La Consolacion University Philippines

City of Malolos, Bulacan

GRADUATE SCHOOL DEPARTMENT

INSTRUTIONAL MANAGEMENT
(Teaching Strategies and Approaches)

In Partial Fulfilment of Master of Education

Major in Educational Management
3rd Trimester, February to May 2017

SARAH JEAN C. EVARISTO

New Student
I. INTRODUCTION

Can you imagine a technician repairing a machine with only one tool?
Obviously not, he needs and must utilize different tools in different situations.
Similarly, teachers need to vary their teaching strategies in different classroom
situations, but a vast majority competently utilize only a few and many times
only one. As with the single-tool technician, this severely limits the teachers
overall effectiveness. When a teacher relies upon a single approach (such as a
drill or lecture) as a learning strategy, students boredom can easily create
learning and/or discipline problems. A lack of methodological fluidity usually
indicates a lack of knowledge of students needs, interests, and individual
optimum learning conditions. Therefore, it is a near mandate that teachers be
competent to the utilisation of a number of teaching strategies.

There are at least four valid reasons for a teacher being proficiently
prepared in a wide assortment of strategies.

1. Different pupils learn best in different ways at different times.

2. Some subject matter is best served by use of a particular strategy or
combination of strategies.
3. Diverse objectives call for diverse approaches to meet those
objectives.
4. Environmental factors (money, supplies, facilities, time, etc.) often
dictate which strategies will be most effective.

The mastery of instructional strategies is only one dimension of the skills,

attitudes, and knowledge needed by the competent teacher. For examples, no
amount of strategies can make up for lack of knowledge in subject matter. The
converse is also true. The greater the teachers knowledge of the subject, the
more freedom he has to apply a variety of instructional approaches. The
teacher should also have a basic understanding of philosophies of education,
learning theory, and human development to act as a guide in the proper
application of each strategy. The teacher must answer such questions as: What
is a student? What are his needs, wants, and interests? Any teaching strategy,
which is inconsistent with the students desire for peer acceptance and
approval, is likely to meet with strong resistance. Even the most careful planning
cannot produce beneficial results unless the student personally feels the need
for learning. This requires consideration of the associated problem of providing
adequately for individual differences. It is a rare student who will create a
disturbance (internally, if not externally) when class expectations are too high or
too low for his capabilities.
 After practice with a given strategy has provided confidence in its
utilisation in the classroom, a number of strategies should be combined and
blended into new creative patterns by the teacher. The knowledge, accuracy,
and rapidity with which a teacher can apply strategies to a particular learning
situation are some of the differences between the teacher as a technician and
the teacher as a professional. Both stages are necessary, but one is a rung on
the ladder to becoming the other. Too often as teachers we tend to use that
strategy which gives us a feeling of security. Consequently there is a hesitancy to
employ more appropriate methods. By understanding how different strategies
can best be utilised, we can better benefit the student and ourselves.

If sub-strategies are properly used they can often enhance and extend
the effectiveness of the strategy employed. For example: Interest
centres/subject centres could include appropriate film strips, tape recordings,
and films; drill is enhanced by charts of content or activities to be performed;
and lectures are more meaningful if main points or key ideas are displayed by
means of overhead projections or use of the chalkboard. Strategies and sub-
strategies are not content themselves, but are, rather, catalytic agents causing
a reaction but not becoming a part of the result. A more graphic analogy is as
follows:

You can offer individuals raw potatoes (knowledge) for eating (learning)
but many would not eat. A pressure cooker (strategy) prepares the potatoes
more properly for consumption and increases the chances of them being
eaten. Putting the potatoes on a table with a colourful table setting (sub-
strategy) improves the chances for consumption even more.

II. SUMMARY

Method refers to the formal structure of the sequence of acts commonly

denoted by instruction. The term covers both the strategy and tactics of
teaching and involves the choice of what is to be taught, and the order in
which it is to be taught. Method is a systematic way of doing things under the
guidance of certain previously established principles. The manner in which
method in teaching is followed varies with the subjects presented, the teachers
who teach, and the children who learn.
 In reality there seem to be only two generalized methods of teaching;
namely, the inductive method and the deductive method. The specific
methods by which these two schemes are carried out are also called
techniques, strategies, procedures, devices and the like at times.

The inductive method: The inductive method is the real method of

discovery. It moves from objects or several keynote examples to the
development of ideas. There are many decided merits of the inductive method
of teaching, among which the following are of the most importance. 1) Children
who gain knowledge in this way have been able to retain it for longer periods of
time. 2) It increases the perspective powers of the pupil since he is encouraged
to be more self-reliant upon his thinking. 3) The conclusions made for the most
part are formed first in the mind of the pupil with the teacher becoming a
checkpoint for inaccuracies and wrong perceptions.

The main disadvantages of the inductive method stem from the fact that
not all subjects can be taught inductively. For example, some of the abstract
ideas in arithmetic cannot be effectively presented through inductive
procedures. Moreover, induction is a slow process and requires many materials
some of it may be most expensive. There are limitations but it is absolutely
necessary that if clearness of thought is to be encouraged and real knowledge
preserved, the inductive method should be used to introduce many new
subjects and to give aid in the exposition of difficult ones.

The deductive method: Generally one is teaching deductively when he

gives the rules, principle or generalisation first and from them the descent is
made to the specific factors or ideas making up such generalisations. When this
method is used, pupils are asked to accept the reasoning of someone else, to
profit from what others have concluded. With increasing age children become
more highly skilled in deductive reasoning, therefore, the deductive method
should simultaneously increase in importance. The best method of teaching
comes about when the teacher combines the two in such ways that one
method reinforces the other to assist the perceptions of the pupils in the learning
situation.

Teachers like the learners they serve, are unique personalities. It makes sense
for them to take advantage of their own special interests, skills, and
competencies as they plan for instruction. Individual strengths of teachers can
be utilised most effectively when a logical framework is employed to organise
the instructional skills selected for a specific programme. Such a framework can
suggest how instructional skills might best be organised to promote a logical,
systematic instructional programme for learners.
 As a framework to guide teacher instructional practices, a model of
instruction is proposed here that relates actions of teachers to achievement of
learners. According to this model, major emphases are placed not specifically
on what teachers do, but on what learners derive from instruction.

This model of instruction rests on a clear formulation of the teaching process.

Teaching can be thought of as a series of events requiring decisions made by
the teachers. Logically, these decisions can be organised into separate
categories. These decision categories have been grouped under five general
headings. Collectively, these five headings comprise all of the basic instructional
skills. These skills are:

Skill one: specifying performance objective

Skill two: diagnosing learners
Skill three: selecting instructional strategies
Skill four: interacting with learners
Skill five: evaluating the effectiveness of instruction

Each of these five instructional skills can be thought of as an element in a

comprehensive model of instruction. This model provides a useful framework for
teachers as they plan for classroom instruction.

This model encourages the development of individual teaching styles.

Individualised styles are encouraged because evaluation of instruction is based
on learners achievement of the performance objectives. Given this criterion,
teachers are free to choose procedures from their own repertoires that they
believe will result in high levels of learner achievement.
Teacher responsibility is well served by this model. This responsibility comes not
in teachers rigid adherence to a set of ideal role behaviours but rather in
adapting instructional practices, as necessary, to help learners achieve
performance objectives that have been selected.

III. CONCLUSION

Five Key Behaviours Contributing To Effective Teaching

Approximately 10 teacher behaviours show promising relationships to

desirable student performance, primarily as measured by achievement on
classroom and standardised tests. Five of these behaviours have been
consistently supported by research studies over the past two decades. Another
five have had some support and appear logically related to effective teaching.
The first five we will call key behaviours, because they are considered essential
for effective teaching. The second five we will call helping behaviors that can
be used in combinations to implement the key behaviours. The five key
behaviours, referred, are:

Lesson clarity
Instructional variety
Task orientation
Engagement in the learning process
Student success

Some Helping Behaviours Related To Effective Teaching

To fill out our picture of an effective teacher, more than five general keys
to effective teaching are needed. You also need behaviours to help you
implement the five key behaviours in your classroom. Lets consider some
additional behaviors that can be thought of as catalytic or helping behaviours
for performing the five key behaviours.

Research findings for helping behaviours, although promising, are not as

strong and consistent as those that identified the five key behaviours. There is
general agreement on the importance of these helping behaviours, but the
research has not been so accommodating as to identify explicitly how these
behaviours should be used. Nor has it linked these behaviours to student
achievement as strongly as the key five. This is why it is suspected that helping
behaviours need to be employed in the context of other behaviours to be
effective, making them catalysts rather than agents unto themselves.
These catalytic behaviours include:

1. Using student ideas and contributions

2. Structuring
3. Questioning
4. Probing
5. Teacher affect

Some important teacher effectiveness indicators:

The effective teacher

Takes personal responsibility for students learning and has positive
expectations for every learner,
 Matches the difficult of the lesson with the ability level of the students
and varies the difficulty when necessary to attain moderate-to-higher
success rates,
Gives students the opportunity to practice newly learned concepts
and to receive timely feedback on their performance,
Maximises instructional time to increase content coverage and to give
students the greatest opportunity to learn,
Provides direction and control of student learning through questioning,
structuring and probing,
Uses a variety instructional materials and verbal and visual aids to foster
use of student ideas and engagement in the learning process,
Elicits responses from students each time a question is asked before
moving to the next student or question.
Present material in small steps with opportunities for practice.
Encourages students to reason out and elaborate upon the correct
answer.
Encourages students in verbal questions and answers.
Uses naturally occurring classroom dialogue to get students elaborate,
extend, and comment on the content being learned.
Gradually shifts some of the responsibility for learning to the students
encouraging independent thinking, problem solving, and decision
making.
Provides learners with mental strategies for organising and learning the
content being taught.

IV. RECOMMENDATION

Teaching strategies paves way for teacher's self-assessment and

evaluation of his capacity to do more than just merely teaching. It guides and
directs him on what specific method her teaching techniques to students make
appropriate approach. It perfectly minds the teacher to go through a plan and
what best strategies he will share to come up with a good retention in learning.

Teaching is a dynamic process and there is no perfect or constant

strategy for every approach. The way teacher knows how to balance and
perceive of using such a strategy merely depends on the kind of approach
each day his students or learners reveal to him.

In today's generation which technology is rising, the need for teacher to

cope with and ride with the now's innovation deeply make a huge impact of
better learning. Teaching strategies in this generation upgrades, enhance and
enthusiastically upload the teacher's knowledge in dealing with learning that
pertains to this days time.

Whatever strategies teachers share to students donate huge amount of

positive change. Indeed, teachers make a huge change to learners. If the
teacher doesn't embrace good strategic tactic in his class, then, I am sure that
his students will not accumulate good learning. Thus, if the teacher has all the
access and know-how to ensure better learning, then there is a big impact that
the teacher brings to the lives of the learners.

That is why, teaching strategies transform lives. It is the business in the

world of teaching.

V. REFERENCES

Dr. M.P. Chhaya. Staff Development Series.

Dromor Tackie-Yaoboi. Dream School Ltd Training Material on Teaching

Strategies Staff Training.