Teaching Processes in Social Studies Classrooms and Prescriptive Instructional Theories

Abstract

An exploratory study of teaching styles in 40 social studies classrooms was described. Observational data were cluster‐analysed and three teaching styles were described. It was found that inexperienced teachers favoured an informational teaching style. The implications of the study for the possible empirical testing of prescriptive, instructional theories were discussed, and it was suggested that sufficient variance of teaching style could be found in natural, intact classrooms to justify optimism about the feasibility of using these classrooms in such empirical tests.

Computer Assisted Adult Interactive Learning in a Multi-Cultural Environment

“…Most of the Asian students had been tutor-oriented learners (Zhan, 1995) while they were learning in their native countries. Their original learning process was described by Hacker and Carter (1987) as a kind of knowledge transmission, but they tended to become peer-oriented learners when they studied abroad (Chalmers & Volet, 1997). Because Asian adult learners have had more opportunities to undertake e-mail interactive learning overseas than they had in their own countries, this has made them more likely to accept this new learning approach.…”

Constructing a typology of teaching styles using a cluster analysis algorithm with iterative relocation of entities

“…Each updated Similarity Matrix and group membership is returned to the clustering procedure which ceases when only two groups remain. The pattern is represented as a dendrogram and a section of this, for the sample studied (n=40) (Hacker and Carter, 1987), is illustrated in Figure 2. Everitt (1980: 75) draws attention to validity issues and notes that several intuitively reasonable methods for validating clusters have been suggested.…”

“…As a consequence, a high degree of confidence can be placed on the natural grouping of the three clusters which emerged to form a typology of social studies teaching styles. The three approaches to teaching social studies, identified above, were resolved from this analysis and are characterised in terms of pen-portraits elsewhere (Hacker and Carter, 1987).…”

“…The groups resolved from the clustering process we~ labelled The Social Scientist, (n=22), The Knowledge Transmitter, (n=15) and The Reflective Thinker, (n=3). These are characterised as "pen portraits" of teaching style by Hacker and Carter (1987).After describing the data collection procedures adopted for this study, the purpose of this paper is to delineate the cluster analysis technique used to construct the typology, referred to above, with special reference to an innovative Fortran IV program. The latter allows for the relocation of entities as the clustering algorithm proceeds, this overcoming problems associated with initial poor partitions as the group forming processes are developed.…”

“…The groups resolved from the clustering process we~ labelled The Social Scientist, (n=22), The Knowledge Transmitter, (n=15) and The Reflective Thinker, (n=3). These are characterised as "pen portraits" of teaching style by Hacker and Carter (1987).…”