Instruction

This is Unit Ten, part one, on instruction: planning goals and objectives, adapting instruction to students, and the first steps of delivering it. Unit Nine closed on explaining group differences. Unit Ten turns to the teacher's own craft of instruction. Carry one idea through this part: plan from the learner's side, starting with what students should learn and working backward to the activities. At the entry on matching method to objective, the part shows the objective choosing the method. By the end you will be able to plan a unit by backward design. To build and repair a Mager objective. To place an objective in the cognitive, affective or psychomotor domain. To differentiate content, process and product for a class. And to match a delivery method to an objective.

Five entries on planning: goals from the learner's side, Tyler's sources and screens, standards, and backward design.

Planning, and delivering.

EDP 0901 Planning and Delivering Instruction

Expert teaching has two components, planning instruction and delivering it, and delivery works through four teaching activities: structuring, modeling, coaching and fading, as a teacher introduces a skill, demonstrates it, guides practice, then steps back as students work alone. The four activities organize the delivery entries later in this unit.

Goals from the learner's side.

EDP 0902 Goals from the Learner's Side

Planning means selecting goals, turning them into objectives and linking them to prior knowledge; goals answer why a topic is taught, and are written from the learner's side, as in students will explain the causes of the Civil War, not I will cover the Civil War. A goal names what students will learn.

Where goals come from.

EDP 0903 Tyler's Rationale

Ralph Tyler's rationale draws goals from three sources, the subject matter, society and the learners, and filters them through two screens, the school's philosophy and the psychology of learning, as a goal on budgeting comes from society's needs, then passes the screen of what students this age can learn. Sources supply; screens decide.

Standards, frameworks and guides.

EDP 0904 Standards, Frameworks and Guides

Standards state what students should know at national or state level, with states holding the broader responsibility; curriculum frameworks break standards into observable skills in a scope and sequence; curriculum guides work at the level of activities. A state standard on fractions becomes a framework skill, then a guide's lesson with fraction strips.

Backward design.

EDP 0905 Backward Design

Backward design, from Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design, plans a unit in three stages. Stage one identifies desired results, sorting content into what is worth being familiar with, what is important to know and do, and the enduring understandings at the center. Stage two determines acceptable evidence, decided before any activity is planned. Stage three plans the learning experiences. A unit on ecosystems names the understanding that living things depend on one another, sets a project predicting what happens to a pond when one species disappears, and only then chooses activities. Forward design risks activities done for their own sake.

Six entries on writing objectives, general and behavioral, and on the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains.

General goals, with indicators.

EDP 0906 General-to-Specific Objectives

The cognitive, general-to-specific approach states a few general goals and illustrates each with a representative sample of indicators, specific behaviors that show the goal has been reached, as understands fractions is illustrated by comparing, ordering and adding fractions. It suits long-term goals, though indicators may under-specify them.

Mager's three parts.

EDP 0907 Mager's Three Parts

Robert Mager's behavioral objective has three parts: an observable behavior, the conditions under which it is performed, and a criterion, the minimum acceptable level, as in given a map, the student will label ten of the twelve state capitals. Mager objectives suit short, fully specifiable skills; for large goals they become unwieldy.

Building and repairing objectives.

EDP 0908 Building and Repairing Objectives

To build a Mager objective, write each part in turn. The behavior must be observable, something a teacher could see or hear, such as identify, write, solve or label; understand, appreciate and know are not observable. The conditions describe the circumstances of performance, and the criterion states how well the student must perform. After three days of instruction, students will understand photosynthesis needs two repairs: understand becomes label the inputs and outputs, and the teaching schedule becomes given an unlabeled diagram. Adding a criterion, with no more than one error, completes it. A missing criterion leaves no way to judge.

Adding a knowledge dimension.

EDP 0909 The Knowledge Dimension

The revised taxonomy adds a knowledge dimension, factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive, and any cognitive process, from remembering to creating, can pair with any type of knowledge: recalling the steps of long division pairs remember with procedural knowledge. The nineteen fifty-six taxonomy had one dimension; the two thousand one revision has two.

The affective domain.

EDP 0910 The Affective Domain

The affective taxonomy of Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia orders objectives about attitudes and values: receiving, responding, valuing, organization, and characterization by a value or value complex. A student who listens politely to a recycling debate, then volunteers to run the recycling drive, has moved from receiving to valuing.

The psychomotor domain.

EDP 0911 The Psychomotor Domain

A third domain, the psychomotor, covers objectives for physical skills and coordinated movement, taught through demonstration and practice, such as forming letters in handwriting, focusing a microscope and shooting a free throw. Several level schemes exist for this domain, and they differ; what matters is recognizing a physical-skill objective.

Four entries on adapting instruction to students: differentiation, emergent curriculum, and multicultural and anti-bias education.

Differentiated instruction.

EDP 0912 Differentiated Instruction

Differentiated instruction, associated with Carol Ann Tomlinson, varies four things according to three student characteristics while keeping the same essential goals. Teachers vary content, the materials; process, the activities; product, how students show learning; and affect or environment, the climate and setting. They vary these by readiness, interest and learning profile, and formative assessment tells them how to differentiate next. In a water-cycle unit, ready students read a technical article while others read an illustrated text, a weather enthusiast tracks local rainfall, and students choose a diagram, report or model. Learning profile means varied ways of learning, not diagnosed learning styles.

Differentiated, not individualized.

EDP 0913 Differentiated, Not Individualized

Differentiated instruction is not individualized instruction: it works in heterogeneous classes through flexible grouping that is never fixed, teaching up to challenging goals, and respectful tasks for every student, as a student in the support group for fractions joins the advanced group for geometry. Critics question its feasibility in large mixed classes.

Goals that emerge from students.

EDP 0914 Emergent Curriculum

In an emergent curriculum, goals emerge from students' expressed interests, and the teacher uses continuous observation and curriculum webbing to connect them to learning goals, as children fascinated by a spider web lead to a unit on insects, patterns and measuring. The best evidence is in early childhood, and emergent does not mean unplanned.

Multicultural and anti-bias education.

EDP 0915 Multicultural and Anti-Bias Education

Multicultural and anti-bias education help students understand differences and overcome prejudice, and Banks's five dimensions apply to instruction here, from content integration to an empowering school culture, with equity pedagogy letting students learn and show learning in culturally varied ways. Anti-bias education targets prejudice directly, not only the content of lessons.

Four entries on delivering instruction, beginning with the payoff: matching the method to the objective.

The payoff: matching method to objective.

EDP 0916 Matching Method to Objective

Here the part's idea does its work. Three delivery methods match three kinds of objective. Direct instruction suits facts, rules and action sequences. Indirect, or inquiry, instruction suits concepts, patterns and abstractions, grasped by working with examples. Self-directed instruction suits learning strategies, building metacognition. Lecture is as effective as other methods for acquiring information, but less effective for promoting thought, changing attitudes or teaching behavioral skills. Memorizing a lab safety procedure calls for direct instruction; grasping what makes a food web stable, for inquiry; planning one's own study, for self-direction; and changing attitudes toward recycling, for discussion or role-play. Choose the method from the objective, not from habit.

Capturing attention.

EDP 0917 Capturing Attention

Structuring begins by capturing attention, and Borich names four kinds of appeal: psychophysical, emotional, discrepancy and commanding stimuli. Dimming the lights is a psychophysical appeal, a demonstration that contradicts expectations a discrepancy appeal, and a personal story an emotional appeal. Capturing attention is only the start; the lesson must then hold it.

Holding attention.

EDP 0918 Holding Attention

Attention is held with a learning set, such as Hunter's anticipatory set, and Ausubel's advance organizers, and by activating prior knowledge so new material has somewhere to attach, as in remember how we measured our shadows? Today we find out why they change length. Both devices return from unit six to serve structuring.

Anticipating preconceptions.

EDP 0919 Anticipating Preconceptions

Teachers anticipate preconceptions, such as believing the seasons come from Earth's distance from the sun, and treat students' beliefs with respect even when they conflict with the curriculum, as a teacher teaching evolution acknowledges students' religious beliefs respectfully while teaching the science. Naming a misconception starts conceptual change; it does not complete it.

Look at what you can now do. You can plan a unit by backward design: results first, then evidence, then activities. You can build and repair a Mager objective, with an observable behavior, real conditions and a criterion. You can place an objective in the cognitive, affective or psychomotor domain. You can differentiate content, process and product while keeping the same goals for everyone. And you can match a delivery method to an objective rather than to habit. Part two turns to modeling, coaching, active learning and the evidence on lecture.