Structure Gives You Freedom
Structure is the most essential part of designing a classroom learning experience.
First my personal reflection:
As a teacher, I am obsessed with perfection. I want to be perfect with my planning and timing, all the way down to 30 secs.
(I am not talking from “perfectionist” vs “procrastinator” perspective at all. That too is too much conflated, in my opinion.)
I aim for perfection but it doesn't mean my lessons must go exactly the way I had planned. They don't. And that's the point.
From the eyes of a novice observer, it might look fluid and natural. But, inside the mind of a teacher, there's literally 100 small decisions going on every minute of the lesson.
There's always a Tweak. Improvisation. Quick Decisions.
However, if I didn't aim for perfection and didn't plan to the dots, it would be a disaster when I needed to improvise.
Structure = Freedom
The structure I plan gives me the maximum freedom on what, why, and how I take my lessons ahead. It shows me where the students are at in the overall learning process, and what pedagogical approach I need to implement accordingly.
But, it’s not just for me as a teacher. Structure is in realty for the students. Unlike the popular discourse in education, that structure is dull, it kills creativity or whatever. Sounds good. Looks good. Smells good, from the outside. You can gain some social talking points if you are an educational commentator. But they don’t have to do the teaching, you do. So ignore them.
So what then?
Remember, structure also helps students to manage their cognitive load. Especially when they are in the novice or intermediate phase of learning. A lot of times, when you see your students disengaged, confused, or even “lazy”, generally they are experiencing cognitive overload and as a result can’t process the unstructured instructions.
“What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
In the context of classroom teaching, what looks like a student problem (bored, disengaged, confused) is often a problem due to the lack of structure and clarity in the instructional design.
So, next time when you think about planning the learning process, here’s what you can do:
Start with a general plan (lesson objective, outcome, type of evaluation etc)
Know where your students are at (in the novice-expert continuum)
Check their prior knowledge (incomplete, inaccurate, faulty)
Then, design a structure.
You might want them to take them through an inductive route or a deductive one. You might want them to give them a series of instructions or you want them to experience (directly, indirectly) the content/issue/problem.Make sure the instructions, steps, guidelines are clear, crisp, and concise. Else, this becomes the major source of confusion and inaction among students.
Communicate the structure to the students (this might be optional)
Reflect and reiterate.
Enjoy the process.
Let me say it again: structure does not mean conformity.
Some Popular Structures:
For reference, here are some popular instructional theories. You can use them to come up with your structures.
Explicit Instruction, Anita Archer and Charles A. Hughes
Experiential Learning Cycle, David Kolb
Design Thinking / Double Diamond Process
Rosenshine’s Principle of Instruction
Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction
5E Instructional Model
Flipped Classroom Model
My go-to structure is a super tweaked version of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle. We call it the E-R-T-A model. This works better for adult leaners and grad/undergrad students.
If I had to teach in a school level, I would probably go for Explicit Instruction 80% of the time, and a blend of 5E Model 20% of the time.
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