Strategies and Models for Teachers

1. Strategies and Models for Teachers • Describe the different kinds of knowledge expert teachers possess • Identify the important elements of teacher-effectiveness research • Describe the characteristics of teaching models • Identify factors influencing the choice of a teaching model

2. Teacher Knowledge • Knowledge of content • Must understand content and the way the content interrelates to other content areas • Pedagogical content knowledge • Must understand how to represent the content as to make it accessible to others • General Pedagogical Knowledge • Must understand general principles of instruction and classroom management beyond content • Knowledge of learners and learning • We do not teach content; we teach students!

3. Professional Organizations focused on Teachers’ Knowledge • INTASC (the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) • Focus on knowledge of subject, learning and human development, adapting instruction, strategies, motivation and management, communication skills, planning, assessment, commitment, and partnership • NBPTS (the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards) • Focus on the need for teachers to be committed to students and their learning, to know their subject and how to teach it, to manage and monitor student learning, how to think systematically about their practice and learn from experience, and are members of their communities

4. Teacher-Effectiveness Research • Teaching for understanding • Identify clear learning objectives for students • Selecting teaching strategies that most effectively help students acquire a deep understanding of the topics they study • Encouraging students to become actively involved in the learning process • Guiding students as they construct their understanding of the topics being studied • Continually monitoring students for evidence of learning

5. The Need for Instructional Alternatives • Selecting teaching strategies: The role of the Teacher • How we teach depends on who we are • Lies in understanding our own strengths and preferences and adopting compatible teaching strategies • Selecting Teaching Strategies: The role of Learners • Who are your learners? Academic ability, background, culture, personality, experience • Individual differences respond differently to various teaching strategies

6. A Models Approach to Teaching • Strategies are general approaches to instruction that apply in a variety of content areas and are used to meet a range of learning objectives (e.g., questioning, organizing lessons, providing feedback, and ending lessons with review and closure). • Models are specific approaches to instruction that have four characteristics: • Designed to help students acquire deep understanding of specific forms of content and to develop their critical thinking skills • Include a series of specific steps that are intended to help students reach the objectives • Are grounded in Learning theory • Are grounded in Motivation theory

7. The Cognitive Process Dimension

8. Three Domains of Instructional Focus • Affective Domain: attitudes and values and the development of students’ personal and emotional growth • Psychomotor Domain: acquisition of manipulation and movement skills (typing) • Cognitive Domain: objectives that focus on developing student’s intellect and understanding

9. Learning, Motivation and Models of Teaching • Evolutionary Psychology: • Human Ethology = biology of behavior • We have spent 99.9% of our evolutionary history as hunter-gather tribes. • Over time, our brain has evolved to operate in specific ways for specific reasons, yet has a flexibility and redundancy built into the design. • We learn and remember things that are salient for us.s • When we fail to learn and/or remember it is due to a breakdown in biology (neurochemistry) • Questions: What gets your attention?, What are humans designed to do? What do children do best?

10. Behavioral Theories of Learning: Based on the Observable • Learning is defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of experience • Pavlov = Classical Conditioning: SR • Unconditioned stimulus leads to an unconditioned response • Pairing a previously neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus comes to illicit a conditioned response • E.L. Thorndike: Law of Effect • An act that is followed by a favorable effect is more likely to be repeated in similar situations; an act that is followed by an unfavorable effect is less likely to be repeated

11. Operant Conditioning: Still Behaviorism • Skinner = Operant Conditioning: SOR • The use of pleasant or unpleasant consequences to control the occurrence of behavior • Consequences, reinforcers, punishers, immediacy of consequences, shaping, extinction, schedules of reinforcement, maintenance, and the role of antecedents (cues) • Pleasurable consequences strengthen behavior and unpleasant consequences weaken it. • A reinforcer is any consequence that strengthens (increases the frequency) behavior. • Primary reinforcers: basic needs • Secondary reinforcers: associated with primary • Positive reinforcers: something given • Negative reinforcers: escape from an unpleasant task

12. The Premack Principle and Reinforcers: Still Behaviorism • Enjoyable activities can be used to reinforce less enjoyable activities • Intrinsic reinforcers: behaviors organisms engage in for their own sake, without reward • Extrinsic reinforcers: rewards applied to organisms to motivate them to engage in a behavior • Reinforcers to use: • Self-reinforcement, Praise, Attention, Grades and recognition, Home-based reinforcement, Privileges, Activity reinforcers, Tangible reinforcers, Food

13. Principles of Behavioral Learning • Shaping: eliciting a behavior by incremental steps • Extinction: the weakening and eventual elimination of a learned behavior as reinforcement is withdrawn • Extinction burst: initial increase in behavior at the beginning of extinction • Spontaneous recovery: the reoccurrence of a behavior following extinction

14. Schedules of Reinforcement • Fixed-interval: time • Variable interval: time • Fixed ratio: behavior • Variable ratio: behavior • Maintenance: continuation of behavior

15. The Role of Antecedents • Cues or signals that give us hints as to how to behave • Discrimination: perceptions of and responses to differences in stimuli • Generalization: the “carry-over” of behaviors, skills, or concepts from one setting or task to another

16. Bandura: Social Learning Theory • Learning that emphasizes reinforcement and the effects of cues on thought and thought on action • Modeling: the imitation of others’ behavior and of vicarious experience • Observational learning: • Attentional phase: paying and holding attention to a model • Retention phase: once attention is held, the behavior is modeled and practiced • Reproduction: the behaviors are matched to the models (do the same as) • Motivational phase: perform the behavior for reinforcement

17. Vicarious and Self-regulated Learning • Learning based on the observation of the consequences of others’ behavior • Self-regulated learning: individuals observe their own behavior and judge it against their own (or others’) standards and reinforce or punish themselves • Cognitive-behavioral modification: change in behaviors by combining the above with self-talk and self-instruction

18. Information Processing and Cognitive Theories of Learning • Information-processing theory • Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) • External stimulus  sensory register  initial processing  short-term (STM)or working memory  long-term memory (LTM) • Information is forgotten from STM without rehearsal • Information is stored into LTM through elaborate rehearsal and coding • Retrieval is activated by cues or cognitive markers

19. Individual Differences in STM • Perceptual differences • Memory traces (sound, sight, smell, touch) • Stimuli available for processing • Attentional differences • High interest • Heritable differences • Rehearsal differences • Trained skills

20. Individual Differences in LTM • Episodic Memory: images of our personal experiences • Semantic Memory: facts and general knowledge • schemata: mental networks of related concepts that influence the understanding of new information • Procedural Memory: list of skills needed to perform a task • Flashbulb Memory: important events fixed mainly in visual and auditory memory

21. Factors that Enhance LTM • Concepts are remembered over names and dates • Whatever students retain after 12-24 weeks may be retained forever • How well did the student learn the information in the first place? • Instructional strategies that actively involve students in lessons

23. Word List • Asperity (terseness) • Bursiform (pouch shaped) • Cinerarium ( a depository for cremated ashes) • Dien Bien Phu (dyen byen foo) a city in Viet Nam • Enchiridion (a handbook or manual) • Falderal (pure foolishness) • Gormandize (to eat greedily) • Hexachlorophine (antibacterial agent) • Indurate (to harden, make callous) • Jeux d’esprit (witty remark) • Kinetochore (structure on the chromosome near the centromere) • Lignocellulose (compounds of woody cell walls)

24. Let’s put all of these theories together: Brainstorm! • How/why do we learn and remember?

25. Backward Design “To begin with the end in ;mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction” ~ (Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)

26. Stages in the Backward Design Process • Identify desired results • Determine acceptable evidence • Plan learning experiences and instruction

27. Identify Desired Results • To what extent does the idea, topic, or process represent a “big idea” having enduring value beyond the classroom? • To what extent does the idea, topic, or process reside at the heart of the discipline? • To what extent does the idea, topic, or process require uncoverage (not obvious, students have difficulty grasping)? • To what extent does the idea, topic, or process offer potential for engaging the students?

28. Determine Acceptable Evidence • How will we know if the students have achieved the desired results and met the standards? • We use a continuum of assessment methods from • Informal checks for understanding • Observation/Dialogue • Quiz/Test • Academic prompt • Performance task/project

29. Plan learning Experiences and Instruction • What enabling knowledge (facts, concepts, and principles) and skills (procedures) will students need to perform effectively and achieve desired results? • What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills? • What will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals? • What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals? • Is the overall design coherent and effective?

30. The Big Picture of a Design Approach

31. The Six Facets of Understanding • A mature understanding consists fo being able to: • Explain [provide thorough, supported, and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data] • Interpret [tell meaningful stories, offer apt translations, provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events, make it personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models] • Apply [effectively use and adapt what we know in diverse contexts]

32. Six Facets of Understanding • Perspective [ see and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears, see the big picture] • Empathize [find value in what others might find odd, alien, or implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior direct experience] • Self-knowledge [perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding, we are aware of what we do not understand and why understanding is so hard]

33. The Elements of Teaching “Most teachers forget that teaching is an art. We prepare for this art by learning our subjects and the methods by which we will teach them. Yet we are rarely led to reflect on the character and mind that are at the very core of what we do – which is to help others acquire both the knowledge by which they can understand life in all its fullness and the dispositions by which they can live such a life” (Banner & Cannon, 1997).

34. Learning Authority Ethics Order Imagination Compassion Patience Character Pleasure The Elements of Teaching

35. The Elements of Teaching • Learning • The act of gaining knowledge • Or the knowledge gained by virtue of the act • Or the process of gaining knowledge • Authority • Legitimate influence over others, not mere power • Reciprocal in nature composed of the teacher’s knowledge, character, and conduct and of students’ respect given back to the teacher in free acknowledgement of the teachers’ greater understanding of the subject at hand and greater ability to convey it

36. Ethics • The natural consideration of our moral duties and behavior toward others in a complex and imperfect world • Putting the satisfaction of the needs and good of students before those of anyone else • Teaching requires student-centered ethics, if the good of our students is not the focus of our attention, they cannot be taught, and they are unlikely to learn

37. Order • Teaching requires that students experience the imposition of some outer order so that inner order may develop • The goals for classes and courses be set, that they be explained and justified, that the manner of achieving them be clear, that the presentation of materials of achieving them be appropriate, and that all activities be directed somehow to their attainment

38. Imagination • Good teachers have the ability to imagine themselves in their students’ places, and then to help those students imagine themselves in other times, locations, and circumstances not immediately present to their senses and, for the most part, never previously experienced • Compassion • A profound concern for students that springs from the heart as well as from the head, an irresistible desire to help the young overcome their natural weaknesses and to dispel all people’s ignorance

39. Patience • Persistence allied with a determination to help others learn, as well as a kind of resignation to the difficulties students face, requires endurance, equanimity, and tolerance in about equal measures • Character • Today’s successful and admired teachers are more likely to be known for their congeniality, good humor and tolerance rather than for their harsh discipline and scowling looks

40. Pleasure • It is difficult to imagine effective teachers who do not have an abiding fascination with their subjects, who do not love being among students, and who do not gain fulfillment from nourishing others’ minds and lives • Most people who teach also do so in part because it involves plain good fun – laughter, humor and wit