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The three elements of great teaching.

The research on how people learn indicates that there are three essential elements in effective teaching. (Caine and Caine, 1994, 2001). They do not occur in a linear form. Rather, they have to be thoroughly integrated, somewhate like a tripple helix. They are:

Relaxed alertness as the optimal state of mind in a learner and in a classroom or learning community;

The orchestrated immersion of the learner in complex experience in which the standards or content are embedded;

The active processing of experience - The essential, ongoing process of practice, questioning and reflection that leads to high standards evident as dynamical knowledge or real world competence.

Two different instructional approaches

There at least two different approaches to instruction. This debate has a long history in the United States, because it goes back to the differences between progressive education proposed by Dewey and the more traditional, transmission approach to education that became popular later in the twentieth century. Others have also identified two different approaches. (e.g. Argyris, 1984, Miller, 1993).

We call them Direct Instruction and the Guided Experience Approach.

They differ in the ways in which they construe and implement the three elements of great teaching, and in the extent to which the natural perception/action cycle is engaged. They should not be treated as being in conflict with each other. Guided experience is bigger than but includes direct instruction.

The guided experience approach to teaching is vital because that is the way in which the perception/action cycle and three elements of great teaching referred to above can be adequately engaged.

A Path of Professional Development

Step One: Improve direct instruction.

Almost all professional development, and all the programs - including those recognized by government or implemented by districts - seeks to improve direct instruction. That makes sense. The key is to get it right.

Our approach does NOT provide educators with recipes, though we do model many strategies. Our approach is to introduce educators to the 12 brain/mind learning principles so that they gain a much deeper understanding of how students learn AND work together to develop better instructional strategies.

Step Two: Make the shift to learner centered teaching.

The key here is to discover how to create experiences that generate student interest and questions, and then to follow those questions and interests in a rigorous way so that students are engaged in research which leads them into material to be covered. In this way, individual students styles and preferences are dealt with, students work alone AND they work together, the standards are dealt with rigorously, and the students have opportunities to make decisions and take charge of the way that they learn so that they develop their higher order thinking capacities.

We provide an approach - the guided experience approach - that is not a recipe but which provides educators with rails to run on as they develop mastery.

An example: In our work with Learning to Learn in South Australia, one of the world's leading edge educational reform programs, we helped them clarify their work by introducing this path. Download their way of describing the path in a set of materials prepared for the educators and schools in their program.

Direct Instruction - Basic

View of Learning: Memorization of facts and skills, and veridical (right - wrong) decision making

Instruction: Largely focused on teacher presentations followed by repetition and practice

Assessment: Completion of assigned work, with grades based on teacher judgment and standards and onstandardized tests

Direct Instruction - Advanced

View of Learning: Intellectual understanding supplemented by memorization, with some opportunities for adaptive decision making

Instruction: Teacher-led experiences orchestrated around concepts and meaning; with some role for student choices and input on assignments,class rules, and assessment (example: rubrics)

Assessment: Authentic assessment and standardized tests

Guided Experience Approach

View of Learning: Understanding in order to make sense of experience and develop real world competence, with strong emphasis on adaptive decision making and development of higher order functions

Instruction: Real-world projects with curriculum embedded, driven by student choices and interests, with ongoing, authentic questioning, investigation, and documentation.

Assessment: Authentic performance of all kinds including as well as tests that assess the use of student higher order learning (use of their executive functions)