How we teach

My first article on this website took a brief look at learning styles, where I briefly considered some different models that attempt to categorise different learners. There is so much more to that subject, but there is also another side to it as well. That is: how do we teach? What might be considered best practice and what theories exist to help us to understand how to teach others better? As you would expect, there are multiple theories about teaching, which tend to fall into the following three categories:

The Behaviourist approach – Here the instructor provides materials and guides students through a series of lessons with repetition as a primary goal. Students respond to stimuli.

The Cognitive approach – Here, the instructor provides information, and the students passively listen and take notes.

The Humanistic approach – This involves active participation from students, involving self-study and progress based on need, desire, and motivation of the student.

If you are familiar with how universities teach, then the first two categories will be familiar to you as seminars and lectures respectively (in a very generalised sense). These are not the only forms that behaviourist and cognitive approaches take, of course, but they are common ones. The humanistic approach is less common in Higher Education, requiring a different kind of input from the instructor and a different – more active – involvement by the student. It is, however, becoming more common.

Beyond these basic categories of learning approaches, there are a whole range of theories. I won’t go into all these here (that would take a while!), but I do want to highlight just three, which have been influential to me, and are very common in educational practices. These are:

• Bigg’s Constructive Alignment,
• Kolb’s Cycle of Learning from Experience,
• and, Bruner’s Spiral Curriculum.

Let’s briefly touch on these here, just to get a flavour of what each suggest. Somewhere down the line I shall dig deeper into each of these and look at other theories and models.

Bigg’s Constructive Alignment

There is nothing more frustrating than finding a question in an exam that was not emphasised in the classroom. This ‘out of the blue’ occurrence happens when teachers emphasise certain topics over others without considering the original intention of a course (usually highlighted in the learning outcomes) or the test to check students’ knowledge at the end (the exam or assessed coursework).

Bigg’s Constructive Alignment is an encouragement to all teachers, trainers, and tutors, to consider learning in a more holistic way. The learning outcomes (usually a series of bullet points about what the student is expected to learn) should align with what is taught and emphasised during the course, and then should be reflected in the types of questions asked in the assessments. All elements should align.

The purpose of this alignment is to ensure that students are not sent off on random quests for knowledge (however interesting those might be) but stick to the key objectives of the course. The student should be able to tick off the learning outcomes at the end of the course and understand how each bullet point applies to what they were taught and how they were assessed (they won’t usually do this of course, but they should be able to if asked).  

Kolb’s Cycle of Learning from Experience

Reflection is at the heart of Kolb’s theory. He suggests a four-stage cycle in which learning occurs based on a starting point (the learner experiences something), is then considered through reflection (what did I do? What did I learn?), and then is developed into a theory, model, or explanation, and then, finally, plans are made to implement this new understanding and to test it (feedback).

Kolb’s model moves away from the idea that learning occurs when someone explains something to the learner, the learner takes notes (for example), and then can recall that knowledge in the future. For Kolb, the learner is not a sponge, who is expected to soak up information, but a critical thinker, who can respond to stimuli, consider it, and form structured conclusions which can then be tested. Kolb places intentionality at the heart of learning.   

Kolb, of course, is not the only person to suggest that learning should be based around reflection or to use a cycle to identify the key elements of learning; there is much more to be found here, but that’s for another time. Well, expect briefly, for Bruner’s model.

Bruner’s Spiral Curriculum

One of those ways in which Kolb’s cycle is expanded upon is Bruner’s transformation of the cycle into a spiral. Bruner considered the cycle too limiting, as it fails to emphasise the progression that occurs when the cycle is repeated. Bruner argued that one element of learning should be built upon in the next, and then the next bit of learning from there should build further. The idea could be conceived of in different ways. It’s usually shown as a spiral, but I prefer to think of it as a series of staircases (imagine a high-rise building and you need to get to the top).  

Each staircase represents a unit or level of learning. As you progress the learning gets harder and more complex until you reach the top. In mathematics the first staircase could represent a basic equation (2+2=4), the next staircase provides another level of complexity to the learning (2+2 x 5 = 20), and the next staircase builds on this further (2+2 x 5 ÷ 4 = 5). In literature this might be learning about poetry, beginning the first staircase with a simple poem, the next understanding the construction of a sonnet or Haiku, and the next studying an epic poem. One builds on the other and each becomes more complex.

Summary

Theories about how we teach are numerous and this summary barely does justice to it all. It’s a starting point, however. What each theory has in common is an emphasis on structure and progression (of one sort or another). What do you think about these three theories? Have you used them in your teaching? Please comment below as I’d love to hear what you think.