Teaching method

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Teaching method or educational method has a long history and relates to the questions, "What is the purpose of education?" and "What are the best ways of achieving these purposes?" For much of human history, educational method was largely unconscious and consisted of children imitating or modelling their behaviour on that of their elders, learning through observation and play, such as, how to make meals, set places for the family, hunt for food, pick berries and how to play-fight and return home with little trophies.

Ancient education

About 3000 BC, with the advent of writing, education became more conscious or self-reflective, with specialized occupations requiring particular skills and knowledge--how to be a scribe, an astronomer, etc.,.

Philosophy in ancient Greece led to questions of educational method entering national discourse. In his Republic, Plato describes a system of instruction that he felt would lead to an ideal state. In his Dialogues, Plato describes the Socratic method--the questions and answers of the great Socrates--who was able to show even an uneducated slave boy how the logic leading to the Pythagorean Theorem was within him.

It has been the intent of the largest-minded among educators since then--such as the Roman educator Quintilian--to find specific, interesting ways to bring out of children the possibilities of intelligence and to encourage them to learn.

Medieval education

Comenius, in what would become Czechoslovakia, wanted all boys and girls to learn. In his famous The World in Pictures he gave the first vivid, illustrated text book which contained much that children would be familiar with in everyday life and use it to teach the academics subjects they needed to know. Rabelais described how the student Gargantua learned about the world and what is in it.

Much later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Emile, presented methodology to teach children the elements of science and much more. In this he famously eschewed books, saying the world is one's book. And so Emile was brought out into the woods without breakfast to learn the cardinal directions and the positions of the sun as he found his way home for something to eat.

Then there is Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi of Switzerland, whose methodology during Napoleonic warfare enabled refugee children, of a class believed to be unteachable, to learn--and love to learn. He describes this in his account of the educational experiment at Stanz. He felt the key to have children learn is for them to be loved. But his method, though transmitted later in the school for educators he founded, has been thought too unclear to be taught today. One result was, when he would ask, "Children, do you want to learn more or go to sleep?" they would reply, "Learn more!"

 

20th century

In the 20th century, the philosopher Eli Siegel, who believed that all children are equally capable of learning regardless of ethnic background or social class, stated: "The purpose of all education is to like the world through knowing it." This is a goal which is implicit in previous educators but in this principle is made conscious. With this principle at basis, teachers, predominantly in New York, have found that students learn the curriculum with the kind of eagerness that Pestalozzi describes for his students at Stanz centuries earlier.

Many current teaching philosophies are aimed at fulfillng the precepts of a curriculum based on Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE). Arguably the qualities of a SDAIE curriculum are as effective if not more so for all 'regular' classroom.

Some critical ideas in today's education evironment include:

• Instructional scaffolding
• Graphic organizers
• Standardized testing

According to Dr. Shaikh Imran, the teaching methodology in Education is a new concept in the teaching learning process. New methods involved in the teaching learning process are television, radio, computer, etc.

Other educators believe that the use of technology, while facilitating learning to some degree, is not a substitute for educational method that brings out critical thinking and a desire to learn.

Elvis H. Bostwick  Ed.D., M.Ed., B.S. Biology Recently concluded Dr. Cherry's quantitative study "The Interdisciplinary Effect of Hands On Science”, a three-year study of 3920 middle school students and their Tennessee State Achievement scores in Math, Science, Reading and Social Studies. Metropolitan Nashville Public School is considered urban demographically and can be compared to many of urban schools nationally and internationally. This study divided students on the basis of whether they had hands on trained teachers over the three-year period addressed by the study. Conclusions: Students who had a hands-on trained science teacher for one or more years had statistically higher standardized test scores in science, math and social studies. For each additional year of being taught by a hands-on trained teacher the stdent’s grades increased.

Ed.D., M.Ed., B.S. Biology Recently concluded Dr. Cherry's quantitative study "The Interdisciplinary Effect of Hands On Science”, a three-year study of 3920 middle school students and their Tennessee State Achievement scores in Math, Science, Reading and Social Studies. Metropolitan Nashville Public School is considered urban demographically and can be compared to many of urban schools nationally and internationally. This study divided students on the basis of whether they had hands on trained teachers over the three-year period addressed by the study. Conclusions: Students who had a hands-on trained science teacher for one or more years had statistically higher standardized test scores in science, math and social studies. For each additional year of being taught by a hands-on trained teacher the stdent’s grades increased.

External Links

• Training Within Industry Instructionally sound training methodology developed during WWII using the scientific method and still being used today throughout the world

 

References

• Everett Dean Martin, The Meaning of a Liberal Education, Norton, 1926.
• Paul Monroe, A Text-Book in the History of Education, Macmillan, 1915.
• Gilbert Highet, The Art of Teaching, Knopf, 1950.
• The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method.