Brief Note on Models of Teaching

Models of Teaching

Families of Models

Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weil have identified four main families of models

1. Information Processing Family

Main Focus: Help students in the mastery  of methods of  inquiry; mastery of academic concepts and facts; development of general  intellectual skills such as the ability to think more logically .

Eg:   Concept Attainment Model

Advance Organizer   Model

Biological Science Inquiry Training Model

Cognitive Development Model

Synetics Model (to develop creativity)

2. Behaviour Systems Family

Main Focus:  To change the behaviour of the learner; to transmit culture by teaching skills and knowledge

Eg.  Direct Instruction Model

Contingency Management Model

Mastery Learning

Learning from Simulations

Model to develop the six varieties of performances identified by Gagne

3. Social Family

Main Focus :  To help  students work together to identify and solve problems; to develop skills in human relations,: to become aware of personal and social values

Eg:  Jurisprudential Inquiry Model (learning to think about  social policy)

Cooperative learning

Group Investigation

Role Playing

4. Personal Family

Main Focus: To increase the students’ sense of self-worth; to help students understand  themselves more fully; to help students recognize their emotions and become more aware of the way emotions affect other aspects of their behaviour; to help them develop goals for learning; to help students develop plans for increasing their competence ; to increase the students’ creativity and playfulness and to increase the students’ openness to new experience.

Eg: Awareness Training Model

Classroom Meeting Model

Non-directive Teaching Model

Concept Attainment model

What is Concept Attainment?

Concept Attainment is an indirect instructional strategy that uses a structured inquiry process. It is based on the work of Jerome Bruner. In concept attainment, students figure out the attributes of a group or category that has already been formed by the teacher. To do so, students compare and contrast examples that contain the attributes of the concept with examples that do not contain those attributes. They then separate them into two groups. Concept attainment, then, is the search for and identification of attributes that can be used to distinguish examples of a given group or category from non-examples.

What is its purpose?

Concept attainment is designed to clarify ideas and to introduce aspects of content. It engages students into formulating a concept through the use of illustrations, word cards or specimens called examples. Students who catch onto the idea before others are able to resolve the concept and then are invited to suggest their own examples, while other students are still trying to form the concept. For this reason, concept attainment is well suited to classroom use because all thinking abilities can be challenged throughout the activity. With experience, children become skilled at identifying relationships in the word cards or specimens. With carefully chosen examples, it is possible to use concept attainment to teach almost any concept in all subjects.

Advantages:

helps make connections between what students know and what they will be learning

learn how to examine a concept from a number of perspectives

learn how to sort out relevant information

extends their knowledge of a concept by classifying more than one example of that concept

students go beyond merely associating a key term with a definition
concept is learned more thoroughly and retention is improved 

How do I do it?

Steps of Concept Attainment:

Select and define a concept

Select the attributes

Develop positive and negative examples

Introduce the process to the students

Present the examples and list the attributes

Develop a concept definition

Give additional examples

Discuss the process with the class

Evaluate

How can I adapt it?

This activity can be done on the chalkboard, chart paper or overhead projector to a large or small group. It also works well as one-on-one work. Rather than starting with the teacher's concept, use a student's concept. Concept attainment can be used to introduce or conclude a unit of study.

Variations on the Concept Attainment Model

Present all of the positive examples to the students at once and have them determine the essential attributes.

Present all of the positive and negative examples to the students without labeling them as such. Have them group the examples into the two categories and determine the essential attributes.

Have the students define, identify the essential attributes of, and choose positive examples for a concept already learned in class.

Use the model as a group activity.

Assessment and Evaluation Considerations

Have the students:

write the definition from memory.

determine positive and negative examples from a given group.

create their own examples of the concept.

"think aloud"

Write a learning log

Do an oral presentation

Create a web, concept map, flow chart, illustrations, KWL chart, T chart

ADVANCE ORGANISER MODEL

David  Ausubel

An advance organizer is a tool used to introduce the lesson topic and illustrate the relationship between what the students are about to learn and the information they have already learned. They are used during expository instruction, which is the use of an expert to present information in a way that makes it easy for students to make connections from one concept to the next.

By using an advance organizer to link the new information to old information, the new information can     be remembered more easily.

There are three basic purposes of advance organizers.

First, they direct students' attention to what is important in the upcoming lesson.

Second, they highlight relationships among ideas that will be presented.

Third, they remind students of relevant information that they already have.

An advance organizer is not a summary or review of a previous lesson. It also doesn't provide a structure for the current lesson. Instead, it provides a structure for student thinking. It acts as a conceptual bridge from the old information to the new information. A person's existing knowledge about a concept is the most important factor in whether new material will be meaningful and how well it can be learned and retained.

Analogies and metaphors are frequently used as advance organizers because they help students recognize that the topic they are beginning to learn is not totally new, but rather can be related to something they are already comfortable with. This not only helps the students better understand the new concept, but it also helps to encourage and motivate students, as it makes them more confident about the material to come. They also help teachers fit the new information into a larger framework or existing schema. They help students understand the governing questions, issues and propositions that are reflected in that hierarchy. If students understand the basic outline of the structure, they are able to fill in the gaps with new and related information as it is presented to them.

ADVANCE ORGANIZER MODEL  

Goal of learning subject matter and improvement of presentational methods of teaching is important.

His theory of meaningful verbal learning deals with three concerns-

* how knowledge(curriculum content) is organised.

* how mind works to process new information(learning).

* how teachers can apply these ideas about curriculum and learning when they present new material to students(instruction).

GOALS AND ASSUMPTIONS

This model helps teacher to organise and convey information as meaningfully and effectively as possibly.

Advance organisers provide concepts and principles to students directly.

This model is designed to strengthen students cognitive structure.

Cognitive structure deals with – what kind of knowledge of a field is in our mind, how much of it there is, and how well it is organised.

Before presenting new material, existing cognitive structure should be increased by presenting concepts.

Meaningful learning can occur if material is solidly organised and this depends on the learner.

Acc to Ausubel, any subject is a chain of concepts and in our mind also, when we accept these facts, that is also settled as a chain in our mind, if new concept is presented as related with the old one.