Pedagogy: Planning, Methods and Evaluation in the Chosen Subject
This domain asks whether you can plan, deliver and measure a lesson in your own subject. Questions are situational: a described classroom, a stated learning objective, or a test result that you must interpret.
Planning
- Herbartian five steps: preparation, presentation, comparison and association, generalisation, application.
- Objectives written in behavioural terms with revised Bloom verbs (remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create) plus a measurable outcome.
- A blueprint (table of specifications) balances content with objective level; without it, content validity cannot be claimed.
Methods and aids
- Inductive (examples to rule) and deductive (rule to examples); heuristic method (Armstrong); project method (Kilpatrick); analytic and synthetic approaches in mathematics and grammar.
- Self-paced variants: Dalton plan and programmed instruction (Skinner) with small frames, active response and immediate feedback.
- Dale's cone of experience: move from concrete to abstract; an aid supports a method but is not itself a method.
Evaluation
Formative assessment happens during learning and feeds back into teaching; summative assessment closes a unit or term; diagnostic assessment locates the specific error for remediation. Criterion-referenced tests compare performance to a set standard, norm-referenced tests to the group.
Worked example
An item is attempted by 100 students; 80 answer it correctly, so the difficulty index p = 0.80, an easy item. In the upper 27% group (27 students) 24 are correct; in the lower 27% group 8 are correct, so D = (24 - 8) / 27 = 0.59, strong discrimination. Reasoning: p reports difficulty, D reports whether the item separates achievers from non-achievers. An item can be easy yet still useful, but an easy item with low D tells you nothing about learning.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling a unit test formative; it is summative.
- Swapping reliability (consistency) with validity (measuring the intended construct).
- Assuming p = 0.9 is a good item; it is merely easy.
- Naming a chart or model as a teaching method.