Priorities for Evaluating Instructional Materials

Research Update

This research deals basically with significant features for evaluating instructional materials. We need to have clear that teachers make a big difference in students´ learning and that materials with effective strategies can support that learning or interfere its impact on learners.

There are two special cases for learning strategies.

• Expertise reversal effect ( refers to students who possess high levels of expertise and do not benefit from the same strategies of those average students )
• Powerful resistance to learning (  has to do with learners misconceptions in a subject area )

Learning review includes examination of  strategies in instructional materials:

Motivational Strategies

• Positive Expectations: It is setting the right climate for learning that contributes to student´s motivation
• Feedback: feedback about what is good and what is wrong and how to improve while they are learning
• Appearance: materials should be appealing and provide the integration of subject matter

Teaching a Few "Big Ideas"

•  Focus for Students: major themes help students organize what they are learning following a sequence
• Completeness: focusing on big ideas help students develop a deep and  more complete understanding of a major theme

Explicit Instruction

• Clarity of Directions/Explanations: the learning process is improved with clear objectives focused on specific problem-solving and the teaching of thinking skills
• Exclusion of Ambiguity: special attention should be put on materials that uses confusing directions or inadequate explanations

Guidance and Support

•  Level: it includes a variety of appropiate skills like organized routines, better thinking skills, feedback and other forms of guidance
• Adaptability: while lectures help "advanced" students, "average" students need scaffolding. Also material should accommodate differences in learning styles.

Active Participation of Students

•  Assignments: should be logical extensions of the content and will be more effective when organized
• Student Responses: they learn more when following activities like peer tutoring, discuss controversial issues etc.

Targeted Instructional and Assessment Strategies

•  Alignment of Strategies: taking into account that some strategies are more suitable than others, instructional materials should use strategies that have been proved to be effective in producing learning outcomes.
• Completeness of Strategies: the combination of instructional strategies should also be complete enough to achieve learning outcomes.

Teachers tend to fall into the trap of  "teaching to the test", according to Mestre. Student learning should emphasize applied learning and thinking skills, not just learning a collection of definitions and isolated bits of information.

 

 Three major principles, according to Bass&Glaser, make assessment informative to students and therefore improve the teaching and learning process.

• Models of competence
• Graphical tools
• Structured opportunities for reflection

 Quote: It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.  ~Jacob Bronows