Learning environment
Direct instruction is perhaps civilization's oldest method of formal, structured education and continues to be a dominant form throughout the world.
The Socratic method was developed over two millennia ago in response to direct instruction in the scholae of Ancient Greece.
Characteristics that can determine the nature of the learning environment include: "Culture" is generally defined as the beliefs, customs, arts, traditions, and values of a society, group, place, or time.
These can be provided in comprehensive or specialized schools in a variety of organizational models, including departmental, integrative, project-based, academy, small learning communities, and school-within-a-school.
Passive learning, a key feature of direct instruction, has at its core the dissemination of nearly all information and knowledge from a single source, the teacher with a textbook providing lessons in lecture-style format.
Education at the time was designed to provide workers for the emerging factory-based, industrial societies, and this educational model and organization of schools became known as the "factory model school", with curriculum, teaching style, and assessment heavily standardized and centered around the needs and efficiencies of classroom and teacher management.
It is based on the premise that in order to learn, students must do more than just listen: they must read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solving problems.
It relates to three learning domains referred to as knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA) (Bloom, 1956), whereby students must engage in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Direct instruction is now expanding to include students conducting independent or guided research with multiple sources of information, greater in-class discussion, group collaboration, experiential (hands-on, project-based, etc.
In instruction based on differentiation, the classroom teacher alters the delivery and content of instruction for students based on each student's learning profile, readiness level, and interests [12] Progressive education is a pedagogical movement using many tenets of active learning that began in the late 19th century and has continued in various forms to the present.
The term progressive was engaged to distinguish this education from the traditional Euro-American curricula of the 19th century, which was rooted in classical preparation for the university and strongly differentiated by social class.
The teacher acts as a facilitator who encourages students to discover principles for themselves and to construct knowledge by working answering open-ended questions and solving real-world problems.
It also encompasses differentiated instruction that supports student progress based on mastery of specific subjects or skills.
This includes establishing clear and appropriate consequences for breaking classroom and school rules, ensuring that they are just, proportional, and paired with positive reinforcement.
Where learners are given meaningful opportunities to provide creative and constructive input into lesson planning and school governance processes, expected benefits include: increased engagement; the development of skills in planning, problem-solving, group work, and communication; and a sense of pride in school activities and their own learning experience.
[15] Learning environments are frequently organized into six pedagogical and physical models: This article incorporates text from a free content work.
