Principles and Methods of Teaching / Instructional Strategies
Principles and Methods of Teaching / Instructional Strategies
This domain tests the match between what you want learners to do and how you teach it: the principle behind the method, the sequence of the lesson, and the questions you ask. Items often give you an objective and four methods, or a lesson transcript and ask which principle was violated.
Core rules
- Learner-centred principle: the learner does the cognitive work. A lesson where the teacher talks for 35 of 40 minutes is teacher-centred regardless of the activity's label.
- Sequence: known to unknown, simple to complex, concrete to abstract, part to whole (or whole to part for whole-language tasks).
- Objective quality: state observable behaviour, condition and criterion - 'By the end of the lesson, pupils will be able to name three causes of soil erosion, giving at least two examples', not 'to know erosion'.
- Method families: direct/explicit instruction (procedures and skills), demonstration (psychomotor, safety-critical), discussion, inquiry/discovery (Bruner), problem-based and project methods (Kilpatrick), cooperative learning (jigsaw, STAD), role play and simulation, field trips, team teaching, microteaching for practice.
- Cooperative learning requires positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, social skills and group processing - otherwise it is just group seating.
- Lesson architecture: set induction, progression, varied stimulus, guided and independent practice, closure, evaluation.
Worked example
'Teach JHS 2 learners to tie a square bandage.' The defensible choice is demonstration with guided practice: the skill is psychomotor and has a correct sequence, so the teacher models each step, learners imitate under supervision, then practise in pairs while the teacher circulates and corrects. Inquiry would risk learners practising an unsafe or wrong technique, and lecture gives no practice at all.
Traps that cost marks
- Naming a method without tying it to the objective or the learners' level.
- Writing objectives as teacher activities ('to explain…') instead of learner outcomes.
- Treating 'group work' as automatically cooperative.
- Forgetting closure and evaluation in the lesson plan.