Presenting and Explaining

1. Presenting and Explaining Introduction to Teaching Chapter 7

2. Purpose • The purpose of the chapter is to introduce the Presentation Teaching Model and to describe how to use it effectively.

3. A teaching model has three features: • The type of learner outcomes it produces • Its syntax or overall flow of instructional activities • Its learning environment

4. Presentation • Presentation is a teacher-centered model consisting of four major phases: • The flow proceeds from the teacher’s initial attempt to clarify the aims of the lesson and to get students ready to learn, through • Presentation of an advance organizer, and

5. Presentation of the new information, to • Interactions aimed at checking student understanding of the new information and extending and strengthening their thinking skills.

6. When using the presentation model, the teacher strives to structure the learning environment tightly. • Except in the final phase of the model, the teacher is an active presenter and expects students to be active listeners.

7. Use of the model requires a physical learning environment that is conducive to presenting and listening, including appropriate facilities for use of technology.

8. Structure of Knowledge • Knowledge of the world has been organized around various subject areas called disciplines. • The teaching implications of this structuring of knowledge are clear • The key ideas supporting each structure should be taught to students instead of lists of disparate facts or bits of information.

9. David Ausubel (1963), an educational psychologist, explained that at any point of time, a learner has an existing “organization… and clarity of knowledge in a particular subject matter field.”

10. He called this organization a cognitive structure and believed that this structure determined a learner’s ability to deal with new ideas and relationships. • Meaning can emerge from new materials only if they tie into existing cognitive structures of prior learning. • Ideas should be presented in a clear, concise way.

11. For this learning to occur, according to Ausubel, the teacher should create two conditions: • Present learning materials in a potentially meaningful form, with major and unifying ideas and principles, consistent with contemporary scholarship, high-lighted rather than merely listing as facts;

12. 2. Find ways to anchor the new learning materials to the learners’ prior knowledge and ready the students’ minds so that they can receive new information • The major pedagogical strategy proposed by Ausubel (1963) was the use of advance organizers.

13. It is the job of advance organizers to: • Delineate clearly, precisely, and explicitly the principal similarities and differences between the ideas in a new learning passage, on the one hand, and existing related concepts in cognitive structure on the other. (p. 83)

14. Cognitive Psychology of Learning • Types of knowledge: Declarative Knowledge is knowledge about something or knowledge that something is the case. • Factual Knowledge: knowing basic elements of a topic • Conceptual Knowledge: knowing about the interrelationships among the basic elements

15. Meta-cognitive Knowledge: knowing when to use particular knowledge and awareness of one’s own cognitive processes • Procedural Knowledge: knowing how to do something

16. Information Processing • Short-term Memory is the place where conscious mental work is done. • Long-term Memory is the place in the mind where information is stored, ready to be retrieved when needed.

17. Knowledge Representation • Cognitive Psychologists use the label schemato define the way people organize information about particular subjects and how this organization influences their process of new information and ideas. • Prior knowledge refers to the information an individual has prior to instruction.

18. Cognitive structures change as a result of new information and thus become the basis for developing new cognitive structures. • Research has been conducted during the past 30 years on the influence of prior knowledge for learning to read, learning to use new information, and learning to write.

19. One important procedure for helping students use their prior knowledge is induction or establishing set. • Establishing set is a technique used by teachers at the beginning of a presentation to prepare students to learn and to establish a communicative link between the learners and the information about to be presented.

20. By establishing set, teachers help students retrieve appropriate information and intellectual skills from long-term memory and get it ready for use as new information and skills are introduced. • Use of cues provide hints about what the students are about to experience or what they are expected to hear.

21. Sometimes teachers cue student by telling them what they are about to see or hear. • At other times, teachers cue by asking questions that evoke students’ prior knowledge.

22. Another variable associated with presentation of information that has been shown to influence student learning is teacher clarity. • Hiller, Gisher, and Kaess conducted an important study on teacher clarity. • They asked 5 teachers to deliver two different 15 minute presentations to their students-one on Yugoslavia and the other on Thailand.

23. Teachers were encouraged to make the presentations in their normal fashion. They studied 5 teacher presentation variables: • Verbal fluency • Amount of information • Knowledge structure cues • Interest • Vagueness

24. The researchers found significant relationships on two factors: • Verbal fluency (clarity) • Vagueness

25. The researchers suggested that lack of clarity in a presentation most often indicates that the speaker does not know the information well or cannot remember the key points. • This suggest several steps for teachers who are about to present information to their students.

26. Make sure the content is thoroughly understood • Practice and commit the key ideas to memory prior to presentation • Follow written notes very carefully.

27. Teacher Enthusiasm Collins (1978) developed and tested a training program that looked at a specific set of enthusiastic behaviors: • Rapid, uplifting, varied local delivery • Dancing, wide open eyes • Frequent, demonstrative questions • Varied, dramatic body movements • Varied emotive facial expressions

28. Selection of words, especially adjectives • Ready, animated acceptance of ideas and feelings • Exuberant overall energy Collins found that students in classes of enthusiasm trained teachers did better than those in classes of untrained teachers.

29. Planning and Conduction Presentation Lessons • Four planning tasks are very important: • Choosing objectives and content for the presentation • Diagnosing students’ prior knowledge • Selecting appropriate and powerful advance organizers • Planning for use of time and space.

30. Conceptual Mapping • Conceptual maps show relationships among ideas, and like road maps, they help users get their bearings. • They also help clarify for the teacher the kinds of ideas to teach, and they provide students with a picture of understanding relationships among ideas.

31. Diagnosing Students’ Prior Knowledge: Information given in a presentation is based on teachers’ estimates of their students’ existing cognitive structures and their prior knowledge of a subject. • Students’ Intellectual Development is an important factor to consider when planning a presentation. Some students have a high level of abstraction in some subjects, say history, and still may be at a very concrete level in another subject, such as mathematics.

32. Another problem facing the teacher striving to apply developmental theories to planning for a particular presentation is the problem of measuring the developmental levels of students. Watch how students approach specific problem solving tasks and make a rough assessment of the degree to which they use concrete or abstract operations.