What are the different teaching approaches?

What are the different teaching approaches?

The approach that an educator takes in the classroom is as individual as their accent: it is a culmination of their background, context and personal preference. However, you can broadly break teaching approaches down into a few different categories.

A teacher may use any combination of these different methods, and may change their approach depending on context, teaching phase and the content they are delivering.

Popular approaches in the classroom:

• Phonics
• The Montessori Method
• Socratic questioning
• Retrieval practice
• Project-based learning
• Teach Like A Champion
• Mantle of the Expert
• Dialogic teaching

Teacher-centred approaches and child-centred approaches

Very broadly speaking, teaching approaches can be split into two different categories: teacher-centred and child-centred. However, many teachers will draw on elements of both of these.

Teacher-centred approaches position the teacher as the expert in the classroom, and the students as the novices. Such approaches are supported by theories about “behaviourism”, drawn from the work of researchers including Edward Thorndike, Ivan Pavlov and Burrhus Frederic Skinner.

Child-centred approaches, on the other hand, emphasise the child’s role in the learning process. In these approaches, the child may be given the opportunity to decide what is learned, how it is learned and where the learning takes place. These approaches are considered “constructivist”, and are based on the work of researchers including Jean Piaget.

Teacher-led approaches

The following teaching methods may be found in a classroom where the approach is teacher-centred:

Lecture

The lecture style puts the teacher at the front of the classroom, delivering the content, while the students take notes. Sometimes referred to as “chalk and talk”, a modern lecture might also include visual images, written notes on a handout, or a display of key points on a projector or whiteboard.

In secondary schools, a lecture might dominate part or all of a lesson. Students may take notes using the Cornell note-taking method. Sometimes lectures can be delivered to whole year groups or to targeted groups of students.

This method is less common in the primary phase, where younger children would struggle to stay focused.

Direct instruction

In this approach, the teacher delivers the content by explicitly explaining a concept, rather than relying upon the student to discover the information on their own. They will give examples of what they mean and what they don’t mean, and check understanding through questioning.

Direct instruction will usually lead into guided practice activities, before students begin independent practice.

Modelling and live modelling

As the expert, the teacher will demonstrate - or ”model” - what they expect the student’s work to look like. This might involve using pre-prepared examples to dissect with the class, as well as “live modelling” (completing a task in front of the class, perhaps using a visualiser). When live modelling, the teacher may also model the thinking process behind the task, and take input from the students.

Prepared models could be examples of student work that the teacher has chosen. This could be something that the teacher uses in the middle of a lesson, as a student produces it, or from a previous lesson.

Low-stakes quizzing

”Low-stakes quizzes” are a type of informal assessment that is conducted frequently, and has no bearing on the students’ final assessed mark for a unit or course. Students’ responses will instead be used to inform teaching. Questions are usually multiple-choice or closed-answer.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding involves offering targeted support to help students complete independent work. This might take the form of sentence prompts, mind maps, essay plans or teacher-led explanations of the thought processes behind an idea. Types of scaffolds vary depending on the phase or focus of the class.

Questioning

Questioning occurs in both teacher-centred and child-centred approaches, but the types of questions may differ. With a teacher-led approach, questioning may be used primarily to monitor students’ understanding and correct misconceptions. Types of questioning technique might include: cold-call questioning, dialogic questioning, oral-drill questions, open questions, closed questions and questioning using the Bloom’s Taxonomy of remembering, applying and evaluating. 

Hinge questions and key questions could be planned as key formative assessment points; if students are unable to answer these questions, teachers can plan reteaching to eliminate misconceptions.

Drilling

The term ”drilling” refers to the use of repetition to support the memorisation of information. It might involve: call and response (sometimes called choral response) or repeated practice of written responses.

Self-quizzing

”Self-quizzing” involves students testing themselves on a topic they have already covered with a teacher, either as a homework task or an independent task in the classroom. A knowledge organiser may be used to support this activity. 

Child-led approaches

Enquiry-based learning

In enquiry-based learning the teacher sets the students a task, or poses a question, and then facilitates them in their discovery of information. The teacher may provide students with books or technology needed to uncover the information. They may also teach the thinking skills needed to determine whether information is reliable or relevant.

Enquiry-based learning may be split into four categories: confirmation inquiry, structured inquiry, guided enquiry and open inquiry. 

Some enquiry-based learning activities include: field work on a school trip, research projects, research for context, group work presentations and other experiment-based tasks.

Questioning

With a child-centred approach, questioning in the classroom often prioritises critical thinking skills. Teachers may refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy in their questioning to encourage students to draw on what are known as “higher order” thinking skills - asking students to analyse or evaluate, rather than simply recall information.

Role play

Often seen as a task for early years classrooms or drama studios, role play may be used in a variety of subjects with students of all ages. For example, secondary history students might be asked to take on the roles of historical characters when learning about life in Victorian England. Or primary pupils may be asked to act as customers and cafe owners as a way to practise addition and subtraction in a real-world context.

Mantle of the Expert might be considered a more intensive role play experience. In this approach, students take part in an immersive role play, where they are tasked with a problem and positioned as experts who have been asked to find the solution. For example, a dinosaur egg is discovered in the playground, and the children take on the role of archaeologists to take care of it.

Teacher in role or question and answer sessions

A popular method in the drama classroom, this involves the teacher taking on the role of a character, who students then have the opportunity to question, in order to understand a concept in more depth. The students themselves may not take on roles, but the teacher must respond to them in character.

Expeditionary-based learning

In this approach, students go outside the classroom to find real-world examples of what they’re learning about. For instance, if students are learning about coastal patterns, they might go to the coast to try to observe these patterns for themselves. Outdoors-based learning experiences, such as Forest Schools or Beach Schools, come under this umbrella.

Pair work and group work

Activities in which students work together in pairs or small groups may be used in teacher-led classrooms. However, these activities are more often prioritised by teachers who favour a child-led approach.

In pair work or group work the students work collaboratively on an activity with peers. The make-up of the groups may be decided by the teacher or chosen by the students. Sometimes the activity will have a defined outcome and allocated roles for each member of the group. Alternatively, it could involve a more general research task, in which students determine the outcome. The teacher may take on the role of facilitator, while the students are in charge of their own learning.

Personalised learning

When a teacher adopts a “personalised learning” approach, students are given the freedom to choose their learning method for themselves, and then produce their own work in a form of their choosing. The teacher may even give the freedom of allowing the students to choose their topic and make choices based on their own prior learning and interests.

Project-based learning

Project-based learning is when students work independently of the teacher to solve a problem or respond to a question, over a period of time. The teacher may set a task or students might devise their own task under guidance from the teacher. The project could last a week or as long as a half-term.

Active learning

Active learning involves students being vocal and physically active in the classroom. This can be as simple as tasks that require them to move from their seats during the course of the lesson and move around the room to different stations, where they may be asked to demonstrate that they have understood a concept or to communicate an opinion - perhaps by contributing to a mind map. Another example would be a “jigsaw” activity, in which students are placed in small groups and positioned as “experts” who must move around the room, delivering content to groups of their peers.

These approaches suit problem-solving tasks, and require the discrete teaching of collaboration skills. Focus is on the information students learn but also on the skills they develop in the process of learning it.

To find more...

These methods are just some of the different approaches teachers use to deliver content. Each school and teacher has their own preferences.

If you would like to find out more, then there are many good books available on teaching approaches.

Kirsty Ward, course tutor at Mid Essex Scitt, suggests reading Teaching and Learning by Alex Moore. “This is essential reading for teachers who want to find out more about teaching styles,” she says.