LESSON 4

The Principles of Teaching (According to Various Authors)

Learning Objectives: After the report, students should be able to:

 Show how principles of teaching are derived.
 Cite principles of teaching.
 have more knowledge of what are the Principles of teaching.
 understand the importance of the Principles of teaching.
 apply the different principles of teaching

4.1 Principles of teaching

Principle is:
 A basic truth, law, or assumption
 A rule or standard, especially of good behavior.
 The collectivity of moral or ethical standards or judgments.
 A fixed or predetermined policy or mode of action.
 A basic or essential quality or element determining intrinsic nature or characteristic
behavior
 A rule or law concerning the functioning of natural phenomena or mechanical processes.

PRINCIPLE is a comprehensive law or doctrine from which an accepted or professed rule of

action or conduct is derived. It has been adopted from latin word princeps which means the
beginning or the end of all facts, circumstances or state of affairs. This is also used to express the
origin of things and their fundamental laws and to bring out the ultimate objectives (Zulueta,2006)

Principles of teaching
The basic principles of teaching relate to effective communication and should be visible within
a lesson plan. By communication is meant the whole environment of effective teaching as well as
simply verbal speaking and listening (each by student and teacher)

1. Share intellectual control with students.

Building a sense of shared ownership is an effective way of achieving high levels of student
interest and engagement. It can be achieved in many ways; many of these involve some
form of formal or informal negotiation about parts or all of the content, tasks or
assessment. Another complementary approach is to ensure that students' questions,
comments and suggestions regularly influence, initiate (or terminate) what is to be done.

2. Look for occasions when students can work out part (or all) of the content or
instructions.

Learning is almost always better if students work something out for themselves, rather
than reading it or hearing it. This is not always feasible of course, but often it is.

3. Provide opportunities for choice and independent decision-making.

Students respond very positively to the freedom to make some decisions about what or
how they will work. To be effective, the choices need to be genuine, not situations where
there is really only one possibility. These may include choices about which area of content
to explore, the level of demand (do more routine tasks or fewer more demanding ones),
the form of presentation (poster, powerpoint presentation, role play, model etc.),and how
to manage their time during a day or lesson.
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4. Provide diverse range of ways of experiencing success.

Raising intellectual self-esteem is perhaps the most important aspect of working with low
and moderately achieving students. Success via interactive discussion, question-asking,
role-plays and tasks allowing high levels of creativity often results in greater confidence
and hence persistence in tackling other written tasks. Publicly recognising and praising
good learning behaviours is useful here.

5. Promote talk which is exploratory, tentative and hypothetical.

This sort of talk fosters link-making and, as our research shows, commonly reflects high
levels of intellectual engagement. Teaching approaches such as delayed judgement,
increased wait-time, promotion of 'What If' questions. The classroom becomes more fluid
and interactive.

6. Encourage students to learn from other students' questions and comments.

The student conception that they can learn from other students’ ideas, comments and
questions develops more slowly than the conception that discussion is real and useful
work. The classroom dynamics can reach new, very high levels when ideas and debate
bounce around from student to student, rather than student to teacher.

7. Build a classroom environment that supports risk-taking.

We underestimated the very high levels of perceived risk that accompanies many aspects
of quality learning for most students, even in classes where such learning is widespread. It
is much safer, for example, to wait for the teacher's answer to appear than to suggest one
yourself. Building trusts in the teacher and other students and training students to disagree
without personal put-downs are essential to widespread display of good learning
behaviours.

8. Use a wide variety of intellectually challenging teaching procedures.

There are at least two reasons for this, one is that teaching procedures that counter
passive learning and promote quality learning require student energy and effort. Hence
they need to be varied frequently to retain their freshness. The other is that variety is
another source of student interest.

9. Use teaching procedures that are designed to promote specific aspects of quality
learning.

Students could be taught how to learn, in part by devising a range of teaching procedures
to variously tackle each of a list of poor learning tendencies, for example failing to link
school work to relevant out-of-school experiences. The variety in (8) is not random and one
basis for selecting a particular teaching procedure is to promote a particular aspect of
quality learning.

10. Develop students' awareness of the big picture: how the various activities fit together
and link to the big ideas.

Many, if not most students, do not perceive schooling to be related to learning key ideas
and skills. Rather, they see their role as completing tasks and so they focus on what to do
not why they are doing it. Much teacher talk, particularly in skills based areas such as
Mathematics, Grammar and Technology reinforces this perception. For these reasons,
students (including primary students) commonly do not link activities and do not make
links to unifying, 'big ideas'.
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Module 1

11. Regularly raise students' awareness of the nature of different aspects of quality learning.

This is a key aspect of learning how to learn. Students typically have no vocabulary to
discuss learning. it is very helpful to build a shared vocabulary and shared understandings
by regular, short debriefing about some aspect of the learning that has just occurred.
Having a rotating student monitor of a short list of good learning behaviours can be very
helpful.

12. Promote assessment as part of the learning process.

Students and sometimes teachers typically see assessments as purely summative:

something that teachers do to students at the end of a topic. Building the perception that
most assessment tasks are part of the learning process includes encouraging students
learning from what they did and did not do well as well as having students taking some
ownership of and responsibility for aspects of assessment.

4.2 How Principles of Teaching Are Derived

It can be said that principles of teaching are derived;

a) Through the pooling of the opinions of experts,
b) Through comparative studies of the teaching performance of capable and
oincapable teachers;
c) Through experimental studies of teaching and learning in the classroom;
d) From the results of experiments which are the universal methods of deducing
principles; and
e) From critically analyzed experience or from systematic investigations.

Principles of Teaching and Learning Language

1. Begin with the end in mind. With the clear focus “no amount of far-fetched
question or comment from our students, no amount of unnecessary interruption or
disruption can derail our intended lesson for the day. If you want people to achieve
result, clarify what you want your students to achieve.

2. Encourage your student to personalize the learning goals identified for them. Your
student must own the lesson objectives. When they make the lesson objectives
their own then they take care that they realize them. When student set their own
personal targets they will become more self-motivated.

3. Motivation is essential for learning. It is motivation that makes students explore,

choose, remain interested, participate actively and build self-confidence.

4. Learning is a social activity. We learn from others when we interact with them in
the same way that they learn from us.

5. Teaching language is more effective and learning, more meaningful when it is

integrative. When you do integrative teaching you will:
 Incorporate the four language arts – listening, speaking, reading and writing
 Consider varied strategies for all multiple intelligence and learning styles
 Apply interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teaching
 Teach language structure and from in authentic contexts rather through
contrived drills and in language workbooks
 Connect your lessons to the life experiences of your students
 Incorporate effective, research-based instructional strategies for teaching
 Integrate values in your lessons
 Principles and Methods of Teaching 4
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6. A conducive classroom atmosphere. Build comfort into learning. People function

best in a favourable atmosphere. Gerald J. Pine and Peter J. Horne describe a
facilitative learning atmosphere as one that:
 Encourage people to be active
 Promotes and facilities the individual’s discovery of the learning meaning of
ideas
 Emphasizes the uniquely personal and subjective nature of learning
 Sees difference as good and desirable
 Consistently recognizes people’s right to make mistakes
 Tolerate ambiguity
 Looks at evaluation as a cooperative process and emphasizes on self-
evaluation
 Encourages openness of self rather than concealment of self
 Encourages people to trust in themselves as well as in external sources
 Gives respect to people
 Accepts people for who they are
 Permits confrontation with self and ideas

7. Learning is an active process in which the learner uses sensory input and
constructs meaning out of it. Learning is not the passive acceptance of knowledge
which exists ‘out there’ but that learning involves the learner’s engaging with the
world.

8. Learning is reflective. We need to provide activities which engage the mind as well
as the hands.

9. Emphasize on self-evaluation. Feedback should be criterion-referenced. Practice

using rubrics. It is against this personal target that they will evaluate themselves at
the end of the lesson.
10. Make use of an integrated performance assessment that makes the connections
between learning styles, intelligence, and the real world explicit in a way that is
useful to both students and teachers.

11. Emphasize on real world application that favours realistic performance over out-
of-context drill items. Such assessments require students to generate-rather than
choose- a response, and to actively accomplish complex tasks while bringing to bear
prior knowledge new learning, and relevant skills.

Discussion Questions: (Provide an answer and send them to your instructor)

The 3-2-1 ACTIVITY:
Write three (3) important things you have learned from this module. You may write it in a
paragraph form or in a creative manner such as using a semantic web in your presentation.

Write two (2) ways on how you can use such knowledge in the practice of teaching. Presuppose
that you are a classroom teacher, how can you put these learning in the real practice of your
profession. Cite situations and concrete ways.

Write one (1) question in this module that you want to clarify further.

(Note: The next modules will be sent/given only if you have completed this module)
 Principles and Methods of Teaching 5
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books:

Salandanan, Gloria Ph. D. Elements of Good Teaching. Chapter 4 -- ISBN 971-685-679-8 Lorimar
Publishing
Corpus, Brenda B. and Salandanan, Gloria (2006).Principles and method of Teaching. Lorimar
Publishing
Bilbao, Purita P., Corpuz, Brenda B., Llagas, Avelina T., Salandanan, Gloria G..The Teaching
Profession. ISBN 971-685-673-6 Lorimar Publishing
Corpus, Brenda B., Ph.D, Salandanan, Gloria G., Ph.D, & Rigor, Dalisay V., Ph.D. Principles of
Teaching 2.Lorimar Publishing Inc.
Acero, Victorina O., Ph.D, Javier, Evelyn S.,M.A., & Castro, Herminia O., M.A. Principles and
Strategies of Teaching. Rex Bookstore.
Corpuz, Brenda B., Ph.D, &Salandanan, Gloria G., Ph.D. Principles and Strategies of
Teaching.Lorimar Publishing.
Gregorio, Hernan C. (1976) Principles and Methods of Teaching. Revised Edition.
Garotech Publishing.
Salandanan, Gloria S. (2005). Teaching and the Teacher. LominarPublishingCo.Inc.
Zulueta, Francisco M. &Guimbatan, Kathleen L. (2002). Teaching Strategies and
Educational Alternatives. Volume I. Academic Publishing Corporation
Concepcion, B. et al. Esmane, M. (2011). Licensure Examination for Teachers. 2010
Edition. MET Reviewer Center
Recto, Angel S., (2005) Foundations of Education (Anthropological, Psychological, Sociological
and Moral) Vol. 1, REX Bookstore
Faking good breeding.blogspot.com/…headeroozydrops.blogspot.com/2009/12/towards-
demeanor-of-good-teacher..html
Gregorio, Herman C., (1976) Principles and Methods of Teaching, R. P. Garcia Publishing Company
Corpuz, Brenda B. Ph. D. and Salandanan, Gloria G. Ph. D., Principles of Teaching I, Lolimar
Publishing, Inc.

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http://gesture-lyon2005.ens-lyon.fr/article.php3?id_article=253
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copyright © 2009 Peel Publications, Australia.
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