Evidence of effective teaching

To assure about the effectiveness of a teaching-learning process evidences have to be shown.

In this part of the blog , we will show some evidence of the effectiveness of some pedagogical models.

Mujis and Reynolds in "Effective teaching: evidence and practice" (2011) propose that any pedagogical model can be effective if the teachers know the correct behaviors at the class needed for it

Direct Instruction:

Many studies have been made to prove direct instruction (or whole-class teaching) effective. LIke the oe in 1994 that proved it vs individual approaching. THe students that were taught with direct instruction obteined positive outcomes in 4 out of 29 studies and it didint get any negative, meanwhile the ones with differentited lass got  3 negative outcomes out of 29 and none positive.

Experts in the field said that direct instruction became effective in these cases because its easer to keep it up wih the whole group behavior and control it if teacher notice any student is not attending the lesson or he is invaded of boredom. As for the information they recibe, its easier to relate the old one in their long-term memory with the new one in the short-term memory and since the whole-class teaching is the most rapid way of attaining  new knowledge, we will need to train or learning ability.

The main elelmentes to make this possible are:

• Clearly structured lessons: Lessons must be well structured so students wll be able to unsterstand the topic correctly and how it is related to what they already know.
• Clear, structured presentations: Content should be presented step by step and each step should be feeded back before going forward.
• Use of conceptual maping: A well structured conceptoal schema helps students to relate and order every subtopic of the lesson correctly. It will help them specially in very complex topics. 
• Interactive questioning: Direct instruction wont be an effective method if here is not a practice element, and the interactive questioning serve for this.
• Preparing seatwork: the seatwork must tie with the objetives of the lesson.  It must take place after the questioning.
• Use workbooks/textbooks: Attactively looking books can mtivate the students during the lesson and it will help them to make the seatwork faster.
• Organizing seatwork:Teachers need to make clear the objetive of the seatwork so students understand how is it related to the lesson and the topics they are learing.
• Feedback on seatwork: An effective way to do this is at the final part of the lesson, where the teacher will ask about students's answers and correct them  if needed.

Interactive Teaching

Mortimore et al. found positive results of a frenquent cuestiong in primary schools.(1988)
The interaction in class is needed for an effective teaching. The use of high order questions and a good communication with pupils showed to be effective. American researchers have made a detail study  on what constitute effective interacioning and questioning (1976).

Questioning:

• When and how often to use questioning: Questioning should take up a large part of the lesson. It can be used to check students retention of previous topics. Questioning is positive to make it explain themselves.
• Eliciting a pupil response: To make students answer the questions is difficult on older or shy students or if the whle class is made to this kind of work. Teacher has to make pupils feel confortable in teh classroom so they don't feel that a wrong answer will carry something bad to them.
• The cognitive level of questions: Research has shown that teachers prefer to use high order questions since it make students think about the answer longer than low level questions.
• Open and close questions: Effectiver teahcers use open question more often since it requier the student to think it longer and closed question. How ever the frecuency of closed or open question will depend on the topic.
• Process and product questions: Product questions are mean to find the answer to a particual problem while process questions will find the procedure to solve the problem.
• What to do when a pupil answers aquestion correctly but hesitantly?: It is essential to give a positive feedback and it has to be explcit so the student that gave the answer notices that the answer was effectively correct.
• What to do when pupil answers a question incorrectly?: Teacher must break the question into many little steps so the student is able to anliza it in a simplified way.
• What to do when a pupil answers a question partially correctlly?: It is important to give a positive feedback but clearifying which part was the correct one and which wasn't so no confusing will appear. 
• Prompting: Prompting can be given in for of tips instruccions, clues so student will have to analize and find the corret answer himself.
• What is a correct wait-time?: The wait-time depends on the type of question, if its a low order, closed question 3-4 seconds will be enough, while with open, high order questions 12-15 seconds is the optimal wait-time.
• Classroom discussion and its relationship to questioning: Depending in the lesson's objective questining will be or not appropiate. In the case it is not, classroom discussion will be the best option. It can be done in the whole class or small groups. The whole class discussion will help the students to envolve and engage into the topic allowing stdents to develop a better understanding of the lesson.