The technique of teaching

Front matter

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Foreword

I

The Technique of Teaching is primarily devoted to actual teaching situations. Its professional purpose is to analyze classroom activities which the instructor may have performed mechanically without being conscious of principles involved, to afford opportunity for intelligent evaluation of procedures in common use, and to suggest as diversified methods of presentation as the limits of one small volume render possible. In addition to a concise treatment of accepted teaching activities and a brief study of current innovations, method in six fundamental subjects is discussed in concrete terms. Psychological principles of which method studies should be the application lose none of their truth or scientific value by being presented in their schoolroom contacts as found in the everyday experience of teachers. The work of every skillful classroom artist abounds in a wealth of minor expedients and devices; the genuine expert perceives clearly that devices are never an end. In the specific illustrations and cases at the close of each chapter may be found abundant opportunity for testing such devices by principles outlined or developed in the chapter which precedes.

With most teachers, principles emerge from processes. After utilizing a bit of technique, many times perhaps, its underlying meaning and purpose may stand revealed. Specific and concrete teaching suggesdons are worth while when they lead to intelligent use of new methods, even though an imitative sti^e come before the new plane of intelligence. Imitation of classroom devices is bad only when it never achieves more than the mechanical and rule of thumb. It is not too much to hope that those who read this book will find plans described which they may imitate. Along with this material which "teachers can

407883 vi Foreword

actually use," they will miss the finest educational growth if new technique does not also bring added meaning and understanding to daily schoolroom tasks.

Aside from hundreds of his colleagues whose classrooms he has visited as inspector or supervisor, and the faculty of Montana State Normal College, to whom he is under obligation for helpful suggestions, the writer is indebted to his sister, Helen Mary Davis; to Miss Elizabeth Sutherland, Superintendent of Schools in Beaverhead County, Montana; to Miss Mina Petrashek, Assistant State Superintendent of Schools in Montana; and to G. H. Reavis, Dean of the School of Education of the University of PittsburgK, all of whom read the manuscript critically and constructively. Finally, acknowledgment is made to Dr. E. L. Thorndike, to D. Appleton and Company, Henry Holt and Company, the Houghton Mifflin Company, the School Review, and the Journal of Educational Research for permission to quote with credit brief extracts from their publications.

S. E. D.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Chapter One

the technique of teaching i

Clear professioiial thinking — Laclc of perspective perverts judgment — Educational principles acquired through practice — Principles and attitudes universally valid in teaching — Belief in pupila essential — Recent changes in classroom ideals and technique — Analysis of teaching purposes — ^Instruction — Characteristics of inductive and deductive exercises — Drill — Ideals and attitudes — Lesson plans — The assignment — The study period — Question and answer — Illustrative media — Written work — Testing results ■ — ^Exerdsea — Re f erences.

Chapter Two the teaching of spelling 37

Function of spelling — Present status of spelling — What spellit^ includes — The psychology of spelling — Pronunciatioo — The meanings of words — Selection of spelling vocabulary— Textbooks in teaching spelling — Diagnous of spelling diSculties — SpelUi^ rules — Lesson technique — Spelling matches — Exercises — References.

Chapter Three the teaching ok reading and literature 8l

The purposes of readii^ — Two purposes in teaching reading — At what age should children Icam to read — Stories for primary grades— Characteristics of stories — Psychology of reading process—Motivation — Teaching beginners — Providing reading content — Textbooks — Silent and oral reading — The reading lesson — Teaching literature — E^xercises — References.

Chapter Foijr

the teaching of composition and grahuar i58

Peculiar problem of English — The meaning of composition — The function of language — Vocabulary a measure of intelttgence — viii Contents

PA The teaching purpose — To develop expreaaion — Ideala of compoaition teaching — PaycholoRy of composition teaching — Correction of errors — Oral and written composition — The function of grammar — Fundamental conaiderationa in teaching grammar — Suggeationa for teaching grammar — Exerciaes — References.

Chapter Five the teaching of arithmetic v

The function of arithmetic — Content and form- Instruction

and drill differentiated — Drill and habit formation — Addition — Substraction — Suggestions in teaching multiplication — Suggestions in teaching division — Course of study and teictbooks— Principles, niles, and explanation— Problems — ^Informational material in arithmetic — Lesson assignments — The arithmetic study period — Class exercises in arithmetic — Devices for drill exercises — Exerc Ises — References.

Chapter Six the teaching of history 2;

Definitions of history — The function of history — Patriotism and moral values — Disciplinary values — Course of study — Phases of history teaching — Place relations in hiatory— Time relations- Continuity — -Suggestions for history assignment — The study period — Classroom suggestions — Current even ts^Ci vies— ^Exercises — Re f erences .

Chapter Seven

A difficult subject— Reasons for unsatisfactory results — Accepted definitions of geography — The function of geography teaching — What shall we teach — Factual or rational — ^More place geography needed — Local or remote content — Use of types and comparisons-— Problems in geography teaching — Projects— Relations of geography with history — Maps — The use of globes- Diagrams and graphs — Pictures — The educational museum — Field trips and excursions — Use of teictbooka — Exercisea — Refer-

SJBl,IOGRAPHY 337

THE

Chapter One The Technique Of Teaching

Cleu professional thioking. Teachers must be clear in professional thinking if they would be correct in practice. Lack of clearness is woefully apparent in discussions of educational aims, curriculum values, and methods. Inflated rhetoric is too seriously taken by those who lack perspective. Not all who lecture to teachers are sane; some are victims of an unusually barren public school experience which they very naturally attack as typical, when, even though it may have been notoriously bad a generation ago, it is found to-day only where ignorant teachers hold sway. Even granting balance and honesty of treatment, the little expedients which many reformers advocate are but half comprehended by the immature and untrained, and would be useless because obvious if we but had an adequately trained teaching corps. The clear- thin king teacher is not alarmed by reforms nor distressed by fads. He analyses each successive educational catchword and turns it to account in improved teaching technique.

Lack of perspective perverts judgment. With a little and therefore a dangerous learning, the unprepared of the profession find their world crumbling when an improved bit of technique is proposed: "Methods are suffering great improvement recently" is the self-expressed conviction of one of these apprentices. A useful device is hailed as a revolutionary principle. Appropriate generalizations are utilized inappropriately. "Make the school homelike" sounds well and is seized for general application without settling the important matter of whose home the school is to resemble or disposing of what seems a valid claim that schools have a right to be school-like, entitled to their own modes of work. "Learn to do by doing," a useful maxim in certain stages of learning, is quoted to justify irrational activities of doubtful educational value because some have never discovered that the distinguishing mark of higher grades of intelligence is ability to learn without doing, and that after doing has reached the plane of routine it is no longer accompanied by learning at all. "Making learning concrete" is held too long as a goal by those who have not thought far enough through their problem to realize that, despite the value of concrete beginnings, real thinking is hardly possible until the concrete can be largely discarded. The foregoing illustrate the tendency of unanalyzed precepts to obstruct radier than to guide. When rules for devices supplant principles the case is even worse.

Educational principles acquired through practice. Principles are recognized by those at home in the educational world; rules are for the apprentices who form so large a proportion of America's teachers. "In doing his work, in so far as he acts from rule or precept, an individual's full, personal preference is not accorded. The rule may help him once, and, indeed many times, but he is not perfectly free. The rule is in a sense a prescription for his activity; it is commanding, fixed, imperative. A principle, on the other hand, is experimental rather than something fixed; it is a method for or of action rather thana prescription for it."' Great principles should free rather than mold the worker in education, thus keeping him alive and growing.

But teaching principles are not acquired at once or by dek ductive treatment. They are usually but faintly comprehended until actual teaching experience clothes with human meanings what seem at first empty or obvious generalizations. In the technique of instruction, method principles may be the general guide, but actual teaching is done with schoolroom devices. If properly method conscious, teachers evaluate every classroom expedient. By this process of critical analysis of actual teaching or judging the device suggestions of method literature, principles emerge as guides; meanwhile classroom technique is sharpened by each successfully applied new procedure. Many teachers seem afraid of devices — a warranted fear only when these become irrationally imitated rule of thumb. Enlightened classroom artists — for that is what thousands of our finest teachers are — welcome every hitherto unused technique but are never slavish in application. It is the purpose of this and succeeding chapters to present classroom method as practiced in modem elementary schools and to furnish practical devices for discussion, evaluation, and use. The growing teacher capitalizes experience by constructive study of his own work. The one who develops fastest also utilizes the experience of others.

Principles and attitudes universally valid in teaching. Before considering teaching activities in detail, a summary of important attitudes characteristic of real teachers of all times will be given. Such attitudes do not consist of measurable procedures; a technically faultless instructor noticeably lacldng in one of these essentials might be a total failure. With little conventional skill one liberally endowed with such attitudes might be indifferently successful, but the only person a would-be teacher can afford to emulate is strong in these and technically expert as well.

I. We are leaching pupils, not subjects. It is not primarily subject matter we are dispensing; we are developing boys and girls through their school experiences. If it were necessary

L to ruin his ideals or attitude toward life in order to make sure of his geography and arithmetic, a pupil would better pass through life without these, but such is never the alternative. Though there is the constant tendency to stress school "subjects" in isolation from each other and from life, it is only the poorest teacher who does not know at a given moment what subject is being taught and mystically say, "I am not teaching anything in particular; I am teaching these children,"

2. Emotional response important. Teaching is concerned with emotional response not less than with subject matter reaction. If one danger more than all others threatens popular education, it is that of being fed-up with what we call culture— of not being hungry for more of what the school introduces. The result of effective teaching is to stimulate and keep alive intellectual appetites which multitudes of pupils seem never to feel, or feel only to lose even before their school days are over. Right teaching builds life interests; it makes books, museums, music, art, a wide knowledge of current events, the objects of impelling interest.

3. Education develops ability to -work. Teaching means developing capacity for work, — sustained, independent, intellectual effort. In this it is the teacher's business to make himself unnecessary. If an educated person is worth more to society than one who is ignorant, the difference is as much ' in his working ideal as in his immediate mental content. If school life has been worth anytJiing, he has learned and remembers much but in addition is constantly widening his own cultural frontier. No teacher assigns him reading lessons, but he reads; no one corrects his compositions, but he is criticalof his own writings; from school projects he has learned to find and work out his own.

Large ideals of teaching procedure insure impress. Best teaching is positive, treating even little matters in large ways. Much attention is placed upon what is purposely being

L done and less upon the unrelated and inconsequential. Lowering a pupil's class standing because he is late and counting off a minute percentage from a history paper because of each misspelled word are examples of little ways of doing things. Better far not to have the tardiness ; strong teachers find more direct and fair means of its prevention than the doubtful expedient of lowered marks. If the spelling is below par, why accept the history paper at all? Teachers who make real impress are usually those with whom work is positively accepted or rejected rather than those who qualify acceptance with the discount of some small, and to most pupils irrelevant, mark of school management.

5. Learning is attention. Holding the attention of each pupil every minute is the ideal. The inattentive child is absent. If class work begins with promptness and force and the teacher sees all, order is preserved by vigorous, spontaneous interest. Calling for order is confession of failure to secure it in the manner of all great teachers. "I teach so well that all are keenly participating" is the ideal rather than "Sit still BO that I can teach you." A teacher has the right to demand attention, but one who must call too often loses teaching edge. Suppression is characteristic of the schoolroom autocrat of an earlier generation.

Belief in pupils essential. A permanent endowment of all inspiring teachers is the optimism of belief in their work, and in their pupils. Cynical, apathetic, or colorless persons cannot teach; the warmth, cheer, and enthusiasm of vital personality inspire performance. Though actual attainment of a few pupils may remain below a praiseworthy standard, finding nothing to praise in a pupil's effort or attitude is confession of failure to secure his cooperation, without which the school is not educating him. "Most pupils are doing about the best they can when we consider heredity, home environment, and their teacher, me," would be a true and most useful philosophy for teachers to adopt, "The best they can" is not enough; it is the school's business to furnish the experience which shall make this best better, upon a plane which only wholesome, human, expert teaching can reach.

Recent changes in classroom ideals and technique. A visitor, familiar with school practice of a few decades ago, on stepping into the typical classroom of to-day, is impressed with the fact that, though excellent teaching always bears the same essential characteristics, the school of the present is different. It is not necessary to argue with those who prefer the old. Granting the success of the earlier regime, new times teach new duties and a modern school must, in its methods and spirit, reflect or be a part of present social life, utilizing the contributions of present-day scientific method as applied to school life and conditions. A teacher unaffected by current changes in education has small reason for being proud of immunity from fads.

1. Recognition of motor activity. Adequate adjustments to the fact that pupils are dominantly motor have brought more athletics and manual studies. In lower grades games have large scope. Frequent short recesses and recreation periods are characteristic. The room "so quiet you can hear a pin drop" is not the ideal of any teacher who has felt the breath of modern educational life. Classrooms are becoming workrooms. Where a specific program has not broken the sedentary regime of schools as they were, teachers intersperse class work with physical drills, knowing that short periods of intense activity accomplish more than too long effort with accompanying fatigue and listlessness.

2. Physical conditions related to classroom work. Pupils who cannot see what is on the blackboard or even in their own books are not teachable; testing hearing and eyesight are inseparably related to teaching. Sitting upon an uncomfortable seat, in a cold or unventilated room or where light is inadequate makes concentration impossible. Under-

TTie Technique of Teaching 7

nourished pupils usually need more attention to proper food than to methods of teaching ; those who are short of sleep would profit by refonnation of their negligent parents. Both in the classroom and at home the problem of physical ability and condition is recognized as a fundamental element of instruction.

3. Individual teaching — learning. Individual learning rather than mass teaching now holds recognition. Genuine educatorsv.' have always realized that teaching and learning are only terminal points of the same activity, but class mechanics have too often obscured the fact that one is inseparable from the other. Much less is now said about the need of impartiality in dealing with pupils; no one thinks of insisting that all shall be treated alike since they are not all alike. Some would even do away with the entire class and grade organization in the interest of individual development, and there is general agreement that smaller groups make possible more vital education. Without accepting the psychology of individual differences as a justification of curriculum or method anarchy, no teacher can afford ignorance of its findings. Mechanical grading, fixed norms of performance for promotion, and lack of individual acquaintance stand in the way of adapting method to specific pupil needs,

4. Widened scope of instruction. The single textbook no longer occupies an exclusive position in American education- Supplementary material and the library have enriched or supplanted the one book plan. In a small way, the research ^ ideal is being realized wherever teachers are skillfully directing the study of well organized units in which pupils find out all they can about a topic or problem, making a responsible report to teacher and classmates. Similarly, increased use of excursions, field trips, and visits to industrial establishments have brought into more general vogue the practice of studying real things directly.

$. The socialized recitation. The belief in self determination which accompanies the growth of democracy means, in essence, the substitution of inner for outer controls of conduct. The properly socialized individual is guided by principles developed through experience and integrally a part of his being rather than by the external force of authority. "The process of socialization, in which the process of education essentially consists, presents the two-fold aspect: (a) participation in the experience of others and the gradual recognition of the value of social life, (b) the achievement of power on the part of the individual to express himself in social directions." '■ Though no mathematical proof of the matter can be given, the opinion commends itself to serious consideration that sharing social responsibility in democratic society is best prepared for by increase of participation in the responsibility of classroom instruction. This the socialized recitation provides.

a. Responsibility in Ike socialized recitation. In any form which the socialized recitation may assume, the foundation element is responsibility to the group including the teacher. Whenever possible the content of what a pupil reads aloud is new to all but himself. He faces the class since it is his business to make them understand. He has no right to hesitate, mumble, or mispronounce because he is responsible to the class for being worth listening to. In a cooperative undertaking like a room or class contest, a class play, conducting opening exercises or a special day program, the individual is responsible to the group, and the group to their own reputation as well as to the audience. The great difficulty with the teachercentered recitation is that what happens often seems to make little difference; the teacher may not be pleased with one's contribution, but after all what does that amount to? It is but a school reason — not a real one. An unfulfilled task in a

socialized recitation may spoil a class undertaking; an exaggerated statement or half-thought-out opinion is sure to be challenged, and a reason demanded.

b. Conducting the socialized recitation. The group may be organized with a chairman and secretary; a pupil may be appointed by the teacher or elected by the class to lead in discussion. In either case, the teacher, acting as parliamentarian, is a steadying influence to whom final appeal is made. In a typical situation, after a pupil makes his contribution to class discussion, several stand in their places without the customary waving of hands or asking 0/ the teacher's permission to speak. The chairman recognizes one who perhaps failed to understand a statement made by the speaker; another wishes to make a correction ; and a third contributes additional information. Pupils question each other, playing the game according to recognized rules of order. The leader and each participating member is responsible to the class for making individual contributions also and for making the entire exercise worth while. Lapses in discipline due to uncontrolled enthusiasm are not hard to control by teachers who are strong enough to undertake socialized class work. The appeal is always the same, "You are wasting the time of the class to which you are responsible," or "This is impolite and not according to rule"; back of this, usually implied only, "If you cannot play the game according to rule, we shall have to play without you for a while." The same motives which prevail on the playground or in adult social life are thus made operative in instruction.

c. Dangers of the socialized recitation, (i) In common with every device of classroom organization, the socialized recitation is subject to its own peculiar dangers. The contributions of pupils who talk from the floor easily degenerate. Some resort to the familiar faultfinding about very small matters; "She said 'There wasn't no' for 'There wasn't any' " or "He didn't let his voice fall" are typical. Others in order to be in the game force themselves to talk even though they have nothing to say, the result being trivialities.

(2) Fragmentary and unorganized work is likely to be the consequence of pupil leadership. The leader can have no well thought out or far reaching plan; he cannot know accurately where he is going with his class and it requires magnificent skill for the teacher to furnish effectively a balanced outline without killing individual and group initiative. Carried away by pupil enthusiasm excellent teachers themselves often say "I've spent too much time upon that topic because the children were so interested in it," Class enthusiasm is only partly a reliable guide: children may keep the discussion upon unimportant and unrelated material. Unskillfully directed, the plan wastes pupils' time.

{3) The socialized recitation offers little to insure participation of all members of a class. Without skillful precautionary organization, the alert, intelligent, and dominating monopolize. The pupil leader being responsible is loath to inflict upon the group one who is slow or uninteresting, and a considerable proportion of many classes are content to sit in a tolerant, even apathetic attitude, being little receptive of what transpires among their more vocal and argumentative classmates. The unruffled calm of those for whom no problems arise is not to be disturbed by a pupil leader.

6. Project teaching. Teaching by projects introduces a useful term for which no definition of universal acceptance has been found, A project is called a "large topic," "a problem," or "a whole-hearted purposeful activity," the last being so all-inclusive that it embraces attention to any topic a pupil may find of absorbing interest, "from homemade gingerbread to the League of Nations" as one writer has phrased the matter. Others think of project as applied only to activities in which something tangible is developed or created, manual training

The Technique of Teaching r i

or agriculture projects being legitimate examples. Generally speaking, project is taken tomeana relatively complex problem, the solution of which is carried on in its natural setting. Project may very usefully be thought of as an attitude toward work regarded as an undertaking.

a. Characteristic advantages of the project. (l) Project teaching may insure sustained effort upon large units. Even a puzzle as a project increases the attention span of the child who solves it. To construct, to find out, to solve a problem is not measured in pages ; keeping an outline or bit of unrelated content for future need lacks the sustaining motive of present use.

(2) The successful project must originate with or be adopted by the pupil. Responsibility for the results of a self-chosen undertaking is a powerful motive for carrying on. Not to miss a word for three months, to increase reading rate, to observe health card regulations, to win first place or honorable mention in an agricultural club enterprise, or to construct the model of a medieval castle are illustrations of such motivated activities. Most projects are not originally devised by pupils, for contrary to the inference of much which is written about child life, worth while problems seldom "spontaneously arise"; educative projects are usually the result of expertly contrived situations in which pupils are led to adopt a problem for solution. To find out how the American colonists made their way into the Mississippi valley, or how much the family spends during a year are examples of adopted projects. Most of school experience is vicarious. The accomplishments of the great have always been projects carried to success in the face of obstacles. Not infrequently reading of their struggles has far more educational value than endeavoring to retrace the path they have climbed.

(3) A project seriously undertaken necessitates persistent ^effort. To achieve the end sought, many means of but mediate

12 The Technigue of Teaching

interest must be utilized. To maintain a perfect spelling record, uninteresting words have to be studied; to make the finest garden, weeds must be pulled even though days are hot. "The most valuable result of education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you ought to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not." (Huxley.) Fears that education by projects will lack disciplinary value are groundless. Responsibility for consequences is the most relentless of taskmasters.

(4) Project teaching breaks isolation between subjects and between school and community. In executing a garden project, arithmetic in its natural setting is needed to count costs and measure the ground; letter writing is necessary in ordering seeds; and manual activities are constantly requisite. In beautifying school premises, help of the community is enlisted; opening exercises carried on as a successful project utilize out-of-school contributors and attract visitors. If the use of related school subjects in a project is held to a high standard, and every opportunity seized to connect subjects which have an interesting though not necessarily integral relationship with each other, wide correlations may be brought about,

b. Project leaching may permil trivial content. The principal danger to which project teaching is exposed is the noneducative value of much that is undertaken or the disproportionate emphasis likely to be given. Many class periods lu-gently needed for drill are spent in cooking or canning projects in which, to use Dewey's phrase, pupils, merely "messing around," accomplish little for themselves. Perhaps the jelly making hour, designed in part to motivate third grade language, requires the using of the language period to wash kettles. The project of beautifying the home town or city is commendable, but too much time devoted by children to picking up cans or refuse is barren of educational results.

1 Home projects such as splitting kindling or making beds may

I have value in promoting ideals of perseverance in common

1 with any tasks faithfully performed, but, once thoroughly done,

the activities themselves have slight educational significance.

c. Manual and constructive projects hard to eoaluale. The manual activity or constructive project often associated with school subjects is peculiarly liable to deceive both pupils and teachers as to what is being accomplished. Building a model house in primary grades may have value in motivation of correlated measurements, and in language, spelling, and reading content. If conducted properly, its socializing value is as great as that of any other well organized cooperative enterprise. However, most of the time required for this project is devoted to leisurely play and should be so regarded. Such playhouse building is not work. Thisisnotanindictmentagainst it, provided working hours are not unduly encroached upon.

d. Manual projects not of universal interest. Manual projects are supposed to be Intrinsically more interesting because of instinctive tendencies of children to do and construct. Granting the general soundness of this view, many pupils, some of them the brightest, prefer intellectual effort to almost any subordinate manual project which may be devised. It is a mistake to assume that all dislike mental eflort and need to be stimulated by handwork which is usually far leas exacting in the amount of concentration it requires. The "instinct for thinking things out" may be a less universal endowment but it is surely as important in solving social problems as any instinct which satisfies itself in tangible construction. The world needs thinkers as well as doers.