Approach to learning

THE SEQUENCING OF CONTENT:
INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE APPROACHES

1. Sequence

An important issue in lesson planning is the way materials are sequenced. The syllabus provides the teacher with the knowledge of the ideas which are to be taught. The teacher has to interpret syllabus statements by selecting those aspects which are appropriate and by organising the material is such a way that itcan readily be comprehended by the pupils given their background and cognitive ability.

Two major components of lesson content are: (i) key ideas/concepts and (ii) examples. In the majority of lessons, teaching centres around the learning of particular key ideas or skills. These might be:

a grammar rule in language studies;
the way an author uses an analogy in literature studies;
aclassification of life forms or parts of an organism in biology;
a law in physics or economics;
a formula or type of solution in mathematics;
a key relationship in history or geography.

These focal generalisations are supported by the use of an example/case study or a number of examples. In History or Geography, for example, the situation in a particular time or place will be discussed anda specific key idea, or ideas, set out in the syllabus will be used to provide understanding. In science, pupils may, for similar reasons, carry out experimental work; in economics, or other subjects, pupils may be involved in data handling exercises. Pupils in maths or language lessons may be provided with a set of problems which illustrate the concept.

With reference to a topic in yoursubject area, list the steps you would take in teaching it. Explain why you have used that sequence.

2. What types of sequence are commonly found?

Consider the two language lessons given below. These are designed to teach ‘The Passive’.
Lesson 1

1. A newspaper article with examples of the passive is given to pupils.
2. Pupils answer set of questions on the article.
3. Example of passiveverb identified; pupils find others & work out how passive is formed.
4. Pupils answer a further set of questions on the article which focus on the passive.
5. Pupils look at examples of sentences using the passive & answer questions focusing on the lack of an agent in many passive sentences.
6. A definition is then developed which explains the passive.
7. Further examples are provided to testunderstanding.

Lesson 2

1. A definition is developed which explains the passive.
2. Examples are provided for pupils to work on to test understanding.

The sequence in Lesson 1 is an example of what is called an inductive approach and that in Lesson 2 is an example of a deductive approach.

With reference to defining key ideas and using examples what is the difference between the twolessons?

We will now look in more detail at the difference between deductive and inductive approaches.

3. What is meant by a deductive approach?

Let us start by looking an example of lesson which just happens to be in mathematics. A teacher might start a lesson on arithmetic progression by writing the following definition on the board:

An arithmetic progression (A.P.) is a sequencewith a common difference.
[Similarly a geographer might define the landuse distribution in a city by drawing a diagram of a typical pattern on the board. A language teacher might state a grammar rule, e.g. homophones are words with same sound but different meanings. A scientist might state a law, e.g. P1V1/T1 = P2V2/T2 Etc.]

Returning to the maths teacher, he or she then explains what is meantby ‘common difference’ (as the language teacher would explain what is meant by ‘same sound’ or the scientist the meaning of P1, V1, etc.)

The maths teacher might continue:

“Let the first term of the sequence be ‘a’ and the common difference be ‘d’, then: a, a + d, a + 2d, ........a + (n- 1)d is an A. P.”

The teacher would then give examples and provide others for the pupils to...