kumpulan bahan method of teaching

                                KUMPULAN BAHAN METHOD OF TEACHING

* MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE

The theory of multiple intelligences was proposed by Howard Gardner in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences as a model of intelligence that differentiates it into specific (primarily sensory) "modalities", rather than seeing it as dominated by a single general ability.

Gardner argues that there is a wide range of cognitive abilities, and that there are only very weak correlations among them. For example, the theory postulates that a child who learns to multiply easily is not necessarily more intelligent than a child who has more difficulty on this task. The child who takes more time to master multiplication may best learn to multiply through a different approach, may excel in a field outside mathematics, or may be looking at and understanding the multiplication process at a fundamentally deeper level. Such a fundamental understanding can result in slowness and can hide a mathematical intelligence potentially higher than that of a child who quickly memorizes the multiplication table despite possessing a shallower understanding of the process of multiplication.

intelligence tests and psychometrics have generally found high correlations between different aspects of intelligence, rather than the low correlations which Gardner's theory predicts, supporting the prevailing theory of general intelligent rather than multiple intelligences (MI). The theory has been widely criticized by mainstream psychology for its lack of empirical evidence, and its dependence on subjective judgement. Certain models of alternative education employ the approaches suggested by the theory.

Gardner articulated seven criteria for a behavior to be considered an intelligence.These were that the intelligences showed:

1. Potential for brain isolation by brain damage,
2. Place in evolutionary history,
3. Presence of core operations,
4. Susceptibility to encoding (symbolic expression),
5. A distinct developmental progression,
6. The existence of savants, prodigies and other exceptional people,
7. Support from experimental psychology and psychometrics findings.

Gardner chose eight abilities that he held to meet these criteria: spatial, linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. He later suggested that existential and moral intelligence may also be worthy of inclusion.

Logical-mathematical

This area has to do with logic, abstractions, reasoning and numbers and critical thinking. This also has to do with having the capacity to understand the underlying principles of some kind of causal system.Logical reasoning is closely linked to fluid intelligence and to general intelligence (g factor).

Spatial

Main article: Spatial intelligence (psychology)

This area deals with spatial judgment and the ability to visualize with the mind's eye. Spatial ability is one of the three factors beneath g in the hierarchical model of intelligence.

Linguistic

People with high verbal-linguistic intelligence display a facility with words and languages. They are typically good at reading, writing, telling stories and memorizing words along with dates. Verbal ability is one of the most g-loaded abilities. This type of intelligence is associated with the Verbal IQ in WAIS-III.

Bodily-kinesthetic

Main article: Kinesthetic learning

The core elements of the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence are control of one's bodily motions and the capacity to handle objects skillfully. Gardner elaborates to say that this also includes a sense of timing, a clear sense of the goal of a physical action, along with the ability to train responses.

People who have bodily-kinesthetic intelligence should learn better by involving muscular movement (e.g. getting up and moving around into the learning experience), and be generally good at physical activities such as sports, dance, acting, and making things.

Gardner believes that careers that suit those with this intelligence include: athletes, pilots, dancers, musicians, actors, surgeons, builders, police officers, and soldiers. Although these careers can be duplicated through virtual simulation, they will not produce the actual physical learning that is needed in this intelligence.

Musical

Further information: auditory learning

This area has to do with sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, and music. People with a high musical intelligence normally have good pitch and may even have absolute pitch, and are able to sing, play musical instruments, and compose music. Since there is a strong auditory component to this intelligence, those who are strongest in it may learn best via lecture. They will sometimes use songs or rhythms to learn. They have sensitivity to rhythm, pitch, meter, tone, melody or timbre.

Interpersonal

This area has to do with interaction with others. In theory, individuals who have high interpersonal intelligence are characterized by their sensitivity to others' moods, feelings, temperaments and motivations, and their ability to cooperate in order to work as part of a group. According to Gardner in How Are Kids Smart: Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, "Inter- and Intra- personal intelligence is often misunderstood with being extroverted or liking other people..." Those with this intelligence communicate effectively and empathize easily with others, and may be either leaders or followers. They typically learn best by working with others and often enjoy discussion and debate.

Gardner believes that careers that suit those with this intelligence include sales, politicians, managers, teachers, counselors and social workers.

Intrapersonal

This area has to do with introspective and self-reflective capacities. This refers to having a deep understanding of the self; what your strengths/ weaknesses are, what makes you unique, being able to predict your own reactions/emotions.

Naturalistic

This area has to do with nurturing and relating information to one’s natural surroundings. Examples include classifying natural forms such as animal and plant species and rocks and mountain types. This ability was clearly of value in our evolutionary past as hunters, gatherers, and farmers; it continues to be central in such roles as botanist or chef.

Existential

Some proponents of multiple intelligence theory proposed spiritual or religious intelligence as a possible additional type. Gardner did not want to commit to a spiritual intelligence, but suggested that an "existential" intelligence may be a useful construct. The hypothesis of an existential intelligence has been further explored by educational researchers.

* THE GRAMMAR TRANSLATION METHOD

The grammar-translation method is a method of teaching foreign languages derived from the classical (sometimes called traditional) method of teaching Greek and Latin. In grammar-translation classes, students learn grammatical rules and then apply those rules by translating sentences between the target language and their native language. Advanced students may be required to translate whole texts word-for-word. The method has two main goals: to enable students to read and translate literature written in the target language, and to further students’ general intellectual development.

History and philosophy

The grammar-translation method originated from the practice of teaching Latin. In the early 1500s, Latin was the most widely-studied foreign language due to its prominence in government, academia, and business.However, during the course of the century the use of Latin dwindled, and it was gradually replaced by English, French, and Italian. After the decline of Latin, the purpose of learning it in schools changed. Whereas previously students had learned Latin for the purpose of communication, it came to be learned as a purely academic subject.

Throughout Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the education system was formed primarily around a concept called faculty psychology. This theory dictated that the body and mind were separate and the mind consisted of three parts: the will, emotion, and intellect. It was believed that the intellect could be sharpened enough to eventually control the will and emotions. The way to do this was through learning classical literature of the Greeks and Romans, as well as mathematics. Additionally, an adult with such an education was considered mentally prepared for the world and its challenges.

At first it was believed that teaching modern languages was not useful for the development of mental discipline and thus they were left out of the curriculum. When modern languages did begin to appear in school curricula in the 19th century, teachers taught them with the same grammar-translation method as was used for classical Latin and Greek. As a result, textbooks were essentially copied for the modern language classroom. In the United States of America, the basic foundations of this method were used in most high school and college foreign language classrooms.

Principles and goals

There are two main goals to grammar-translation classes. One is to develop students’ reading ability to a level where they can read literature in the target language. The other is to develop students’ general mental discipline. The users of foreign language wanted simply to note things of their interest in the literature of foreign languages. Therefore, this method focuses on reading and writing and has developed techniques which facilitate more or less the learning of reading and writing only. As a result, speaking and listening are overlooked.

Method

Grammar-translation classes are usually conducted in the students’ native language. Grammar rules are learned deductively; students learn grammar rules by rote, and then practice the rules by doing grammar drills and translating sentences to and from the target language. More attention is paid to the form of the sentences being translated than to their content. When students reach more advanced levels of achievement, they may translate entire texts from the target language. Tests often consist of the translation of classical texts.

There is not usually any listening or speaking practice, and very little attention is placed on pronunciation or any communicative aspects of the language. The skill exercised is reading, and then only in the context of translation.

Materials

The mainstay of classroom materials for the grammar-translation method is the textbook. Textbooks in the 19th century attempted to codify the grammar of the target language into discrete rules for students to learn and memorize. A chapter in a typical grammar-translation textbook would begin with a bilingual vocabulary list, after which there would be grammar rules for students to study and sentences for them to translate.Some typical sentences from 19th-century textbooks are as follows:

The philosopher pulled the lower jaw of the hen.
My sons have bought the mirrors of the Duke.
The cat of my aunt is more treacherous than the dog of your uncle.

Reception

The method by definition has a very limited scope. Because speaking or any kind of spontaneous creative output was missing from the curriculum, students would often fail at speaking or even letter writing in the target language. A noteworthy quote describing the effect of this method comes from Bahlsen, who was a student of Plötz, a major proponent of this method in the 19th century. In commenting about writing letters or speaking he said he would be overcome with "a veritable forest of paragraphs, and an impenetrable thicket of grammatical rules."

According to Richards and Rodgers, the grammar-translation has been rejected as a legitimate language teaching method by modern scholars:

Though it may be true to say that the Grammar-Translation Method is still widely practiced, it has no advocates. It is a method for which there is no theory. There is no literature that offers a rationale or justification for it or that attempts to relate it to issues in linguistics, psychology, or educational theory.

Influence

The grammar-translation method was the standard way languages were taught in schools from the 17th to the 19th century. Despite attempts at reform from Roger Ascham, Montaigne, Comenius and John Locke, no other methods gained any significant popularity during this time.

Later, theorists such as Vietor, Passy, Berlitz, and Jespersen began to talk about what a new kind of foreign language instruction needed, shedding light on what the grammar translation was missing. They supported teaching the language, not about the language, and teaching in the target language, emphasizing speech as well as text. Through grammar translation, students lacked an active role in the classroom, often correcting their own work and strictly following the textbook.

The grammar-translation method is still in use today in hybrid forms in many different countries, including many parts of India.

* WHOLE LANGUAGE

Whole language describes a literacy philosophy which emphasizes that children should focus on meaning and strategy instruction. It is often contrasted with phonics-based methods of teaching reading and writing which emphasize instruction for decoding and spelling. However, from whole language practitioners' perspective, this view is erroneous and sets up a false dichotomy. Whole language practitioners teach to develop a knowledge of language including the graphophonic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects of language. Within a whole language perspective, language is treated as a complete meaning-making system, the parts of which function in relational ways. It has drawn criticism by those who advocate "back to basics" pedagogy or reading instruction because whole language is based on a limited body of scientific research.

Overview

Whole language is an educational philosophy that is complex to describe, particularly because it is informed by multiple research fields including but not limited to education, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology (see also Language Experience Approach). Several strands run through most descriptions of whole language:

• focus on making meaning in reading and expressing meaning in writing;
• constructivist approaches to knowledge creation, emphasizing students' interpretations of text and free expression of ideas in writing (often through daily journal entries);
• emphasis on high-quality and culturally-diverse literature;
• integrating literacy into other areas of the curriculum, especially math, science, and social studies;
• frequent reading
  • with students in small "guided reading" groups
  • to students with "read alouds"
  • by students independently;
• reading and writing for real purposes;
• focus on motivational aspects of literacy, emphasizing the love of books and engaging reading materials;
• meaning-centered whole to part to whole instruction where phonics are taught contextually in "embedded" phonics (different from Synthetic phonics or Analytical phonics); and
• emphasis on using and understanding the meaning-making role of phonics, grammar, spelling, capitalization and punctuation in diverse social contexts.

Underlying premises

Cognitive skills of reading

Sub-lexical reading

Sub-lexical reading involves teaching reading by associating characters or groups of characters with sounds or by using phonics learning and teaching methodology. Sometimes argued to be in competition with whole language methods.

Lexical reading

Lexical reading involves acquiring words or phrases without attention to the characters or groups of characters that compose them or by using Whole language learning and teaching methodology. Sometimes argued to be in competition with phonics methods, and that the whole language approach tends to impair learning how to spell.

Learning theory

The idea of "whole" language has its basis in a range of theories of learning related to the epistemologies called "holism". Holism is based upon the belief that it is not possible to understand learning of any kind by analyzing small chunks of the learning system. Holism was very much a response to behaviorism, which emphasized that the world could be understood by experimenting with stimuli and responses. Holists considered this a reductionist perspective that did not recognize that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Analyzing individual behaviors, holists argued, could never tell us how the entire human mind worked. This is—in simplified terms—the theoretical basis for the term "whole language."

Chomsky and Goodman

The whole language approach to phonics grew out of Noam Chomsky's ideas about language acquisition. In 1967, Ken Goodman had an idea about reading, which he considered similar to Chomsky's, and he wrote a widely-cited article calling reading a "psycholinguistic guessing game". He chided educators for attempting to apply what he saw as unnecessary orthographic order to a process that relied on holistic examination of words.

Goodman thought that there are four "cueing systems" for reading, four things that readers have to guess what word comes next:

1. graphophonemic: the shapes of the letters, and the sounds that they evoke (see phonetics).
2. semantic: what word one would expect to occur based on the meaning of the sentence so far (see semantics).
3. syntactic: what part of speech or word would make sense based on the grammar of the language (see syntax).
4. pragmatic: what is the function of the text

The "graph" part of the word "graphophonemic" means the shape or symbol of the graphic input, i.e., the text. According to Goodman, these systems work together to help readers guess the right word. He emphasized that pronouncing individual words will involve the use of all three systems (letter clues, meaning clues from context, and syntactical structure of the sentence).

The graphophonemic cues are related to the sounds we hear (the phonological system including individual letters and letter combinations), the letters of the alphabet, and the conventions of spelling, punctuation and print. Students who are emerging readers use these cues considerably. However, in the English language there is a very imprecise relationship between written symbols and sound symbols. Sometimes the relationships and their patterns do not work, as in the example of great and head. Proficient readers and writers draw on their prior experiences with text and the other cueing systems, as well as the phonological system, as their reading and writing develops. Ken Goodman writes that, "The cue systems are used simultaneously and interdependently. What constitutes useful graphic information depends on how much syntactic and semantic information is available. Within high contextual constraints an initial consonant may be all that is needed to identify an element and make possible the prediction of an ensuing sequence or the confirmation of prior predictions." He continues with, "Reading requires not so much skills as strategies that make it possible to select the most productive cues." He believes that reading involves the interrelationship of all the language systems. Readers sample and make judgments about which cues from each system will provide the most useful information in making predictions that will get them to meaning. Goodman provides a partial list of the various systems readers use as they interact with text. Within the graphophonemic system there are:

• Letter-sound relationships
• Shape (or word configuration)
• Know ‘little words’ in bigger words
• Whole know words
• Recurrent spelling patterns

The semantic cuing system is the one in which meaning is constructed. "So focused is reading on making sense that the visual input, the perceptions we form, and the syntactic patterns we assign are all directed by our meaning construction." The key component of the semantic system is context. A reader must be able to attach meaning to words and have some prior knowledge to use as a context for understanding the word. They must be able to relate the newly learned word to prior knowledge through personal associations with text and the structure of text.

The semantic system is developed from the beginning through early interactions with adults. At first, this usually involves labeling (e.g. This is a dog). Then labeling becomes more detailed (e.g., It is a Labrador dog. Its coat is black.) The child learns that there is a set of "dog attributes" and that within the category "dog", there are subsets of "dog" (e.g. long-hair, short-hair). The development of this system and the development of the important concepts that relate to the system are largely accomplished as children begin to explore language independently. As children speak about what they’ve done and play out their experiences, they are making personal associations between their experiences and language. This is critical to success in later literacy practices such as reading comprehension and writing. The meaning people bring to the reading is available to them through every cuing system, but it’s particularly influential as we move from our sense of the syntactic patterns to the semantic structures.

To support the reader in developing the semantic system, ask, "Does that make sense"?

The syntactic system, according to Goodman and Watson, includes the interrelation of words and sentences within connected text. In the English language, syntactic relations include word order, tense, number, and gender. The syntactic system is also concerned with word parts that change the meaning of a word, called morphemes. For example, adding the suffix "less" or adding "s" to the end of a word changes its meaning or tense. As speakers of English, people know where to place subjects, which pronoun to use and where adjectives occur. Individual word meaning is determined by the place of the word in the sentence and the particular semantic or syntactic role it occupies.For example: The mayor was present when he received a beautiful present from the present members of the board.

The syntactic system is usually in place when children begin school. Immersed in language, children begin to recognize that phrases and sentences are usually ordered in certain ways. This notion of ordering is the development of syntax. Like all the cueing systems, syntax provides the possibility of correct prediction when trying to make sense or meaning of written language. Goodman notes the cues found in the flow of language are:

• Patterns of words (or function order)
• Inflection and inflectional agreement
• Function words such as noun markers (the, a, that)
• Intonation (which is poorly represented in writing by punctuation)

To support a reader in developing the syntactic system, ask, "Can we say it that way? Does that sound right?"

The pragmatic system is also involved in the construction of meaning while reading. This brings into play the socio-cultural knowledge of the reader. It provides information about the purposes and needs the reader has while reading. Yetta Goodman and Dorothy Watson state that, "Language has different meaning depending on the reason for use, the circumstances in which the language is used, and the ideas writers and readers have about the contextual relations with the language users. Language cannot exist outside a sociocultural context, which includes the prior knowledge of the language user. For example, shopping lists, menus, reports and plays are arranged uniquely and are dependent on the message, the intent, the audience, and the context."

By the time children begin school, they may have developed an inferred understanding of some of the pragmatics of a particular situation. For example, turn taking in conversation, reading poetry or a shopping list. "While different materials may share common semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic features, each genre has its own organization and each requires certain experiences by the reader."

To support the reader in developing the pragmatic system ask, "What is the purpose and function of this literacy event?"

Goodman performed a study where children first read words individually, and then read the same words in connected text. He found that the children did better when they read the words in connected text. Later replications of the experiment failed to find effects, however, when children did not read the same words in connected text immediately after reading them individually, as they had in Goodman's experiment.

Goodman's theory has been criticized by other researchers who favor a phonics-based approach, and present research to support their viewpoint. Critics argue that good readers use decoding as their primary approach to reading, and use context to confirm that what they have read makes sense.

Application of Goodman's theory

Goodman's argument was compelling to educators as a way of thinking about beginning reading and literacy more broadly. This led to the idea that reading and writing were ideas that should be considered as wholes, learned by experience and exposure more than analysis and didactic instruction. This largely accounts for the focus on time spent reading, especially independent reading. Many classrooms (whole language or otherwise) include silent reading time, sometimes called DEAR ("Drop Everything And Read") time or SSR (sustained silent reading). Some versions of this independent reading time include a structured role for the teacher, especially Reader's Workshop. Despite the popularity of the extension of Chomsky's linguistic ideas to literacy, there is some neurological and experimental research that has concluded that reading, unlike language, is not a pre-programmed human skill. It must be learned. Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a neurologist at Yale University, is credited with much of the research on the neurological structures of reading.

Contrasts with phonics

Because of this holistic emphasis, whole language is contrasted with skill-based areas of instruction, especially phonics and synthetic phonics. Phonics instruction is a commonly-used technique for teaching students to read. Phonics instruction tends to emphasize attention to the individual components of words, for example, the phonemes /k/, /æ/, and /t/ are represented by the graphemes c, a, and t. Because they do not focus exclusively on the individual parts, tending to focus on the relationship of parts to and within the larger context, whole language proponents do not favor some types of phonics instruction. Interestingly, whole language advocates state that they do teach, and believe in, phonics, especially a type of phonics known as embedded phonics. In embedded phonics, letters are taught during other lessons focused on meaning and the phonics component is considered a "minilesson". Instruction in embedded phonics typically emphasizes the consonants and the short vowels, as well as letter combinations called rimes or phonograms. The use of this embedded phonics model is called a "whole-part-whole" approach because, consistent with holistic thinking, students read the text for meaning first (whole), then examine features of the phonics system (part) and finally use their new knowledge while reading the text again (whole). Reading Recovery is a program that uses holistic practices with struggling readers.

Most whole language advocates see that children go through stages of spelling development as they develop, use and gain control over written language. Early literacy research conducted by Piagetian researcher, Emilia Ferreiro and published in her landmark book, Literacy Before Schooling, has been replicated by University of Alabama professor, Maryann Manning. Based on this research "invented spelling" is another "whole-part-whole" approach: children learn to read by writing in a meaningful context, e.g. by writing letters to others. To write a word they have to decompose its spoken form into sounds and then to translate them into letters, e.g. k, a, t for the phonemes /k/, /æ/, and /t/. Empirical studies show that later orthographic development is fostered rather than hindered by these invented spellings - as long as children from the beginning are confronted with "book spellings", too.

Rise of whole language and reaction

After its introduction by Goodman, whole language rose in popularity dramatically. It became a major educational paradigm of the late 1980s and the 1990s. Despite its popularity during this period, educators who believed that skill instruction was important for students' learning and some researchers in education were skeptical of whole language claims and said so loudly. What followed were the "Reading Wars" of the 1980s and 1990s between advocates of phonics and those of Whole Language methodology, which in turn led to several attempts to catalog research on the efficacy of phonics and whole language. Congress commissioned reading expert Marilyn Jager Adams to write a definitive book on the topic. She determined that phonics was important but suggested that some elements of the whole language approach were helpful.Two large scale efforts, in 1998 by the United States National Research Council's Commission on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children and in 2000 by the United States National Reading Panel, catalogued the most important elements of a reading program. While proponents of whole language find the latter to be controversial, both panels found that phonics instruction of varying kinds, especially analytic and Synthetic Phonics, contributed positively to students' ability to read words on tests of reading words in isolation. Both panels also found that embedded phonics and no phonics contributed to lower rates of achievement for most populations of students when measured on test of reading words in isolation. The Panel recommended an approach it described as "scientifically-based reading research" (SBRR), that cited 5 elements essential to effective reading instruction, one of which was explicit, Systematic Phonics instruction (phonological awareness, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency were the other 4).

In December 2005 the Australian Government endorsed the teaching of synthetic phonics, and discredited the whole language approach ("on its own"). Its Department of Education, Science and Training published a National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy.  The report states "The evidence is clear, whether from research, good practice observed in schools, advice from submissions to the Inquiry, consultations, or from Committee members’ own individual experiences, that direct systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read." Pg 11. See Synthetic phonics#Acceptance in Australia

State of the debate

Despite these results, many whole language advocates continue to argue that their approach, including embedded phonics, has been shown to improve student achievement. Whole language advocates sometimes criticize advocates of skill instruction as "reductionist" and describe the use of phonics as "word calling" because it does not involve the use of meaning. The United States National Reading Panel is criticized especially harshly by some in the whole language community for failing to include qualitative research designs that showed benefits for embedded phonics (the panel only considered experiments and quasi-experiments). On the other hand, some parents and teachers have objected to the de-emphasis on phonics in whole language-based curricula such as Reading Recovery and advocated their removal from schools.

Adoption of some whole language concepts

While rancor continues, much of whole language's emphasis on quality literature, cultural diversity, and reading in groups and to students is widely supported by the educational community. The importance of motivation, long a central focus of whole language approaches, has gained more attention in the broader educational community in the last few years. Prominent critic of whole language Louisa Cook Moats has argued, however, that the foci on quality literature, diversity, reading groups, and motivation are not the sole property of whole language.She, and others, contend these components of instruction are supported by educators of diverse educational perspectives. Moats contends that the properties essential to Whole Language, and those that render it ineffective and unfit for reading education are the principles that children learn to read from exposure to print, the hostility to drilling in phonics and other forms of direct instruction, and the tendency to endorse the use of context-clues and guess-work to decipher a word rather than phonemic decoding. In these and certain other tenets lie the essence and the error of Whole Language. Emphases on cultural diversity and quality literature is neither limited to Whole Language nor fundamental to it.

Balanced Literacy

More recently, "Balanced Literacy" has been suggested as an integrative approach, portrayed by its advocates as taking the best elements of both whole language and code-emphasizing phonics, something advocated by Adams in 1990. The New York Public School system has adopted Balanced Literacy as its literacy curriculum, though critics of whole language have suggested that "Balanced Literacy" is just the disingenuous recasting of the very same whole language with obfuscating new terminology. Equally vociferously, the whole language advocates have criticized the United States National Reading Panel. Allington went so far as to use the term "big brother" to describe the government's role in the reading debate.

No Child Left Behind has brought a resurgence of interest in phonics. Whole language has thus during the 2000s receded from being the dominant reading model in the education field to marginal status, and it continues to fade.

Thinkers

Prominent proponents of whole language include Kenneth Goodman, Frank Smith (psycholinguist), Carolyn Burke, Jerome Harste, Yetta Goodman, Dorothy Watson, Regie Routman, Steven Krashen, and Richard Allington.

Widely-known whole language detractors include Louisa Cook Moats, G. Reid Lyon, James Kauffman, Phillip Gough, Keith Stanovich, Diane McGuinness, Douglas Carnine, Edward Kame'enui, Jerry Silbert, Lynn Melby Gordon, Rudolf Flesch, and Jeanne Chall.

* AUDIO LINGUAL METHOD

Background

audio lingual method is the method that was introduced in the united states in the 1940's.

it was introduced in indonesia in the 1960's.

not a lot of literature and most of the ideas in this section is adapted from how to teach foreign languages effectively.

Approach

a. approach language theory

 - speaking is the primary requirement 

 - writing is secondary needs.

b. learning approach

 - behavioral habits.

Teaching and Learning Activity

 - Teacher give a brief summary of the dialog.

 - Student listen the dialog when the teacher read or speak about the dialog.

 - Student repeat again the dialog together.

 - Repeat again one by one about the dialog.

 - Finally, in pairs come to in front of the class to practice the dialog.

* DIRECT METHOD

The direct method of teaching, sometimes called the natural method. Not limited to but often used in teaching foreign languages, the method refrains from using the learners' native language and uses only the target language. It was established in Germany and France around 1900. Characteristic features of the direct method are:

• teaching concepts and vocabulary through pantomiming, real-life objects and other visual materials
• teaching grammar by using an inductive approach (i.e. having learners find out rules through the presentation of adequate linguistic forms in the target language)
• centrality of spoken language (including a native-like pronunciation)
• focus on question-answer patterns

Principles

1. Classroom instructions are conducted exclusively in the target language.
2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences are taught during the initial phase; grammar, reading and writing are introduced in intermediate phase.
3. Oral communication skills are built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.
4. Grammar is taught inductively.
5. New teaching points are introduced orally.
6. Concrete vocabulary is taught through demonstration, objects, and pictures; abstract vocabulary is taught by association of ideas.
7. Both speech and listening comprehensions are taught.
8. Correct pronunciation and grammar are emphasized.
9. Student should be speaking approximately 80% of the time during the lesson.
10. Students are taught from inception to ask questions as well as answer them.

Pedagogy

The key Aspects of this method are:

I. Introduction of new word, number, alphabet character, sentence or concept (referred to as an Element) :

• SHOW...Point to Visual Aid or Gestures (for verbs), to ensure student clearly understands what is being taught.

• SAY...Teacher verbally introduces Element, with care and enunciation.

• TRY...Student makes various attempts to pronounce new Element.

• MOLD...Teacher corrects student if necessary, pointing to mouth to show proper shaping of lips, tongue and relationship to teeth.

• REPEAT...Student repeats each Element 5-20 times.

NOTE: Teacher should be aware of "high frequency words and verbs" and prioritize teaching for this. (i.e. Teach key verbs such as "To Go" and "To Be" before unusual verbs like "To Trim" or "To Sail"; likewise, teach Apple and Orange before Prune and Cranberry.)

II. Syntax, the correct location of new Element in sentence:

• SAY & REPEAT...Teacher states a phrase or sentence to student; Student repeats such 5-20 times.

• ASK & REPLY IN NEGATIVE...Teacher uses Element in negative situations (e.g. "Are you the President of the United States?" or "Are you the teacher?"); Students says "No". If more advanced, may use the negative with "Not".

• INTERROGATIVES Teacher provides intuitive examples using 5 "w"s (Who, What, Where, Why, When) or How". Use random variations to practice.

• PRONOUNS WITH VERBS Using visuals (such as photos or illustrations) or gestures, Teacher covers all pronouns. Use many random variations such as "Is Ana a woman?" or "Are they from France?" to practice.

• USE AND QUESTIONS...Student must choose and utilize the correct Element, as well as posing appropriate questions as Teacher did.

III. Progress, from new Element to new Element (within same lesson):

A. Random Sequencing:

1. After new Element (X) is taught and learned, go to next Element (Y).

2. After next Element (Y) is taught and learned, return to practice with Element (X).

3. After these two are alternated (X-Y; Y-X; Y-Y, etc), go to 3rd Element (Z).

4. Go back to 1 and 2, mix in 3, practice (X-Y-Z; Z-Y-X; Y-Y-Z, etc.) and continue building up to appropriate number of Elements (may be as many as 20 per lesson, depending on student, see B.1), practicing all possible combinations and repeating 5-20 times each combination.

B. Student-Led Limits:

1. Observe student carefully, to know when mental "saturation" point is reached, indicating student should not be taught more Elements until another time.

2. At this point, stop imparting new information, and simply do Review as follows:

C. Review: Keep random, arbitrary sequencing. If appropriate, use visuals, pointing quickly to each. Employ different examples of Element that are easy to understand, changing country/city names, people names, and words student already knows. Keep a list of everything taught, so proper testing may be done.

D. Observation and Notation: Teacher should maintain a student list of words/phrases that are most difficult for that student. List is called "Special Attention List"

IV. Progress, from Lesson to Lesson:

• LESSON REVIEW The first few minutes of each lesson are to review prior lesson(s).

• GLOBAL REVIEW Transition from Lesson Review to a comprehensive review, which should always include items from the Special Attention List.

V. Advanced Concepts:

• Intermediate and Advanced Students may skip some Element introduction as appropriate; become aware of student's language abilities, so they are not frustrated by too much review. If Student immediately shows recognition and knowledge, move to next Element.

• Non-Standard Alphabets: Teaching Student to recognize letters/characters and reading words should employ same steps as in above Aspect I. and alphabet variations may be taught using Aspect III. Writing characters and words should initially be done manually, either on paper or whiteboard.

• Country Accents: Any student at intermediate stages or higher should be made aware of subtle variations in pronunciation, which depend on geography within a country or from country to country.

It should be noted that an integral aspect of the Direct Method is varying the setting of teaching; try different scenarios using the same Element. This makes the lessons more "real world," as it will bring some confusing distractions to the student and employ organic variables common in the culture and locale of language use.

Historical Context

The direct method was an answer to the dissatisfaction with the older grammar translation method, which teaches students grammar and vocabulary through direct translations and thus focuses on the written language.

There was an attempt to set up conditions that imitate mother tongue acquisition, which is why the beginnings of these attempts were called the natural method. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Sauveur and Franke proposed that language teaching should be undertaken within the target-language system, which was the first stimulus for the rise of the direct method.

The audio-lingual method was developed in an attempt to address some of the perceived weaknesses of the direct method.

* CONTENT BASED INSTRUCTION

Content-Based Instruction (CBI) is a significant approach in language education (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989). CBI is designed to provide second-language learners instruction in content and language.

Historically, the word content has changed its meaning in language teaching. Content used to refer to the methods of grammar-translation, audio-lingual methodology and vocabulary or sound patterns in dialog form. Recently, content is interpreted as the use of subject matter as a vehicle for second or foreign language teaching/learning.

Benefits of content based instruction

1. Learners are exposed to a considerable amount of language through stimulating content. Learners explore interesting content & are engaged in appropriate language-dependant activities. Learning language becomes automatic.

2. CBI supports contextualized learning; learners are taught useful language that is embedded within relevant discourse contexts rather than as isolated language fragments. Hence students make greater connections with the language & what they already know.

3. Complex information is delivered through real life context for the students to grasp well & leads to intrinsic motivation.

4. In CBI information is reiterated by strategically delivering information at right time & situation compelling the students to learn out of passion.

5. Greater flexibility & adaptability in the curriculum can be deployed as per the students interest.

Comparison to other approaches

The CBI approach is comparable to English for Specific Purposes (ESP), which usually is for vocational or occupational needs or English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The goal of CBI is to prepare students to acquire the languages while using the context of any subject matter so that students learn the language by using it within the specific context. Rather than learning a language out of context, it is learned within the context of a specific academic subject.

As educators realized that in order to successfully complete an academic task, second language (L2) learners have to master both English as a language form (grammar, vocabulary etc.) and how English is used in core content classes, they started to implement various approaches such as Sheltered instruction and learning to learn in CBI classes. Sheltered instruction is more of a teacher-driven approach that puts the responsibility on the teachers' shoulders. This is the case by stressing several pedagogical needs to help learners achieve their goals, such as teachers having knowledge of the subject matter, knowledge of instructional strategies to comprehensible and accessible content, knowledge of L2 learning processes and the ability to assess cognitive, linguistic and social strategies that students use to assure content comprehension while promoting English academic development. Learning to learn is more of a student-centered approach that stresses the importance of having the learners share this responsibility with their teachers. Learning to learn emphasizes the significant role that learning strategies play in the process of learning.

Motivating students

Keeping students motivated and interested are two important factors underlying content-based instruction. Motivation and interest are crucial in supporting student success with challenging, informative activities that support success and which help the student learn complex skills (Grabe & Stoller, 1997). When students are motivated and interested in the material they are learning, they make greater connections between topics, elaborations with learning material and can recall information better (Alexander, Kulikowich, & Jetton, 1994: Krapp, Hidi, & Renninger, 1992). In short, when a student is intrinsically motivated the student achieves more. This in turn leads to a perception of success, of gaining positive attributes which will continue a circular learning pattern of success and interest. Krapp, Hidi and Renninger (1992) state that, "situational interest, triggered by environmental factors, may evoke or contribute to the development of long-lasting individual interests" (p. 18). Because CBI is student centered, one of its goals is to keep students interested and motivation high by generating stimulating content instruction and materials.

Active student involvement

Because it falls under the more general rubric of communicative language teaching (CLT), the CBI classroom is learner rather than teacher centered (Littlewood, 1981). In such classrooms, students learn through doing and are actively engaged in the learning process. They do not depend on the teacher to direct all learning or to be the source of all information. Central to CBI is the belief that learning occurs not only through exposure to the teacher's input, but also through peer input and interactions. Accordingly, students assume active, social roles in the classroom that involve interactive learning, negotiation, information gathering and the co-construction of meaning (Lee and VanPatten, 1995). William Glasser's "control theory" exemplifies his attempts to empower students and give them voice by focusing on their basic, human needs: Unless students are given power, they may exert what little power they have to thwart learning and achievement through inappropriate behavior and mediocrity. Thus, it is important for teachers to give students voice, especially in the current educational climate, which is dominated by standardization and testing (Simmons and Page, 2010).

Conclusion

The integration of language & content teaching is perceived by the European Commission as "an excellent way of making progress in a foreign language". CBI effectively increases learners' English language proficiency & teaches them the skills necessary for the success in various professions. With CBI, learners gradually acquire greater control of the English language, enabling them to participate more fully in an increasingly complex academic & social environment.

* COMPETENCY BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING

Competency-Based Language Teaching (CBLT) focuses on what “learners are expected to do with the language” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.141). This approach emerged in the United States in the 1970s and can be described as “defining educational goals in terms of precise measurable descriptions of the knowledge, skills, and behaviors students should possess at the end of a course of study” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.141).

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2000, p.246) defines competency as “the ability to do sth well” and as “a skill that you need in a particular job or for a particular task”.

Background 

According to Richards & Rodgers (2001, p.141) “Competency-Based Language Teaching (CBLT) is an application of the principles of Competency-Based Education to language teaching”. In Competency-Based Education (CBE) the focus is on the “outcomes or outputs of learning”. By the end of the 1970s Competency-Based Language Teaching was mostly used in “work-related and survival-oriented language teaching programs for adults” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.141). Since the 1990s, CBLT has been seen as “the state-of-the-art approach to adult ESL” (Auerbach, 1986, p.411) so that any refugee in the United States who wished to receive federal assistance had to attend a competency-based program (Auerbach, 1986, p.412) in which they learned a set of language skills “that are necessary for individuals to function proficiently in the society in which they live” (Grognet & Crandall, 1982, p.3).

 

Theory of Language and Learning 

The major basis of CBLT is the “functional and interactional perspective on the nature of language (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 143) which means that language learning always needs to be connected to the social context it is used in. Therefore, language is seen as “a medium of interaction and communication between people” who want to achieve “specific goals and purposes” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.143). This especially applies to situations in which the learner has to fulfill a particular role with language skills which can be predicted or determined for the relevant context (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.143). In connection to this Competency-Based Language Teaching shares the behaviorist view of learning that “certain life encounters call for certain kinds of language” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.143). Another key aspect of both language and learning theory is the so called “mosaic approach to language learning” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.143), which assumes that language can be divided into appropriate parts and subparts. Communicative competence is then constructed from these subparts put together in the correct order (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.143). All these aspects together show that CBLT is in some respects similar to Communicative Language Teaching (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.143).

Syllabus 

A syllabus for a competency-based framework clearly differs from the traditional approach to developing a syllabus. Instead of selecting a topic or field of knowledge that one is going to teach (e.g., British History, American Literature, or poetry) and then choosing “concepts, knowledge, and skills that constitute that field of knowledge” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.144), Competency-based Language Teaching “is designed not around the notion of subject knowledge but around the notion of competency” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.144). Therefore, the focus is on how the students can use the language instead of their knowledge about the language. Schenck (1978) points out that the teacher provides a list of competencies which the course is going to deal with, and these are “typically required of students in life role situations”.

The fact that CBLT is an outcome-based approach also influences the syllabus, especially the kind of assessment which is used. In contrast to “norm-referenced assessment” (Docking, 1994, p.16), which is used in many other teaching approaches and methods, “criterion-based assessment” (Docking, 1994, p.16) is essential for CBLT. Students have to perform specific language skills which they have already learned during the course (Docking, 1994, p.16). The competencies tested “consist of a description of the essential skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors required for effective performance of a real-world task or activity” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.144). These performance-criteria form the basis for the assessment.

 

Learning Activities 

The learning activities used in CBLT can be described as systematically designed activities to achieve a certain competence. These activities are real-world tasks which “may be related to any domain of life” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.144) but especially to survival-oriented and work-related situations in a new environment (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.144). Typical areas, for which such competency-based activities have been developed, are for example Job Application, Job Interview, or Work Schedules (Mrowicki, 1986). All these areas “can be described as a collection of units of competencies” which consist of “specific knowledge, thinking processes, attitudes, and perceptual and physical skills” (Docking, 1994, p.11).

 

Eight Key Features 

According to Auerbach (1986) there are eight key features which are essential for Competency-Based Language Teaching:

1. A focus on successful functioning in society which means that language is taught in order to prepare the students for the different demands of the world (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146).

2. A focus on life skills to determine that language is always taught as a medium of communication in concrete tasks in which specific language forms/skills are required (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146).

3. Task- or performance-centered orientation. The focus is on what the students can do with the language and certain behaviors instead of knowledge of the language (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146).

4. Modularized instruction emphasizes that the competencies which are taught have to be systematically separated into manageable parts so that both the teacher and students can handle the content and realize their progress (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146).

5. Outcomes that are made explicit a priori. “Outcomes are public knowledge, known and agreed upon by both learner and teacher” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146). Therefore, the students clearly know what behaviors and skills are expected of them (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146).

6. Continuous and ongoing assessment which means that the students are tested before the course to determine which skills they lack and after they have had instructions in that skill they are tested again to ascertain whether they have achieved the necessary skills or not (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146).

7. Demonstrated mastery of performance objectives. The assessment is based on the students’ performance of specific behaviors instead of traditional paper-and-pencil-tests (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146).

8. Individualized, student-centered instruction. The instructions given by the teacher are not time-based but the focus is on the progress the individual students make at their own rate. Therefore, the teacher has to concentrate on each individual students in order to support them in those areas in which they lack competence (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146).

 

Role of Teacher 

The role of the teacher in a competency-based framework is not defined by specific terms. The teacher has to provide positive and constructive feedback in order to help the students to improve their skills. She/he needs to be aware of the learners’ needs so that everybody feels welcome in class (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146). The different competencies dealt with in class require specific instructions for the various learning activities. Thus the teacher has to give clear orders and explanations to make sure that every student understands the task they are going to deal with. But the teacher does not push the students because the instructions are not time-based; instead the student’s progress is most important (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146). Another task of the teacher in CBLT is to select learning activities and to design a syllabus according to the competency the students are going to acquire. 

Role of Learner 

The role of the learner in a competency-based framework is to decide whether the competencies are useful and relevant for him/her (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146). This shows that the learner has an active role in the classroom which is underlined by the fact that the students are expected to perform the skills learned (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146). The competencies the students will learn are clearly defined and present in the public so that “the learner knows exactly what needs to be learned” and for which purpose he/she has to use the competencies (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147). In this regard it is vital that every competency is mastered one at a time because this makes sure that the learners know what they have already learned and what the next steps will look like (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147). Moreover, the students have to stay in the actual program until they improve. After they mastered their skills, they move into a more proficient group of students. The main goal of the learner in Competency-Based Language Teaching is to be able to adapt and transfer knowledge from one setting to another.

 

Materials 

The materials the teacher chooses are mainly “sample texts and assessment tasks that provide examples of texts and assessment tasks that relate to the competency” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147). These materials are used to provide the students with “the essential skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors required for effective performance of a real-world task or activity” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.144). A great variety of competencies should be improved by these tasks. On the one hand, knowledge and learning competencies as well as oral competencies are dealt with. On the other hand, the materials include tasks to improve the reading and writing competencies (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147).

 

Procedure 

At the beginning of a course in a competency-based framework the students have to go through an initial assessment, in which the teacher determines the current proficiency level of the individual student. After this the students are grouped on the basis of “their current English proficiency level, their learning pace, their needs, and their social goals for learning English” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147). Furthermore, a course based on CBLT is divided into three stages, which the students have to go through in order to successfully finish the course (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147). At Stages 1 and 2 the learners deal with twelve competencies which are related to general language development (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147). At Stage 3 the students are grouped on the basis of their learning goals and “competencies are defined according to the three syllabus strands of Further Study, Vocational English, and Community Access” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147).

   

Conclusion 

There are both critics and supporters of Competency-Based Language Teaching. According to Tollefson (1986) it is very difficult to develop lists of competencies for every specific situation. This is due above all to the fact that many areas in which people need certain competencies are impossible to operationalise (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.148). Other researchers argue that describing an activity in terms of a set of different competencies is not enough in order to deal with the complexity of the activity as a whole (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.148). But on the other hand, CBLT is gaining popularity in the whole world. It is argued that through the clearly defined outcomes and the continuous feedback in CBLT, the quality of assessment as well as the students’ learning and the teaching are improved (Docking, 1994, p.15). These improvements can be seen on all educational levels, “from primary school to university, and from academic studies to workplace training” (Docking, 1994, p.15). Rylatt and Lohan (1997, p.18) point out that “the business of improving learning competencies and skills will remain one of the world’s fastest growing industries and priorities” in the future. 

* COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

Communicative language teaching (CLT), or the communicative approach, is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study.

Background

Societal influences

Communicative language teaching rose to prominence in the 1970s and early 1980s as a result of many disparate developments in both Europe and the United States. First, there was an increased demand for language learning, particularly in Europe. The advent of the European Common Market led to widespread European migration, and consequently there was a large population of people who needed to learn a foreign language for work or for personal reasons. At the same time, children were increasingly able to learn foreign languages in school. The number of secondary schools offering languages rose worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s as part of a general trend of curriculum-broadening and modernization, and foreign-language study ceased to be confined to the elite academies. In Britain, the introduction of comprehensive schools meant that almost all children had the opportunity to study foreign languages.

This increased demand put pressure on educators to change their teaching methods. Traditional methods such as grammar translation assumed that students were aiming for mastery of the target language, and that students were willing to study for years before expecting to use the language in real life. However, these assumptions were challenged by adult learners who were busy with work, and by schoolchildren who were less academically able. Educators realized that to motivate these students an approach with a more immediate payoff was necessary.

The trend of progressivism in education provided a further pressure for educators to change their methods.Progressivism holds that active learning is more effective than passive learning, and as this idea gained traction in schools there was a general shift towards using techniques where students were more actively involved, such as group work. Foreign-language education was no exception to this trend, and teachers sought to find new methods that could better embody this shift in thinking.

Academic influences

The development of communicative language teaching was also helped by new academic ideas. In Britain, applied linguists began to doubt the efficacy of situational language teaching, the dominant method in that country at the time. This was partly in response to Chomsky’s insights into the nature of language. Chomsky had shown that the structural theories of language prevalent at the time could not explain the creativity and variety evident in real communication. In addition, British applied linguists such as Christopher Candlin and Henry Widdowson began to see that a focus on structure was also not helping language students. They saw a need for students to develop communicative skill and functional competence in addition to mastering language structures.

In the United States, the linguist and anthropologist Dell Hymes developed the concept of communicative competence. This was a reaction to Chomsky’s concept of the linguistic competence of an ideal native speaker.Communicative competence redefined what it meant to “know” a language; in addition to speakers having mastery over the structural elements of language, according to communicative competence they must also be able to use those structural elements appropriately in different social situations. This is neatly summed up by Hymes’s statement, “There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless.” Hymes did not make a concrete formulation of communicative competence, but subsequent authors have tied the concept to language teaching, notably Michael Canale.

Communicative syllabuses

An influential development in the history of communicative language teaching was the work of the Council of Europe in creating new language syllabuses. Education was a high priority for the Council of Europe, and they set out to provide syllabuses that would meet the needs of European immigrants.Among the studies used by the council when designing the course was one by the British linguist, D. A. Wilkins, that defined language using “notions” and “functions”, rather than more traditional categories of grammar and vocabulary. Notional categories include concepts such as time, location, frequency, and quantity, and functional categories include communicative acts such as offers, complaints, denials, and requests. These syllabuses were widely used.

Communicative language-learning materials were also developed in Germany. There was a new emphasis on personal freedom in German education at the time, an attitude exemplified in the philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. To fulfill this goal, educators developed materials that allowed learners to choose what they wanted to communicate freely. These materials concentrated on the various different social meanings a given item of grammar could have, and were structured in such a way that learners could choose how to progress through the course themselves. The materials were used in teacher training courses and workshops to encourage teachers to change to using a communicative syllabus. Two similar projects were also undertaken by Candlin at Lancaster University, and by Holec at the University of Nancy.

Meanwhile, at the University of Illinois, there was a study that investigated the effects of the explicit teaching of learning strategies to language learners. The study encouraged learners to take risks while communicating, and to use constructs other than rote memorized patterns. At the study’s conclusion, students who were taught communicatively fared no worse on grammatical tests than students that had been taught with traditional methods, but they performed significantly better in tests of communicative ability. This was the case even for beginners. As a result of this study, supplemental communicative activities were created for the French CRÉDIF course Voix et Visages de la France. These materials focused on classroom autonomy, and learners were taught various phrases they could use to negotiate meaning, such as “What’s the word for …” and “I don’t understand”.

Outline

CLT is usually characterized as a broad approach to teaching, rather than as a teaching method with a clearly defined set of classroom practices. As such, it is most often defined as a list of general principles or features. One of the most recognized of these lists is David Nunan’s (1991) five features of CLT:

1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
2. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
3. The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself.
4. An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning.
5. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom.

These five features are claimed by practitioners of CLT to show that they are very interested in the needs and desires of their learners as well as the connection between the language as it is taught in their class and as it used outside the classroom. Under this broad umbrella definition, any teaching practice that helps students develop their communicative competence in an authentic context is deemed an acceptable and beneficial form of instruction. Thus, in the classroom CLT often takes the form of pair and group work requiring negotiation and cooperation between learners, fluency-based activities that encourage learners to develop their confidence, role-plays in which students practise and develop language functions, as well as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focused activities.

In the mid 1990s the Dogma 95 manifesto influenced language teaching through the Dogme language teaching movement, who proposed that published materials can stifle the communicative approach. As such the aim of the Dogme approach to language teaching is to focus on real conversations about real subjects so that communication is the engine of learning. This communication may lead to explanation, but that this in turn will lead to further communication.

Classroom activities

Classroom activities used in communicative language teaching can include the following:

• Role-play
• Interviews
• information gap
• Games
• Language exchanges
• Surveys
• Pair-work
• Learning by teaching

However, not all courses that utilize the Communicative Language approach will restrict their activities solely to these. Some courses will have the students take occasional grammar quizzes, or prepare at home using non-communicative drills, for instance. William Glasser's "control theory" exemplifies his attempts to empower students and give them voice by focusing on their basic, human needs: Unless students are given power, they may exert what little power they have to thwart learning and achievement through inappropriate behavior and mediocrity. Thus, it is important for teachers to give students voice, especially in the current educational climate, which is dominated by standardization and testing (Simmons and Page, 2010).

Critiques of CLT

One of the most famous attacks on communicative language teaching was offered by Michael Swan in the English Language Teaching Journal in 1985. Henry Widdowson responded in defense of CLT, also in the ELT Journal (1985 39(3):158-161). More recently other writers (e.g. Bax) have critiqued CLT for paying insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place, though CLT has also been defended against this charge (e.g. Harmer 2003).

Often, the communicative approach is deemed a success if the teacher understands the student. But, if the teacher is from the same region as the student, the teacher will understand errors resulting from an influence from their first language. Native speakers of the target language may still have difficulty understanding them. This observation may call for new thinking on and adaptation of the communicative approach. The adapted communicative approach should be a simulation where the teacher pretends to understand only what any regular speaker of the target language would and reacts accordingly (Hattum 2006).

* COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING

Community language learning (CLL) is an approach in which students work together to develop what aspects of a language they would like to learn. The teacher acts as a counsellor and a paraphraser, while the learner acts as a collaborator, although sometimes this role can be changed.

Examples of these types of communities have recently arisen with the explosion of educational resources for language learning on the Web.

Background

The CLL method was developed by Charles A. Curran, a professor of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago.^[1] This method refers to two roles: that of the know-er (teacher) and student (learner). Also the method draws on the counseling metaphor and refers to these respective roles as a counselor and a client. According to Curran, a counselor helps a client understand his or her own problems better by 'capturing the essence of the clients concern ...[and] relating [the client's] affect to cognition...;' in effect, understanding the client and responding in a detached yet considerate manner.

To restate, the counselor blends what the client feels and what he is learning in order to make the experience a meaningful one. Often, this supportive role requires greater energy expenditure than an 'average' teacher.

Methods

Natural Approach

The foreign language learner's tasks, according to CLL are (1) to apprehend the sound system of the language (2) assign fundamental meanings to individual lexical units and (3) construct a basic grammar.

In these three steps, the CLL resembles the Natural Approach to language teaching in which a learner is not expected to speak until he has achieved some basic level of comprehension.

There are 5 stages of development in this method.

1. “Birth” stage: feeling of security and belonging are established.
2. As the learners' ability improve, they achieve a measure of independence from the parent.
3. Learners can speak independently.
4. The learners are secure enough to take criticism and being corrected.
5. The child becomes an adult and becomes the know-er.

Online Communities

 

A new wave of Community Learning Languages have come into place with the internet growth and the boom of social networking technologies. These online CLLs are social network services such as Papora (language education company), English, baby! and LiveMocha that take advantage of the Web 2.0 concept of information sharing and collaboration tools, for which users can help other users to learn languages by direct communication or mutual correction of proposed exercises.

Barriers in Community Language Learning

When learning a different language while in a multilingual community, there are certain barriers that one definitely will encounter. The reason for these barriers is that in language learning while in a multicultural community, native and nonnative groups will think, act, and write in different ways based on each of their own cultural norms. Research shows that students in multicultural environments communicate less with those not familiar with their culture. Long-term problems include that the foreign speakers will have their own terms of expression combined into the language native to the area, which oftentimes makes for awkward sentences to a native speaker. Native students tend to develop an exclusive attitude toward the nonnative speaker because they feel threatened when they do not understand the foreign language. Short-term problems include the fact that native students will usually lack in-depth knowledge of the nonnative cultures, which makes them more likely to be unwilling to communicate with the foreign speakers. Because these foreign students grew up and were educated in a totally different cultural environment, their ideologies, identities and logic that form in the early age cause different ways of expressing ideas both in written and spoken form. They will have to modify and redefine their original identities when they enter a multicultural environment (Shen, 459). This is no easy task. Consequentially, a low-level of social involvement and enculturation will occur for both native and nonnative speakers in the community.

* CONTEXTUAL TEACHING LEARNING 

Contextual Learning is based on a constructivist theory of teaching and learning. Learning takes place when teachers are able to present information in a way that students are able to construct meaning based on their own experiences. Contextual learning experiences include internships, service learning, and study abroad programs, among others.

Contextual learning has the following characteristics:

• emphasizing problem solving
• recognizing that teaching and learning need to occur in multiple contexts
• assisting students in learning how to monitor their learning and thereby become self-regulated learners
• anchoring teaching in the diverse life context of students
• encouraging students to learn from each other
• employing authentic assessment

Key Elements

Current perspectives on what it means for learning to be contextualized include

• situated cognition- all learning is applied knowledge
• social cognition- intrapersonal constructs
• distributed cognition- constructs that are continually shaped by other people and things outside the individual

Constructivist learning theory maintains that learning is a process of constructing meaning from experience Contextual learning may be useful for child development if it provides learning experiences in a context in which children are interested and motivated. Various experiential learning theorists have contributed to an understanding of contextual learning.

Benefits of contextual learning

• Both direct instruction and constructivist activities can be compatible and effective in the achievement of learning goals.
• Increasing one’s efforts results in more ability. This theory opposes the notion that one’s aptitude is unchangeable. Striving for learning goals motivates an individual to be engaged in activities with a commitment to learning.
• Children learn the standards values, and knowledge of society by raising questions and accepting challenges to find solutions that are not immediately apparent. Other learning processes are explaining concepts, justifying their reasoning and seeking information. Therefore, learning is a social process which requires social and cultural factors to be considered during instructional planning. This social nature of learning also drives the determination of the learning goals.
• Knowledge and learning are situated in particular physical and social context. A range of settings may be used such as the home, the community, and the workplace, depending on the purpose of instruction and the intended learning goals.
• Knowledge may be viewed as distributed or stretched over the individual, other persons, and various artifacts such as physical and symbolic tools and not solely as a property of individuals. Thus, people, as an integral part of the learning process, must share knowledge and tasks.

* COOPERATIVE LEARNING

Cooperative learning is an approach to organizing classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. It differs from group work, and it has been described as "structuring positive interdependence." Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively toward academic goals. Unlike individual learning, which can be competitive in nature, students learning cooperatively capitalize on one another’s resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, etc.).Furthermore, the teacher's role changes from giving information to facilitating students' learning. Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds. Ross and Smyth (1995) describe successful cooperative learning tasks as intellectually demanding, creative, open-ended, and involve higher order thinking tasks.Five essential elements are identified for the successful incorporation of cooperative learning in the classroom.

History

Prior to World War II, social theorists such as Allport, Watson, Shaw, and Mead began establishing cooperative learning theory after finding that group work was more effective and efficient in quantity, quality, and overall productivity when compared to working alone. However, it wasn’t until 1937 when researchers May and Doob found that people who cooperate and work together to achieve shared goals, were more successful in attaining outcomes, than those who strived independently to complete the same goals. Furthermore, they found that independent achievers had a greater likelihood of displaying competitive behaviours.

Philosophers and psychologists in the 1930s and 40’s such as John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, and Morton Deutsh also influenced the cooperative learning theory practiced today. Dewey believed it was important that students develop knowledge and social skills that could be used outside of the classroom, and in the democratic society. This theory portrayed students as active recipients of knowledge by discussing information and answers in groups, engaging in the learning process together rather than being passive receivers of information (e.g., teacher talking, students listening).

Lewin’s contributions to cooperative learning were based on the ideas of establishing relationships between group members in order to successfully carry out and achieve the learning goal. Deutsh’s contribution to cooperative learning was positive social interdependence, the idea that the student is responsible for contributing to group knowledge.

Since then, David and Roger Johnson have been actively contributing to the cooperative learning theory. In 1975, they identified that cooperative learning promoted mutual liking, better communication, high acceptance and support, as well as demonstrated an increase in a variety of thinking strategies among individuals in the group. Students who showed to be more competitive lacked in their interaction and trust with others, as well as in their emotional involvement with other students.

In 1994 Johnson and Johnson published the 5 elements (positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, social skills, and processing) essential for effective group learning, achievement, and higher-order social, personal and cognitive skills (e.g., problem solving, reasoning, decision-making, planning, organizing, and reflecting.

Types

Formal cooperative learning is structured, facilitated, and monitored by the educator over time and is used to achieve group goals in task work (e.g. completing a unit). Any course material or assignment can be adapted to this type of learning, and groups can vary from 2-6 people with discussions lasting from a few minutes up to an entire period. Types of formal cooperative learning strategies include:

1. The jigsaw technique
2. Assignments that involve group problem solving and decision making
3. Laboratory or experiment assignments
4. Peer review work (e.g. editing writing assignments).

Having experience and developing skill with this type of learning often facilitates informal and base learning.Jigsaw activities are wonderful because the student assumes the role of the teacher on a given topic and is in charge of teaching the topic to a classmate. The idea is that if students can teach something, they have already learned the material.

Informal cooperative learning incorporates group learning with passive teaching by drawing attention to material through small groups throughout the lesson or by discussion at the end of a lesson, and typically involves groups of two (e.g. turn-to-your-partner discussions). These groups are often temporary and can change from lesson to lesson (very much unlike formal learning where 2 students may be lab partners throughout the entire semester contributing to one another’s knowledge of science).

Discussions typically have four components that include formulating a response to questions asked by the educator, sharing responses to the questions asked with a partner, listening to a partner’s responses to the same question, and creating a new well-developed answer. This type of learning enables the student to process, consolidate, and retain more information.

In group-based cooperative learning, these peer groups gather together over the long term (e.g. over the course of a year, or several years such as in high school or post-secondary studies) to develop and contribute to one another’s knowledge mastery on a topic by regularly discussing material, encouraging one another, and supporting the academic and personal success of group members.

Base group learning (e.g., a long term study group) is effective for learning complex subject matter over the course or semester and establishes caring, supportive peer relationships, which in turn motivates and strengthens the student’s commitment to the group’s education while increasing self-esteem and self-worth. Base group approaches also make the students accountable to educating their peer group in the event that a member was absent for a lesson. This is effective both for individual learning, as well as social support.

Elements

Brown & Ciuffetelli Parker (2009) and Siltala (2010) discuss the 5 basic and essential elements to cooperative learning:

1. Positive interdependence
   1. Students must fully participate and put forth effort within their group
   2. Each group member has a task/role/responsibility therefore must believe that they are responsible for their learning and that of their group
2. Face-to-face promotive interaction
   1. Members promote each other's success
   2. Students explain to one another what they have or are learning and assist one another with understanding and completion of assignments
3. Individual and group accountability
   1. Each student must demonstrate mastery of the content being studied
   2. Each student is accountable for their learning and work, therefore eliminating “social loafing”
4. Social skills
   1. Social skills that must be taught in order for successful cooperative learning to occur
   2. Skills include effective communication, interpersonal and group skills
      1. Leadership
      2. Decision-making
      3. Trust-building
      4. Communication
      5. Conflict-management skills
5. Group processing
   1. Every so often groups must assess their effectiveness and decide how it can be improved

In order for student achievement to improve considerably, two characteristics must be present:

1. When designing cooperative learning tasks and reward structures, individual responsibility and accountability must be identified. Individuals must know exactly what their responsibilities are and that they are accountable to the group in order to reach their goal.
2. All group members must be involved in order for the group to complete the task. In order for this to occur each member must have a task that they are responsible for which cannot be completed by any other group member.

Cooperative Learning Techniques

There are a great number of cooperative learning techniques available. Some cooperative learning techniques utilize student pairing, while others utilize small groups of four or five students. Hundreds of techniques have been created into structures to use in any content area. Among the easy to implement structures are Think-Pair-Share, Think-Pair-Write, variations of Round Robin, and the Reciprocal Teaching Technique. A well known cooperative learning technique is the Jigsaw, Jigsaw II and Reverse Jigsaw.

Think Pair Share

Originally developed by Frank T. Lyman (1981), Think-Pair-Share allows for students to contemplate a posed question or problem silently. The student may write down thoughts or simply just brainstorm in his or her head. When prompted, the student pairs up with a peer and discusses his or her idea(s) and then listens to the ideas of his or her partner. Following pair dialogue, the teacher solicits responses from the whole group.

Jigsaw

Students are members of two groups: home group and expert group. In the heterogeneous home group, students are each assigned a different topic. Once a topic has been identified, students leave the home group and group with the other students with their assigned topic. In the new group, students learn the material together before returning to their home group. Once back in their home group, each student is accountable for teaching his or her assigned topic.

Jigsaw II

Jigsaw II is Robert Slavin's (1980) variation of Jigsaw in which members of the home group are assigned the same material, but focus on separate portions of the material. Each member must become an "expert" on his or her assigned portion and teach the other members of the home group.

Reverse Jigsaw

This variation was created by Timothy Hedeen (2003) It differs from the original Jigsaw during the teaching portion of the activity. In the Reverse Jigsaw technique, students in the expert groups teach the whole class rather than return to their home groups to teach the content.

Reciprocal Teaching

Brown & Paliscar (1982) developed reciprocal teaching. It is a cooperative technique that allows for student pairs to participate in a dialogue about text. Partners take turns reading and asking questions of each other, receiving immediate feedback. Such a model allows for students to use important metacognitive techniques such as clarifying, questioning, predicting, and summarizing. It embraces the idea that students can effectively learn from each other.

The Williams

Students collaborate to answer a big question that is the learning objective. Each group has differentiated questions that increases in cognitive ability to allow students to progress and meet the learning objective.

STAD (or Student-Teams-Achievement Divisions)

Students are placed in small groups (or teams). The class in its entirety is presented with a lesson and the students are subsequently tested. Individuals are graded on the team's performance. Although the tests are taken individually, students are encouraged to work together to improve the overall performance of the group.

Research supporting cooperative learning

Research on cooperative learning demonstrated “overwhelmingly positive” results and confirmed that cooperative modes are cross-curricular. Cooperative learning requires students to engage in group activities that increase learning and adds other important dimensions. The positive outcomes include academic gains, improved race relations and increased personal and social development. Students who fully participate in group activities, exhibit collaborative behaviors, provide constructive feedback, and cooperate with their groups have a higher likelihood of receiving higher test scores and course grades at the end of the semester. Cooperative learning is an active pedagogy that fosters higher academic achievement. Cooperative learning has also been found to increase attendance, time on task, enjoyment of school and classes, motivation, and independence.

Benefits and applicability of cooperative learning:

• Students demonstrate academic achievement
• Cooperative learning methods are usually equally effective for all ability levels
• Cooperative learning is effective for all ethnic groups
• Student perceptions of one another are enhanced when given the opportunity to work with one another
• Cooperative learning increases self-esteem and self-concept
• Ethnic and physically/mentally handicapped barriers are broken down allowing for positive interactions and friendships to occur

Cooperative learning results in:

• Increased higher level reasoning
• Increased generation of new ideas and solutions
• Greater transfer of learning between situations

Cooperative learning is significant in business:

• Cooperative learning can be seen as a characteristic of innovative businesses
• The five stage division on cooperative learning creates a useful method of analyzing learning in innovative businesses
• Innovativity connected to cooperative learning seems to make the creation of innovations possible

Limitations

Cooperative Learning has many limitations that could cause the process to be more complicated than first perceived. Sharan (2010) describes the constant evolution of cooperative learning as a threat. Due to the fact that cooperative learning is constantly changing, there is a possibility that teachers may become confused and lack complete understanding of the method. Teachers implementing cooperative learning may also be challenged with resistance and hostility from students who believe that they are being held back by their slower teammates or by students who are less confident and feel that they are being ignored or demeaned by their team.

Students often provide feedback in the success of the teamwork experienced during cooperative learning experiences. Peer review and evaluations may not reflect true experiences due to perceived competition among peers. A confidential evaluation process may help to increase evaluation strength.

* INQUIRY BASED LEARNING

Definition

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a project-oriented pedagogic strategy based on constructivist and socio-constructivist theories of learning (Eick & Reed, 2002).

“Inquiry learning is not about memorizing facts - it is about formulation questions and finding appropriate resolutions to questions and issues. Inquiry can be a complex undertaking and it therefore requires dedicated instructional design and support to facilitate that students experience the excitement of solving a task or problem on their own. Carefully designed inquiry learning environments can assist students in the process of transforming information and data into useful knowledge” (Computer Supported Inquiry Learning, retrieved 18:31, 28 June 2007 (MEST).

Inquiry-based learning is often described as a cycle or a spiral, which implies formulation of a question, investigation, creation of a solution or an appropriate response, discussion and reflexion in connexion with results (Bishop et al., 2004). IBL is a student-centered and student-lead process. The purpose is to engage the student in active learning, ideally based on their own questions. Learning activities are organized in a cyclic way, independently of the subject. Each question leads to the creation of new ideas and other questions.

This learning process by exploration of the natural or the constructed/social world leads the learner to questions and discoveries in the seeking of new understandings. With this pedagogic strategy, children learn science by doing it (Aubé & David,2003). The main goal is conceptual change.

IBL is a socio-constructivist design because of collaborative work within which the student finds resources, uses tools and resources produced by inquiry partners. Thus, the student make progress by work-sharing, talking and building on everyone's work.

Models

There are many models described in the literature. We shall present as an example the cyclic inquiry model presented on the inquiry page sponsored by "Chip" Bruce et. al of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

 

Cyclic Inquiry model

The purpose of the UIUC inquiry model is the creation of new ideas and concepts, and their spreading in the classroom.

The Inquiry cycle is a process which engages students to ask and answer questions on the basis of collected information and which should lead to the creation of new ideas and concepts. The activity often finishes by the creation of a document which tries to answer the initial questions.

The cycle of inquiry has 5 global steps: Ask, Investigate, Create, Discuss and Reflect. We will give an example for each step using the "rainbow" example from Villavicencio (2000) who works on light and colors every year with 4 or 5 years old children.

from: [The Inquiry Page]

 

During the preparation of the activity, teachers have to think about how many cycles to do, how to end the activity (at the Ask step): when/how to rephrase questions or answer them and express followup questions.

Ask

Ask begins with student's curiosity about the world, ideally with their own questions. The teacher can stimulate the curiosity of the student by giving an introduction talk related to concepts that have to be acquired. It's important that student formulate their own questions because they then can explicitly express concepts related to the learning subject.

This step focuses on a problem or a question that students begin to define. These questions are redefined again and again during the cycle. Step's borders are blurred: a step is never completely left when the student begins the next one.

Rainbow Scenario : The teacher gives some mirrors to the children, so they can play with the sunlight which are passing trough the classroom's windows. With these manipulations, students can then formulate some questions about light and colors.

Investigate

Ask naturally leads to Investigate which should exploit initial curiosity and lead to seek and create information. Students or groups of students collect information, study, collect and exploit resources, experiment, look, interview, draw,... They already can redefine "the question", make it clearer or take another direction. Investigate is a self-motivating process totally owned by the active student.

Rainbow Scenario : Once questions have been asked, the teacher gives to the children some prisms which allow to bend the light and a Round Light Source (RLS), a big cylindrical lamp with four colored windows through a light ray can pass. Then the children can mix the colors and see the result of their mixed ray light on a screen. They begin to collect information...

Create

Collected information begins to merge. Student start making links. Here, ability to synthesize meaning is the spark which creates new knowledge. Student may generate new thoughts, ideas and theories that are not directly inspired by their own experience. They write them down in some kind of report.

Rainbow Scenario : Some links are created from collected information and children understand that rainbows have to be created by this kind of phenomenon.

Discuss

At this point, students share their ideas with each other, and ask others about their own experiences and investigations. Such knowledge-sharing is a community process of construction and they begin to understand the meaning of their investigation. Comparing notes, discussing conclusions and sharing experiences are some examples of this active process.

Rainbow Scenario : children often and spontaneously sit around the RLS. They discuss and share their newly acquired knowledge with the purpose to understand the mix of colors. Then, they are invited to share their findings with the rest of the class, while the teacher takes notes on the blackboard.

Reflect

This step consists in taking time to look back. Think again about the initial question, the path taken, and the actual conclusions. Student look back and maybe take some new decisions: "Has a solution been found ?", "did new questions appear?", "What could they ask now ?",...

Rainbow Scenario : teacher and students take time to look back at the concepts encountered during the earlier steps of the activity. They try to synthesize and to engage further planning on the basis of their recently acquired concepts.

Continuation

Once the first cycle is over, students are back the Ask step and they can choose between two options:

1. Ask: a new cycle starts, fed by the new questions or reformulations of earlier ones. The teacher can create groups to stimulate discussions and interest.
2. Answer: the activity is ending. The teacher has to finish it by broadening: The initial questions with their responses, the reformulated ones, new ones that appeared during the activity. Making a synthesis is always a better solution, even if this step is not the purpose of an entire cycle.

Rainbow Scenario : the teacher sets students free to repeat their experiments or to try different things. Some students try to replicate what their friends have done, others do the same things with or without variants. A new cycle begins.

The advantage of this model is that it can be applied with lots of student types and lots of matters. Moreover, the teacher can design the scenario by focusing on a part of the cycle or another. He can use one, few or more cycle. Most often, a single cycle (formal or not) is not enough and because of that, this model is often drawn in a spiral shape.

 

Other models 

The model we presented above represents probably the dominant view of inquiry learning. It combines more radical open-ended socio-constructivist principles (Discovery learning) with a model of guidance. As opposed to Learning by design, most inquiry-based models do advocate opportunistic (i.e. adaptive) planning by the teacher. Other models include

• knowledge-building community model (a much more open ended version, geared toward "design mode")
• Scaffolded knowledge integration
• Learning by design
• Computer simulation (The "Dutch school") 

* LEXICAL APPROACH

The lexical approach is a method of teaching foreign languages described by M. Lewis in the 1990s. The basic concept on which this approach rests is the idea that an important part of learning a language consists of being able to understand and produce lexical phrases as chunks. Students are thought to be able to perceive patterns of language (grammar) as well as have meaningful set uses of words at their disposal when they are taught in this way.

In the lexical approach, instruction focuses on fixed expressions that occur frequently in dialogues, which Lewis claims make up a larger part of discourse than unique phrases and sentences. Vocabulary is prized over grammar per se in this approach. The teaching of chunks and set phrases has become common in English as a second or foreign language, though this is not necessarily primarily due to the Lexical Approach.

Syllabus

The lexical syllabus is a form of the propositional paradigm that takes 'word' as the unit of analysis and content for syllabus design. Various vocabulary selection studies can be traced back to the 1920s and 1930s (West 1926; Ogden 1930; Faucet et al. 1936), and recent advances in techniques for the computer analysis of large databases of authentic text have helped to resuscitate this line of work. The modern lexical syllabus is discussed in Sinclair & Renouf (1988), who state that the main benefit of a lexical syllabus is that it emphasises utility - the student learns that which is most valuable because it is most frequent. Related work on collocation is reported by Sinclair (1987) and Kennedy (1989), and the Collins COBUILD English Course (Willis & Willis 1988) is cited as an exemplary pedagogic implementation of the work, though "in fact, however, the COBUILD textbooks utilise one of the more complex hybrid syllabi in current ESL texts" (Long & Crookes 1993:23).

Sinclair & Renouf (1988:155) find that (as with other synthetic syllabi), claims made for the lexical syllabus are not supported by evidence, and the assertion that the lexical syllabus is "an independent syllabus, unrelated by any principles to any methodology" (Sinclair et al. 1988:155) is subject to the criticism levelled by Brumfit against notional functional syllabi, i.e. that it (in this case, deliberately) takes no cognisance of how a second language is learned. Since these observations were made, however, Willis (1990) and Lewis (1993) have gone some way to provide such a theoretical justification.

* SUSTAINED SILENT READING

Sustained silent reading (SSR) is a form of school-based recreational reading, or free voluntary reading, where students read silently in a designated time period every day in school. An underlying assumption of SSR is that students learn to read by reading constantly. Successful models of SSR typically allow students to select their own books and require neither testing for comprehension nor book reports. Schools have implemented SSR under a variety of names, such as "Drop Everything and Read (DEAR)" or "Free Uninterrupted Reading (FUR)".

Value of Sustained silent reading

Advocates' perspective

According to advocates, such as Stephen Krashen, SSR has been shown to lead to gains in several literacy domains, including comprehension, spelling and increased vocabulary.

Advocates also point out that students in SSR programs have more positive attitudes toward reading than students who do not participate in SSR programs.

National Reading Panel analysis of sustained silent reading studies

The National Reading Panel (NRP) in the United States meta-analyzed all quasi-experimental and experimental studies of SSR and challenged the claim that SSR has positive effects. The panel stated that the literature contained insufficient numbers of quasi-experimental or experimental studies on SSR to validate its use as a sound educational practice. The panel also noted that the absence of quantitative evidence was not evidence against the practice in itself. They recommended further study of SSR.

Sustained silent reading practices

A range of practices have been associated with SSR, and some advocates suggest that teacher models of reading behavior (i.e., teachers read while the students read), a long term commitment to SSR, availability of multiple level, high interest texts, and a sense of reading community are particularly relevant.

* TASK -BASED INSTRUCTION

Task-based language learning (TBLL), also known as task-based language teaching (TBLT) or task-based instruction (TBI) focuses on the use of authentic language and on asking students to do meaningful tasks using the target language. Such tasks can include visiting a doctor, conducting an interview, or calling customer service for help. Assessment is primarily based on task outcome (in other words the appropriate completion of real world tasks) rather than on accuracy of prescribed language forms. This makes TBLL especially popular for developing target language fluency and student confidence. As such TBLL can be considered a branch of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).

TBLL was popularized by N. Prabhu while working in Bangalore, India. Prabhu noticed that his students could learn language just as easily with a non-linguistic problem as when they were concentrating on linguistic questions. Major scholars who have done research in this area include Teresa P. Pica and Michael Long

According to Jane Willis, TBLL consists of the pre-task, the task cycle, and the language focus.

The components of a Task are:

1. Goals and objectives
2. Input
3. Activities
4. Teacher role
5. learner role
6. Settings

Background

Task-based language learning has its origins in communicative language teaching, and is a subcategory of it. Educators adopted task-based language learning for a variety of reasons. Some moved to task-based syllabi in an attempt to make language in the classroom truly communicative, rather than the pseudo-communication that results from classroom activities with no direct connection to real-life situations. Others, like Prabhu in the Bangalore Project, thought that tasks were a way of tapping into learners' natural mechanisms for second-language acquisition, and weren't concerned with real-life communication per se.

Definition of a Task

According to Rod Ellis, a task has four main characteristics:

1. A task involves a primary focus on (pragmatic) meaning.
2. A task has some kind of ‘gap’ (Prabhu identified the three main types as information gap, reasoning gap, and opinion gap).
3. The participants choose the linguistic resources needed to complete the task.
4. A task has a clearly defined, non-linguistic outcome.

In practice

The core of the lesson or project is, as the name suggests, the task. Teachers and curriculum developers should bear in mind that any attention to form, i.e. grammar or vocabulary, increases the likelihood that learners may be distracted from the task itself and become preoccupied with detecting and correcting errors and/or looking up language in dictionaries and grammar references. Although there may be several effective frameworks for creating a task-based learning lesson, here is a basic outline:

Pre-task

In the pre-task, the teacher will present what will be expected of the students in the task phase. Additionally, in the "weak" form of  TBLL, the teacher may prime the students with key vocabulary or grammatical constructs, although this can mean that the activity is, in effect, more similar to the more traditional present-practise-produce (PPP) paradigm. In "strong" task-based learning lessons, learners are responsible for selecting the appropriate language for any given context themselves. The instructor may also present a model of the task by either doing it themselves or by presenting picture, audio, or video demonstrating the task.

Task

During the task phase, the students perform the task, typically in small groups, although this is dependent on the type of activity. And unless the teacher plays a particular role in the task, then the teacher's role is typically limited to one of an observer or counselor—thus the reason for it being a more student-centered methodology.

Review

If learners have created tangible linguistic products, e.g. text, montage, presentation, audio or video recording, learners can review each others' work and offer constructive feedback. If a task is set to extend over longer periods of time, e.g. weeks, and includes iterative cycles of constructive activity followed by review, TBLL can be seen as analogous to Project-based learning.

Types of task

According to N. S. Prabhu, there are three main categories of task; information-gap, reasoning-gap, and opinion-gap.

Information-gap activity, which involves a transfer of given information from one person to another – or from one form to another, or from one place to another – generally calling for the decoding or encoding of information from or into language. One example is pair work in which each member of the pair has a part of the total information (for example an incomplete picture) and attempts to convey it verbally to the other. Another example is completing a tabular representation with information available in a given piece of text. The activity often involves selection of relevant information as well, and learners may have to meet criteria of completeness and correctness in making the transfer.

Reasoning gap Reasoning-gap activity, which involves deriving some new information from given information through processes of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of relationships or patterns. One example is working out a teacher’s timetable on the basis of given class timetables. Another is deciding what course of action is best (for example cheapest or quickest) for a given purpose and within given constraints. The activity necessarily involves comprehending and conveying information, as in information-gap activity, but the information Teaching to be conveyed is not identical with that initially comprehended. There is a piece of reasoning which connects the two.

Opinion gap Opinion-gap activity, which involves identifying and articulat-ing a personal preference, feeling, or attitude in response to a given situation. One example is story completion; another is taking part in the discussion of a social issue. The activity may involve using factual information and formulating arguments to justify one’s opinion, but there is no objective procedure for demonstrating outcomes as right or wrong, and no reason to expect the same outcome from different individuals or on different occasions.

Reception

According to Jon Larsson, in considering problem based learning for language learning, i.e. task based language learning:

...one of the main virtues of PBL is that it displays a significant advantage over traditional methods in how the communicative skills of the students are improved. The general ability of social interaction is also positively affected. These are, most will agree, two central factors in language learning. By building a language course around assignments that require students to act, interact and communicate it is hopefully possible to mimic some of the aspects of learning a language “on site”, i.e. in a country where it is actually spoken. Seeing how learning a language in such an environment is generally much more effective than teaching the language exclusively as a foreign language, this is something that would hopefully be beneficial.

Larsson goes on to say:

Another large advantage of PBL is that it encourages students to gain a deeper sense of understanding. Superficial learning is often a problem in language education, for example when students, instead of acquiring a sense of when and how to use which vocabulary, learn all the words they will need for the exam next week and then promptly forget them.

In a PBL classroom this is combatted by always introducing the vocabulary in a real-world situation, rather than as words on a list, and by activating the student; students are not passive receivers of knowledge, but are instead required to actively acquire the knowledge. The feeling of being an integral part of their group also motivates students to learn in a way that the prospect of a final examination rarely manages to do.

Task-based learning is advantageous to the student because it is more student-centered, allows for more meaningful communication, and often provides for practical extra-linguistic skill building. As the tasks are likely to be familiar to the students (e.g.: visiting the doctor), students are more likely to be engaged, which may further motivate them in their language learning.

According to Jeremy Harmer, tasks promote language acquisition through the types of language and interaction they require. Harmer says that although the teacher may present language in the pre-task, the students are ultimately free to use what grammar constructs and vocabulary they want. This allows them, he says, to use all the language they know and are learning, rather than just the 'target language' of the lesson. On the other hand, according to Loschky and Bley-Vroman, tasks can also be designed to make certain target forms 'task-essential,' thus making it communicatively necessary for students to practice using them. In terms of interaction, information gap tasks in particular have been shown to promote negotiation of meaning and output modification.

According to Plews and Zhao, task-based language learning can suffer in practice from poorly informed implementation and adaptations that alter its fundamental nature. They say that lessons are frequently changed to be more like traditional teacher-led presentation-practice-production lessons than task-based lessons.

* TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE

Total physical response (TPR) is a language-teaching method developed by James Asher, a professor emeritus of psychology at San José State University. It is based on the coordination of language and physical movement. In TPR, instructors give commands to students in the target language, and students respond with whole-body actions.
The method is an example of the comprehension approach to language teaching. Listening serves a dual purpose; it is both a means of understanding messages in the language being learned, and a means of learning the structure of the language itself. Grammar is not taught explicitly, but is induced from the language input.
Asher developed TPR as a result of his experiences observing young children learning their first language. He noticed that interactions between parents and children often took the form of speech from the parent followed by a physical response from the child. Asher made three hypotheses based on his observations: first, that language is learned primarily by listening; second, that language learning must engage the right hemisphere of the brain; and third, that learning language should not involve any stress.
Total physical response is often used alongside other methods and techniques. It is popular with beginners and with young learners, although it can be used with students of all levels and all age groups.
Background

James Asher developed the total physical response method as a result of his observation of the language development of young children. Asher saw that most of the interactions that young children experience with parents or other adults combine both verbal and physical aspects. The child responds physically to the speech of the parent, and the parent reinforces the child’s responses through further speech. This creates a positive feedback loop between the parent’s speech and the child’s actions. Asher also observed that young children typically spend a long time listening to language before ever attempting to speak, and that they can understand and react to utterances that are much more complex than those they can produce themselves.
From his experiences, Asher outlined three main hypotheses about learning second languages that are embodied in the total physical response method. The first is that the brain is naturally predisposed to learn language through listening. Specifically, Asher says that learners best internalize language when they respond with physical movement to language input. Asher hypothesizes that speech develops naturally and spontaneously after learners internalize the target language through input, and that it should not be forced.In Asher’s own words:

A reasonable hypothesis is that the brain and the nervous system are biologically programmed to acquire language, either the first or the second in a particular sequence and in a particular mode. The sequence is listening before speaking and the mode is to synchronise language with the individual’s body.

The second of Asher’s hypotheses is that effective language learning must engage the right hemisphere of the brain. Physical movement is controlled primarily by the right hemisphere, and Asher sees the coupling of movement with language comprehension as the key to language acquisition. He says that left-hemisphere learning should be avoided, and that the left hemisphere needs a great deal of experience of right-hemisphere-based input before natural speech can occur.
Asher’s third hypothesis is that language learning should not involve any stress, as stress and negative emotions inhibit the natural language-learning process. He regards the stressful nature of most language-teaching methods as one of their major weaknesses. Asher recommends that teachers focus on meaning and physical movement to avoid stress.
The main text on total physical response is James Asher’s Learning Another Language through Actions, first published in 1977.

Principles

Total physical response is an example of the comprehension approach to language teaching. Methods in the comprehension approach emphasize the importance of listening on language development, and do not require spoken output in the early stages of learning. In total physical response, students are not forced to speak. Instead, teachers wait until students acquire enough language through listening that they start to speak spontaneously. At the beginning stages of instruction students can respond to the instructor in their native language.
While the majority of class time in total physical response is spent on listening comprehension, the ultimate goal of the method is to develop oral fluency. Asher sees developing listening comprehension skills as the most efficient way of developing spoken language skills.
Lessons in TPR are organized around grammar, and in particular around the verb. Instructors issue commands based on the verbs and vocabulary to be learned in that lesson.However, the primary focus in lessons is on meaning, which distinguishes TPR from other grammar-based methods such as grammar-translation.
Grammar is not explicitly taught, but is learned by induction. Students are expected to subconsciously acquire the grammatical structure of the language through exposure to spoken language input, in addition to decoding the messages in the input to find their meaning. This approach to listening is called codebreaking.
Total physical response is both a teaching technique and a philosophy of language teaching. Teachers do not have to limit themselves to TPR techniques to teach according to the principles of the total physical response method.
Because the students are only expected to listen and not to speak, the teacher has the sole responsibility for deciding what input students hear.

Procedure

The majority of class time in TPR lessons is spent doing drills in which the instructor gives commands using the imperative mood. Students respond to these commands with physical actions. Initially, students learn the meaning of the commands they hear by direct observation. After they learn the meaning of the words in these commands, the teacher issues commands that use novel combinations of the words the students have learned.
Instructors limit the number of new vocabulary items given to students at any one time. This is to help students differentiate the new words from those previously learned, and to facilitate integration with their existing language knowledge. Asher suggests that students can learn between 12 and 36 words for every hour of instruction, depending on their language level and class size.
While drills using the imperative are the mainstay of total physical response classes, teachers can use other activities as well. Some typical other activities are role plays and slide presentations. However, beginners are not made to learn conversational dialogs until 120 hours into their course.
There is little error correction in TPR. Asher advises teachers to treat learners’ mistakes the same way a parent would treat their children’s. Errors made by beginning-level students are usually overlooked, but as students become more advanced teachers may correct more of their errors. This is similar to parents raising their children; as children get older parents tend to correct their grammatical mistakes more often.
According to Asher, TPR lesson plans should contain the detailed commands that the teacher intends to use. He says, “It is wise to write out the exact utterances you will be using and especially the novel commands because the action is so fast-moving there is usually not time for you to create spontaneously.”

Teaching materials

Total physical response lessons typically use a wide variety of realia, posters, and props. Teaching materials are not compulsory, and for the very first lessons they may not be used. As students progress in ability the teacher may begin to use objects found in the classroom such as furniture or books, and later may use word charts, pictures, and realia.
There are a number of specialized TPR teaching products available, including student kits developed by Asher and an interactive CD-ROM for students to practice with privately.

Research

Asher conducted a large number of scientific studies to test and refine his hypotheses and the teaching practices in total physical response. When testing children and adults learning Russian, Asher and Price found that the adults outperformed the children.

Reception

According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning, TPR is often criticized as being only suitable for beginning students. However, the encyclopedia goes on to note that there are several publications available about how to use TPR with intermediate and advanced students.
According to its proponents, total physical response has a number of advantages: Students enjoy getting out of their chairs and moving around. Simple TPR activities do not require a great deal of preparation on the part of the teacher. TPR is aptitude-free, working well with a mixed ability class, and with students having various disabilities.^[17] It is good for kinesthetic learners who need to be active in the class. Class size need not be a problem, and it works effectively for children and adults.
However, it is recognized that TPR is most useful for beginners, though it can be used at higher levels where preparation becomes an issue for the teacher. It does not give students the opportunity to express their own thoughts in a creative way. Further, it is easy to overuse TPR-- "Any novelty, if carried on too long, will trigger adaptation." It can be a challenge for shy students. Additionally, the nature of TPR places an unnaturally heavy emphasis on the use of the imperative mood, that is to say commands such as sit down and stand up. These features are of limited utility to the learner, and can lead to a learner appearing rude when attempting to use his new language. As a TPR class progresses, group activities and descriptions can extend basic TPR concepts into full communication situations.
Because of its participatory approach, TPR may also be a useful alternative teaching strategy for students with dyslexia or related learning disabilities, who typically experience difficulty learning foreign languages with traditional classroom instruction.

Influence

Teachers who use TPR typically use it together with a variety of other activities and techniques.It is most often used for introducing new vocabulary.This is in line with Asher’s recommendations for using the method.
Blaine Ray, a Spanish language teacher, added stories to TPR to help students acquire non-physical language creating the foundation of the method known as Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) built on Stephen Krashen's theories of language acquisition.

* PROJECT BASED LEARNING

Project-based learning is considered an alternative to paper-based, rote memorization, teacher-led classrooms. Proponents of project-based learning cite numerous benefits to the implementation of these strategies in the classroom including a greater depth of understanding of concepts, broader knowledge base, improved communication and interpersonal/social skills, enhanced leadership skills, increased creativity, and improved writing skills.
John Dewey initially promoted the idea of "learning by doing." In My Pedagogical Creed (1897) Dewey enumerated his beliefs regarding education: "The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these.......I believe, therefore, in the so-called expressive or constructive activities as the centre of correlation."(Dewey, 1897) Educational research has advanced this idea of teaching and learning into a methodology known as "project-based learning." Blumenfeld & Krajcik (2006)cite studies by Marx et al., 2004, Rivet & Krajcki, 2004 and William & Linn, 2003 and state that "research has demonstrated that student in project-based learning classrooms get higher scores than students in traditional classroom."

Markham (2011) describes project-based learning (PBL) as: " PBL integrates knowing and doing. Students learn knowledge and elements of the core curriculum, but also apply what they know to solve authentic problems and produce results that matter. PBL students take advantage of digital tools to produce high quality, collaborative products. PBL refocuses education on the student, not the curriculum--a shift mandated by the global world, which rewards intangible assets such as drive, passion, creativity, empathy, and resiliency. These cannot be taught out of a textbook, but must be activated through experience."
Project-based learning has been associated with the "situated learning" perspective of James G. Greeno (2006) and on the constructivist theories of Jean Piaget. A more precise description of the processes of PBL given by Blumenfeld et al. says that, "Project-based learning is a comprehensive perspective focused on teaching by engaging students in investigation. Within this framework, students pursue solutions to nontrivial problems by asking and refining questions, debating ideas, making predictions, designing plans and/or experiments, collecting and analyzing data, drawing conclusions, communicating their ideas and findings to others, asking new questions, and creating artifacts." (Blumenfeld, et al., 1991) The basis of PBL lies in the authenticity or real-life application of the research. Students working as a team are given a "driving question" to respond to or answer, then directed to create an artifact (or artifacts) to present their gained knowledge. Artifacts may include a variety of media such as writings, art, drawings, three-dimensional representations, videos, photography, or technology-based presentations.
Project-based learning is not without its opponents, however; in Peer Evaluation in Blended Team Project-Based Learning: What Do Students Find Important? Hye-Jung & Cheolil (2012) describe social loafing as a negative aspect of collaborative learning. Social loafing may include insufficient performances by some team members as well as a lowering of expected standards of performance by the group as a whole to maintain congeniality amongst members. These authors said that because teachers tend to grade the finished product only, the social dynamics of the assignment may escape the teacher's notice.

Structure

Project-based learning emphasizes learning activities that are long-term, interdisciplinary and student-centered. Unlike traditional, teacher-led classroom activities, students often must organize their own work and manage their own time in a project-based class. Project-based instruction differs from traditional inquiry by its emphasis on students' collaborative or individual artifact construction to represent what is being learned.
Elements

The core idea of project-based learning is that real-world problems capture students' interest and provoke serious thinking as the students acquire and apply new knowledge in a problem-solving context. The teacher plays the role of facilitator, working with students to frame worthwhile questions, structuring meaningful tasks, coaching both knowledge development and social skills, and carefully assessing what students have learned from the experience. Typical projects present a problem to solve (What is the best way to reduce the pollution in the schoolyard pond?) or a phenomenon to investigate (What causes rain?).
Comprehensive Project-based Learning:

• is organized around an open-ended driving question or challenge.
• creates a need to know essential content and skills.
• requires inquiry to learn and/or create something new.
• requires critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication, often known as "21st Century Skills."
• allows some degree of student voice and choice.
• incorporates feedback and revision.
• results in a publicly presented product or performance.

Examples

Although projects are the primary vehicle for instruction in project-based learning, there are no commonly shared criteria for what constitutes an acceptable project. Projects vary greatly in the depth of the questions explored, the clarity of the learning goals, the content and structure of the activity, and guidance from the teacher. The role of projects in the overall curriculum is also open to interpretation. Projects can guide the entire curriculum (more common in charter or other alternative schools) or simply comprise of a few hands-on activities. They might be multidisciplinary (more likely in elementary schools) or single-subject (commonly science and math). Some projects involve the whole class, while others are done in small groups or individually.
When PBL is used with 21st-century tools/skills , students are expected to use technology in meaningful ways to help them investigate, collaborate, analyze, synthesize and present their learning. Where technology is infused throughout the project, a more appropriate term for the pedagogy can be referred to as iPBL (copyright 2006, ITJAB), to reflect the emphasis on technological skills as well as academic content.
An example of applied PBL is Muscatine High School, located in Muscatine, Iowa. The school started the G2 (Global Generation Exponential Learning) which consists of middle and high school “Schools within Schools” that deliver the four core subject areas. At the high school level, activities may include making water purification systems, investigating service learning, or creating new bus routes. At the middle school level, activities may include researching trash statistics, documenting local history through interviews, or writing essays about a community scavenger hunt. Classes are designed to help diverse students become college and career ready after high school.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided funding to start holistic PBL schools across the United States. These organizations include:

• EdVisions Schools 
• Envision Schools 
• North Bay Academy of Communication and Design 
• Big Picture Schools 
• New Tech Network.

Another example is Manor New Technology High School, a public high school that is part of the New Tech Network of school. Manor New Technology High School is a 100 percent project-based instruction school. Students average 60 projects a year across subjects. Since opening in fall 2007, the school has outperformed the state of Texas and Manor Independent School District in the percentage of students passing state standards in three of the four subjects tested: science, social studies, and reading/English language arts.

Roles

PBL relies on learning groups. Student groups determine their projects, in so doing, they engage student voice by encouraging students to take full responsibility for their learning. This is what makes PBL constructivist. Students work together to accomplish specific goals.
When students use technology as a tool to communicate with others, they take on an active role vs. a passive role of transmitting the information by a teacher, a book, or broadcast. The student is constantly making choices on how to obtain, display, or manipulate information. Technology makes it possible for students to think actively about the choices they make and execute. Every student has the opportunity to get involved either individually or as a group.
Instructor role in Project Based Learning is that of a facilitator. They do not relinquish control of the classroom or student learning but rather develop an atmosphere of shared responsibility. The Instructor must structure the proposed question/issue so as to direct the student's learning toward content-based materials. The instructor must regulate student success with intermittent, transitional goals to ensure student projects remain focused and students have a deep understanding of the concepts being investigated. It is important for teachers not to provide the students any answers because it defeats the learning and investigating process. Once the project is finished, the instructor provides the students with feedback that will help them strengthen their skills for their next project
Student role is to ask questions, build knowledge, and determine a real-world solution to the issue/question presented. Students must collaborate expanding their active listening skills and requiring them to engage in intelligent focused communication. Therefore, allowing them to think rationally on how to solve problems. PBL forces students to take ownership of their success.

Outcomes
 
More important than learning science, students need to learn to work in a community, thereby taking on social responsibilities. The most significant contributions of PBL have been in schools languishing in poverty stricken areas; when students take responsibility, or ownership, for their learning, their self-esteem soars. It also helps to create better work habits and attitudes toward learning. In standardized tests, languishing schools have been able to raise their testing grades a full level by implementing PBL.Although students do work in groups, they also become more independent because they are receiving little instruction from the teacher. With Project-Based Learning students also learn skills that are essential in higher education. The students learn more than just finding answers, PBL allows them to expand their minds and think beyond what they normally would. Students have to find answers to questions and combine them using critically thinking skills to come up with answers.
PBL is significant to the study of (mis-)conceptions; local concepts and childhood intuitions that are hard to replace with conventional classroom lessons. In PBL, project science is the community culture; the student groups themselves resolve their understandings of phenomena with their own knowledge building. Technology allows them to search in more useful ways, along with getting more rapid results.
Opponents of Project Based Learning warn against negative outcomes primarily in projects that become unfocused and tangential arguing that underdeveloped lessons can result in the wasting of precious class time. No one teaching method has been proven more effective than another. Opponents suggest that narratives and presentation of anecdotal evidence included in lecture-style instruction can convey the same knowledge in less class time. Given that disadvantaged students generally have fewer opportunities to learn academic content outside of school, wasted class time due to an unfocused lesson presents a particular problem. Instructors can be deluded into thinking that as long as a student is engaged and doing, they are learning. Ultimately it is cognitive activity that determines the success of a lesson. If the project does not remain on task and content driven the student will not be successful in learning the material. The lesson will be ineffective. A source of difficulty for teachers includes, "Keeping these complex projects on track while attending to students' individual learning needs requires artful teaching, as well as industrial-strength project management." Like any approach, Project Based Learning is only beneficial when applied successfully.
Problem-based learning is a similar pedagogic approach, however, problem-based approaches structure students' activities more by asking them to solve specific (open-ended) problems rather than relying on students to come up with their own problems in the course of completing a project.
A meta-analysis conducted by Purdue University found that when implemented well, PBL can increase long-term retention of material and replicable skill, as well as improve teachers' and students' attitudes towards learning.
Criticism

One concern is that PBL may be inappropriate in mathematics, the reason being that mathematics is primarily skill-based at the elementary level. Transforming the curriculum into an over-reaching project or series of projects does not allow for the necessary practice at particular mathematical skills. For instance, factoring quadratic equations in elementary algebra is something that requires extensive practice.
On the other hand, a teacher could integrate a PBL approach into the standard curriculum, helping the students see some broader contexts where abstract quadratic equations may apply. For example, Newton's law implies that tossed objects follow a parabolic path, and the roots of the corresponding equation correspond to the starting and ending locations of the object.
Another criticism of PBL is that measures that are stated as reasons for its success are not measurable using standard measurement tools, and rely on subjective rubrics for assessing results.
In PBL there is also a certain tendency for the creation of the final product of the project to become the driving force in classroom activities. When this happens, the project can lose its content focus and be ineffective in helping students learn certain concepts and skills. For example, academic projects that culminate in an artistic display or exhibit may place more emphasis on the artistic processes involved in creating the display than on the academic content that the project is meant to help students learn.

* THE SILENT WAY

The Silent Way is a language-teaching method created by Caleb Gattegno that makes extensive use of silence as a teaching technique. It is not usually considered a mainstream method in language education. It was first introduced in Gattegno's book Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: The Silent Way in 1963. Gattegno was skeptical of the mainstream language education of the time, and conceived of the method as a special case of his general theories of education.

The method emphasises the autonomy of the learner; the teacher's role is to monitor the students' efforts, and the students are encouraged to have an active role in learning the language. Pronunciation is seen as fundamental; beginning students start their study with pronunciation, and much time is spent practising it each lesson. The Silent Way uses a structural syllabus, and structures are constantly reviewed and recycled. The choice of vocabulary is important, with functional and versatile words seen as the best. Translation and rote repetition are avoided and the language is usually practiced in meaningful contexts. Evaluation is carried out by observation, and the teacher may never set a formal test.

The teacher uses silence for multiple purposes in the Silent Way. It is used to focus students' attention, to elicit student responses, and to encourage them to correct their own errors. Even though teachers are often silent, they are still active; they will commonly use techniques such as mouthing words and using hand gestures to help the students with their pronunciation. Teachers will also encourage students to help their peers.

Silent Way teachers use specialized teaching materials. One of the hallmarks of the method is the use of Cuisenaire rods, which can be used for anything from introducing simple commands to representing abstract objects such as clocks and floor plans. The method also makes use of color association to help teach pronunciation; there is a sound-color chart which is used to teach the language sounds, colored word charts which are used to teach sentences, and colored Fidel charts which are used to teach spelling.

Background and principles

Gattegno was a rank outsider to language education when Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools was first published in 1963. The book was conspicuously lacking the names of most prominent language educators and linguists of the time, and Gattegno's works were only cited rarely in language education books and journals. He was previously a designer of mathematics and reading programmes, and the use of color charts and colored Cuisenaire rods in the Silent Way grew directly out of this experience.

Gattegno was openly sceptical of the role linguistic theory of the time had in language teaching. He felt that linguistic studies "may be a specialization, [that] carry with them a narrow opening of one's sensitivity and perhaps serve very little towards the broad end in mind". The Silent Way was conceived as a special case of Gattegno's broader educational principles, rather than a method specifically aimed at teaching languages. Gattegno developed these ideas to solve general problems in learning, and he also applied them to his work in the teaching of mathematics and the mother tongue. Broadly, these principles are:

1. Teachers should concentrate on how students learn, not on how to teach
2. Imitation and drill are not the primary means by which students learn
3. Learning consists of trial and error, deliberate experimentation, suspending judgement, and revising conclusions
4. In learning, learners draw on everything that they already know, especially their native language
5. The teacher must not interfere with the learning process

These principles situate the Silent Way in the tradition of discovery learning, that sees learning as a creative problem-solving activity.

Design and goals

The general goal of the Silent Way is to help beginning-level students gain basic fluency in the target language, with the ultimate aim being near-native language proficiency and good pronunciation. An important part of this ability is being able to use the language for self-expression; students should be able to express their thoughts, feelings, and needs in the target language. In order to help them achieve this, teachers emphasize self-reliance. Students are encouraged to actively explore the language, and to develop their own 'inner criteria' as to what is linguistically acceptable.

The role of the teacher is that of technician or engineer. The teacher's task is to focus the students' attention, and provide exercises to help them develop language facility; however, to ensure their self-reliance, the teacher should only help the students as much as is strictly necessary. As Gattegno says, "The teacher works with the student; the student works on the language." For example, teachers will often give students time to correct their own mistakes before giving them the answer to a question. Teachers also avoid praise or criticism, as it can discourage students from developing self-reliance.

A sound-color chart for English; these charts are used right from the beginning stages to teach pronunciation and word stress.

In the Silent Way students are seen as bringing a vast amount of experience and knowledge with them to the classroom; namely, their first language. The teacher capitalizes on this knowledge when introducing new material, always building from the known to the unknown. The students begin their study of the language by studying its sound system. The sounds are associated to different colors using a sound-color chart that is specific to the language being learned. The teacher first introduces sounds that are already present in the students' native language, and then progresses to sounds that are new to them. These sound-color associations are later used to help the students with spelling, reading, and pronunciation.

The Silent Way uses a structural syllabus. The teacher will typically introduce one new language structure at a time, and old structures are continuously reviewed and recycled. These structures are chosen for their propositional meaning, not for their communicative value. The teacher will set up learning situations for the students which focus their attention on each new structure. For example, the teacher might ask students to label a floor plan of a house in order to introduce the concepts of inside and outside. Once the language structures have been presented in this way, learners learn the grammar rules through a process of induction.

Gattegno saw the choice of which vocabulary to teach as vital to the language learning process. He advised teachers to concentrate on the most functional and versatile words, to help students build a functional vocabulary.

Translation and rote repetition are avoided, and instead emphasis is placed on conveying meaning through students' perceptions, and through practicing the language in meaningful contexts. In the floor plan example, the plan itself negates the need for translation, and the teacher is able to give the students meaningful practice simply by pointing to different parts of the house. The four skills of active listening, speaking, reading, and writing are worked on from the beginning stages, although students only learn to read something after they have learned to say it.

Evaluation in the Silent Way is carried out primarily by observation. Teachers may never give a formal test, but they constantly assess students by observing their actions. This allows them to respond straight away to any problems the students might have.Teachers also gain feedback through observing students' errors; errors are seen as natural and necessary for learning, and can be a useful guide as to what structures need more practice. Furthermore, teachers may gain feedback by asking the students at the end of the lesson.When evaluating the students, teachers expect them to learn at different rates, and students are not penalized for learning more slowly than their classmates. Teachers look for steady progress in the language, not perfection.

Process

Teaching techniques

Just as the name implies, silence is a key tool of the teacher in the Silent Way. From the beginning levels, students do 90 percent or more of the talking. Being silent moves the focus of the classroom from the teacher to the students, and can encourage cooperation among them. It also frees the teacher to observe the class. Silence can be used to help students correct their own errors. Teachers can remain silent when a student makes a mistake to give them time to self-correct; they can also help students with their pronunciation by mouthing words without vocalizing, and by using certain hand gestures. When teachers do speak, they tend to say things only once so that students learn to focus their attention on them.

A Silent Way classroom also makes extensive use of peer correction. Students are encouraged to help their classmates when they have trouble with any particular feature of the language. This help should be made in a cooperative fashion, not a competitive one. One of the teacher's tasks is to monitor these interactions, so that they are helpful and do not interfere with students' learning.

Teaching materials

A set of Cuisenaire rods

The silent way makes use of specialized teaching materials: colored Cuisenaire rods, the sound-color chart, word charts, and Fidel charts. The Cuisenaire rods are wooden, and come in ten different lengths, but identical cross-section; each length has its own assigned color. The rods are used in a wide variety of situations in the classroom. At the beginning stages they can be used to practice colors and numbers, and later they can be used in more complex grammar. For example, to teach prepositions the teacher could use the statement "The blue rod is between the green one and the yellow one". They can also be used more abstractly, perhaps to represent a clock or the floor plan of a house.

A Fidel chart for English; these charts are used to teach spelling.

The sound-color chart consists of blocks of color, with one color representing one sound in the language being learned. The teacher uses this chart to help teach pronunciation; as well as pointing to colors to help students with the different sounds, she can also tap particular colors very hard to help students learn word stress. Later in the learning process, students can point to the chart themselves. The chart can help students perceive sounds that may not occur in their first language, and it also allows students to practice making these sounds without relying on mechanical repetition. It also provides an easily verifiable record of which sounds the students and which they have not, which can help their autonomy.

The word charts contain the functional vocabulary of the target language, and use the same color scheme as the sound-color chart. Each letter is colored in a way that indicates its pronunciation. The teacher can point to the chart to highlight the pronunciation of different words in sentences that the students are learning. There are twelve word charts in English, containing a total of around five hundred words. The Fidel charts also use the same color-coding, and list the various ways that sounds can be spelled. For example, in English, the entry for the sound /ey/ contains the spellings ay, ea, ei, eigh, etc., all written in the same color. These can be used to help students associate sounds with their spelling.

* PARTICIPATORY APPROACH

Participatory approach is the approach whichis applied by the teacher to learner to exposure language learners to the target language through issue of concern to students. 

Role of  Teacher 

Role of teacher is the teacher conduct of the flow of the lesson or as a facilitator.

Role of Student

The expression participatory is self explanatory. 

student are active participant.

 The participatory approach to evaluation is aimed at promoting action and community-level change. It tends to overlap more with qualitative than with quantitative methods. However, not all qualitative methods are participatory, and inversely, many participatory techniques can be quantified. 

As with qualitative methods,  participatory evaluation ensures that the perspectives and insights of all stakeholders, beneficiaries as well as project implementers, are taken into consideration. However, the participatory approach is very much action-oriented. The stakeholders themselves are responsible for collecting and analyzing the information, and for generating recommendations for change. The role of an outside evaluator is to facilitate and support this learning process. Participatory M&E develops ownership by placing a strong emphasis on building the capacity and commitment of all stakeholders to reflect, analyze, and take responsibility for implementing any changes they recommend. 

Typically, participatory methods have been used to learn about local-level conditions and local people's perspectives and their priorities during project appraisal. But one can go further, and use participatory methods not only at project formulation stage, but throughout the duration of the project, and especially for evaluating how the poor perceived the benefits from the project. Participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) is an important management tool that provides task managers with quick feedback on project effectiveness during implementation. This has become increasingly important as development interventions move away from "blueprint projects" toward the more flexible planning which enables projects to learn and adapt on-the-ground. 

There are many different participatory information collection and analysis tools. Most of these are not inherently M&E tools, but can be used for a range of purposes ranging from project planning and community mobilization through M&E depending on the way they are employed. As with all participatory approaches, the key to success is to be flexible and innovative in the use of appropriate tools and methods, and to be willing to adapt to local circumstances. 

This site provides descriptions of three participatory methodologies and their associated tools and techniques which are commonly used in participatory M&E:  

• Beneficiary Assessment (BA)
• Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)
• SARAR: Self-esteem, Associative strength, Resourcefulness, Action planning and Responsibility

These methods can be used alone or combined in a single evaluation. They represent only a small sample of the vast range of participatory techniques that can be used for M&E. 

It should be noted that none of these participatory methods is intended to be a replacement for good quality survey work. Indeed, they are often used in conjunction with other methods. For example, the findings from a preliminary study using PRA or SARAR techniques can usefully give direction and focus to a subsequent survey-based evaluations. In turn, the survey can verify and quantify the qualitative findings from participatory evaluations and be applied on a larger scale. Participatory evaluations done after quantitative surveys can verify or challenge survey findings, and can go some way toward explaining the information collected by the quantitative survey-based evaluations. 

* NEUROLINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING

  

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is an incredibly powerful discipline that enables people to unblock the structures of human communication and human excellence.  By doing so people can think, communicate and manage themselves, and others, more effectively. 

NLP explores the relationships between how we think (neuro), how we communicate (linguistic) and our patterns of behaviour and emotion (programmes).

By studying and learning from these relationships people can effectively transform the way they traditionally think and act, adopting new, far more successful models of human excellence. (This activity is called modelling and is a key feature that distinguishes NLP from psychology). 

In effect, NLP is a powerful change management tool that transforms the way people think and act to have the greatest impact both professionally and personally.  That’s why NLP is one of the most powerful skills used in business management, psychology, sales, sports coaching and all forms of personal development.

NLP can help you to:

• Be more successful by learning to influence your emotional and psychological states.
• Replace negative behaviors and habits with positive ones.
• Transform the way you go about everyday tasks.
• Be more aware of your impact on others and how to manage your behaviour for optimal results.
• Better understand your own motivations, needs and behaviors and use these positively to have the greatest impact.
• Better understand your staff’s and customer’s needs, motivations and behaviors.
• Improve and enhance your interpersonal communication at the office and at home.

 * NATURAL APPROACH

The natural approach is a method of language teaching developed by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It aims to foster naturalistic language acquisition in a classroom setting, and to this end it emphasises communication, and places decreased importance on conscious grammar study and explicit correction of student errors. Efforts are also made to make the learning environment as stress-free as possible. In the natural approach, language output is not forced, but allowed to emerge spontaneously after students have attended to large amounts of comprehensible language input.

The natural approach has become closely associated with Krashen's monitor model, and it is often seen as an application of the theory to language teaching. Despite this perception, there are some differences, particularly Terrell's view that some degree of conscious grammar study can be beneficial. The syllabus focuses on activities which Terrell sees as promoting subconscious language acquisition. He divides these activities into four main areas: content activities, such as learning a new subject in the target language; activities which focus on personalizing language, such as students sharing their favorite music; games; and problem-solving activities.

Background

 

The natural approach was originally invented in 1977 by Terrell, a Spanish teacher in California, who wished to develop a style of teaching based on the findings of naturalistic studies of second-language acquisition. After the original formulation, Terrell worked with Krashen to further develop the theoretical aspects of the method. Terrell and Krashen published the results of their collaboration in the 1983 book The Natural Approach.

The natural approach was strikingly different from the mainstream approach in the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s, the audio-lingual method. While the audio-lingual method prized drilling and error correction, these things disappeared almost entirely from the natural approach. Terrell and Krashen themselves characterized the natural approach as a "traditional" method and contrasted it with grammar-based approaches, which they characterized as new inventions that had "misled" teachers.

The natural approach shares many earmarks with the direct method (itself also known as the "natural method"), which was formulated around 1900 and was also a reaction to grammar-translation. Both the natural approach and the direct method are based on the idea of enabling naturalistic language acquisition in the language classroom; they differ in that the natural approach puts less emphasis on practice and more on exposure to language input and on reducing learners' anxiety.

Outline

 

The aim of the natural approach is to develop communicative skills, and it is primarily intended to be used with beginning learners. It is presented as a set of principles that can apply to a wide range of learners and teaching situations, and concrete objectives depend on the specific context in which it is used. Terrell outlines three basic principles of the approach:

• "Focus of instruction is on communication rather than its form."
• "Speech production comes slowly and is never forced."
• "Early speech goes through natural stages (yes or no response, one- word answers, lists of words, short phrases, complete sentences.)"

These principles result in classrooms where the teacher emphasizes interesting, comprehensible input and low-anxiety situations. Lessons in the natural approach focus on understanding messages in the foreign language, and place little or no importance on error correction, drilling or on conscious learning of grammar rules. They also emphasize learning of a wide vocabulary base over learning new grammatical structures. In addition, teachers using the natural approach aim to create situations in the classroom that are intrinsically motivating for students.

Terrell sees learners going through three stages in their acquisition of speech: comprehension, early speech, and speech emergence. In the comprehension stage Terrell focuses on students' vocabulary knowledge. His aim is to make the vocabulary stick in students' long term memory, a process which he calls binding. Terrell sees some techniques as more binding than others; for example, the use of gestures or actions, such as in Total Physical Response, is seen to be more binding than the use of translation.

According to Terrell, students' speech will only emerge after enough language has been bound through communicative input. When this occurs, the learners enter the early speech stage. In this stage, students answer simple questions, use single words and set phrases, and fill in simple charts in the foreign language. In the speech emergence stage, students take part in activities requiring more advanced language, such as role-plays and problem-solving activities.

Theory

 

Although Terrell originally created the natural approach without relying on a particular theoretical model, his subsequent collaboration with Krashen has meant that the method is often seen as an application to language teaching of Krashen's monitor model. Krashen outlined five hypotheses in his model:

1. The acquisition-learning hypothesis. This states that there is a strict separation between conscious learning of language and subconscious acquisition of language, and that only acquisition can lead to fluent language use.
2. The monitor hypothesis. This states that language knowledge that is consciously learned can only be used to monitor output, not to generate new language. Monitoring output requires learners to be focused on the rule and to have time to apply it.
3. The input hypothesis. This states that language is acquired by exposure to comprehensible input at a level a little higher than that the learner can already understand. Krashen names this kind of input "i+1".
4. The natural order hypothesis. This states that learners acquire the grammatical features of a language in a fixed order, and that this is not affected by instruction.
5. The affective filter hypothesis. This states that learners must be relaxed and open to learning in order for language to be acquired. Learners who are nervous or distressed may not learn features in the input that more relaxed learners would pick up with little effort.

Despite its basis in Krashen's theory, the natural approach does not adhere to the theory strictly. In particular, Terrell perceives a greater role for the conscious learning of grammar than Krashen. Krashen's monitor hypothesis contends that conscious learning has no effect on learners' ability to generate novel language, whereas Terrell is of the opinion that some conscious learning of grammar rules can be beneficial.

Syllabus

 

Terrell outlines four categories of classroom activities that can facilitate language acquisition (as opposed to language learning):

• "Content (culture, subject matter, new information, reading, e.g. teacher tells interesting anecdote involving contrast between target and native culture.)"
• "Affective-humanistic (students' own ideas, opinions, experiences, e.g. students are asked to share personal preferences as to music, places to live, clothes, hair styles, etc.)"
• "Games [focus on using language to participate in the game, e.g. 20 questions: I, the teacher, am thinking of an object in this room. You, students, have twenty questions to guess object. Typical questions: is it clothing? (yes) is it for a man or a woman? (woman) is it a skirt? (yes) is it brown? (yes) is it Ellen's skirt? (yes)]"
• "Problem solving (focus on using language to locate information, use information, etc., e.g. looking at this listing of films in the newspaper, and considering the different tastes and schedule needs in the group, which film would be appropriate for all of us to attend, and when?)"

Reception

 

The natural approach enjoyed much popularity with language teachers, particularly with Spanish teachers in the United States. Markee (1997) puts forward four reasons for the success of the method. First, she says that the method was simple to understand, despite the complex nature of the research involved. Second, it was also compatible with the knowledge about second-language acquisition at the time. Third, Krashen stressed that teachers should be free to try the method, and that it could go alongside their existing classroom practices. Finally, Krashen demonstrated the method to many teachers' groups, so that they could see how it would work in practice.

* SELF DIRECT LEARNING

Self-directed learning is not a new concept. In fact, much has been written about it. Unfortunately, however, it is a notion that has a variety of interpretations and applications in the corporate training arena. Typical, narrow interpretations involve simply giving learners some sort of choice in their learning. For example, allowing learners to select one or more courses from a curriculum, or, in cases of structured on-the-job training, allowing employees to choose what pre-designed modules (e.g., a video tape, workbook, special reading, etc.) to complete. In terms of e-learning, the fact that learners can determine which modules or scenarios to review is also frequently touted as self-directed learning.The fact that the learner has a choice and makes a decision to select this or that module does not constitute true self-directed learning.

This interpretation is too limited. Self-directed learning is much more. Using the analogy of taking a trip, the narrow interpretation of SDL is equivalent to selecting where to go, i.e., the destination. The essence of the notion of self-directed learning advocated here, however, is broader, more fundamental. It is about the learner deciding not just where to take a trip but how they will go (both the means of transportation as well as route), when they will leave, how they will get there and how long they will stay.

Essentially, the notion of SDL advocated here reflects Malcolm Knowles definition of SDL:

“In its broadest meaning, ’self-directed learning’ describes a process by which individuals take the initiative, with our without the assistance of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identify human and material resources for learning, choosing and implement appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes.” (Knowles, 1975, p. 18)

Of primary concern in this definition of SDL is the fact the learner takes 1) the initiative to pursue a learning experience, and 2) the responsibility for completing their learning. Once the initiative is taken, the learner assumes complete responsibility and accountability for defining the learning experience and following it through to its conclusion. This does not preclude input from others, but the final decision is the learner’s. Self-direction does not mean the learner learns alone or in isolation. While, that may be the case in any given learning situation, the critical factor here, again, is the fact the learner is driving the total learning experience, beginning with recognizing a need to learn.

* PROBLEM BASED LEARNING

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of problem solving. Students learn both thinking strategies and domain knowledge. The PBL format originated from the medical school of thought, and is now used in other schools of thought too. The goals of PBL are to help the students develop flexible knowledge, effective problem solving skills, self-directed learning, effective collaboration skills and intrinsic motivation. Problem-based learning is a style of active learning.

Working in groups, students identify what they already know, what they need to know, and how and where to access new information that may lead to resolution of the problem. The role of the instructor (known as the tutor in PBL) is to facilitate learning by supporting, guiding, and monitoring the learning process. The tutor must build students' confidence to take on the problem, and encourage the students, while also stretching their understanding. PBL represents a paradigm shift from traditional teaching and learning philosophy, which is more often lecture-based. The constructs for teaching PBL are very different from traditional classroom/lecture teaching.

Definition

Barrows defines the Problem-Based Learning Model as:

1. Student Centered Learning

2. Learning is done in Small Student Groups, ideally 6-10 people

3. Facilitators or Tutors guide the students rather than teach

4. A Problem forms the basis for the organized focus of the group, and stimulates learning

5. The problem is a vehicle for the development of problem solving skills. It stimulates the cognitive process.

6. New knowledge is obtained through Self-Directed Learning(SDL)

History

PBL was pioneered in the medical school program at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in the late 1960s by Howard Barrows and his colleagues. Traditional medical education disenchanted students, who perceived the vast amount of material presented in the first three years of medical school as having little relevance to the practice of medicine and clinically based medicine. The PBL curriculum was developed in order to stimulate the learners, assist the learners in seeing the relevance of learning to future roles, maintain a higher level of motivation towards learning, and to show the learners the importance of responsible, professional attitudes.

Problem-based learning has subsequently been adopted by other medical school programs, adapted for undergraduate instruction, as well as K-12. The use of PBL has expanded from its initial introduction into medical school programs to include education in the areas of other health sciences, math, law, education, economics, business, social studies, and engineering. The use of PBL, like other student-centered pedagogies, has been motivated by recognition of the failures of traditional instruction. and the emergence of deeper understandings of how people learn. Unlike traditional instruction, PBL actively engages the student in constructing knowledge. PBL includes problems that can be solved in many different ways and have more than one solution.

Supporters

Advocates of PBL claim it can be used to enhance content knowledge while simultaneously fostering the development of communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and self-directed learning skills. PBL may position students in a simulated real world working and professional context which involves policy, process, and ethical problems that will need to be understood and resolved to some outcome. By working through a combination of learning strategies to discover the nature of a problem, understanding the constraints and options to its resolution, defining the input variables, and understanding the viewpoints involved, students learn to negotiate the complex sociological nature of the problem and how competing resolutions may inform decision-making.

Constructivism and PBL

Problem Based Learning addresses the need to promote lifelong learning through the process of inquiry and constructivist learning. PBL can be considered a constructivist approach to instruction, emphasizing collaborative and self-directed learning and being supported by flexible teacher scaffolding. Yew and Schmidt, Schmidt, and Hung elaborate on the cognitive constructivist process of PBL:

1. Learners are presented with a problem and through discussion within their group, activate their prior knowledge.

2. Within their group, they develop possible theories or hypotheses to explain the problem. Together they identify learning issues to be researched. They construct a shared primary model to explain the problem at hand. Facilitators provide scaffold, which is a frame work on which students can construct knowledge relating to the problem.

3. After the initial team work, students work independently in self directed study to research the identified issues.

4. The students re-group to discuss their findings and refine their initial explanations based on what they learned.

A PBL group at Gadjah Mada University

PBL follows a constructivist perspective in learning as the role of the instructor is to guide and challenge the learning process rather than strictly providing knowledge. From this perspective, feedback and reflection on the learning process and group dynamics are essential components of PBL. Students are considered to be active agents who engage in social knowledge construction. PBL assists in processes of creating meaning and building personal interpretations of the world based on experiences and interactions. PBL assists to guide the student from theory to practice during their journey through solving the problem.

Supporting evidence

Several studies support the success of the constructivist problem-based and inquiry learning methods.One example is a study on a project called GenScope, an inquiry-based science software application, which found that students using the GenScope software showed significant gains over the control groups, with the largest gains shown in students from basic courses.

One large study tracked middle school students' performance on high-stakes standardized tests to evaluate the effectiveness of inquiry-based science. The study found a 14 percent improvement for the first cohort of students and a 13 percent improvement for the second cohort. The study also found that inquiry-based teaching methods greatly reduced the achievement gap for African-American students.

A systematic review of the effects of problem-based learning in medical school on the performance of doctors after graduation showed clear positive effects on physician competence. This effect was especially strong for social and cognitive competencies such as coping with uncertainty and communication skills.

Another study from Slovenia looked at whether students who learn with PBL are better at solving problems and if their attitudes towards mathematics were improved compared to their peers in a more traditional curriculum. The study found that students who were exposed to PBL were better at solving more difficult problems, however, there was no significant difference in student attitude towards mathematics.

Examples of PBL in curricula

Malaysia

In Malaysia, an attempt is being made to introduce a problem-based learning model in secondary mathematics, with the aim of educating citizens to prepare them for decision-making in sustainable and responsible development. This model called problem-based learning the four core areas (PBL4C) first sprouted in SEAMEO RECSAM in 2008, and as a result of training courses conducted, a paper was presented at the EARCOME5 conference in 2010, followed by two papers during the 15th UNESCO-APEID conference in 2011. This model has since expanded in its use in the field of education management, Education for International & Intranational Understanding (EIU), and human resource management. Subsequently, many Malaysian universities began implementing PBL in their curricula in an effort to improve the quality of their education. In collaboration with Aalborg University of Denmark, PBL was introduced at University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). Since then the PBL was widely used among engineering and as well as humanities lecturers at UTHM (Berhannudin, 2007). In Universiti Malaya, the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery and Bachelor of Dental Surgery courses included several sessions of problem-based learning in their curriculum as a way of teaching interactions between students.

Medical schools

Several medical schools have incorporated problem-based learning into their curricula, using real patient cases to teach students how to think like a clinician. More than eighty percent of medical schools in the United States now have some form of problem-based learning in their programs. Research of 10 years of data from the University of Missouri School of Medicine indicates that PBL has a positive effect on the students' competency as physicians after graduation.

Monash University was the second institution to adopt PBL within a medical school environment and continues to apply this within the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences for the Bachelor of Medicine / Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) programs delivered in Australia and Malaysia.

Maastricht University offers its whole program in PBL format only, as does the University of Limerick graduate entry medical school in Ireland.

In 1998, Western University of Health Sciences opened its College of Veterinary Medicine, with curriculum based completely on PBL.

In 2004, the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine founded a branch campus in Bradenton, Florida, using an entirely PBL format. From 2006 to 2010, this campus led the nation in COMLEX scores.

In 2002, Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta, Indonesia began offering an International Medicine program based on problem-based learning.

In 2009, Libyan International Medical University of Benghazi, Libya started using PBL for all of its medical programmes.

High School

In 2008, Parramatta Marist High School a secondary Catholic school in Australia employed the methods of PBL in their teaching for year 9 and 10 boys. The learning system was a great success and since has been expanded to lower grades to challenge students to think outside of the box and relate content drive courses to problems in the real world.

Criticisms

 

Cognitive load

Sweller and others have published a series of studies over the past twenty years that is relevant to problem-based learning but concerning cognitive load and what they describe as the guidance-fading effect. Sweller et al. conducted several classroom-based studies with students studying algebra problems. These studies have shown that active problem solving early in the learning process is a less effective instructional strategy than studying worked examples (Sweller and Cooper, 1985; Cooper and Sweller, 1987). Certainly active problem solving is useful as learners become more competent, and better able to deal with their working memory limitations. But early in the learning process, learners may find it difficult to process a large amount of information in a short amount of time. Thus the rigors of active problem solving may become an issue for novices. Once learners gain expertise the scaffolding inherent in problem-based learning helps learners avoid these issues. These studies have however been conducted largely based on individual problem solving of well-defined problems.

Sweller (1988) proposed cognitive load theory to explain how novices react to problem solving during the early stages of learning. Sweller, et al. suggests a worked example early, and then a gradual introduction of problems to be solved. They propose other forms of learning early in the learning process (worked example, goal free problems, etc.); to later be replaced by completions problems, with the eventual goal of solving problems on their own. This problem based learning becomes very useful later in the learning process.

Many forms of scaffolding have been implemented in problem based learning to reduce the cognitive load of learners. These are most useful to fade guidance during problem solving. As an example, consider the fading effect helps learners to slowly transit from studying examples to solving problems. In this case backwards fading was found to be quite effective and assisting in decreasing the cognitive load on learners.

Evaluation of the effects of PBL learning in comparison to traditional instructional learning have proved to be a challenge. Various factors can influence the implementation of PBL: extent of PBL incorporation into curriculum, group dynamics, nature of problems used, facilitator influence on group, and the motivation of the learners. There are also various outcomes of PBL that can be measured including knowledge acquisition and clinical competence. Additional studies are needed to investigate all the variables and technological scaffolds, that may impact the efficacy PBL.

Demands of Implementing

Implementing PBL in schools and Universities is a demanding process that requires resources, a lot of planning and organization. Azer discusses the 12 steps for implementing the "pure PBL"

1. Prepare faculty for change

2. Establish a new curriculum committee and working group

3. Designing the new PBL curriculum and defining educational outcomes

4. Seeking Advice from Experts in PBL

5. Planning, Organizing and Managing

6. Training PBL facilitators and defining the objectives of a facilitator

7. Introducing Students to the PBL Program

8. Using 3-learning to support the delivery of the PBL program

9. Changing the assessment to suit the PBL curriculum

10. Encouraging feedback from students and teaching staff

11. Managing learning resources and facilities that support self directed learning

12. Continuing evaluation and making changes (pg. 809-812)

Hung reviews the various models of PBL, Barrow's original concept or "pure PBL", the Hybrid PBL and lecture based learning with problem solving activities. In general these models form a continuum where the level of instruction and lecture are inversely proportional to the amount of self-directed learning. The individual Problem design, or "trigger" must ultimately guide students to obtain the learning objectives. Azer reviews the detailed objectives for constructing "the problem" for PBL. Facilitator selection, training and development is very important to PBL. Students respond better to motivated and enthusiastic facilitators. It is the facilitator's role to direct students during the tutorials. Guiding students learning entails much more time then simply giving students the answers. Kol et al.(2008) reported PBL facilitator-student contact time was 3-4 times greater than instructors in traditional methods.

Other outcomes

One of the aims of PBL is the development of self-directed learning (SDL) skills. In Loyens, Magda & Rikers' discussion, SDL is defined as "a process in which individuals take the initiative…in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating goals, identifying human and material resources, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes." By being invited into the learning process, students are also invited to take responsibility for their learning, which leads to an increase in self-directed learning skills. In Severiens and Schmidt’s study of 305 first year college students, they found that PBL and its focus on SDL led to motivation for students to maintain study pace, led to social and academic integration, encouraged development of cognitive skills, and fostered more study progress than students in a conventional learning setting. PBL encourages learners to take a place in the academic world through inquiring and discovery that is central to problem-based learning.

PBL is also argued as a learning method that can promote the development of critical thinking skills. In PBL learning, students learn how to analyze a problem, identify relevant facts and generate hypotheses, identify necessary information/knowledge for solving the problem and make reasonable judgments about solving the problem.

Employers have appreciated the positive attributes of communication, teamwork, respect and collaboration that PBL experienced students have developed. These skills provide for better future skills preparation in the ever-changing information explosion. PBL curriculum includes building these attributes through knowledge building, written and interpersonal interactions and through the experience of the problem solving process.

* SUGGESTOPEDIA

Suggestopedia (USA English) or Suggestopaedia (UK English) is a teaching method developed by the Bulgarian psychotherapist Georgi Lozanov. It is used in different fields, but mostly in the field of foreign language learning. Lozanov has claimed that by using this method a teacher's students can learn a language approximately three to five times as quickly as through conventional teaching methods.

Suggestopedia has been called a "pseudo-science". It strongly depends on the trust that students develop towards the method by simply believing that it works.

The theory applied positive suggestion in teaching when it was developed in the 1970s. However, as the method improved, it has focused more on “desuggestive learning” and now is often called “desuggestopedia.” Suggestopedia is a portmanteau of the words “suggestion” and “pedagogy". A common misconception is to link "suggestion" to "hypnosis". However, Lozanov intended it in the sense of offering or proposing, emphasising student choice.

Purpose and theory

The intended purpose of Suggestopedia was to enhance learning by tapping into the power of suggestion. Lozanov claims in his website, Suggestology and Suggestopedy, that “suggestopedia is a system for liberation”; liberation from the “preliminary negative concept regarding the difficulties in the process of learning” that is established throughout their life in the society. Desuggestopedia focuses more on liberation as Lozanov describes “desuggestive learning” as “free, without a mildest pressure, liberation of previously suggested programs to restrict intelligence and spontaneous acquisition of knowledge, skills and habits.” The method implements this by working not only on the conscious level of human mind but also on the subconscious level, the mind’s reserves.

In practice

Physical surroundings and atmosphere in classroom are the vital factors to make sure that "the students feel comfortable and confident", and various techniques, including art and music, are used by the trained teachers. The lesson of Suggestopedia consisted of three phases at first: deciphering, concert session (memorization séance), and elaboration.

Deciphering: The teacher introduces the grammar and lexis of the content.

Concert session (active and passive): In the active session, the teacher reads the text at a normal speed, sometimes intoning some words, and the students follow. In the passive session, the students relax and listen to the teacher reading the text calmly. Music (“Pre-Classical”) is played in the background.

Elaboration: The students finish off what they have learned with dramas, songs, and games.

Then it has developed into four phases as lots of experiments were done: introduction, concert session, elaboration, and production.

Introduction: The teacher teaches the material in “a playful manner” instead of analyzing lexis and grammar of the text in a directive manner.

Concert session (active and passive): In the active session, the teacher reads with intoning as selected music is played. Occasionally, the students read the text together with the teacher, and listen only to the music as the teacher pauses in particular moments. The passive session is done more calmly.

Elaboration: The students sing classical songs and play games while “the teacher acts more like a consultant”.

Production: The students spontaneously speak and interact in the target language without interruption or correction.

Teachers

Teachers should not act in a directive way, although this method is teacher-controlled and not student-controlled. For example, they should act as a real partner to the students, participating in the activities such as games and songs “naturally” and “genuinely.” In the concert session, they should fully include classical art in their behaviors. Although there are many techniques that the teachers use, factors such as “communication in the spirit of love, respect for man as a human being, the specific humanitarian way of applying their ‘techniques’” etc. are crucial. The teachers not only need to know the techniques and to acquire the practical methodology completely, but also to fully understand the theory, because, if they implement those techniques without complete understanding, they will not be able lead their learners to successful results, or they could even cause a negative impact on their learning. Therefore, the teacher has to be trained in a course taught by certified trainers.

Here are the most important factors for teachers to acquire, described by Lozanov.

1. Covering a huge bulk of learning material.
2. Structuring the material in the suggestopaedic way: global-partial – partial-global, and global in the part – part in the global, related to the golden proportion.
3. As a professional, on one hand, and a personality, on the other hand, the teacher should be a highly-regarded professional, reliable and credible.
4. The teacher should have, not play, a hundred percent expectation of positive results (because the teacher is already experienced even from the time of the teacher training course).
5. The teacher should love his/her students (of course, not sentimentally but as human beings) and teach them with personal participation through games, songs, classical arts, and pleasure.

Method for children (preventive Suggestopedia)

The method for Adults includes long sessions without movement, and materials that are appropriate for adults. Children, however, get impacts from “the social suggestive norms” differently and their brains are more delicate than those of adults. Therefore, another method with different materials should be applied to children, which better matches their characteristics. Lessons for children are more incidental and short, preventing the children from the negative pedagogical suggestions of Society. It is important to tell the parents about the method and their roles because they could influence children both negatively and positively, depending on how they support the kids.

Side effects

Lozanov claims that the effect of the method is not only in language learning, but also in producing favorable side effects on health, the social and psychological relations, and the subsequent success in other subjects.

Unesco's final report on Suggestopedia

Recommendations (Extraction)

Made by the Experts from the Working Group on Suggestology as a Learning Methodology Meeting in Sofia, December 11–17, 1978

...1. There is consensus that Suggestopedia is a generally superior teaching method for many subjects and for many types of students, compared with traditional methods. We have arrived at this consensus following a study of the research literature, listening to the testimony of international experts, observing films portraying Suggestopedia instruction and visiting classes in which Suggestopedia is practiced. The films were prepared and the classroom visitations were impressive.

...2. Standards should be set up for the training, certification and maintaining of standards of suggestopedic training.

...3. Different categories of competency of teachers should be used to reflect increasing levels of teaching performance in certification.

...4. Suggestopedic teacher training should be started as soon as possible.

...5. An International Association for Suggestology and Suggestopedia should be set up that is affiliated with UNESCO and should have the assistance and guidance of Dr. Lozanov for training, research, coordination and publication of results.

...6. UNESCO is requested to give its support to all these proposed activities by all possible means and under the existing international regulations.”

Criticism

Suggestopedia has been called a "pseudo-science". It strongly depends on the trust that students develop towards the method by simply believing that it works. Lozanov himself admits that Suggestopedia can be compared to a placebo. He argues, however, that placebos are indeed effective. Another point of criticism is brought forward by Baur who claims that the students only receive input by listening, reading and musical-emotional backing, while other important factors of language acquisition are being neglected. Furthermore, several other features of the method, like the 'nonconscious' acquisition of language, or bringing the learner into a childlike state are questioned by critics.

Lukesch claims that Suggestopedia lacks scientific backing and is criticized by psychologists as being based on pseudoscience.

Later variations

Suggestopedia produced four main offshoots. The first was still called Suggestopedia but was developed in eastern Europe and used different techniques from Lozanov's original version. The other three are named Superlearning, Suggestive Accelerated Learning and Teaching (SALT), and Psychopädie. Superlearning and SALT originated in North America, while Psychopädie was developed in West Germany. While all four are slightly different from the original Suggestopedia and from each other, they still share the common traits of music, relaxation, and suggestion.

* COLLABORATING

Collaboration is working with each other to do a task. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative ventures, but a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective for example, an endeavor that is creative in nature- by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources. Collaboration is also present in opposing goals exhibiting the notion of adversarial collaboration, though this is not a common case for using the word.

Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication. These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving. Forms, rubrics, charts and graphs are useful in these situations to objectively document personal traits with the goal of improving performance in current and future projects.

Since the Second World War the term "Collaboration" acquired a very negative meaning as referring to persons and groups which help a foreign occupier of their country—due to actual use by people in European countries who worked with and for the Nazi German occupiers. Linguistically, "collaboration" implies more or less equal partners who work together—which is obviously not the case when one party is an army of occupation and the other are people of the occupied country living under the power of this army.

In order to make a distinction, the more specific term Collaborationism is often used for this phenomenon of collaboration with an occupying army. However, there is no water-tight distinction; "Collaboration" and "Collaborator", as well as "Collaborationism" and "Collaborationist", are often used in this pejorative sense—and even more so, the equivalent terms in French and other languages spoken in countries which experienced direct Nazi occupation.

Classical examples of collaboration

Following are some examples of successful collaboration efforts in the past.

Trade

The trade of goods is an economic activity providing mutual benefit

Trade originated with the start of communication in prehistoric times. Trading was the main facility of prehistoric people, who bartered goods and services from each other when there was no such thing as the modern day currency. Peter Watson dates the history of long-distance commerce from circa 150,000 years ago.^[8] Trade exists for many reasons. Due to specialisation and division of labor, most people concentrate on a small aspect of production, trading for other products. Trade exists between regions because different regions have a comparative advantage in the production of some tradable commodity, or because different regions' size allows for the benefits of mass production. As such, trade at market prices between locations benefits both locations.

Community organization

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Organization and cooperation between community members provides economic and social benefits

Main article: intentional community

The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political or spiritual vision. They also share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities include cohousing, residential land trusts, ecovillages, communes, kibbutzim, ashrams, and housing cooperatives. Typically, new members of an intentional community are selected by the community's existing membership, rather than by real-estate agents or land owners (if the land is not owned by the community).

Hutterite, Austria (16th century)

Housing units are built and assigned to individual families but belong to the colony and there is very little personal property. Meals are taken by the entire colony in a common long room.

Oneida Community, Oneida, New York (1848)

The Oneida Community practiced Communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions) and Mutual Criticism, where every member of the community was subject to criticism by committee or the community as a whole, during a general meeting. The goal was to eliminate bad character traits.

Early Kibbutz settlements founded near Jerusalem (1890)

A Kibbutz is an Israeli collective community. The movement combines socialism and Zionism in a form of practical Labor Zionism, founded at a time when independent farming was not practical or perhaps more correctly—not practicable. Forced by necessity into communal life, and inspired by their own ideology, the kibbutz members developed a pure communal mode of living that attracted interest from the entire world. While the kibbutzim lasted for several generations as utopian communities, most of today's kibbutzim are scarcely different from the capitalist enterprises and regular towns to which the kibbutzim were originally supposed to be alternatives.

Game theory

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics and economics that looks at situations where multiple players make decisions in an attempt to maximize their returns. The first documented discussion of it is a letter written by James Waldegrave, 1st Earl Waldegrave in 1713. Antoine Augustin Cournot's Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth in 1838 provided the first general theory. It was not until 1928 that this became a recognized, unique field when John von Neumann published a series of papers. Von Neumann's work in game theory culminated in the 1944 book The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.

Military-industrial complex

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The term military-industrial complex refers to a close and symbiotic relationship among a nation's armed forces, its private industry, and associated political and commercial interests. In such a system, the military is dependent on industry to supply material and other support, while the defense industry depends on government for revenue.

Skunk Works

Skunk Works is a term used in engineering and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects. Founded at Lockheed Martin in 1943, the team developed highly innovative aircraft in short time frames, even beating its first deadline by 37 days. Creator of the organization, Kelly Johnson is said to have been an 'organizing genius' and had fourteen basic operating rules.

Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was the project to develop the first nuclear weapon (atomic bomb) during World War II by the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Formally designated as the Manhattan Engineer District, it refers specifically to the period of the project from 1941–1946 under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the administration of General Leslie R. Groves. The scientific research was directed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

While the aforementioned persons were influential in the project itself, the value of this project as an influence on organized collaboration is better attributed to Vannevar Bush. In early 1940, Bush lobbied for the creation of the National Defense Research Committee. Frustrated by previous bureaucratic failures in implementing technology in World War I, Bush sought to organize the scientific power of the United States for greater success.

The project succeeded in developing and detonating three nuclear weapons in 1945: a test detonation of a plutonium implosion bomb on July 16 (the Trinity test) near Alamogordo, New Mexico; an enriched uranium bomb code-named "Little Boy" on August 6 over Hiroshima, Japan; and a second plutonium bomb, code-named "Fat Man" on August 9 over Nagasaki, Japan.

Project management

 

The 2,751 Liberty ships built in four years by the United States during World War II required new approaches in organization and manufacturing

As a discipline, Project Management developed from different fields of application including construction, engineering, and defense. In the United States, the forefather of project management is Henry Gantt, called the father of planning and control techniques, who is famously known for his use of the "bar" chart as a project management tool, for being an associate of Frederick Winslow Taylor's theories of scientific management, and for his study of the work and management of Navy ship building. His work is the forerunner to many modern project management tools including the work breakdown structure (WBS) and resource allocation.

The 1950s marked the beginning of the modern project management era. Again, in the United States, prior to the 1950s, projects were managed on an ad hoc basis using mostly Gantt charts, and informal techniques and tools. At that time, two mathematical project scheduling models were developed: (1) the "Program Evaluation and Review Technique" or PERT, developed as part of the United States Navy's (in conjunction with the Lockheed Corporation) Polaris missile submarine program; and (2) the "Critical Path Method" (CPM) developed in a joint venture by both DuPont Corporation and Remington Rand Corporation for managing plant maintenance projects. These mathematical techniques quickly spread into many private enterprises.

In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was formed to serve the interest of the project management industry. The premise of PMI is that the tools and techniques of project management are common even among the widespread application of projects from the software industry to the construction industry. In 1981, the PMI Board of Directors authorized the development of what has become A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), containing the standards and guidelines of practice that are widely used throughout the profession. The International Project Management Association (IPMA), founded in Europe in 1967, has undergone a similar development and instituted the IPMA Project Baseline. Both organizations are now participating in the development of a global project management standard.

Academia

Black Mountain College

Founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier and other former faculty of Rollins College, Black Mountain was experimental by nature and committed to an interdisciplinary approach, attracting a faculty which included many of America's leading visual artists, poets, and designers.

Operating in a relatively isolated rural location with little budget, Black Mountain College inculcated an informal and collaborative spirit, and over its lifetime attracted a venerable roster of instructors. Some of the innovations, relationships and unexpected connections formed at Black Mountain would prove to have a lasting influence on the postwar American art scene, high culture, and eventually pop culture. Buckminster Fuller met student Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain, and the result was the first geodesic dome (improvised out of slats in the school's back yard); Merce Cunningham formed his dance company; and John Cage staged his first happening.

Not a haphazardly conceived venture, Black Mountain College was a consciously directed liberal arts school that grew out of the progressive education movement. In its day it was a unique educational experiment for the artists and writers who conducted it, and as such an important incubator for the American avant garde. Black Mountain proved to be an important precursor to and prototype for many of the alternative colleges of today ranging from the University of California, Santa Cruz to Hampshire College and Evergreen State College, among others.

Learning Community

The Evergreen signature clock tower

Dr. Wolff-Michael Roth and Stuart Lee of the University of Victoria assert that until the early 1990s the individual was the 'unit of instruction' and the focus of research. The two observed that researchers and practitioners switched to the idea that knowing is 'better' thought of as a cultural practice. Roth and Lee also claim that this led to changes in learning and teaching design in which students were encouraged to share their ways of doing mathematics, history, science, with each other. In other words, that children take part in the construction of consensual domains, and 'participate in the negotiation and institutionalisation of … meaning'. In effect, they are participating in learning communities.

This analysis does not take account of the appearance of Learning communities in the United States in the early 1980s. For example, The Evergreen State College, which is widely considered a pioneer in this area, established an intercollegiate learning community in 1984. In 1985, this same college established The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education, which focuses on collaborative education approaches, including learning communities as one of its centerpieces.

Classical music

Main article: Classical music written in collaboration

Although relatively rare compared with collaboration in popular music, there have been some notable examples of music written in collaboration between classical composers. Perhaps the best-known examples are:

• Hexameron, a set of variations for solo piano on a theme from Vincenzo Bellini's opera I puritani. It was written and first performed in 1837. The contributors were Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Carl Czerny, Sigismond Thalberg, Johann Peter Pixis, and Henri Herz.
• The F-A-E Sonata, a sonata for violin and piano, written in 1853 as a gift for the violinist Joseph Joachim. The composers were Albert Dietrich (first movement), Robert Schumann (second and fourth movements), and Johannes Brahms (third movement).

Contemporary examples

Arts

A piece of collaborative art created by students in Currier House at Harvard University

Collaboration—or joint production by two or more artists—is a common style among musicians and performance artists. It has not been so popular, on the other hand, in the world of art, and especially in modern art. But the strong sense of individualism long possessed by artists of fine art began to wane around the 1960s, and some artists working in units have emerged and become widely known along with the development of new media based on the advances in information technology. They have changed the concept of art into something that can be engaged in by more than individual artists alone.

Art groups

Fluxus

An international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. Fluxus encouraged a do it yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. Like Dada before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. As Fluxus artist Robert Filliou wrote, however, Fluxus differed from Dada in its richer set of aspirations, and the positive social and communitarian aspirations of Fluxus far outweighed the anti-art tendency that also marked the group.

Just Buffalo Literary Center, CEPA Gallery, and Big Orbit are three nonprofit arts organizations in Buffalo, New York, that have shared space and certain administrative functions since 2005. Just Buffalo offers an array of literary arts and arts-in-education programs. CEPA Gallery presents contemporary photo-related art and supports working artists. And Big Orbit has an art gallery and programs in the fields of experimental theater, literary performance, new music and sound art.

Once they co-located their administrative offices they quickly started to realize a number of advantages. Financial savings was an obvious one (they share equipment, a software contract, phone and Internet services and more). Physical proximity also helped the three executives develop a strong sense of trust and respect, and they soon looked for other ways to collaborate, such as hiring a shared grant writer who brings in grants for all three organizations.

There have been many benefits: financial savings because of their shared space, increased donations, and improved artistic programming. Beyond the tangible benefits, there are important intangibles. The agency directors share information and ideas, and they coordinate mailings. Perhaps most important, the organizations have increased their creativity; being in the same space has led to a "think tank" atmosphere. One of the three directors notes that "We work so closely … it's helped us come up with new thinking to expand our capacity and create a built-in brain trust and support system for problem solving and practical help."

Situationist International

The Situationist International (SI) was a small group of international political and artistic agitators with roots in Marxism, Lettrism and the early 20th century European artistic and political avant-gardes. Formed in 1957, the SI was active in Europe through the 1960s and aspired to major social and political transformations. In the 1960s it split into a number of different groups, including the Situationist Bauhaus, the Antinational and the Second Situationist International. The first SI disbanded in 1972.

See also Experiments in Art and Technology, Dada and Colab.

Business

Collaboration in business can be found both inter- and intra-organization and ranges from the simplicity of a partnership and crowd funding to the complexity of a multinational corporation. Collaboration between public, private and voluntary sectors can be effective in tackling complex policy problems, but may be handled more effectively by committed boundary-spanning teams and networks than by formal organizational structures. Collaboration between team members allows for better communication within the organization and throughout the supply chains. It is a way of coordinating different ideas from numerous people to generate a wide variety of knowledge. Collaboration with a selected few firms as opposed to collaboration with a large number of different firms has been shown to positively impact firm performance and innovation outcomes. The recent improvement in technology has provided the world with high speed internet, wireless connection, and web-based collaboration tools like blogs, and wikis, and has as such created a "mass collaboration." People from all over the world are efficiently able to communicate and share ideas through the internet, or even conferences, without any geographical barriers. The power of social networks it beginning to permeate into business culture where many collaborative uses are being found including file sharing and knowledge transfer.

See also : Management cybernetics

A plethora of studies have shown that collaboration can be a powerful tool towards higher achievement and increased productivity since collective efficacy can significantly boost groups’ aspirations, motivational investment, morale, and resilience to challenges. However, a four-year study of interorganizational collaboration by Fischer and colleagues at the University of Oxford, found that successful collaboration can be rapidly derailed through external policy steering, particularly where it undermines relations built on trust.

Education

Generally defined, an Educational Collaborative Partnership is ongoing involvement between schools and business/industry, unions, governments and community organizations. Educational Collaborative Partnerships are established by mutual agreement between two or more parties to work together on projects and activities that will enhance the quality of education for students while improving skills critical to success in the workplace.

Collaboration in Education- two or more co-equal individual voluntarily brings their knowledge and experience together by interacting toward a common goal in the best interest of students for the betterment of their education success. Students achieve team building and communication skills meeting many curricular standards. Students have the ability to practice real-world communication experiences. Students gain leadership through collaboration and empowers peer to peer learning.

When collaborating in education, according to ISTE NEST-S and NEST-T standards, there is cultural understanding by engaging learners with other cultures and develop technology in enriched learning environments.

Societal changes that have taken place over the past few decades allows new ways of conceptualizing collaboration, and to understand the evolution and expansion of these types of relationships. For example, economic changes that have taken place domestically and internationally have resulted in the transformation from an industry-dependent economy to an information-centered economy that is dependent on new technologies and expansion of industries that provide services. From an educational standpoint, such transformations were projected through federal reports, such as A Nation at Risk in 1983 and What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future in 1996. In these reports, economic success could be assured if students developed the capacity to learn how to “manage teams… and…work together successfully in teams”.

The continuing development of Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, blogs, multiplayer games, online communities, and Twitter, among others, has changed the manner in which students communicate and collaborate.

See also :

• Collaborative Partnerships: Business/Industry-Education
• Learning circle

Music

Main article: Classical music written in collaboration

Musical collaboration occurs when musicians in different places or groups work on the same album or song. Collaboration between musicians, especially with regards to jazz, is often heralded as the epitome of complex collaborative practice. Special websites as well as software have been created to facilitate musical collaboration over the Internet resulting in the emergence of Online Bands.

Several awards exist specifically for collaboration in music:

• Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals—awarded since 1988
• Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals—awarded since 1995
• Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration—awarded since 2002

Entertainment

Collaboration in entertainment is a relatively new phenomenon brought on with the advent of social media, reality TV, and video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Collaboration occurs when writers, directors, actors, producers and other individuals or groups work on the same television show, short film, or feature length film. A revolutionary system has been developed by Will Wright for the production of the TV series title Bar Karma on CurrentTV. Special web-based software, titled Storymaker, has been written to facilitate plot collaboration over the Internet. Organizations such as Orange County Screenwriters Association bring together professional and amateur writers and filmmakers in a collaborative manner for entertainment development.

Publishing

Collaboration in publishing can be as simple as dual-authorship or as complex as commons-based peer production. Technological examples include Usenet, e-mail lists, blogs and Wikis while 'brick and mortar' examples include monographs (books) and periodicals such as newspapers, journals and magazines.

Science

Though there is no political institution organizing the sciences on an international level, a self-organized, global network had formed in the late 20th century. Observed by the rise in co-authorships in published papers, Wagner and Leydesdorff found international collaborations to have doubled from 1990 to 2005. While collaborative authorships within nations has also risen, this has done so at a slower rate and is not cited as frequently.

Medicine

In medicine the physician assistant - physician relationship involves a collaborative plan to be on file with each state board of medicine where the PA works. This plan formally delineates the scope of practice approved by the physician.

Technology

Due to the complexity of today's business environment, collaboration in technology encompasses a broad range of tools that enable groups of people to work together including social networking, instant messaging, team spaces, web sharing, audio conferencing, video, and telephony. Broadly defined, any technology that facilitates linking of two or more humans to work together can be considered a collaborative tool. Wikipedia, Blogs, even Twitter are collaborative tools. Many large companies are developing enterprise collaboration strategies and standardizing on a collaboration platform to allow their employees, customers and partners to intelligently connect and interact.

Enterprise collaboration tools are centered around attaining collective intelligence and staff collaboration at the organization level, or with partners. These include features such as staff networking, expert recommendations, information sharing, expertise location, peer feedback, and real-time collaboration. At the personal level, this enables employees to enhance social awareness and their profiles and interactions Collaboration encompasses both asynchronous and synchronous methods of communication and serves as an umbrella term for a wide variety of software packages. Perhaps the most commonly associated form of synchronous collaboration is web conferencing using tools such as Cisco TelePresence, Cisco WebEx Meetings, HP Halo Telepresence Solutions, GoToMeeting Web Conferencing, or Microsoft Live Meeting, but the term can easily be applied to IP telephony, instant messaging, and rich video interaction with telepresence, as well. Examples of asynchronous collaboration software include Cisco WebEx Connect, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Sharepoint and MediaWiki.

The effectiveness of a collaborative effort is driven by three critical factors: - Communication - Content Management - Workflow control

The Internet

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made collaborative work dramatically easier. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and test, but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups to easily form in the first place, even among niche interests. An example of this is the free software movement in software development which produced GNU and Linux from scratch and has taken over development of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org (formerly known as Netscape Communicator and StarOffice).

Commons-based peer production

Commons-based peer production is a term coined by Yale's Law professor Yochai Benkler to describe a new model of economic production in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the internet) into large, meaningful projects, mostly without traditional hierarchical organization or financial compensation. He compares this to firm production (where a centralized decision process decides what has to be done and by whom) and market-based production (when tagging different prices to different jobs serves as an attractor to anyone interested in doing the job).

Examples of products created by means of commons-based peer production include Linux, a computer operating system; Slashdot, a news and announcements website; Kuro5hin, a discussion site for technology and culture; Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia; and Clickworkers, a collaborative scientific work. Another example is Socialtext which is a software that uses tools such as wikis and weblogs and helps companies to create a collaborative work environment.

Massively distributed collaboration

The term massively distributed collaboration was coined by Mitchell Kapor, in a presentation at UC Berkeley on 2005-11-09, to describe an emerging activity of wikis and electronic mailing lists and blogs and other content-creating virtual communities online.

 * HOMESCHOOLING

Homeschooling or homeschool (also called home education or home based learning) is the education of children at home, typically by parents or by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school. Although prior to the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws, most childhood education occurred within the family or community, homeschooling in the modern sense is an alternative in developed countries to attending public or private schools. Homeschooling is a legal option for parents in many countries, allowing them to provide their children with a learning environment as an alternative to public or private schools outside the individual's home.

Parents cite numerous reasons as motivations to homeschool their children. The three reasons that are selected by the majority of homeschooling parents in the United States are concern about the school environment, to provide religious or moral instruction, and dissatisfaction with academic instruction at public and private schools. Homeschooling may also be a factor in the choice of parenting style. Homeschooling can be an option for families living in isolated rural locations, living temporarily abroad, to allow for more traveling, while many young athletes and actors are taught at home. Homeschooling can be about mentorship and apprenticeship, where a tutor or teacher is with the child for many years and then knows the child very well. Recently, homeschooling has increased in popularity in the United States, with the percentage of children 5-17 who are homeschooled increasing from 1.7% in 1999 to 2.9% in 2007.

Homeschooling can be used as a form of supplementary education, a way of helping children learn, in specific circumstances. For instance, children that attend downgraded schools can greatly benefit from homeschooling ways of learning, using the immediacy and low cost of the Internet. As a synonym to e-learning, homeschooling can be combined with traditional education and lead to better and more complete results. Homeschooling may also refer to instruction in the home under the supervision of correspondence schools or umbrella schools. In some places, an approved curriculum is legally required if children are to be home-schooled. A curriculum-free philosophy of homeschooling may be called unschooling, a term coined in 1977 by American educator and author John Holt in his magazine Growing Without Schooling. In some cases, a liberal arts education is provided using the trivium and quadrivium as the main model.

History

Frontispiece to Fireside Education, Samuel Griswold (Goodrich).

For much of history and in many cultures, enlisting professional teachers (whether as tutors or in a formal academic setting) was an option available only to a small elite. Thus, until relatively recently, the vast majority of people were educated by family members (especially during early childhood), family friends or any one with useful knowledge.

The earliest public schools in the modern West began in the early 16th century in the German states of Gotha and Thurungia. However, even in the 18th century, the vast majority of people in Europe lacked formal schooling, which means they were homeschooled, tutored or received no education at all. The same was also true for colonial America and for the United States until the 1850s. Formal schooling in a classroom setting has been the most common means of schooling throughout the world, especially in developed countries, since the early and mid 19th century. Native Americans, who traditionally used homeschooling and apprenticeship, vigorously resisted compulsory education in the United States.

In the 1960s, Rousas John Rushdoony began to advocate homeschooling, which he saw as a way to combat the intentionally secular nature of the U.S. public school system. He vigorously attacked progressive school reformers such as Horace Mann and John Dewey and argued for the dismantling of the state's influence in education in three works: Intellectual Schizophrenia (a general and concise study of education), The Messianic Character of American Education (a history and castigation of public education in the U.S.), and The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum (a parent-oriented pedagogical statement). Rushdoony was frequently called as an expert witness by the HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) in court cases.

During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.

They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8–12 not only lacked the anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores began to publish their view that formal schooling was damaging young children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency, nearsightedness, increased enrollment of students in special education classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier enrollment of students. The Moores cited studies demonstrating that orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent, with superior long term effects – even though the mothers were "mentally retarded teenagers" – and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical western children, "by western standards of measurement."

Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional development made at home with parents during these years produced critical long term results that were cut short by enrollment in schools, and could neither be replaced nor afterward corrected in an institutional setting.Recognizing a necessity for early out-of-home care for some children – particularly special needs and starkly impoverished children, and children from exceptionally inferior homes– they maintained that the vast majority of children are far better situated at home, even with mediocre parents, than with the most gifted and motivated teachers in a school setting (assuming that the child has a gifted and motivated teacher). They described the difference as follows: "This is like saying, if you can help a child by taking him off the cold street and housing him in a warm tent, then warm tents should be provided for all children – when obviously most children already have even more secure housing."

Similar to Holt, the Moores embraced homeschooling after the publication of their first work, Better Late Than Early, 1975, and went on to become important homeschool advocates and consultants with the publication of books like Home Grown Kids, 1981, Homeschool Burnout, and others.

At the time, other authors published books questioning the premises and efficacy of compulsory schooling, including Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, 1970 and No More Public School by Harold Bennet, 1972.

In 1976, Holt published Instead of Education; Ways to Help People Do Things Better. In its conclusion, he called for a "Children's Underground Railroad" to help children escape compulsory schooling. In response, Holt was contacted by families from around the U.S. to tell him that they were educating their children at home. In 1977, after corresponding with a number of these families, Holt began producing Growing Without Schooling, a newsletter dedicated to home education.

In 1980, Holt said, "I want to make it clear that I don't see homeschooling as some kind of answer to badness of schools. I think that the home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were."

Holt later wrote a book about homeschooling, Teach Your Own, in 1981.

One common theme in the homeschool philosophies of both Holt and the Moores is that home education should not be an attempt to bring the school construct into the home, or a view of education as an academic preliminary to life. They viewed it as a natural, experiential aspect of life that occurs as the members of the family are involved with one another in daily living.

Methodology

Homeschools use a wide variety of methods and materials. Families, for a variety of reasons (parent education, finances, educational philosophies, future educational plans, where they live, past educational experiences of the child, child’s interests and temperament) chose different educational methods, representing a variety of educational philosophies and paradigms. Some of the methods used include Classical Education Classical education (including Trivium, Quadrivium), Charlotte Mason education, Montessori method, Theory of multiple intelligences, Unschooling, Radical Unschooling, Waldorf education, School-at-home (curriculum choices from both secular and religious publishers), A Thomas Jefferson Education, unit studies, curriculum made up from private or small publishers, apprenticeship, hands-on-learning, distance learning (both on-line and correspondence), dual enrollment in local schools or colleges, and curriculum provided by a local schools and many others. Some of these approaches are used in private and public schools. Educational research and studies support the use of some of these methods. Unschooling, natural learning, Charlotte Mason Education, Montessori, Waldorf, apprenticeship, hands-on-learning, unit studies are supported to varying degrees by research by constructivist learning theories and situated cognitive theories. Elements of these theories may be found in the other methods as well. A student’s education may be customized to support his learning level, style, and interests. It is not uncommon for a student to experience more than one approach as the family discovers what works best as students grow and circumstances change. Many families use an eclectic approach, picking and choosing from various suppliers. For sources of curricula and books, "Homeschooling in the United States: 2003" found that 78 percent utilized "a public library"; 77 percent used "a homeschooling catalog, publisher, or individual specialist"; 68 percent used "retail bookstore or other store"; 60 percent used "an education publisher that was not affiliated with homeschooling." "Approximately half" used curriculum or books from "a homeschooling organization", 37 percent from a "church, synagogue or other religious institution" and 23 percent from "their local public school or district." 41 percent in 2003 utilized some sort of distance learning, approximately 20 percent by "television, video or radio"; 19 percent via "Internet, e-mail, or the World Wide Web"; and 15 percent taking a "correspondence course by mail designed specifically for homeschoolers." Individual governmental units, e. g. states and local districts, vary in official curriculum and attendance requirements.

Unit studies

In a unit study approach, multiple subjects like math, science, history, art, and geography, are studied in relation to a single topic like Native Americans, ancient Rome, or whales. For example, a unit study of Native Americans could combine age-appropriate lessons and projects teaching literature (Native American legends), writing (report on a famous native American), vocabulary and spelling (Native American words that are now part of the English language), art and crafts (pottery, beadwork, sand painting, making moccasins), geography (original locations of tribes in the Americas), social studies (cultures of the different tribes), and science (plants and animals used by Native Americans). Unit studies may be purchased or be parent prepared. Unit studies are useful for teaching multiple grades simultaneously as the difficulty level can be adjusted for each student.

All-in-one curricula

All-in-one homeschooling curricula (variously known as "school-at-home", "The Traditional Approach", "school-in-a-box" or "The Structured Approach"), are instructionist methods of teaching in which the curriculum and homework of the student are similar or identical to taught in a public or private school. Purchased as a grade level package or separately by subject, the package may contain all of the needed books, materials, internet access for remote testing, traditional tests, answer keys, and extensive teacher guides. These materials cover the same subject areas as public schools which allow an easy transition back into the school system. These are among the more expensive options for homeschooling, but they require minimal preparation and are easy to use. Examples of curriculum providers are Calvert School, A Beka Book, Bob Jones Press, Alpha Omega Publishers, Educator’s Publishing Service, Modern Curriculum Press, University of North Dakota Distance Education, etc. Some localities provide the same materials used at local schools to homeschoolers. Purchase of a complete curriculum and their teaching/grading service from an accredited distance learning curriculum provider may allow students to obtain an accredited high school diploma.

Unschooling and natural learning

Some people use the terms "unschooling" or "radical unschooling" to describe all methods of education that are not based in a school.

"Natural learning" refers to a type of learning-on-demand where children pursue knowledge based on their interests and parents take an active part in facilitating activities and experiences conducive to learning but do not rely heavily on textbooks or spend much time "teaching", looking instead for "learning moments" throughout their daily activities. Parents see their role as that of affirming through positive feedback and modeling the necessary skills, and the child's role as being responsible for asking and learning.

The term "unschooling" as coined by John Holt describes an approach in which parents do not authoritatively direct the child's education, but interact with the child following the child's own interests, leaving them free to explore and learn as their interests lead. "Unschooling" does not indicate that the child is not being educated, but that the child is not being "schooled", or educated in a rigid school-type manner. Holt asserted that children learn through the experiences of life, and he encouraged parents to live their lives with their child. Also known as interest-led or child-led learning, unschooling attempts to follow opportunities as they arise in real life, through which a child will learn without coercion. An unschooled child may utilize texts or classroom instruction, but these are not considered central to education. Holt asserted that there is no specific body of knowledge that is, or should be, required of a child.

"Unschooling" should not be confused with "deschooling," which may be used to indicate an anti-"institutional school" philosophy, or a period or form of deprogramming for children or parents who have previously been schooled.

Both unschooling and natural learning advocates believe that children learn best by doing; a child may learn reading to further an interest about history or other cultures, or math skills by operating a small business or sharing in family finances. They may learn animal husbandry keeping dairy goats or meat rabbits, botany tending a kitchen garden, chemistry to understand the operation of firearms or the internal combustion engine, or politics and local history by following a zoning or historical-status dispute. While any type of homeschoolers may also use these methods, the unschooled child initiates these learning activities. The natural learner participates with parents and others in learning together.

Another prominent proponent of unschooling is John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down, The Exhausted School, A Different Kind of Teacher, and Weapons of Mass Instruction. Gatto argues that public education is the primary tool of "state controlled consciousness" and serves as a prime illustration of the total institution — a social system which impels obedience to the state and quells free thinking or dissent.

Autonomous learning

Autonomous learning is a school of education which sees learners as individuals who can and should be autonomous i.e. be responsible for their own learning climate.

Autonomous education helps students develop their self-consciousness, vision, practicality and freedom of discussion. These attributes serve to aid the student in his/her independent learning.

Autonomous learning is very popular with those who home educate their children. The child usually gets to decide what projects they wish to tackle or what interests to pursue. In home education this can be instead of or in addition to regular subjects like doing math or English.

According to Home Education UK the autonomous education philosophy emerged from the epistemology of Karl Popper in The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality, which is developed in the debates, which seek to rebut the neo-Marxist social philosophy of convergence proposed by the Frankfurt School (e.g. Theodor W. Adorno Jürgen Habermas Max Horkheimer).

Homeschooling and college admissions

Many students choose to pursue higher education at the college or university level, some through dual enrollment while in high school and through standardized tests such as the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) and DANTES Subject Standard Tests (DSST).

The College Board recommends that homeschooled students keep detailed records and portfolios to aid them in the admission process.

Over the last several decades, US colleges and universities have become increasingly open to accepting home-schooled students. 75% of colleges and universities have an official policy for homeschool admissions. 95% have received applications from homeshoolers for admission. Documents that may be required for admission vary, but may include ACT/SAT scores, essays, high school transcript, letters of recommendation, SAT 2 scores, personal interviews, portfolio, and a GED. 78% of admissions officers expect homeschooled students to do as well or better than traditional high school graduates at college.Students coming from a home school graduated college at a higher rate than their peers¬—66.7 percent compared to 57.5 percent—and earned higher grade point averages along the way.

Such students have matriculated at over 900 different colleges and universities, including institutions with highly selective standards of admission such as the US military academies, Rice University, Haverford College, Harvard University, Stanford University, Cornell University, Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Princeton University.

Homeschool cooperatives

A Homeschool Cooperative is a cooperative of families who homeschool their children. It provides an opportunity for children to learn from other parents who are more specialized in certain areas or subjects. Co-ops also provide social interaction for homeschooled children. They may take lessons together or go on field trips. Some co-ops also offer events such as prom and graduation for homeschoolers.

Homeschoolers are beginning to utilize Web 2.0 as a way to simulate homeschool cooperatives online. With social networks homeschoolers can chat, discuss threads in forums, share information and tips, and even participate in online classes via blackboard systems 

similar to those used by colleges.

Homeschool athletics

In 1994, Jason Taylor was a homeschool football player in Pennsylvania who engaged a legal battle against the N.C.A.A. (the leading oversight association governing U.S. collegiate athletics) and its classification of homeschool athletes as essentially high school drop-outs. Taylor's legal victory has provided a precedent for thousands of other homeschool athletes to compete in colleges and attain the same opportunities in education and professional development that other athletes enjoy. Other homeschool students who have risen to the top of collegiate competition include N.C.A.A. 2005 champion tennis player, Chris Lam, Kevin Johnson of the Tulsa University basketball team, 2010-2011 Big South Player of the Year Jesse Sanders of the Liberty University Flames and the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow from the University of Florida . In 2012, another homeschool student was a Heisman Trophy finalist: Collin Klein of Kansas State University.

In Texas, Six-Man Football has also been popular among homeschoolers, with at least five teams being fielded for the 2008-2009 season. Interestingly enough, the top 3 places in the Texas Independent State Championship (TISC, also referred to as "the Ironman Bowl) were claimed by homeschool teams.

Motivations

Number and percentage of homeschooled students in the United States, by reason for homeschooling: 1999, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

Reason for homeschooling	Number of homeschooled students	Percent	s.e.
Can give child better education at home	415,000	48.9	3.79
Religious reason	327,000	38.4	4.44
Poor learning environment at school	218,000	25.6	3.44
Family reasons	143,000	16.8	2.79
To develop character/morality	128,000	15.1	3.39
Object to what school teaches	103,000	12.1	2.11
School does not challenge child	98,000	11.6	2.39
Other problems with available schools	76,000	9.0	2.40
Child has special needs/disability	69,000	8.2	1.89
Transportation/convenience	23,000	2.7	1.48
Child not old enough to enter school	15,000	1.8	1.13
Parent's career	12,000	1.5	0.80
Could not get into desired school	12,000	1.5	0.99
Other reasons*	189,000	22.2	2.90

Parents give many different reasons for homeschooling their children. In the 2003 and 2007 NHES, parents were asked whether particular reasons for homeschooling their children applied to them. The three reasons selected by parents of more than two-thirds of students were concern about the school environment, to provide religious or moral instruction, and dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools. From 2003 to 2007, the percentage of students whose parents reported homeschooling to provide religious or moral instruction increased from 72 percent to 83 percent. In 2007, the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction (36 percent of students). This reason was followed by a concern about the school environment (such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure) (21 percent), dissatisfaction with academic instruction (17 percent), and "other reasons" including family time, finances, travel, and distance (14 percent). Other reasons include more flexibility in educational practices and family core stability for children with learning disabilities or prolonged chronic illnesses, or for children of missionaries, military families, or families who move often, as frequently as every two years.

Research

Supportive

Test results

Numerous studies may suggest that homeschooled students on average outperform their peers on standardized tests. Homeschooling Achievement, a compilation of studies published by the Home School Legal Defense Association, supported the academic integrity of homeschooling. This booklet summarized a 1997 study by Ray and the 1999 Rudner study. The Rudner study noted two limitations of its own research: it is not necessarily representative of all homeschoolers and it is not a comparison with other schooling methods. Among the homeschooled students who took the tests, the average homeschooled student outperformed his public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects. The study also indicates that public school performance gaps between minorities and genders were virtually non-existent among the homeschooled students who took the tests.

A study conducted in 2008 found that 11,739 homeschooled students, on average, scored 37 percentile points above public school students on standardized achievement tests. This is consistent with the Rudner study (1999). However, Rudner has said that these same students in public school may have scored just as well because of the dedicated parents they had. The Ray study also found that homeschooled students who had a certified teacher as a parent scored one percentile lower than homeschooled students who did not have a certified teacher as a parent.

In 2011 Martin-Chang found that unschooling children ages 5–10 scored significantly below traditionally educated children, while academically oriented home schooled children scored from one half grade level above to 4.5 grade levels above traditionally school children on standardized tests (n=37 home schooled children matched with children from the same socioeconomic and educational background).

In the 1970s Raymond S. and Dorothy N. Moore conducted four federally funded analyses of more than 8,000 early childhood studies, from which they published their original findings in Better Late Than Early, 1975. This was followed by School Can Wait, a repackaging of these same findings designed specifically for educational professionals. They concluded that, "where possible, children should be withheld from formal schooling until at least ages eight to ten."

Their reason was that children, "are not mature enough for formal school programs until their senses, coordination, neurological development and cognition are ready." They concluded that the outcome of forcing children into formal schooling is a sequence of "1) uncertainty as the child leaves the family nest early for a less secure environment, 2) puzzlement at the new pressures and restrictions of the classroom, 3) frustration because unready learning tools – senses, cognition, brain hemispheres, coordination – cannot handle the regimentation of formal lessons and the pressures they bring, 4) hyperactivity growing out of nerves and jitter, from frustration, 5) failure which quite naturally flows from the four experiences above, and 6) delinquency which is failure's twin and apparently for the same reason." According to the Moores, "early formal schooling is burning out our children. Teachers who attempt to cope with these youngsters also are burning out."Aside from academic performance, they think early formal schooling also destroys "positive sociability", encourages peer dependence, and discourages self-worth, optimism, respect for parents, and trust in peers. They believe this situation is particularly acute for boys because of their delay in maturity. The Moores cited a Smithsonian Report on the development of genius, indicating a requirement for "1) much time spent with warm, responsive parents and other adults, 2) very little time spent with peers, and 3) a great deal of free exploration under parental guidance." Their analysis suggested that children need "more of home and less of formal school" "more free exploration with... parents, and fewer limits of classroom and books," and "more old fashioned chores – children working with parents – and less attention to rivalry sports and amusements."

Socialization

John Taylor later found, using the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale, "while half of the conventionally schooled children scored at or below the 50th percentile (in self-concept), only 10.3% of the home-schooling children did so." He further stated that "the self-concept of home-schooling children is significantly higher statistically than that of children attending conventional school. This has implications in the areas of academic achievement and socialization which have been found to parallel self-concept. Regarding socialization, Taylor's results would mean that very few home-schooling children are socially deprived. He states that critics who speak out against homeschooling on the basis of social deprivation are actually addressing an area which favors homeschoolers.

In 2003, the National Home Education Research Institute conducted a survey of 7,300 U.S. adults who had been homeschooled (5,000 for more than seven years). Their findings included:

• Homeschool graduates are active and involved in their communities. 71% participate in an ongoing community service activity, like coaching a sports team, volunteering at a school, or working with a church or neighborhood association, compared with 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages from a traditional education background.

• Homeschool graduates are more involved in civic affairs and vote in much higher percentages than their peers. 76% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 voted within the last five years, compared with only 29% of the corresponding U.S. populace. The numbers are even greater in older age groups, with voting levels not falling below 95%, compared with a high of 53% for the corresponding U.S. populace.

• 58.9% report that they are "very happy" with life, compared with 27.6% for the general U.S. population. 73.2% find life "exciting", compared with 47.3%.

Criticism

Critics claim the studies that show that homeschooled students do better on standardized tests, compare voluntary homeschool testing with mandatory public-school testing.

By contrast, SAT and ACT tests are self-selected by homeschooled and formally schooled students alike. Homeschoolers averaged higher scores on these college entrance tests in South Carolina. Other scores (1999 data) showed mixed results, for example showing higher levels for homeschoolers in English (homeschooled 23.4 vs national average 20.5) and reading (homeschooled 24.4 vs national average 21.4) on the ACT, but mixed scores in math (homeschooled 20.4 vs national average 20.7 on the ACT as opposed homeschooled 535 vs national average 511 on the 1999 SAT math).

Some advocates of homeschooling and educational choice counter with an input-output theory, pointing out that home educators expend only an average of $500–$600 a year on each student, in comparison to $9,000-$10,000 for each public school student in the United States, which suggests home-educated students would be especially dominant on tests if afforded access to an equal commitment of tax-funded educational resources.

Controversy and criticism

Opposition to homeschooling comes from some organizations of teachers and school districts. The National Education Association, a United States teachers' union and professional association, opposes homeschooling. Criticisms by such opponents include:

• Inadequate standards of academic quality and comprehensiveness
• Lack of socialization with peers of different ethnic and religious backgrounds
• The potential for development of religious or social extremism/individualism
• Potential for development of parallel societies that do not fit into standards of citizenship and community

Stanford University political scientist Professor Rob Reich (not to be confused with former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich) wrote in The Civic Perils of Homeschooling (2002) that homeschooling can potentially give students a one-sided point of view, as their parents may, even unwittingly, block or diminish all points of view but their own in teaching. He also argues that homeschooling, by reducing students' contact with peers, reduces their sense of civic engagement with their community. Gallup polls of American voters have shown a significant change in attitude in the last 20 years, from 73% opposed to home education in 1985 to 54% opposed in 2001.

International status and statistics

Main article: Homeschooling international status and statistics

Homeschooling is legal in many countries. Countries with the most prevalent home education movements include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Some countries have highly regulated home education programs as an extension of the compulsory school system; others, such as Sweden and Germany, have outlawed it entirely. Brazil has a law project in process. In other countries, while not restricted by law, homeschooling is not socially acceptable or considered undesirable and is virtually non-existent.

* BLENDED LEARNING

What is Blended?

A blended learning approach combines face to face classroom methods with computer-mediated activities to form an integrated instructional approach. In the past, digital materials have served in a supplementary role, helping to support face to face instruction.
For example, a blended approach to a traditional, face to face course might mean that the class meets once per week instead of the usual three-session format. Learning activities that otherwise would have taken place during classroom time can be moved online.
As of now, there is no consensus on a single agree-upon definition for blended learning. The Resources page contains cites to several articles that provide definitions. In addition, the terms "blended," "hybrid," and "mixed-mode" are used interchangeably in current research literature. For the purposes of the Blended Learning Initiative at Penn State, the term "blended" is preferred.

Why Blend?

The goal of a blended approach is to join the best aspects of both face to face and online instruction. Classroom time can be used to engage students in advanced interactive experiences.  Meanwhile, the online portion of the course can provide students with multimedia-rich content at any time of day, anywhere the student has internet access, from Penn State computer labs, the coffee shop, or the students’ homes. This allows for an increase in scheduling flexibility for students.
In addition to flexibility and convenience for students, according to research shared at the ALN Conference Workshop on Blended Learning & Higher Education November 17, 2005, there is early evidence that a blended instructional approach can result in learning outcome gains and increased enrollment retention
Blended learning is on the rise in higher education. 93% of higher ed instructors and admin say they are using blended learning strategies somewhere in their institution. 7 in 10 expect more than 40% of their schools’ courses to be blended by 2013 (Bonk, C. J. & Graham, C. R. (Eds.). (in press).

How to Blend? 

There are no rules in place to prescribe what the ideal blend might be (Bonk reference). The term “blended” encompasses a broad continuum, and can include any integration of face to face and online instructional content. The blend of face to face and online materials will vary depending on the content, the needs of the students, and the preferences of the instructor. See the section of this site titled Instructional Strategies for information on selecting an ideal blend and designing a blended course.

Considerations

Creating high-quality blended instruction can present considerable challenges. Foremost is the need for resources to create the online materials to be used in the courses. Materials development is a time and labor intensive process, just as it is in any instructional medium. In addition, blended instruction is likely to be a new concept to many students and faculty. Instructional designers involved in course development or redesign will need to be able to answer questions related to:

• what blended instruction is
• why blended instruction  is employed 
• how best to leverage the advantages of a blended approach       

* LEARNING STRATEGY TRAINING 

Learning strategy is the specific actions to make the students better in learning a second language.It suggests that teachers should elicit the problems of the students and try to develop a solution for them. Learning Strategy Training is based on problems students encounter in the process of learning target language. These problems are needed to be solved for an effective learning. First ,students are given the strategy and than they are expected to apply it.Learning Strategy Training focuses on learner training as much as language teaching.Students should be responsible for their own learning. They should follow their learning process and be aware of their deficient and efficent sides. They should also monitor their selves and identify what they need. The teacher helps them to facilitate their learning and to be more effective in learning the target language. After the students get some learning strategies, they have a cognition about them. But they also have a meta cognition which means that the students should be aware of the use of the strategies.The teacher plays a modelling role while teaching the strategies to the students. S/he applies he strategy on a contex in the class by thinking aloud. He attracts the students attentions on his beahviours and the way using the technique. As he is performing the techniques, he also informs the students what he gets by doing so. After he has introduced the strategy, he wants the students to practice on the paper given by himself. He directs the students while they are practicing and he asks questions about the practice and the students reply them. The students previous experiences are taken into account by the teacher which increase the motivation of them. The teacher also asks why they think so. There is two-way interaction between the teacher and the students. In this method, the teacher lets the student to think about their questions and guess the answer from the context rather than giving the answer directly. He gives feed backs for their guesses and reinforces the answers accuracy by looking at the context. After the practice is done, students discuss about their performances and they Express what they think about the use fullness of the strategy. They indentify what they acquire and what they need more. The teacher emboldens them they will achieve their difficulties over time using the strategy. He also announces that they should do more practice on the strategy out of the class and he reminds them how to use the strategy. These strategies will be use fulfor the students academic studies as well as their learning the target language.