance of students in the subject at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) level in both public and private schools over the years. This case study paper follows, examines, and documents evidence (in a day) of an exemplary French teacher, Pangloss who, by dint of hard work, has brought tremendous success to his students. This article critically analyzes the difference and excellence he brings unto the teaching and learning of French even as a part-time teacher in a public Junior High School (JHS) in the Muzumba community within the Cape Zone Metropolis. The paper’s preoccupation is to typically observe the characteristics of this individual foreign language teacher with a view to probing deeply and analyzing intensively the multifarious phenomena that constitute his professional demeanor, the processes he employs in teaching, and the opportunities he creates for student learning purposely to establish some insights on how teaching and learning of French could be made better to the wider French teacher population in Ghana.

Aim of this paper is to search and find ways and methods of constructivism teaching and learning ideas in teaching the architectural design studio. The objective is to extract all the positive things constructivism has to offer the architectural design studio for efficient teaching and effective learning. Although there are similarities in the curricula of training architects all over the world, but educators go about it in their own convenient and suitable ways and styles. And this is leading to inadequacy in the standards of teaching the arch-design studios in the contemporary world. The topic has become very relevant and timely as arch-educators and other stakeholders are of the opinion that something has to be done to improve the ways and methods of training architects, especially the teaching of the arch-design studio. Through exploration of critical analytical review of literatures and interviews, this paper finds ways and methods of constructivism in teaching the arch-design studio. These ways and methods are critically explored through the research themes of collaboration, integration, adaptability and motivation. By teaching and learning with constructivism ideas in the arch-design studio the students would be grounded in designing with creativity ideas and therefore we can have professionals that design and build creatively, functionally, satisfactorily and safely. It means we can have real buildings and places that satisfy our clients, the society and in harmony with the environment.