Research based Best Practice Teaching and Learning
Dr. Martin Odudukudu

Many teachers are more concerned with content than with student interest. Many teachers who have not trained to develop lesson plans to address student interest will and often focus exclusively upon content. They do not help students to learn optimally, and students do not develop strategies to simplify tasks and/or develop increased interest in learning tasks. When students are not learning how to learn, they do not learn independently or build the knowledge base necessary to understand connections among concepts. Most students never learn that they could modify concepts, so they continue to believe that the purpose of learning is just to pass pencil and paper tests. They often wait upon teachers to provide the information; consequently, when students must prepare for and take tests they put up great efforts to accumulate much discrete and disconnected concepts in order to pass tests. However, without literacy of strategies, students do not engage learning tasks enough to develop familiarity, thus the preparation necessary to pass the common core tests; and many students do not see how school learning related to or address real life problems.

Without knowledge of the strategies or functions of discipline literacy, teacher focus is often restricted to helping students to accumulate disparate/disconnected concepts; they do not help students to see the need to understand the connections or functions of the concepts. Teachers who do not help students to understand relationships among concepts often simply help students to accumulate disparate concepts, and the teachers are said to be content-centered. They focus upon contents of instruction at the expense of student concerns (what students need to develop in order to understand concepts), and students do not develop understanding of or interest in learning tasks. However, students attend to tasks only in the extent that student can see advantage of tasks. When teacher fails to help student develop or understand connections among concepts of instructions, students continue to perceive and treat concepts as distinct from and unrelated to one another and to their needs. Students continue to believe that the purpose of learning tasks is to pass test; therefore, they memorize disconnected concepts to regurgitate during tests.

Students do not merely want to pass test; students also want to learn and/or to excel in what they choose to do/learn. Students put great efforts into learning; but they often find that the efforts they put into learning only yield little of what they really want. Without interest, students put up great efforts, but students often find that the only advantage of school learning,t eh only benefit for their efforts is to memorize and/or accumulate discrete and disconnected concepts and regurgitate them during tests. In other words, even though strategy learning may be more strategic, more efficient, effective and rewarding, memorization and/or accumulation of discrete and disconnected concepts which are more difficult are often the default alternative when teacher do not know of strategy teaching and learning or help students learn how to learn. However, Strategy Teaching and Learning is equivalent to helping student develop interest in learning; here, students also learn how concepts (learning tasks) also help students to more effectively gain advantage in their lives. In our training programs, we emphasis the needs for teachers to understand student interest; we emphasize how teachers may understand student concerns and help them to learn optimally.

Students do not engage in learning how to learn just by being hands-on or directly engaged with task. Student may be hands-on but not minds-on task. Hands-on tasks imply that student is engaged with the practical/physical perspective of learning. Being hands-on tasks or being engaged with the physical perspective of learning may influence student to exercise and use cognitive efforts; but this may happen only in the senses that student may sometimes be necessitate by nature to do so. In hands-on tasks, teacher’s concern is in regard to the physical but not cognitive responses to tasks. When teacher does not intentionally engage students to exercise student cognitive capacities, any student achievement in cognitive development would be unintended. Here, student cognition and the extent of student cognitive involvement in learning is contingent not purposeful. In other words, when student fails to cognitively engage tasks, and teacher does not initiated or guided students in the process, student cognitive exercise and/or development would only be contingent. Consequently, student do not learn how to learn or learn optimally. 

(1) Goal and Task Teaching and Learning (GTTL) is the innovative and very user friendly teaching and learning methods created by experienced teachers and researchers at Center for Development of Interest in Learning (CDOIL Inc.).

 (2) With the professional training in Goal and Task Teaching and Learning (GTTL) methods, teachers learn to engage students in hands-on as well as in Minds-on learning activities.

(3) Get our training/services, lesson plan and/or lesson plan templates, and give your students the push they need to meet the standard.


Strategy/Disciplinary Literacy

Recently, many writers have continued to emphasize the need to understand these perspectives of student interest, and they have developed or at least have suggested instructional models to reflect these research based immerging views/understanding of student learning. For example, Moore (2005) continue to expound talks about content and strategy disciplines, pointing out that with content literacy, student learn to read, without strategy literacy, students may know how to read, but such achievement does not translate and help student to explore knowledge in other domains. Moore (2005) accordingly also join in the clamor emphasizing the need to understand and apply principles of hand-on as well as mind-on teaching and learning. Carlile & Jordan (2005), in expounding the theory of student-centered teaching and learning, also differentiate between proactive and active learning. Gibbs (1995) emphasizes the same concept when he points out that student-centered learning is about active but not passive learning or passive rather than active teaching. We espouse these views and apply them to help students learn optimally.

Thought Processes vs. Thought Mechanisms

Cognition, when considered from the stand point of taking both subjective/pure and objective thinking as the same, one does not differentiate thought mechanism from a thought process. According to Allison (2001), however, how thought must be (or thought mechanism) in order to receives and/or perceives occurrences is not the same as thought process through which one determines and represents an occurrence as an object. Without the former, without a thought mechanism, one does not receive/perceive occurrences, but without a thought process, one would not and one does not develop and/or represent an occurrence as a unique object able to enter into unique relationships with others. In other words, a thought process is a method once found to be convenient, effective and efficient, and accordingly used frequently and continually. The result of frequently using a process is that the process may develop into a “second nature,” and a “second nature” may be referred to as a learning style.

To teach complex or higher order thinking, empiricist educators emphasize thought processes and related developments (learning styles) through which students may represent occurrences. They emphasize learning/dominant styles students develop and maintain because students find them convenient, effective and efficient. Paradoxically, an individual “may also to hold tight to behaviors that do not work,” Joyce et al (2009, P. 321). Student may develop attachment to a learning style that may not be the best. When teacher emphasizes student learning style over and above student capacities they conflate thought process with thought mechanism, and the teaching may not be optimal; teacher is more concerned with a less thought product than the thought itself. Therefore, teacher may be helping students to develop process that students already found effective and efficient, and that develop on their own accord, but not thought (mechanism) through which student receives and develop understanding and/or change an ineffective process/style that student may find to be ineffective and inefficient.
Reflective Learning and Interest

Interest, reflected in what student does in an actual task situation depends upon the thinking capacity that student deploys prior to getting into the situation. Interest that guides or through which student determines what a student does in a task situation is directly related to student thinking that has gone before. Through thinking, student determines advantage of tasks or situation and what student must do in order to secure determined/represented advantage. Therefore, with practiced thinking, students develops better understanding of perspectives of things, and student develops a personal understanding of what student must do to gain advantage. Consequently, when teacher emphasizes and focuses instructional to helping student develop student thinking, student learn to develop increased understanding of perspectives/advantage, and student tends to persevere with tasks. In other words, student interest is a function of or dependent upon how well student can figure out the advantage of a tasks.

For example, in a task situation, student may finds tasks as expected or as difficult. When student finds tasks as expected, student simple engages tasks and continue to express interest. Otherwise, student does not continue to express interest for and/or engage such a task; rather, student is said to encounter a hindrance or an obstacle. This may be because student has not explored and/or determined the advantage of the task clearly enough; the student has not acquired capacity to see or determine advantage of the task. Therefore, at the occurrence of hindrance or obstacle, student does not continue to engage task or secure a determined advantage. Rather, student may withdraw from task to size up the situation and/or determine advantage of task or to figure out a next best option. Thus, once again, student may embark upon figuring out a next best option, and student is said to operate purely and thus independently of an object and/or an actual task situation. 

Accordingly, in an actual task situation, thinking which had been seeking to secure an object as planned or as determined and had therefore been said to be objective must now again change from being objective to being subjective. Therefore, an objective thinking intended to secure an advantage in an actual task situation may also include subjective thinking or thinking that is independent of an object but intended to clarify an advantage of a situation. In other words, subjective thinking which is intended to clarify an advantage, and thus independent of an actual task situation, may not completely be without an object. For, thinking must ascribe certain characteristics and as it have a focus/object or refer to an object to determine it.

Similarly, pure/subjective thinking intended to clarify an advantage in an actual situation, and thus independent of an object, may also include objective thinking or thinking that responds directly to the demands of object in an objective situation. For, thinking, when pure (when all fails and one must think with increased independence of or without object) refers to an intended purpose of or an advantage of self as a standard in virtue of which one determine an object as good enough for self. On the other hand, when thinking is objective, thinking is said to relating to external objects or objects in an actual task situation. Here, thinking does not completely be or operate without referring to an object as standard. For, otherwise, one would be seeking to secure an object only because it appears, one would be seeking to secure an undefined/undetermined object, and this may be impossible.

In the training services we offer, we emphasis the importance of understanding student interest; we emphasize how student actions are mediated by student thoughts/understanding. We develop the instructional methods of Goal and Task Teaching and Learning (GTTL), With the GTTL, teachers only slightly modify their instructional delivery methods; teachers integrate discipline and/or strategy literacy methods with their usually overly content loaded instructional delivery methods. Here, the emphasis is not merely about how best to deliver content or how best to help student receive/accumulate concepts/content; rather, the emphasis is about how best to deliver instruction and to engage students in developing increased interest in learning.  

(1) Goal and Task Teaching and Learning (GTTL) is the innovative and very user friendly teaching and learning methods created by experienced teachers and researchers at Center for Development of Interest in Learning (CDOIL Inc.).

 (2) With the professional training in Goal and Task Teaching and Learning (GTTL) methods, teachers learn to engage students in hands-on as well as in Minds-on learning activities.

(3) Get our training/services, lesson plan and/or lesson plan templates, and give your students the push they need to meet the standard: (cut and paste); cdoil.org/request or cdoil.org/pub