Research on Teaching - A Brief Overview

This last component of Chapter Three is designed for those who need a more intense understanding of where we have been and how we are currently situating ourselves related to understanding and acting on our understanding of instruction. The one message that should be emerging as a result of reading this chapter is that the teaching and learning process is complex; to engage in it effectively is a highly intelligent and creative act. We certainly sense this in our work in the area of understanding instructional complexity (Bennett, Anderson, and Evans, 1998).

A long history of research on teaching exists which includes a vast number of observation and self-report instruments (Fisher, Filby, Marliaave, Cahen, Dishaw, Moore, & Berliner, 1978; Flanders, 1970) designed to record the variety of instructional practices used by teachers. Generally speaking, studies applying these instruments provide practical inventories of classroom teaching practice which are not grounded in a broader theory or framework of instruction. They do not consider the relationships among different instructional practices; do not question teacher knowledge and skills in the use of reported teaching practices; and do not conceptualize the whole of a teacher's instructional thought and behavior in terms of an instructional repertoire or a similar idea. The reason for this is illustrated in the studies that evolved out of the process/product research paradigm that inquired into the application and effects of specific instructional variables on learning (e.g., Banghart & Spraker, 1963; Bruning & Mettee, 1966; DeVries & Edwards, 1973; Anderson, Evertson, & Brophy; Fry & Coe, 1980; Brophy, 1981; Waxman & Walberg, 1982) and the process of observation employed to observe teachers teaching (e.g., the variety of clinical supervision processes that evolved out of the work of Cogan (1973) and the variety of lenses employed to analyze specific components of a lesson).

Tangentially, an extensive body of literature on teaching exists that focuses on teachers' general pedagogical perspectives, orientations, or approaches. One stream in this research considers the emergence in teacher perspectives of authoritarianism, custodialism, and realism (see Blase, 1985). Another stream characterizes and contrasts teachers in terms of their emphasis on a transmission, transaction, or transformation position/orientation to curriculum and instruction (Miller and Seller, 1990). Fenstermacher and Soltis describe and discuss three 'approaches to teaching': the executive approach, the therapist approach, and the liberationist approach (Fenstermacher and Soltis, 1986). Certain instructional beliefs and practices cluster in the operational definitions and hypothetical illustrations of teachers enacting different perspectives, orientations, or approaches. Empirical studies, portrayals, and analyses of the instructional practices of teachers that exemplify these holistic constructs in action, however, are rare. Although they provide insight into the overall pedagogical views and practice of teachers, developers and users of these general pedagogical constructs make little or no conceptual distinction between different forms of instructional behavior. For example, they do not differentiate between teaching skills such as wait time, checking for understanding, and providing feedback versus teaching strategies, such as jigsaw, lectures, and simulations. In addition, they do not examine the interactions among instructional practices associated with different perspectives or approaches; and do not problematize differences in teacher expertise within or between each perspective or orientation.

Some attempts have been made to conceptualize and order the array of instructional practices available to teachers. Two well known examples include Joyce and Weil's (1992) description of multiple models of teaching (analagous with our definition of teaching 'strategies' in the next section), and Marzano et al's (1992) classification of instructional approaches in terms of the kinds of student learning they are designed to support. Joyce and Weil (1992) identify twenty-one research based instructional models available to teachers, such as cooperative learning, concept attainment, direct instruction, and simulation. They cluster the models of teaching "into four families that share orientations toward human beings and how they learn" which they label the social family, the information-processing family, the personal family, and the behavioral systems family. The multiple models framework focuses on the component of instructional repertoire that we have labeled "instructional strategies". It does not explicitly consider what we have termed instructional organizers, concepts, tactics and skills, except in relation to the concept and implementation of specific models. Joyce and Weil (1992) allude to the possibility that teachers might conceive and implement their own models, but they do not provide any examples of this happening in practice.

Other scholars (e.g., Gunter, Estes, & Schwab, 1995; Saylor, Alexander, & Lewis, 1981) have constructed extended lists of teaching models or strategies adapted from the Joyce and Weil classification. Saylor, Alexander, and Lewis (1981), for example, add instructional practices like 'the lecture method', 'viewing/listening', 'practice/drill', and 'discussion/questioning', which closely resemble the kinds of 'instructing strategies' defined by Freiberg and Driscoll (1992) as 'universal teaching strategies' applicable across a variety of contexts, content, and learner characteristics (lecture, questioning and discussion, interactive practice, grouping, reflective learning, role play and simulation, and resources including AV and computers). Miller and Seller (1990) note that the additional practices incorporated in Saylor et al's list are not equivalent to those described by Joyce and Weil, because they are not connected to a specific theoretical orientation. Miller and Seller relate the Joyce and Weil's models of teaching to their three major curriculum positions/orientations, and describe some additional models of teaching not in Joyce and Weil's list, but which fit their definition and criteria for designation as a teaching model. They argue convincingly that users of the Joyce and Weil list should be open to inclusion of additional models that might be developed or found in practice.

While widely cited, use of the multiple models of teaching framework to describe, compare, or judge teachers' instructional knowledge and behaviours is notably modest in the literature. Joyce and colleagues associated with him produced numerous experimental studies and research instruments in the 1970's and 1980's designed to investigate teacher learning and implementation of multiple models of teaching in the classroom (see Joyce, Brown, & Peck, 1981). Unfortunately, even though the research support for most of the models is extensive, continued application and refinement of the models framework and research tools are not well represented in the current literature on teacher thinking and practice.

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