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SOCIAL STUDIES DIARY

Effective Teaching - I. Introduction

Introduction

Meeting Needs and Providing Effective Instruction

Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, educational researchers probed into teaching behaviors and practices that helped to promote effective teaching. For example, Rosenshine and Furst attempted to identify teacher behaviors that are positively correlated with student learning by compiling over fifty research reports of effective teaching. They divided effective behaviors (variables) into three categories which included “most promising,” “somewhat promising” and those variables with “little or no support (Many studies including those of Rosenshine and Furst, Dunkin and Biddle, Cruickshank, Medley, Gage, Borich, Good, Emmer and Evertson Stalling, Porter and Brophy were summarized in Donald R. Curickshank’s, Research That Informs Teachers and Teacher Educators (Bloomington, Indiana: Phi Dellta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1990, pp. 69-82).” In his book, Effective Teaching Methods, Gary Borich (1992 also in Cruickshank, 1990) organized these variables into lists of essential practices for effective teaching. In review of Borich’s categories I have listed the ten apparently successful practices for social studies instruction. (Research finding can and do conflict from one study to the next; thus, you should be cautioned and judicious in the interpretation and application of recommendations stemming from limited research studies.)

At the same time, one should keep in mind that educational research is an on-going process that requires repeated studies and applications with differences arising out of local conditions and sometimes-undetermined variables. Therefore, as more research is completed in the field of teaching effectiveness, certain conclusions can be substantiated as consistently effective and should be incorporated into teaching practices. In the following series of blogs I have attempted to relate ten elements of “teaching effectiveness” These ten elements will be present and explored one at a time until all ten instructional elements have been advanced for effective teaching in the social studies.

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