Principles of good learning
There are many different ideas about what makes effective teaching. One of the most enduring was developed by Barak Rosenshine who designed a set of principles of instructional strategies that have been shown to be effective in improving student learning outcomes. The principles are based on decades of research into effective teaching practices and have been widely adopted by educators around the world.
There are ten principles in total, each of which addresses a different aspect of effective teaching. I am going to take a closer look at some principles this week and the remaining ones next time and see how they can be applied in the classroom.
Firstly, Rosenshine advises to begin with a review of previous learning. This helps to reinforce prior knowledge and prepare students for new learning. Educational researcher, John Hattie, said that students, on the whole, know up to 40% of what we are about to teach them, so pretesting and knowledge harvesting are key to knowing what the students know, instead of assuming a ‘blank slate.’
Secondly, Rosenshine advocates presenting new material in small steps, more manageable chunks, and present them one at a time. This helps students to understand and retain the information more effectively. Our short term working memories cannot hold more than about seven bits of information at one time. As a little test try remembering your credit card number, (usually 16 digits) then divide it into four sets of four numbers, it should be much easier. When we try to force too many things into short term memory it leads to cognitive overload.
Next, he proposes asking a large number of questions both as a whole class but also individually. Asking questions is a powerful way to engage students and assess their understanding of the material. This principle encourages teachers and students to ask a variety of questions, but it is not simply asking retrieval questions that require students to recall previously learned information. It is vital to ask a variety of types of questions, not questions that ask students to ‘guess the teacher’s mind’ but ones that activate higher order thinking such as synthesis, counter-factual and inference.
Fourth is to provide models. This principle suggests that teachers should provide models of the desired end product to help students understand what they are working towards. Students benefit massively from seeing exactly what they need to produce. This can be in the form of a teacher model or models provided by previous students or a parallel class. Of course, giving students some agency regarding what they want to produce, and how, can also have a massive impact on motivation. As teachers we don’t want 25 pieces of identical work!
The final principle, this week, emphasises the importance of providing students with ample opportunities to practise new skills and receive feedback on their performance. Teachers should guide students through the practice process, providing support and feedback as needed. As John Medina says, ‘remember to practise: practise to remember.’
