Component Two: Instructional Skills

If you observe experienced and effective teachers throughout an academic year, you will see them applying an extensive repertoire of instructional skills. However, in most cases, you will not hear teachers specifically identify or even discuss those skills when reflecting on their teaching.

Instructional skills refer to simpler teacher behaviors that are usually not driven by a predetermined process or a theory. They do not provide theory specific results. In terms of student learning, instructional skills are more like sandpaper, whereas, strategies are like table-saws. If you want to make a bigger difference in student learning -- use strategies. That said, in carpentry, remember that you need both for a finished product. Do you need both skills and strategies in education? From our experience and our experiences with other teachers, applying the strategies without the accompanying skills reduces the effectiveness of the strategies.

The most common resources for accessing this rich instructional area are works such as Madeline Hunter's (1985) Instructional Theory Into Practice program; Saphier and Gower's (1987) work in The Skillful Teacher; Good and Brohpy's (1994) work in Looking in Classrooms; and Cooper's (1986) book Classroom Teaching Skills. Those four sources describe a variety of specific instructional skills and the research literature that supports their use. Waxman and Walberg (1991) summarize current research related to some of those instructional skills (note that in most cases this research evaluates effects but does not evolve out of a theoretical framework of teaching and learning). A number of other texts provide a variety of skills and some strategies [see Arends' (1991) book, Learning to Teach, and Lange, McBeath and Hebert's (1995) book, Strategies and Methods for Student-Centered Instruction]. Other works focus on specific types of instructional skills, such as Morgan and Saxton's (1994) book Asking Better Questions. Again, this list in no way exhausts the myriad of instructional skills, rather, it provides a sampling of the contemporary literature related to instructional skills.

For the most part, these skills have existed (although not labeled) for hundreds of years. In Millar's (1897) book, School Management, he identifies a number of the instructional skills identified in the more extensive programs such as Hunters, Saphier and Gowers, Brophy and Goods, and Cooper. He mentions skills such as framing questions so that every child is held on the alert, then after having time to think, selecting the child in most need of the question to respond. He goes on to argue against the habit of asking students to raise their hands -- only a few students will do the work.

Of course we now realize that although that process holds students accountable, it can be made more powerful by weaving in time for students to think and discuss with a partner or with a small cooperative group prior to responding. As well, we want students asking and answering their own questions related to authentic and meaningful tasks. You might like to know that Millar discussed those ideas as well.

His section on motivation is as appropriate today as it was in 1897. Rather than employ the terms intrinsic and extrinsic, he 'substituted' natural and synthetic -- and he warns against the use of synthetic motivation; foreshadowing the book Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Cohen.

Although instructional skills are less complex than instructional strategies, they are nonetheless important instructional practices. First, most of the skills in use today have stood the test of time -- teachers have found them to work in order to effectively engage students in learning. Second, (and intentionally repetitively) the skills are critically important in facilitating the teacher's application of the more complex instructional tactics (such as Inside Outside Circles and Place Mat) and instructional strategies (such as Concept Attainment and Cooperative Learning). They are also useful in the midst of playing out the 'teachable moment.'

No doubt as times have changed, so has our clarity and understanding of those instructional skills. And most certainly, we have a much more precise understanding of the effect or lack of effect of those instructional skills on student learning.

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