Wang Xiaoming,

ICI Associate Professor

The Development of Teaching Materials should be Student Oriented

Teaching materials are an important basis for achieving educational goals and developing students’ core competencies. Students' core competencies are not born, but cultivated. Effective learning based on high-quality teaching materials is the main way for students to develop core competencies. Therefore, the development of high-quality teaching materials is crucial to the achievement of educational goals and the development of students' core competencies. In order to realize its educational mission, teaching material development must be student oriented. This orientation should be reflected in the functional positioning of teaching materials, the process of teaching material development, and the presentation of teaching material content.

1. Teaching materials should be developed as “learning materials”

For whom are the teaching materials developed and served? This issue about the functional positioning of teaching materials needs to be clarified before the development. There are currently two views on this issue: teaching materials are developed for teachers and are used by teachers to teach, thus "teaching materials"; teaching materials are developed for students and serve students' learning, thus "learning materials." The functional positioning of these two teaching materials reflects two different thinkings and will have different impacts on the development of teaching materials. The positioning of teaching materials as "teaching materials" will focus the development of teaching materials on what teachers should teach and how to teach; the positioning of teaching materials as "learning materials" will focus the development of teaching materials on what and how students should learn. That textbooks want to achieve the goal of educating people and develop students' core competencies without paying attention to students' learning is at across purposes. Even if teaching materials are developed as "teaching materials", since the purpose of teachers' teaching is to promote student learning, the materials used in teaching must ultimately serve the purpose of promoting student learning. "Teaching materials" should ultimately be led to "learning materials" .

2. In the teaching material development process, attention should be paid to overcoming the blind spot effect of experts.

The development of teaching materials is usually primarily undertaken by experts in the relevant disciplines. The rich expertise possessed by subject experts enables them to complete professional tasks easily and efficiently. However, rich professional knowledge will also have some negative effects on the performance of experts. The main manifestation is that it is usually difficult for experts to adopt the perspective of beginners when looking at problems in their professional fields, especially it’s difficult for them to find same problems when study some subjects as beginners do. This phenomenon is called the "expert blind spot effect". As far as the development of teaching materials is concerned, although the expert blind spot effect does not damage the correctness of the content of the teaching materials and the subject logic embodied in the teaching materials, it will damage the learning logic of the teaching materials. The most prominent manifestation is that students will find it difficult and "brain-burning" to learn the teaching materials with correct content and strict logic written by subject experts. Without the teacher's inspiration, guidance and even detailed teaching, it is often difficult for students to understand the teaching materials on their own. This will make it difficult for teaching materials to fully exert their function as "learning materials". In the process of teaching material development, it is necessary to avoid the blind spot effect of experts. Not only do subject experts need to select, present and organize teaching material content from the perspective of beginners, they also need to engage teachers with practical teaching experience to participate in teaching material development. In addition, the development of teaching materials cannot be limited to the completion of the writing of teaching materials and the publication. Collecting problems and difficulties encountered by teachers and students when using teaching materials, and collecting students’ feelings and experiences when learning teaching materials are important for the teaching material development team to further understand the use of teaching materials and to put student in first. Finally, establishing and improving the feedback mechanism on the effectiveness of teaching materials is also an important institutional guarantee for avoiding the blind spot effect of experts in teaching material development.

3. The content presentation of teaching materials should focus on providing effective support for students’ learning.

When developing teaching materials, we should not only consider what content to present to students, but also focus on how to inspire students to learn the presented content. Therefore, it is particularly important to achieve the following two points. First, the presentation of teaching material content should clearly direct students’ attention to the content to be learned. Although the expression "attracting students' attention" is often mentioned in the practice of teaching and textbook compilation, this expression implies an major flaw, which is that it places too much emphasis on attracting students' attention and ignores the object of attention, which can easily lead to a problem that is when the students' attention is attracted but the object of their attention is not the content we expect them to learn. For example, when presenting the teaching material content, interesting but irrelevant pictures or words are used to arouse students' interest. It seems that students' attention is attracted superficially, but the actual effect is to distract students from the content they should pay attention to. In order to correctly guide students' attention when presenting teaching material content, it is necessary to complete the objects of attention and ensure their relevance to students' learning when developing teaching materials . Secondly, the presentation of teaching material content should focus on inspire students to think deeply about the teaching material content. As the saying goes, "Reading without thinking is like scratching an itch from outside the boot." Students' pondering and thinking on the content presented in the teaching materials are the key to absorbing the content of the teaching materials and transforming them into core competencies. However, not every student can take the initiative to carry out these key activities. Therefore, when presenting the teaching material content, you must consider how to trigger students' in-depth thinking. Teachers can use questions, comments, and set some valuable questions for specific content in the teaching material to trigger students' thinking and ensure that students can carry out in-depth thinking.