Westwood Peter. What teachers need to know about Teaching methods

Australia, Victoria: ACER Press, 2008. — 114 p.A teaching method is characterised by a set of principles, procedures or strategies to be implemented by teachers to achieve desired learning in students (Liu & Shi, 2007). These principles and procedures are determined partly by the nature of the subject matter to be taught, and partly by our beliefs or theories about how students learn. In the first half of the twentieth century, the dominant form of pedagogy was almost entirely teacher-directed instruction together with heavy use of textbooks, drill and practice. The focus was clearly on mastery of subject matter and little thought was given to how best to facilitate such learning in students. In every lesson, teachers tended to lecture and demonstrate first, then set their students related deskwork to do. The more imaginative teachers encouraged a little discussion, but in general ‘a good class was a quiet class’. Students’ deskwork was later marked and returned, and students were graded on their results. The same approach was used to teach almost all subjects in the curriculum. No one questioned whether the method was effective; it was the tradition.Conceptualising learning and teaching.
Constructivism.
Active learning.
Deconstructing constructivism.
Direct teaching.
Direct Instruction (DI).
Interactive whole-class teaching.
Direct teaching methods: Suitability for purpose.
Varieties of direct teaching.
Lectures.
Classroom mini lectures.
Teacher-directed lessons.
The important role of direct teaching.