You know what you want to teach. You know what you want the students to learn. Write that down first. Now break that down into a series of activities: what are you going to get the students to do? If you’re new to this, write out the activities as instructions, preferably in bullet points so you can read them while you’re standing in front of people. So now you’ve got a list of activities. Take a few steps back. What will they need to know before hand? What about before that? And before that? Write out the activities in the order you’re going to ask the students to do them. How long will each one take?
What next? Now take your lesson plan and think about context and scaffolding.
Look into the work of Dunn and Dunn (Dunn and Dunn 1987). You can find a summary and critique of their work in a report on learning styles published in 2004 (Coffield et al 2004). You can also find more on the ILSA website including a poster.i Because I’m looking for hands-on suggestions that you can immediately embed in your lesson plan, I’ve summarised what I think of as the practical implications behind the theory. As you can see from the report I mention above, there are lots of ‘models’ of how people learn. One thing of particular note about Dunn and Dunn is that they considered context (like the temperature of the room or sociological pressures) as well as individual learning preferences, or how people like to think.
So here we go. Dunn and Dunn want you to consider environmental factors. For example, be aware of the sound, light, temperature, and design of the room. Change the lay out of chairs. Ask students to inform you if they are hot or cold or distracted by bright sunlight.
They also suggest that you consider emotional factors. Design strategies to encourage motivation, persistence, responsibility and engagement with tasks. Mention the support structure around your course as well as organizational and external structures. Encourage a sense of belonging through 1) group work 2) linking to other courses the student is taking 3) mentioning extra-curricular activities in class and 4) discussing, for example, a wider artistic / cultural / writers’ community.
For Dunn and Dunn, sociological factors are also important. Make sure that learning isn’t always done in the same way. Vary group work, independent work, self-directed and structured / open approaches. Introduce some team-work and some tutorial-based critique. Don’t always follow the same pattern because some people learn better from quiet reflection and others learn better by explaining the concept to others. Build in safety nets, such as a set of ground rules and a list of activity steps for group work. Make ‘get into groups’ or ‘get into pairs’ structured rather than open. Build in activities which allow the students to get to know their peers.
Dunn and Dunn also consider physiological factors. Because they will automatically make you more aware of your teaching strategies, employ ideas drawn from, for example, the VARK system (Fleming and Mills 1992) regarding auditory, visual, tactile and kinaesthetic perceptual preferences, but without making them specific to individual learners. You might also like to look into Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (2006).
As you’ll see from the report and from the poster, Dunn and Dunn discuss psychological factors. For example, give students the ‘big picture’ and ‘step-by-step’ instructions (Pask 1976 and Gregorc 1979). Allow students to see the advantages and disadvantages of ‘jumping in’ and of pausing for reflection first.
Now put up some scaffolding (Jonassen et al 2004: 83 – 84 and Hammond et al 2003: 15-16). Scaffolding means providing a support structure around each activity that allows for the task to start in the students’ comfort zone – or existing area of knowledge and expertise – and then move outside it.
1) Consider the ways in which students manipulate and think about material to discover their ‘comfort zone.’ Attempt to stretch it. Provide a framework in the form of guidance and assistance whilst tasks are performed. Take any task which will involve students learning new material or techniques. You can express this in terms of what you want them to do: I want them to write a short story based on a reading of Edgar Allan Poe. Or you can express this in terms of the wider implication for the students: The students will be able to communicate well when they seek employment. That is, the same task could have both of these outcomes. Break down the task into its component parts. Keep going until you have got to the most basic level of the task. (For example, literacy or the ability to interact socially.)
2) Now look at the way you plan to set up the task with students. Take several steps backwards and start with a task the students know how to do already. Overlap this stage of the task with something they do not know how to do.
3) Relate the task to students’ current everyday experience or prior knowledge using ‘advance organizers’ (Ausubel 1960). This could be anecdotal. For example, lead into an activity with: Can you remember a time when you had to organize something, a party for instance? What skills did you need? (Apply those skills to the organization of an essay.) Or it could relate to the syllabus. For example: Can you remember how we took apart short story X to see how it worked? (Does the beginning of a novel the students wrote follow the same rules?) Or: Do you remember how a couple of weeks ago you edited your work for clichés in each other’s work? (Do they need to edit for clichés when they redraft the short story they wrote?) The key is that they have the prior knowledge or experience firmly in mind through a specific activity – discussion in pairs, close reading, preparing a presentation, for example – before you move on.
3) Structure each aspect of the task. Write down the instructions in baby steps, then break down those baby steps. It feels over the top, but you may come across an assumption on your part – a skill that you were taking for granted. Although openness and flexibility are important concepts, leave these until the final stages of the task.
4) Gradually add levels to the task to extend it. Each should overlap with the last. It should be possible to access the task at any of these levels – the most basic and the most advanced. The most challenging levels are those which are outside the students’ comfort zone.
5) Provide various support activities around these most challenging levels. For instance, do a version of part of the task in front of them; explain the steps which the students need to go through to complete the activity in (seemingly) far too much detail; get them to do a practice run and report back; set activities which practice one aspect of the ‘harder’ task. For example, if the task is to get into a group and produce a newspaper containing original stories, one might need to practice I.T. skills, information gathering and group work before even mentioning the task itself.
6) Provide different kinds of continuous assessment that reflect the stages of the task, not just the end result.
7) Refer to wider support available within your course, the organization, the work-based environment or the community at large.
8) Use relevancy. Involve real world examples, practical applications of the task and transferable skills. Contrast this with ideas about learning for learning’s sake, just because it’s interesting. It is possible to set up a task using relevancy. For instance, imagine that we work for The Times newspaper and we’ve been asked to produce a special Sunday supplement. Build in conceptual dilemmas and abstract ideas: in this example these could be to do with ethics or the nature of hegemonic discourse or narrative structure and the meaning of storytelling.
9) Introduce evaluative, reflexive, open-ended, flexible and independent aspects to the task, which move further and further outside the students’ original comfort zone. Even if only some students take part in these, all students will be able to witness others taking the task this far and one can refer to the skills learnt next time, which provides a kind of peer-based scaffolding.
10) At this stage, you begin to remove the scaffolding. Take away aspects of the support you had in place, bit-by-bit. The students are now on their own – or at least you are providing a simulation of their being on their own. Refer back to the last time they used the skills and techniques they will use in the task you have set them. Their comfort zone has now expanded.
i For more about Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles, see Coffield et al 2004 pp 20 – 35 and the ILSA website. For a list of relevant publications look at the ICELS website and click on ‘Bios’ / ‘Dunn, Kenneth & Rita’. You can find a poster designed by Susan Rundle, illustrating the key approaches, on the ILSA website.
Ausubel, D 1960 ‘The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material’ Journal of Educational Psychology 51 pp 267-272 cited by Hammond et al pp 43 – 44.
Coffield F, Ecclestone, K, Hall, E, and Moseley, D 2004 Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: systematic and critical review London: Learning and Skills Development Agency. Available from various websites, including this one.
Dunn, R., Dunn, K., and Price, G. E. (1987) Manual of the learning styles inventory. Laurence, KS: Price Systems.
Fleming, N. D. and Mills, C. (1992) ‘Not Another Inventory, Rather a Catalyst for Reflection’ To Improve the Academy. Vol. 11. Available from here.
Gardner, H. (2006) Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice New York: Basic Books.
Gregorc, A. F. (1979) ‘Learning / teaching styles: Potent forces behind them’. Educational Leadership. 36 pp. 234-236 cited by Coffield et al pp 15 – 19.
Hammond, N., Trapp A. and Zinkiewicz, L. (2003) Applying Psychology Disciplinary Knowledge to Psychology Teaching and Learning: A review of selected psychological research and theory with implications for teaching practice. Report and Evaluation Series No 2 LTSN Psychology, University of York. Available from here.
Jonassen, D. and Grabowski, B. L. (2004) ‘Epistemological Development: An Implicit Entailment of Constructivist Learning Environments’ Seel, N. M. and Dijkstra, S. eds. Curriculum, Plans, and Processes in Instructional Design: International Perspectives. London: Routledge. pp. 83 – 84.
Pask, G. (1976) ‘Styles and strategies of learning’ British Journal of Educational Psychology 46 pp 128-148, cited by Hammond et al 2003, p 20.