Notes on Principles of Teaching 2 – Approaches, Methods, and K-12 Standards

Learning Outcomes

• Distinguish approach from method and technique

• Describe the teaching approaches of the K to 12 Curriculum

• Compare direct and indirect instruction with deductive and inductive methods of teaching

Introduction

• In OBE we learned that outcomes determine instruction and assessment.

• This chapter discusses approaches, methods and techniques of instruction that will lead us to intended learning outcomes.

Meaning of Approach, Methods and Techniques

• Approach: a set of assumptions that define beliefs and theories about the nature of the learner and the process of learning.

• Method: an overall plan for systematic presentation of a lesson based upon a selected approach (Brown, 1994). Some authors call it design.

• Techniques: the specific activities manifested in the classroom that are consistent with a method and therefore in harmony with an approach as well (Brown, 1994). Technique is referred to also as a task or activity.

The Teaching Approaches of the Subjects in the K to 12 Curriculum

• Section 5 of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 (DepED) states the following standards and principles for developing the Enhanced Basic Education curriculum:

  • (a) The curriculum shall be learner-centered, inclusive and developmentally appropriate;

  • (b) The curriculum shall be relevant, responsive and research-based;

  • (c) The curriculum shall be culture-sensitive;

  • (d) The curriculum shall be contextualized and global;

  • (e) The curriculum shall use pedagogical approaches that are constructivist, inquiry-based, reflective, collaborative and integrative;

  • (f) The curriculum shall adhere to the principles and framework of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) which starts from where the learners are and from what they already know, proceeding from the known to the unknown; instructional materials and capable teachers to implement the MTB-MLE curriculum shall be available;

  • (g) The curriculum shall use the spiral progression approach to ensure mastery of knowledge and skills after each level; and

  • (h) The curriculum shall be flexible enough to enable and allow schools to localize, indigenize and enhance the same based on their respective educational and social contexts…

Let's discuss the teaching approaches to the K to 12 based on the principles cited in the above provision

• 1) learner-centered, 2) inclusive, 3) developmentally appropriate, 4) relevant and responsive, 5) research-based, 6) culture-sensitive, 7) contextualized and global, 8) constructivist, 9) inquiry-based, 10) reflective, 11) collaborative, 12) integrative, 13) Mother Tongue-Based, 14) spiral progression and 15) flexible, indigenized and localized.

Learner-centered

• In a learner-centered instruction, the choice of teaching method and technique has the learner as the primary consideration - his/her nature, his/her innate faculties or abilities, how he/she learns, his/her developmental stage, multiple intelligences, learning styles, needs, concerns, interests, feelings, home and educational background.

Inclusive

• No student is excluded from the circle of learners. Everyone is "in". Teaching is for all students regardless of origin, socio-economic background, gender, ability, nationality. No "teacher favorites", no outcast, no promdi (the Filipino term for someone from the province).

• In an inclusive classroom, everyone feels they belong.

• If you are inclusive in approach you are truly learner-centered.

Developmentally appropriate

• The tasks required of students are within their developmental stages. You will not expect formal operations thinking of kindergarten children (Piaget's pre-operational development).

• If you study the competencies of the K to 12 Curriculum per subject, you will find that the competencies in Grade 1 are obviously more simple compared to the competencies of Grade 7. The treatment of subject matter increases in sophistication as you go up the Grades.

• For instance, in Grade 1 Math, a pupil is engaged in "visualizing and representing numbers from $0$ to $100$", to $1000$ in Grade 2, to $10{,}000$ in Grade 3, to $100{,}000$ in Grade 4, to $10{,}000{,}000$ in Grade 5.

Responsive and relevant

• Using a relevant and responsive teaching approach means making your teaching meaningful. You can make your teaching meaningful if you relate or connect your lessons to the students' daily experiences. You make your teaching relevant when what you teach answers their questions and concerns.

• There is no place for meaningless "mile-wide-inch-deep teaching". No teaching-to-the-test. This does not mean, however, no more tests. It is teaching only for the test that is meaningless that is referred to here and therefore you have to avoid it by all means.

Research-based

• Your teaching approach is more interesting, updated, more convincing and persuasive if it is informed by research. Integrating research findings in your lessons keeps your teaching fresh. You get the latest information from your own research or from the researches of others that enrich your teaching. You apply methods of teaching which have been proven to be effective.

• If your approach is not research-based, you may end up teaching a subject using the same method and the same examples again and again. In Chapter 5, we will discuss research-based instructional strategies.

Culture-sensitive

• If your approach is culture-sensitive, you are mindful of the diversity of cultures in your classroom. You employ a teaching approach that is anchored on respect for cultural diversity. You view all learners as unique individuals and realize and accept that their varied cultural experiences, beliefs, values and language affect their ways of thinking and interaction with others and the larger community.

• You are able to look at their work, their responses from various perspectives apart from yours. If you are culture-sensitive, you will not judge one culture as superior to that of another; no culture is perfect and every culture has its strengths and weaknesses. For instance, you don’t think your culture is better than any student’s culture. You become less judgmental, more understanding of and empathetic with your students.

Contextualized and global

• You make teaching more meaningful by putting your lesson in a context. This context may be local, national and global.

• Considering the development stages of learners, the context to which the lessons in Grade 1 are connected may be local, becoming national in Grade 4 and global in Grade 6 and beyond. Example chain: family (Grade 1), local community (Grade 2), province (Grade 3), country (Grade 4) up to international community (high school).

• Contextualized teaching means extending learning beyond the classroom into relevant real-world contexts. It also entails bringing outside-the-classroom realities of academic contexts into the classroom (Brelsford, 2008).

• A contextualized teaching approach is realized also when you indigenize and localize your lessons. The Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 (K to 12 Law) allows schools to localize and indigenize the K to 12 curriculum. This is in support of a contextualized approach. For Indigenous Peoples (IPs), the context of your teaching is indigenous culture. This means using students' indigenous thought patterns, practices, materials and local celebrations to concretize lessons.

Constructivist

• Constructive comes from the word "construct". If you are constructivist in teaching approach, you believe that students learn by building upon their prior knowledge (knowledge that students already know) prior to your teaching. This prior knowledge is called a schema.

• All students who come to class have prior knowledge or schema. This is contrary to the tabula rasa of John Locke that claims that students' minds are a blank slate.

• Students learn when you help them connect lessons to their prior knowledge. Students make sense of what they are taught according to their current conceptions. Much of what they learn are those that are connected to their prior knowledge (these processes are assimilation and accommodation).

• In constructivist teaching it is the students who construct knowledge and meaning for themselves with teacher's scaffolding, not teachers constructing knowledge and meaning for the students.

Inquiry-based and reflective

• For inquiry-based and reflective teaching approach, the core of the learning process is to elicit student-generated questions.

• A test of your effectiveness in the use of the inquiry-based approach is when the students begin formulating questions, risking answers, probing for relationships, making their own discoveries, reflecting on their findings, acting as researchers and writers of research reports.

• Reflective teaching as a teaching approach is making students reflect on what they learned and on how they learned and how to improve on their learning process.

• From your perspective as a teacher, reflective teaching is thinking over your teaching practice - why you do it, analyzing which worked and which didn’t work and how to improve on your current practice. It is a process of self-observation and self-evaluation. More conscientious reflective teaching on your part redounds to better learning for your students.

Collaborative

• As the word "collaborative" suggests, this teaching approach involves groups of students or teachers and students working together to learn together by solving a problem, completing a task, or creating a product. It may be a collaboration of two to make a dyad or a triad or a tetrad or a group. This may also include teacher teaching in collaboration with other teachers like team teaching.

Integrative

• An integrative approach can be intradisciplinary, interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary. The integrative approach is intradisciplinary when the integration is within one discipline. Integrative teaching can be integrating skills within the subject like the macroskills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in the language subjects (Mother Tongue, Filipino, and English).

• Interdisciplinary integration happens when traditionally separate subjects are brought together so that students can grasp a more authentic understanding of a subject under study. Students demonstrate interdisciplinary understanding when they can bring together concepts and methods from two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise to explain a phenomenon, solve a problem, create a product, or raise a new question. An example is when you discuss responsible parenthood from the point of view of sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics and health. Another example is when mathematical skills such as organizing, computing and interpreting data are also taught in Araling Panlipunan, Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao and Science. Art can be taught with Math. Values Education is expected to be integrated in all subjects that is why every teacher is said to be a Values Education teacher.

• Transdisciplinary integration is integrating your lessons with real life. You do this when you cite real life applications of your lesson. You also do transdisciplinary integration when you indigenize or localize your lessons.

Spiral progression

• To follow a spiral progression approach, you develop the same concepts from one grade level to the next in increasing complexity. It is revisiting concepts at each grade level with increasing depth. Spiral progression approach is also interdisciplinary. This enables students to explore connections among the sciences and the branches of math.

• Notice how the competencies of a lesson on graph in the subject Statistics and Probability increases in complexity from K to Grade 6.

  • K starts from making a graph or charting based on the information gathered.

  • Grade 1 teaches students to organize, represent and compare data using pictographs without scale representations and probability and explores games and activities.

  • Grade 2 makes them compare data using pictographs with scale representations and the ideas of likelihood.

  • Grade 3 teaches them to organize and interpret data presented in tables and bar graphs.

  • Grade 6 makes them construct, read and interpret a line graph and its corresponding table of data and solve problems involving data from a table and a line graph; make simple predictions of events based on a probability experiment (Source: DepEd K to 12 Curriculum Guide, Math).

MTB-MLE-based

• MTB-MLE means Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education.

• In MTB-MLE, teaching is done in more than one language beginning with the Mother Tongue. The Mother Tongue is used as a medium of instruction from K to 3 in addition to it being taught as a subject from Grades 1 to 3. The use of the Mother Tongue as medium of instruction eliminates the language barrier in the early grades. With the Mother Tongue, classrooms tend to be more interactive, with pupils asking questions, reciting and actively participating in class activities.

• As RA 10533 states, MTB-MLE "starts from where the learners are and from what they already know proceeding from the known to the unknown."

Summary

• An approach gives rise to a method (design) while a method (design) includes techniques (tasks or activities).

• The K to 12 Curriculum was developed along the following standards: 1) learner-centered, 2) inclusive, 3) developmentally appropriate; 4) relevant and responsive, 5) research-based, 6) culture-sensitive, 7) contextualized and global, 8) constructivist, 9) inquiry-based, 10) reflective, 11) collaborative, 12) integrative, 13) Mother Tongue-Based, 14) spiral progression and 15) flexible, indigenized and localized.

• To do justice to the K to 12 Curriculum, it must be taught in accordance with these standards.