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Lesson 8.4: Broad Instructional Strategies that Stimulate Complex Thinking

  • Page ID
    10377
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    Because the forms of thinking just described— critical thinking, creativity and problem solving— are broad and important educationally, it is not surprising that educators have identified strategies to encourage their development. Some of the possibilities are shown in Table 24 and group several instructional strategies along two dimensions: how much the strategy is student-centered and how much a strategy depends on group interaction. It should be emphasized that the two-way classification in Table 24 is not very precise, but it gives a useful framework for understanding the options available for planning and implementing instruction. The more important of the two dimensions in the table is the first one— the extent to which an instructional strategy is either directed by the teacher or initiated by students. We take a closer look at this dimension in the next part of this chapter, followed by discussion of group-oriented teaching strategies.

    Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Major instructional strategies grouped by level of teacher direction and student focus

    Directed by student(s) more

    Emphasizes groups somewhat more

    Cooperative learning
    Inquiry
    Discovery Learning
    Self-reflection
    Independent study
    Concept maps

    Emphasizes individuals somewhat more

    Lectures Mastery learning
    Direct instruction Textbook readings
    Madeline Hunter’s “Effective Teaching” Advance organizers
      Outlining
      Recalling, relating, and elaborating

    Directed by teacher more

    Definitions of Terms in Table \(\PageIndex{1}\):

    Lecture – Telling or explaining previously organized information—usually to a group

    Assigned reading – Reading, usually individually, of previously organized information

    Advance organizers – Brief overview, either verbally or graphically, of material about to be covered in a lecture or text

    Outlining – Writing important points of a lecture or reading, usually in a hierarchical format

    Taking notes – Writing important points of a lecture or reading, often organized according to the learning needs of an individual student

    Concept maps – Graphic depiction of relationships among a set of concepts, terms, or ideas; usually organized by the student, but not always

    Madeline Hunter’s “Effective Teaching” – A set of strategies that emphasizes clear presentation of goals, the explanation and modeling of tasks to students and careful monitoring of students’ progress toward the goals


    This page titled Lesson 8.4: Broad Instructional Strategies that Stimulate Complex Thinking is shared under a CC BY license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kelvin Seifert & Rosemary Sutton (Global Text Project) .

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