Applying Effective Instructional Techniques and Strategies

What are instructional strategies?

Instructional strategies are methods that are used in the lesson to ensure that the sequence or delivery of instruction helps students learn.

We could employ a variety of instructional strategies to suit the learner differences.

What does effective mean?

The term "effective" means that student performance improves when the instructional strategies are used. The strategies were identified in studies conducted using research procedures and guidelines that ensure confidence about the results. In addition, several studies exist for each strategy with an adequate sample size and the use of treatment and control groups to generalize to the target population. This allows teachers to be confident about how to apply the strategies in their classrooms.

Strategies to use in designing effective lessons

Six strategies have been proven to work with diverse groups of learners. All students, and particularly those with disabilities, benefit when teachers incorporate these strategies into their instruction on a regular basis.

1. Focus on essentials.
2. Make linkages obvious and explicit.
3. Prime background knowledge.
4. Provide temporary support for learning.
5. Use conspicuous steps and strategies.
6. Review for fluency and generalization.

Effective Teaching Strategies: Six Keys to Classroom Excellence

What learner differences do we need to take into account when diverse cultures  are composed in the classroom?

1: Interest and explanation: When our interest is aroused in something, whether it is an academic subject or a hobby, we enjoy working hard at it. We come to feel that we can in some way own it and use it to make sense of the world around us. Coupled with the need to establish the relevance of content, teachers need to craft explanations that enable students to understand the material. This involves knowing what students understand and then forging connections between what is known and what is new.

2: Concern and respect for students and student learning: Truly awful teaching in higher education is most often revealed by a sheer lack of interest in and compassion for students and student learning. It repeatedly displays the classic symptom of making a subject seem more demanding than it actually is. Some people may get pleasure from this kind of masquerade. They are teaching very badly if they do. Good teaching is nothing to do with making things hard. It is nothing to do with frightening students. It is everything to do with benevolence and humility; it always tries to help students feel that a subject can be mastered; it encourages them to try things out for themselves and succeed at something quickly.

3: Appropriate assessment and feedback: This principle involves using a variety of assessment techniques and allowing students to demonstrate their mastery of the material in different ways. It avoids those assessment methods that encourage students to memorize and regurgitate. It recognizes the power of feedback to motivate more effort to learn.

4: Clear goals and intellectual challenge: Effective teachers set high standards for students. They also articulate clear goals. Students should know up front what they will learn and what they will be expected to do with what they know.

5: Independence, control and active engagement: Good teaching fosters [a] sense of student control over learning and interest in the subject matter. Good teachers create learning tasks appropriate to the student’s level of understanding. They also recognize the uniqueness of individual learners and avoid the temptation to impose “mass production” standards that treat all learners as if they were exactly the same. It is worth stressing that we know that students who experience teaching of the kind that permits control by the learner not only learn better, but that they enjoy learning more.

6: Learning from students: Effective teaching refuses to take its effect on students for granted. It sees the relation between teaching and learning as problematic, uncertain and relative. Good teaching is open to change: it involves constantly trying to find out what the effects of instruction are on learning, and modifying the instruction in the light of the evidence collected.