INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS FOR SUPPORTING SECONDARY INSTRUCTION

Inquiry: Teacher facilitated but student led investigation. The topic to be investigated is decided by the student(s) and teacher guides them to curriculum connections and skills while allowing the students to lead their own learning.

The strength of inquiry based learning is that students have control over the topic so they should be more motivated and engaged in their own learning. It also increases their skills and confidence in independent learning.

The weakness of inquiry based learning is that because of the freedom it allows it takes longer than teacher directed learning and can become off topic. It also relies heavily on student motivation to be effective and so the teacher must have a good understanding of their students and monitor them well.

Jigsaw: A larger topic (puzzle) is divided into subsections (pieces), each subsection is then investigated in different groups. Then a new group is made with some one from every subsection so that they can share their investigations and create a complete understanding of the topic.

The strength of the jigsaw method is that students gain in depth understanding of part of topic as well as overall information. It also lets students work together in changing groups so they must all both teach and learn.

The weakness of jigsaw teaching is that if some groups don’t complete their work there will be missing or inaccurate knowledge. Also, no one person gets thorough understanding of the topic as a whole.

Reciprocal Learning: Students are paired with two complementary sets of problems and answers. One partner uses their answer sheet to help the other with their problems and then they switch roles for the other sheet of problems.

The strength of reciprocal learning is that works really well for declarative and procedural learning while increasing student confidence and communication skills. Both students learn because you must understand in order to teach even in the answers have been given to.

The weakness of reciprocal learning is that it is tempting for students to just give each other the answers, or for the teacher to help the student with the problem sheet rather than the one with answer sheet thereby negating the whole point.

So what?

All three of these methods work to have students lead learning, either their own or a classmates, and foster lifelong learning skills better than traditional methods but they still involve significant teacher involvement and competent classroom management.

I think it would be interesting to consider using all of them as scaffolding for independent learning from jigsaw to reciprocal learning to inquiry as students confidence and skills improve. This would help move the power from solely the teachers hands towards a more collaborative environment.