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A pedagogic basis for multigrade teaching – the 3Ps A pedagogic basis for multi

A pedagogic basis for multigrade teaching – the 3Ps A pedagogic basis for multigrade teaching – the 3Ps Anita Pincas Draft - January 2007 This model is suitable and relevant for all teaching, and can be of considerable use in multigrade classrooms. It is explained in detail below. As with all advice to practising teachers, it is important for them to understand the principles, and then to adapt them to their own circumstances. Further, any set of principles, such as this one, can be of value, but needs to be supplemented with hands-on support.Only in a live, teacher training programme that works intimately with teachers in the classroom, can a trainer help the teachers to apply the model. The 3Ps 3Ps are are P1 = Teacher presents the content P2 = Teacher helps learners to practice the activities proposed by the teacher, and offers feedback. P3 = Teacher asks learners to perform by producing evidence of their competence, for which they receive feedback and/or grades. Content Whatever the learning context, whoever the learners, whether there is one teacher or peer learning, there is always content. Without content there is nothing for the learner to learn. Whether learners find something to learn independently, perhaps through stimulating activities devised or proposed by the teacher, or have it brought to their attention - i.e. presented to them in some way by someone else, who is often a teacher but may be another learner - it has to be there. It might be concepts, or facts, or skills, or processes, or attitudes and approaches. In multigrade classrooms, how to manage access to the appropriate content for different ages and different levels of pupils is one of the three predominant concerns that can worry the teacher. They will ask themselves whether they ought to prepare different content for different levels, or expect the lower levels to “stretch” themselves in order to understand at least some key points of a higher level lesson. This paper will make clear how content relates to the other two predominant concerns for the multigrade teacher: learning, or practice, activities, and feedback or assessment. Of course all creatures learn a great deal on their own. But schools enhance learning by organising it and using strategies to improve the process of acquiring the content. The teacher is key in this process, without diminishing the contribution of peers, facilitators, and others. In other words, the teacher scaffolds the learning process. Part of that scaffolding is to package the content in a manner that s/he believes will make it more learnable. Many factors come into play here, and they normally include arranging the content in a sequence from familiar to new, easy to more difficult, simple to more complex, or perhaps in a hierarchy from general to particular (or vice versa), or even presenting it in simplified form. In the first stage of the 3Ps model, learners become aware of content. It may be directly stated and described [i.e. presented], by the teacher or another learner, or an automated teaching program; or else it may be revealed through resources such as reading, audio-visual materials or learner activities designed to lead to it. It can be presented to the learners in a great variety of ways using traditional or newer ICT. Activities Learners are always active. They do not come with a tabula rasa on which a teacher inscribes knowledge. Their minds work at learning, willy nilly. For motor and other physical skills, their bodies are likewise active and participatory, experimenting and re-trying. In this way, the content, whatever it is, becomes embedded in the learners’ cognitive or functional structures. Again, the teacher’s role is to enhance such activities by organising them, and encouraging learning strategies to improve acquisition, understanding, and memory. Feedback and assessment Learners always need and seek ways of evaluating their own learning. They do their own trial and error practice, and in their own independent learning, they adjust and unconsciously improve – up to a point. It is one of the teacher’s key roles to help them recognise the extent of their own competence, as well as the opportunities for improvement. The teacher’s feedback can be crucial in some learning contexts. More formal assessment, rather than merely feedback, offers a more absolute measure, or in any case a referential measure of what the learner can do. In a traditional view of teaching, the 3 elements are used in the chronological default order. This is reflects the planned delivery order. It is NOT the same as the order of importance of any of the elements! It is: P1 = Teacher presents the content P2 = Learners practice the activities P3 = Learners perform by producing evidence of their competence It is not essential for all 3 Ps to occur in every teaching event. Often the final P, assessment and feedback, is postponed; sometimes content is presented repeatedly before activities are arranged, and so on. Whether it is the activities that are more important in the teacher’s view than the content or the assessment, or the content itself is the key focus and activities are secondary or even optional, the sequence in which the lessons deals with them is crucial. Different sequences are a different kinds of teaching and learning. Some are appropriate for whole class teaching with multigrade pupils, others are not. Some lend themselves only to small group work. This will be dealt with later in the chapter. The 3Ps can be manipulated in an infinite variety of ways. This will be illustrated in relation to further and higher education in the section Variety in the elements of teaching Variety in the elements of teaching. As a preliminary, it is important to stress three self-evident factors in teaching that have an important influence on how the 3Ps can be applied in class. First, it needs to be remembered that teachers cannot control their students’ actual learning processes. However much they might attempt to do so, they are limited to advocating or directing learning activities, without being able to affect the learners’ attention or receptiveness to learning. While the teacher fulfils the role of organiser of the context of learning, this does not guarantee success; on many occasions learners deliberately or unknowingly subvert the teachers’ intentions, though sometimes to their own benefit. Learners give themselves feedback by making judgements about their successes, and these may be at variance with what teachers discover by observing them more objectively. Second, the close, regular, intimate classrooms of schools, has a tacit agreement that the teacher is in charge and pupils will follow. The school teacher-learner is relationship is that of adult-child. This is sometimes a spur to learning, and sometimes the opposite. Third, the theory behind the 3Ps assumes that knowledge, skills, attitudes or beliefs can be “presented” to pupils. However, there are people for whom it is very important to encourage “co-construction of knowledge”, in which learners develop concepts of knowledge themselves. For instance, in a literature course, teachers often find it important for learners to discuss literary works and decide for themselves what they mean, whether they are “good”, “well written”, and so on. Teachers in such subjects often do not want to “present” knowledge to their classes. Although it is arguable that such co-constructivist approaches are more relevant to situations where there are strategies or policies or approaches or viewpoints to be thought through and worked out rather than knowledge as fact , that type of teaching can be accommodated under the 3Ps model, by taking account of the myriad variations that are possible. For instance, starting a lesson with learners inspecting resources or solving a problem would match many of the co- constructivist methods, bearing in mind that one cannot “create” knowledge, only discover it. One can create interpretations, hypotheses, strategies, policies, and viewpoints. See also the detailed description of Discovery Discovery Models Models in The 6 basic templates explained, The 6 basic templates explained, where a sub-type of the discovery model is proposed to meet the constructivist approach. Regarding P2, Practice - what many people call an “activities model” or “active learning” model, is probably dominant through the social sciences today, with the strong emphasis on learning and the learner, rather than teaching and the teacher. It is appropriate for the social sciences but may be somewhat less so for the “hard” sciences. However, there is no absolute division between the two; they are on a scale from “hard facts” at one end to “open to interpretation” at the other. Even in the hard sciences, there are disputes about facts [ie their rightness, appropriacy, relevance, etc.]. Within this small project, we have put forward a framework around which you can build what you need for your own purposes. We do not claim to be offering a total set of universal truths. Variety in the elements of teaching Variety in the elements of teaching The 3Ps default sequence can be changed, and elements can be interleaved, merged, repeated - in dozens uploads/Management/ 3p-x27-s-guide.pdf