Democratic and Prescriptive Instructional Strategies - Research Paper Example

INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES: Introduction: Instructional strategies are plan of actions under which teachers, or lectures use different teachingmodels in passing knowledge to the students or any other trainees. There are various forms of strategies and include democratic and prescriptive strategies. A democratic approach is one whereby learners are provided with an interactive environment where they can express their views, opinions, suggestions and have an opportunity to support their arguments. It is involves both the teacher and the learner where the teacher comes up with the topic to be discussed which is open to any form of criticisms or additions to the main point. According to the Alternative Educational Resource Organization, democratic approach of education is one whereby students or learners have the autonomy in scheduling their daily actions and that there is no impartiality and undemocratic decision making among the students and teachers. (Bennett, 2001) A prescriptive approach is one whereby students are presented with the course outline of what they will learn and what they are expected to do. It involves student getting their learning results from what the teachers are saying and from the existing literature that is prescribed the teacher or the instructor. In essence prescriptive approach is a strategy where the students rely heavily on what their teachers will say and the literature they are directed to use. The differences between the two approaches are the freedom given to the learners to make decisions. We find that in prescriptive approach there is no excellent environment for learning because students are supposed to do what their tutors do without any alteration. Students are always forced to do activities that they are not comfortable with because there is no interaction between the teacher and the students hence the morale of the students is always low and tend to perform poorly in their course work. While in democratic approach there is greater interaction among the students themselves and between the students and their teachers thus opening avenues of generating new knowledge and it is likely that students will be satisfied with the outcome. Another difference is that in democratic approach a lot of emphasis is directed to generation of new knowledge while in the prescriptive approach students are required to gain from the instructions of their teachers and from the existing literatures or textbooks. An example of democratic strategy is the use of debates and an example of prescriptive approach is the use of lectures as ways of learning. (Fraser, 1996) Debates: This strategy involves dividing the students in class into various grouping that will represent certain points of view on the identified issue which is always the most compromising subject. In the division of groups, they are those who support the argument, that is the proponents or those for, and those who oppose the issue referred to as those against or the critics. Students can involve themselves in the debates through character or even assuming different roles. An example of an issue to be subjected to debate may be, Does globalization leads to prosperity or impoverishment One group of the students will be expected to support the argument that globalization brings prosperity while the other group is expected to take a stance against globalization that it brings impoverishment. Debates can lead to generation of new knowledge because by arguing it out a point, there is an opportunity of integrating ideas and hence conclusions arrived at being useful in the learning process. Lectures: According to the latest findings, lecture is the most inefficient mode of teaching and has contributed mostly to deterioration of education standards around the world. It can be described as presentation by the teacher or lecturer to a big group of learners whereby the presence of active learning in the class is limited and only the teacher or lecturer takes the whole time designated for the lesson outlining whatever to be learned. It is a boring activity for the students since there are no open discussions and students tend to get tired easily or even bored because of the monotony of the teacher or the lecturer. The main problem with lecturing is that, it is a passive learning process rather than being active learning process and critics of the method argues that it can only be efficient and the best method if strategies that are active should be incorporated. Usually lectures are characterized by longer hours with a lot of topics to be covered which have led to the approach being in efficient. (Boehrer, 1990) How Debates Can Be Used In Teaching Context: Since it is a learning process which can generate more new knowledge it should be encouraged in learning institutions. Courses should be introduced that only requires debates as a method of learning where participants will be required to compile the outcome of their discussions. Teachers should constantly utilize the approach especially on contemporary issues which requires further research. The use of this approach should be encouraged in training, primary, secondary, adult, and in the higher learning of institutions such as the universities because it provides an opportunity to argue or oppose certain subject which is an issue which can lead to generation of new ideas. However, it should strongly be recommended to adult, training and in the university institutions because with such knowledge the learners can utilize in the working of environment when they are employed. In the primary level those who are in upper classes can be introduced to debates so that they are familiar with the approach and also get to know that constructive debate about an issue is not bad but can lead to gaining of new knowledge. For example debating clubs in schools and colleges should be introduced and they should be required to engage in debates relating to current issues in the country. A good example is where the learners involved can assume the responsibilities of being ministers or members of national assembly and engage in debates relating to political or economic issues of concern. This way they can get exposed to debates of which in future it can be useful to them in undertaking their activities and they will be comfortable with constructive arguments. (Morris, 1976) How Lectures Can Be Used In Teaching Context: Lectures can be utilized whereby there is a big number of audience or learners expected to gain from the knowledge being passed. Lectures can only be effective if active methods of learning are introduced. The aspect of interactive learning should be incorporated in order to avoid boredom and tiredness among the participants. Lectures should not only be done through talking by the speaker but also the use of boards and lecturers being open discussions should be considered. The time of lecturing should be revised as often it is allocated a lengthy time frame which has been the main reason behind boredom and tiredness among the partners. Good communication skills by the lectures should be encouraged in order to pass clearly the intended messages to the learners which lead to solving the most common problem of ambiguity, that is, to enhance passage of clear messages to the listeners or the participants. It is also advisable that lecturing should be encouraged if the topics to be covered are easy and to understand and also interesting to the learners and thus making them more attentive because there will be no boredom and tiredness during the session or lesson and hence gaining knowledge. (Jerrold, 1985) How Debates Are Democratic: Debates as an approach to learning is said to be democratic because of the freedom it gives to the learners and the teachers. Students can organize themselves in groups that everyone is open to raising different opinions relating to the topic without restrictions that is by taking sides in the debate. Everyone is entitled to contribution and everyone is given an opportunity to air his/her opinions without victimization or favours. Further the aspect of freedom of scheduling the activities by the students and the presence of good environment makes debates more democratic and interesting. Moreover students are left to choose on what topics to debate on at their own time and may request their instructor to present their findings at their own convenient time, that is, when they feel that they have fully exhausted the topic debated on. (Herrell, 2002) How Lectures Are Prescriptive: Lectures are said to be prescriptive because it does not give the learner an opportunity to air their views or make suggestions. Usually it gives the teacher or the instructor an opportunity to decide for the students thus being prone to being an effective approach. It is a rigid way since it does not provide an opportunity to participants to make any suggestions concerning the subject matter thus there limited generation of new ideas. The students normally have to follow the set course outline and they are not open to criticize anything even if they are unsatisfied thus rendering this approach to be narrow in terms of the output expected. The lecturer has to come up with what is required and to be covered in the cause and this depends mostly on his professionalism in relation to his duties. For example the topics to be covered during the lecture might be formulated in such a way that some important topics are left out may be because the lecturer may not be conversant with the topics. Technology and Instructional Strategies: For teaching strategies to prosper Information and Communication Technology should be used. ICT is generic terms which refer to technologies used to collect, store, edit and pass on information in various forms. Depending on how ICT is used in the schools, there are a wide variety of impacts that are both negative and positive. Since technology keeps on changing, modern, more cost effective and powerful technologies in ICT will continue to emerge that can be used to potentially aid learning in schools. This study rely mostly on information and research work mostly done by British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) that have researched this issue of impacts of ICT in schools within the United Kingdom in the last two decades. Their study-ImpaCT1 and ImpaCT2 had analysed the statistical relationship between ICT use and education standards, pupil's performances and in different ages and subjects. (Jensen, 1997) ICT technicians are the most useful people in the information society and they do this by teaching students by, first about ICT and secondly assist both the teachers and the students to use ICT in their teaching and learning processes respectively. Adequate training is required for these technicians to provide sufficient guidance for the schools but the cost of doing so is also high for both the government and schools themselves. The following strategies can be used in order to enhance the debates strategy and lecture strategy; the use of interactive whiteboards should be encouraged. Recent studies have looked at how interactive whiteboards influences learning and teaching processes in schools. It suggests that whiteboards offer visual display that go in line with the explanations offered by the teacher thus helps students to understand better. It further outlines that the use of technologies in methods like debate and lectures can act as a motivational effect especially when used at the primary school level Such ICT technologies that can be utilized include; Interactive whiteboard, Videoconferencing, PowerPoint research presentation, and Internet use. For example during lecture, the lecturer can use the laptops in presentation when explaining an issue. Another technique that can be utilized is through the radio broadcasts. In the UK radio broadcast are day to day learning procedures not only in the junior levels but also at the university level. BBC broadcast is usually the favourite for most schools since it is being seen as the best media house with proper research structures. Such school radio programs as 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' broadcasts directly to an MP3 which store the information immediately to be retrieved later by the user. Such programs can be said to be like lectures because they usually educate the public and the students. Sometimes the conversions are open to callers who make their suggestions thus coming up with different opinions which are like a debate in another way. (Campbell, 2003) In the UK, being a developed country, the use of ICT has been very much advanced and most of the schools are now applying ICT in most of their learning practices. Focus has shifted from learning about ICT to learning through ICT. It is widely accepted that ICT has the following benefits as seen from studies here in the UK; Improvement of child development, teaching and learning. Connection with hard-to- reach groups. It provides equal access to services within the schools, and increases the effectiveness, efficiency of services, and better communication standards At present, researchers are developing skills on range of technologies that have in the past made little impacts on the schools. There are several strategies that are being used to incorporate them into educational experiences of these pupils. An example of such technologies in the UK and other developed countries is the use of mobile phones to compile when students are away from home and with some modifications can be used as personal response systems. The use of mobile phones can also be utilized by the students attending lectures recording what the lectures are saying and can review and research about the issues at their own convenient time. (Marzano, 2001) Conclusion: The appropriate strategies for learning have to be chosen in order to yield good results among the learners. Such strategies like lectures should be discouraged or incorporate the use active strategies in order to make it efficient. Because of the increasing technological changes, such strategies should be modified by the respective schools or institutions in order to convey reliable and understandable messages to the students. Teachers are asked to focus on the students matter culturally, linguistically and socially and at the same time, they should encourage the students to choose subjects that are of interest to them. These learners or the students should be allowed to choose units of their study whereby, the teacher can relate the student's preferences of the subjects by asking them questions on the subjects they like and those they dislike. Such a response can motivate the students and thus better results from their studies can be attained. 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