Six strategies that work in education

There is a new – fairly damning – report by the American National Council on Teacher Quality about the textbooks used to train teachers in the United States. The essence of the report: the textbooks do not teach teachers what they need to know.

More interesting still is that the researchers focused on 6 proven strategies that work, which often go unmentioned or are examined only briefly in the textbooks. What are those 6 strategies, and do you have them?

The first two help students take in new information:

• Linking images to words.
  Young or old, everyone takes in information along two primary routes – auditory (for the spoken word) and visual (for the written word and graphic representation). Students learn more when new information is explained in both ways.
• Linking abstract concepts to concrete representations.
  Teachers should give concrete examples that clarify the overarching ideas, and also explain how the examples and the big ideas connect to one another.

The next two make sure students connect different pieces of information, deepening their understanding:

• Asking probing questions.
  Asking students ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘what if’ and ‘how do you know’ obliges them to clarify their knowledge of the key ideas and to link those ideas together.
• Alternating worked examples with problems students have to solve themselves.
  Explanation alongside a worked solution helps students grasp the underlying principles, so they move beyond mere problem-solving procedures.

The last two help students remember what they have learned:

• Spacing out practice.
  Students should practise material several times after learning it, with each practice session or review separated by weeks or even months.
• Assessing in order to strengthen retention.
  Beyond the value of formative assessment (helping a teacher decide what to teach) and summative assessment (establishing what students have learned), assessment that prompts students to recall previously learned information helps that information stick.

Freely translated from an article by The Economy of Meaning.