Approaches To Instruction | Developing Your Teaching Identity

In a few years time I hope my aspirations of becoming either a physical education or mathematics teacher materialize and I have my very own classroom. Through my time at Brock University thus far, I have been introduced to the importance of developing my "teaching identity." This is a broad term that encompasses the importance of understanding your values, stances and beliefs of practices in the classroom. Furthermore, it is address the understanding that there is not one set method of instruction to manage a classroom effectively.

I believe that all prospective teachers need to address this idea of developing their teaching identity.  It is worth carefully thinking about various aspects of teaching and what your views are on them.  It will be all prospective teachers responsibility to develop a stand point on issues that arise in the classroom and educational world.  These issues could range from how to properly discipline students to the best way to arrange seating in a classroom.  Today I would like to address the various approaches to instruction. I view the choice of methods of instruction a primary concern for all teachers.

Studenny, Mike. "Approaches to Instruction." 2015. JPG.

There are many approaches to choosing a method of instruction. I have developed the following graphic organizer to show a variety of different approaches to instruction as described by Drake, Reid and Kolohan (2014).  As you can see the organization of instruction methods is circular. I have attempted to convey the message (one I strongly believe in) that these are not ranked through a hierarchy but rather viewed as equals. By this I mean that a teacher should understand that each method has it's place and uses. This video (Long-Crowell, E. 2015) demonstrates a good contrast between the values of direct instruction and the guided discovery model.

Now I would like to get back to the idea I presented on developing your own personal teaching identity. I believe every teacher has a bias to which instructional approach they can best utilize in the classroom. This bias may have developed from you being taught this way or possibly you having seen good results from it thus far. Either way as prospective teachers we need to cast these biases aside and realize that students have their own individualized learning styles (Advanogy, 2015) and therefore find will  find various approaches of instruction may work better than others.

So, if a teacher is able to ignore any biases to instructional approaches and really understand that each student will have an individual learning preference how do we cater to all of our students? I propose that we view these approaches to instruction as a spectrum and focus on the importance of building a blend of many approaches into each and every lesson we teach.  It is through this progressive approach to building your classroom dynamics that a teacher will begin to address more individualized needs of our students.

References

Advanogy. (2015). Overview of learning styles. Retrieved from: http://www.learning-styles-online.com/overview/

Drake, S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohan, W.  (2014). Interviewing Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st Century Learner. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Long-Crowell, E. (2013-2015). Direct Instruction and Discovery Instruction: Definition and Differences. Retrieved from: http://study.com/academy/lesson/direct-instruction-discovery-instruction-definition-differences.html

Studenny, Mike. "Approaches to Instruction." 2015. JPG.