Types of instruction

Because some forms of thinking—critical thinking, creativity and problem solving—are broad and important educationally, it is not surprising that educators have identified strategies to encourage their development. Some of the possibilities are shown in Table 1 and are grouped into two categories: how much the strategy is student-centered versus teacher-centered. It should be emphasized that the classifications in Table 1 are not very precise, but they give a useful framework for understanding some of the options available for planning and implementing instruction.

Table 2 below defines some of the terms used in Table 1:

Facilitating complex thinking: teacher-directed instruction

As the name implies, teacher-directed instruction includes any strategies initiated and guided primarily by the teacher. A classic example is exposition or lecturing (simply telling or explaining important information to students) combined with assigning reading from texts. But teacher-directed instruction also includes strategies that involve more active response from students, such as encouraging students to elaborate on new knowledge or to explain how new information relates to prior knowledge. Whatever their form, teacher-directed instructional methods normally include the organizing of information on behalf of students, even if teachers also expect students to organize it further on their own. Sometimes, therefore, teacher-directed methods are thought of as transmitting knowledge from teacher to student as clearly and efficiently as possible, even if they also require mental work on the part of the student.

Lectures and readings

Lectures and readings are traditional staples of educators, particularly with older students (including university students). At their best, they pre-organize information so that (at least in theory) the student only has to remember what was said in the lecture or written in the text in order to begin understanding it (Exley&Dennick, 2004). Their limitation is the ambiguity of the responses they require: listening and reading are by nature quiet and stationary, and do not in themselves indicate whether a student is comprehending or even attending to the material. Educators sometimes complain that “students are too passive” during lectures or when reading. But physical quietness is intrinsic to these activities, not to the students who do them. A book just sits still, after all, unless a student makes an effort to read it, and a lecture may not be heard unless a student makes the effort to listen to it.