Cooperative learning

The collaborative nature of scientific and technological work should be strongly reinforced by frequent group activity in the classroom. Scientists and engineers work mostly in groups and less often as isolated investigators. Similarly, students should gain experiences sharing responsibility for learning with each other. In the process of coming to understandings, students in a group must frequently inform each other about procedures and meanings, argue over findings, and assess how the task is progressing. In the context of team responsibility, feedback and communication become more realistic and of a character very different from the usual individualistic textbook-homework-recitation approach. One approach to providing collaborative opportunities for students of biology is cooperative learning, a theoretically grounded and well-researched approach in education that can increase students' learning of subject matter and improve their attitudes toward both academics in general and the subject matter specifically. Cooperative learning is portrayed as simply providing students with a group task or project because of a lack of materials or a low teacher-to-student ratio in the classroom. These scenarios could not be further from the scholarly definition of cooperative learning as recognized in the educational research literature. In fact, much like common words used in biology to connote highly specialized meaningscolumn, gel, matrix, activitythe specialized educational term cooperative learning is much more than the sum of the everyday words that constitute its moniker. In contrast, cooperative learning situations are unique in that students experience learning as a collaborative process. Other students become resources and partners in learning, and the success of a student is, in part, dependent on the involvement of their peers. Given the variety of student learning styles, no one of these approaches can meet the needs of all students all the time, and there is room in any course or classroom for students to engage in each of these types of learning. Indeed, these three approaches can be integrated within a course, even used simultaneously, for example, by engaging cooperative teams in a competitive exercise, not unlike competitive sports do. However, because traditional learning environments have focused almost exclusively on competitive and individualistic approaches, cooperative learning is relatively unfamiliar to most instructors, as well as their students. Learning is individualized and sometimes isolated, and success is generally measured against the individual's own learning goals. Individualistic learning can be seen as a rehearsal for what learning may be like for an individual after their formal schooling is complete

Discovery learning
Discovery learning is one of the pedagogic strategies which reduce teachers direct instruction and have students construct knowledge on their own. Advocates of discovery learning hypothesize the human learn better and deeper when they are required to discover and construct essential information for themselves to look for patterns and underlying principles. Worthen found that comparing with expository method, discovery learning leads students perform superior on retention and transfer of heuristics in the mathematics tasks. Olander and Robertson implied that students learning under the discovery approach could benefit more in concept understanding. However, pure discovery environment lack of structure, guidance, and minimal feedback would get into trial and error, lost and frustrated situations .Guided discovery are superior to pure discovery in helping students learning and transferring. Moreno noted that students learn more deeply from strongly guided learning than from discovery learning. The effectiveness of inductive discovery learning in mathematics , One was experiment group (EG; n = 27), which used inductive discovery learning approach supported with one to one device to learn mathematics. The other two control groups were CG1 (n = 29) and CG2 (n = 29). Both of them used traditional direct instruction approach to explain the concepts and procedures. This study held on the formal mathematics classes during one semester. Each week had third times, and each time used 40 minutes. The EG had this mathematics fraction experiment was one part of all units. The fraction experiment was close to the final exams, so we adopted the final exams as our comparing reference. We used ANOVA to test their average grades of final examination. There were no significant differences. Mathematics content interface and corresponding steps in inductive discovery learning. This study provided a basic mathematics learning framework based on inductive discovery learning in mathematics classroom. Computer presents content, provide immediate feedback and summary of word explanations as scaffolding to facilitate students mathematics learning. Our experiment showed that comparison with direct instruction, inductive discovery approach is feasible in the 3-grade mathematics classroom, not only learn better but also retention longer, particular for medium and high performance students. Our finding showed similar initial learning effects but better engagement effects, and students have capabilities to induct from observation, doing questions, discover critical feature of concepts, and further deepen their mathematics concepts. In the future, we will try to deepen the understanding of learning with suitable scaffolding in this learning method.

The Contructivism Learning

Science teachers use constructivist practices in their classrooms. It will more specifically look at when teachers use constructivist practices during their whole class time. Like, do they use during presenting new information, learning activities or assessment. After a discussion of the rationale for the study, the following questions will be discussed on light of current educational research what is

constructivism? Constructivist teaching practices Constructivist teaching Vs Traditional teaching how can "use of constructivist practices" facilitate learning? This discussion will be followed by a brief explanation of the constructivist learning theory through which the survey instrument will be constructed. This will be then be followed by a review of methodologies from recent, similar studies and my own methodological plan. The increased focus on use of constructivist instructional models as an agent of reform in science education has resulted in a great deal of research. Science education is facing yet another wave of reform efforts. One major recommendation of these reports is the use of constructivist instructional models. Most of the studies on these areas, however, are beliefs or perceptions of teachers on constructivist practices and a very few studies which really looked into the current practices which are consistent with constructivist teaching practices. Reforms need to focus on developing teacher's knowledge and skills before they focus on the changing structure. As more studies are conducted on beliefs are perceptions of teachers and students on constructivist practices and strategies in the classrooms, there is need to look at the current practices used in the classrooms, which are consistent with constructivist practices.. If educators fail to look at the current instructional practices in the classrooms, these reforms would never make sense. It would seem to defeat the purpose of preparing new teachers with exposing to the idea of an effective teacher. By studying the current practices used by teachers in the classrooms, educators can better understand not only the evidence of using constructivist practices, but also the ways to improve the methods courses in teacher education programs.

My research design has its theoretical basis on constructivism. Teacher educators, student teachers and current teachers can gain valuable insight into their own teaching styles as a result of this research. It could affect teacher education programs about how much far does the pre-service teachers understand the "role of teacher". If teacher education programs can be revisited and changes made, there will be teachers who stays longer in this profession. Teacher educators could also have much to gain from this. If teacher preparation programs where better able to prepare teachers to be attuned to the components of constructivist teaching and how they impact teaching, the transition from a intern to a full time classroom teacher will be very effective and smooth. Finally, teachers themselves will have an opportunity to reflect on their own teaching styles, giving them valuable insight that could make these teachers even better teachers in the future.

The Learning Theory Based Or Direct Instruction Learning.

Content Based Instruction is like learning a subject primarily Language (English or Filipino, but also can be used with other subjects) using the content of another subject. This way, learners can connect and can cross the barrier between one subject (like Language) and the other subjects (other academic subjects). As a matter of fact, one of the aims of language teaching is to develop among learners language and communication skills necessary for them to acquire knowledge to other subject areas. This is so true since language is the basic medium to convey information. If one learner is deficient with language skills (i.e. reading, writing and listening skills), he/she may find difficulty understanding the other subjects. For example, when a teacher teaches about a lesson in English, like "Good Qualities of a Paragraph", he/she may use sample paragraphs with topics containing or relating to other subjects like Science or History. Content Based Instruction is not only limited to Language Teaching. As a matter of fact, other subjects can also be integrated. For instance, a lesson in Math can be integrated with Civics or Science by giving sample problems relating to the given subjects. As a concrete example, let's say that a teacher has addition as a topic. He/she can give a problem like this: "In his journey, Magellan started out with 5 ships. At the end of the journey only 1 was left. How many ships were destroyed along the journey?" This is just a simple sample but I hope this can present that even Math can be integrated with History. In this case, learners will not only learn about arithmetic but also a a bit of History. This is like hitting two birds in one stone. This strategy lies on the teacher's creativity. As teachers, we should be creative enough to at least present the lesson as meaningful as possible and in a way learners can make connections rather teaching isolated facts.

The texture of detail in Direct Instruction derives in part from its foundation in close analyses of the comprehension and reasoning skills needed for successful performance in, say, reading or mathematics. These skills provide the intellectual substance of Direct Instruction programs. In the case of reading, it is substance found in the sound system of spoken English and the ways in which English sounds are represented in writing. That is why Direct Instruction is associated with phonemic awareness, or phonics. But Direct Instruction is not the same thing as phonics, or "merely phonics." Direct Instruction can be used to teach other things other than phonics - mathematics and logic, for example - and phonics can be taught (as it often has been) by means other than Direct Instruction. Direct instruction is a teaching model, not a particular, fully elaborated program for teaching, say, reading or mathematics. It is abstracted from detailed procedures found, for example, in particular training manuals and materials, and it implies nothing definite about how teaching functions it embodies . It is a generic teaching model, in other words - one awaiting subsequent interpretation and development in particular applications.