Teaching Principles And Techniques

[Bigg Gernes]

For centuries, education has provided a foundation for societal growth and prosperity. Up until the mid-20th century, however, our understanding of learning theory was informed mostly through observation and research dedicated to the education of children (i.e., pedagogy).

As society advanced, the need for more highly qualified workers steadily grew, necessitating a need for more formal education opportunities for adults. While efforts were made to support these needs, adult education at the time was viewed as an uncoordinated enterprise that failed to advance any specific kind of knowledge.

Knowles theorized that adult learning and childhood learning are entirely different and that adults do not process or retain information in the same manner as children. As such, he proposed an alternative set of assumptions about adult learners that serve as the basic adult learning principles:

As Knowles noted, adult learners use their accumulated life experiences in their learning and place a significant emphasis on achieving long-term goals. This focus sets adult education apart from traditional teaching methods, offering a distinctive and effective framework for the educational development of adult learners.

Adults might face a variety of challenges when trying to learn, whether in school or at work. This means that learning as an adult requires different strategies and support compared to when we were younger. Some common challenges include:

The same applies, she says, to UOPX classrooms, where information, collaborative opportunities and deadlines are presented to students, who can then leverage everything according to their experiences and schedules.

"All of this mimics what they might experience in a work environment while teaching them techniques and giving them tools to further their knowledge and skills applicable to the career path they chose," Savron says.

Michael Feder is a Content Marketing Specialist at University of Phoenix, where he researches and writes on a variety of topics, ranging from healthcare to IT and everything in between. He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars program, and a New Jersey native!

Dr. Marc Booker, University of Phoenix Vice Provost for Strategy, has more than two decades of experience working with online and distance education students at the post-secondary level. He currently oversees critical path academic initiatives to improve the student experience. Dr. Booker is a regular speaker, author and contributor to national higher education associations.

1.Acquisition

During this stage, a new task is introduced to the child for the first time.Initially, you will find the child making errors and over the time, she learnsto perform the activity to a higher level of accuracy. During this stage, highlevel of pupil-teacher interaction is necessary as the child is in the processof learning a new task.

2.Fluency

Once the child learns to perform the activity to a higher level of accuracy,you need to concentrate on building fluency. Children work independently andare provided with plenty of opportunities to practice. Unfortunately, many ofthese activities that help increase fluency are repetitive and so are perhapsnot as enjoyable and interesting as we might want. To keep childrensmotivation high during this essential stage of learning, give regular feedbackand rewards for their progress. It is important that children learn to performan activity to a higher level of accuracy, as it makes all the differencebetween children learning well or continuing to experience difficulties.

Wecannot afford the time to let children forget what they have learnt and keepgoing back and reteaching skills. Over time, we want to ensure that childrenmaintain their levels of performance without any further teaching taking place.However, we cannot wait for this to happen by chance, and so this stage of thehierarchy aims to teach children to reach this position.

At the end of the maintenance stage, children should be able to complete taskson their own, with accuracy and fluency, without receiving any help whatsoeverfrom their teacher. Further more, it is to be hoped that as they progressthrough each of these stages, they will become increasingly motivated to learnnew skills for themselves.

4.Generalization

While the first three stages of hierarchy concentate on skill/activitylearning, generalization represents a change in emphasis to skill/activity.

Up till now, children have been working on a single task. During generalizationthey are presented with two or more tasks (which have both been taughtseparately and progressed to the maintenance stage) and have to select theright response. To do this pupils are shown to discriminate the criticalfeatures of each task, for example, the signs for addition, subtraction,multiplication and division in numerical operations.

Asecond type of generalization activity is known as differentiation. Childrengive the same response to a task even through various aspects of it havechanged. For example, children are taught to identify/read a numeral 8,presenting in different colour, size and or background. Another example is toteach a child to cut on the straight line using different paper or clothmaterials. The childs response will be same though the material presented isdifferent.

We,the teachers should take entire role in teaching children how to generalizeskills, whether it is via the process of discrimination or differentiation.Therefore, the teaching periods need to be followed by intensive practicesessions where children are given a large number of generalization activitiesto complete on their own.

Linksare consistently made between the visuals (what we see), auditory (what wehear), and kinesthetic- tactile (what we do or feel) which enable the learnerto store the information directly to the brain in its real sense.

Imaginarypeople The joy of role-play is that students can become anyone they likefor a short time! The President, the Queen, a millionaire, a pop star .. thechoice is endless! Students can also take on the opinions of someone else

Playway in education aims to introduce the spirit of play in all educationalinstitutions. The methods and techniques used for imparting education must beable to create an environment in which the child can learn his lesson oracquire the desired knowledge.

Play-wayin education insists on child centered education. It advocates educatingchildren through activities in which children can put their heart and soul andwork in an atmosphere of freedom and spontaneity.

Dueto the intellectual impairment, the children with mental retardation havelimited capacity to learn, retain and recall the learned skills. The tasks likeeating, dressing or bathing, which non-disabled children learn to do bythemselves after certain age are to be taught to children with mentalretardation. Further, it is observed that children with mental retardation areunable to learn the task as a whole, but when presented the task in simplesteps, they are able to make better progress. The process of identifying thesesmall steps is known as task analysis.

Whatis task analysis?

To tell you in simple words, it is the analysis of a task into simpler stepsand arranging them in a sequential order. Macarthy (1987) states that taskanalysis is a teaching strategy in which the task is broken down into teachablecomponents and arranged in sequential order. It is a blueprint for instruction/teaching, through which a student should proceed to achieve the terminal goal.It describes an end point of what must be learned but not the methods that willbe employed for learning. Therefore, it is not a teaching methodology.

Ifwe were to examine the course of events in our daily lives, we would readilysee that our continued performance of certain behaviours is due to the resultsor performing consequences of those behaviours. Every action we engage inresults in some consequence. When our behaviour results in a naturallyoccurring, desirable consequence, this experience serves as a motivating forcefor our continued performance. However, some times this natural process may beinsufficient to maintain all desirable behaviours and we need to look for morepowerful ones that motivate learning.

Whatis reinforcement?

Reinforcement describes a relationship between two environmental events, abehaviour (response) and an event or stimulus (consequence) that follows theresponse. The relationship is termed reinforcement only if the responseincreases or maintains its rate as a result of the consequence.

Definition:

Reinforcement is frequently the critical component of programmatic attempts

Continuousschedule of reinforcement

Schedules of reinforcement refer to patterns of timing for delivery ofreinforcers. Delivery of reinforcement on a continuous basis is referred to asa continuous schedule of reinforcement (CRF). That is, each time the studentproduces the target response she or he immediately receives a reinforcer. Thisschedule may be seen as having an one-to-one ratio Response: Reinforcement.

Becauseof this dense ratio of response to reinforcement, CRF schedules are most usefulin teaching new behaviours (acquisition), especially to young and disabledtudents. It is necessary to ensure that a student who is learning a newbehaviour will receive a reinforcer for each response that is closer to acorrect response.

Eitherknowingly or unknowingly most of us acquire behaviours through modeling andimitation. Children learn behaviours by observing others deliberately or bychance. They imitate not only the behaviour of others whom they consider asimportant but also their own behaviour. Simple repetitions of actions are oneof the earliest forms of imitation. The ability to imitate constitutes a`Learning to learn skill which becomes a major tool in the childs futuredevelopment.

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