Instructional method and comprehension - Essay Example

Instructional method and comprehension Instructional method and comprehension Instructional method and learning or comprehension of the student is aligned to the goal of development of better education mechanism and environment. Since, psychology has extended its reach to the classrooms to build a relationship and an environment between the teacher and the students so that the students get the maximum, what they are being taught. The relationship develop between the two, i.e., teacher on one hand and student on the other involves better interactions and better understanding of one another and relative psychological and behavioural adjustments. With advancing technology and approaches in social sciences, psychology reaches out to the mind of the student and teacher resulting in adjustment or change in the teaching method making it more understandable to the students of particular age group. Thus, the terminology of ‘classroom management’ introduced in education with the objective is to create a positive relationship not only between teachers, but also among the peers themselves, and also to help those students who need psychological help (Stough & Emmer, 2001) The two domains of Instruction and learning play the most important role in the learning process of an individual. Instructional and learning style approach is discussed below. 1 Instructional method Methods are the means for instruction for the students. Mostly, instruction method depends upon the content, the students and the level of intellect of the students. Content is categorized into three main domains of knowledge, i.e., skills, attitudes, and values. According to the content and a set goal, students are made to engage themselves actively in the learning process. While, teaching skill, it is necessary to alter the content giving the learners more practical exposure and pointing out the important practical aspects. When teaching attitude, those methods are used which are required to apply in particular situations. There is several level of learning the knowledge of the content from simple recitation without complete understanding to learning so well that the learner has full understanding of listing, discussion, analysing, practical application, and extrapolation of the knowledge in a naïve situation (Bloom et al., 1956). The methods of instruction are chose according to the students who are being taught. Similarly, uniform group of similar intellectual background and age and group of diverse people of different age and intellectual orientation needs different methods of instruction. There are several instruction methods, which are used in various institutions with a variety of the culture and students psychology 1.1 Lecture Lecture is the continuous oration by a speaker wanting to make the audience learn something. Lecture is widely used method of instruction not only in educational settings, but extensively used for political and religious purposes (Bligh, 2000). It is a useful tool to instruct many individuals at a single time. Many useful tools can also be used to make it more result oriented in dispensation of the knowledge like audio-visual support and sometimes aided by handouts for the retention of information. It is necessary to monitor and assess the attention and arousal during the lecture. However, from the learner points of view, it is a monolog. It has very little students’ involvement making it less inclusive with modicum opportunities of group learning. Lecturer has to keep the students active all the time. Passive listening is frequent during lectures that rarely helpful in learning (Bligh, 2000). 1.2 Audience response system An audience response system (ARS) is a technology that provides additional options for the instructor to interact with the learners. Learners are provided with input devices individually connected to a central system and a projector screen. Any input from the participants are instantly displayed on the screen that is discussed are shared among all participants. Although ARS is a useful in promotion of the level interaction between the instructor and audience, it is in limited use due to its pre-requisites of advanced technology and personals having expertise in it (White & Mandfred, 2013). ARS was designed for large audiences of more than 100 but is used for very less than that. A high number of audiences make the interaction more inefficient in the learning process (Menon et al., 2004). 1.3 Team base learning Team-base learning (TBL) is a method developed by Michaelson in 1970, and it followed extensively in medical education since 2001 (Hunt et al., 2003; Michaelsen & Richards, 2005). In this method, a large class is divided into groups and preparatory homework assignments are assigned to each group. When prepared, following classes are conducted with all the groups and activities like discussions, quizzes, presentation of the problem and drawing its solutions are included. TBL is also aided with print and web-based resources when needed (Michaelsen et al., 2002). TBL is an interactive process and helpful in comprehension of problems and its solutions, development of teamwork capabilities and professionalism. Similarly, it is useful in developing critical thinking that is harder to understand through traditional lectures. However, TBL could not design for the entire course and, therefore, has limited its broad application (TBL, 2005). 1.4 Case studies Barnes and Christesen developed the method of case studies. Today, it is widely applied in law, business, and education (Barnes et al., 1994). In this method, learners are given a problem to analyse, which is related to their course work and is called a case. Thus, the students are appreciated to evaluate, synthesize, critique and build new knowledge. Case studies evaluate and develop critical thinking and discussion skills of the learners. Case studies are, however, not meant for dispensation of information. 1.5 Demonstrations Class demonstration is a handy method to teach skills to the students. Demonstrations help to develop critique, attitudes, and values. Pictures and videotapes are used to demonstrate complex topics. Inputs through another sense along with listening enhance the learners’ ability to absorbing knowledge. 1.6 Active learning systems Many educational learning games are available in classroom settings. Quizzes are important to foster active learning in students and can motivate them too. 2 Learning approaches There are several restrictions on the methods of research conduction that propagates learning styles (Freedman & Stumpf, 1980). They focused their research on the meshing hypothesis that states that the alignment the modality of instruction and learning style preferences will produce optimal learning outcomes. So, educators and started developing learning style and instruction matching with the preferred learning styles of students. It comes from our common observation that though studying in a common educational atmosphere, there are students who complete their term with confidence and performs comparatively better, on the other hand, some other may not secure similar grades and risk their educational career. To extend help to such student, people often emphasized with the common notion that memorization will make his mind open to other knowledge also. This idea is the basis of the doctrine of formal discipline. However, later scientists found it absolutely wrong. They argued that the benefits of memorization could not have general application (Roediger, 2013). The emphasis of the modern research focused on the student perspective, i.e., on the psychology of the students rather than a teacher and dimension turned from teaching methods of the teachers to the learning styles of the students. Soon, the learning style of the student got acceptance from educators and the general public (Dekker et al., 2012). Since then, learning styles have become popular among educationists and general masses. Learning style refers to the concept that an individual learner possesses a particular modality through which they learn best (e.g., auditory, visual, kinaesthetic) and the instructional method should be designed (Dekker et al., 2012) and implemented in accordance with the learning preferences of the individual. Though, researchers differed on the need to match instruction to learning styles but in practice, these methods are commonly accepted (Dunn & Dunn, 1979). It is not disputed that all students possess some learning preferences, but some researcher concluded that current evidence supporting the use of learning style-matched approaches is virtually non-existent (Pashler et al., 2008). In contrast to Pashler’s view, the very common application of this method is to ask teacher to make sure of inclusion of all students having different learning behaviour during the preparation of lesson plan (Rogowsky et al., 2014). On learning technique approach, various researches have been conducted. These methods are broadly divided into audio and video preferred learning style techniques. Research on these two found that visual word learning style is more effective than the auditory learning; the former involves more senses and individual attention (Rogowsky et al., 2014). It is clear that instructions methods like lectures and other monolog technique do not efficiently improve the learning ability of the student in the classroom. However, keeping in mind that most of the education and admission tests are carried out in written form, the focus should be giving students more and more written experience without consideration of their preferred learning style. Also, it is nearly impossible task to change the minds of teachers and educators in compliance with the learning style of the individual students (Pashler et al., 2008). So, the instruction method supplemented with images, appropriate audio and videotapes and other supporting material provides the best and efficient learning ambiance for the students. From a student point of view of learning and especially for self-preparation, Dunlosky et al. has discussed learning strategies in detail, which are commonly used by students. These methods are either practiced isolated, or different approaches are merged to get more improvement in the learning process, which are given below: 1. Elaborative Interrogation- the explanation seeking strategy to learning. 2. Self-explanation-aid learning by integrating the new with the old knowledge. 3. Summarization-condense and scrap-off unwanted information. 4. Highlighting and underlining - typical behaviours of the student to learn (Bell & Limber, 2010). 5. The keyword mnemonic 0 Use of imagery for learning is the oldest strategy of learning method (Yates, 1966). 6. Imagery use in text learning-practically demonstrated that Imagery is used for text learning (Leutner et al., 2009). 7. Rereading- students mostly follow during self-regulatory study. 8. Practice testing- testing improves learning and retention (Thorndike, 1909). 9. Distributed study-distributing learning over time helps in retention of long-term memory (Dunlosky et al., 2013). 10. Interleaved practice-reflects the method of alternate practicing of different kinds of items (Dunlosky et al., 2013). 1 List of References Barnes, L.B., Christensen, C.R. & Hansen, A.J., 1994. Teaching and the case method. Boston, Harvard USA: Harvard Business School Press. Bell, K.E. & Limber, J.E., 2010. Reading skill, textbook marking and course performance. Literacy Research and Instruction, 49(1), pp.56-67. Bligh D. A., 2000. Whats the use of lectures? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bloom, B.S., 1956. Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: Longmans, Green. Dunlosky et al., 2013. Improving Students Learning with Effective Learning techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), pp.4-58. Dunn, R.S. & Dunn, K.J., 1979. Learning styles teaching styles: Should they. Can they be matched? Educational Leadership, 36(4), pp.238-44. Dekker, S., Lee, N.C., Howard-Jones & Jolles, J., 2012. Neuromyths in Education: Prevalence and Predictors of Misconceptions among Teachers. Frontiers in Psychology, 3(429), pp.1-8. Freedman, R.D. & Stumpf, S.A., 1980. Learning style theory: Less than meets the eye. Academy of Management Review, 5(3), pp.445-47. Hunt, D.P., Haidet, P., Coverdale, J.H. & Richards, B., 2003. The effect of using team learning in an evidence-based medicine course for medical students. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 15(2), pp.131-39. Leutner, D., Leopold, C. & Sumfleth, E., 2009. Cognitive load and science text comprehension: Effects of drawing and mentally imagining text content. Computers in Human Behaviour, 25(2), pp.284-89. Menon, A.S. et al., 2004. Audience response made easy: using personal digital assistants as a classroom-polling tool. American Medical Information Association, 11(3), pp.217-20. Michaelsen, L.K., Knight, A.B. & Fink, L.D., eds, 2002. Team-based learning: a transformative use of small groups in college teaching. Sterling, Virginia USA: Stylus Publishing LLC. Michaelsen, L. & Richards, B., 2005. Drawing conclusions from the team-learning literature in health-sciences education: a commentary. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 16(3), pp.270-75. Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D. & Bork, R., 2008. Learning styles: concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, pp.105-19. Stough, E.T. & Emmer M. L., 2001. Classroom Management: A critical part of educational psychology with implications for teacher education. Educational Psychologist, 36(2), pp.103-12. Roediger H. L., 2013. Applying Cognitive Psychology to Education: Transitional Educational Science. Psychological Science in Public Interest, 14(1), pp.1-3. Rogowsky, B., Calhoun, B. & Tallal, P., 2014. Matching Learning Style to Instructional Method: Effects on Comprehension. [Online] American Psychological Association Available at: . TBL, 2005. Team-Base Learning Collaborative. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 28 November 2014]. Thorndike, E.L., 1909. The principles of teaching based on psychology. New York: A. G. Seiler. White, C. & Mandfred, L., 2013. Instructional Methods and Strategies. In Fincher, M.E. ed. Guidebook for Clerkship Directors. 3rd ed. Omaha, Nebraska State USA: Alliance for Clinical Education, pp.130-86. Yates, F.A., 1966. The art of memory. London: Pimlico. Read More