3.1 Introduction
A detailed examination of the instructional process reveals that instruction can be broken down into a number of isolatable skills. Applied instruction briefly examines some of these more important skills, which are:
- Establishing Set and Closure.
- Teaching Methods.
- Variation of stimulus.
- Questioning.
Each skill has its own treatment in the sections that follow. 3.2 Establishing Set and Closure is the frame the instructor builds around any lesson or lesson-segment. 3.3 Methods of Teaching Cognitive Skills sets out the two common cognitive-teaching methods (theory lesson and syndicate) and lists the alternatives. 3.4 Voice is the variation-of-stimulus skill the course manual treats as one of the most important tools of the instructor's trade. The questioning treatment that runs from 3.5 Questioning through 3.11 Additional Questioning Techniques is the longest section because it is the most powerful technique of instruction available to the instructor, and (as the course manual notes) the one most instructors are weak at.
Applied instruction does not separately treat "Variation of stimulus" as a numbered section: 3.4 Voice is the variation-of-stimulus content the course manual provides, and 3.12 Student Attention adds gestures, focusing, pauses and movement as the wider attention-producing behaviours that vary stimulus alongside voice. Read 3.4 Voice and 3.12 Student Attention together as the variation-of-stimulus material.
3.13 Which Method of Teaching to Use and 3.14 Which Method of Questioning to Use close by setting out the criteria the instructor weighs when choosing a method. They are short by design: the intent is that the instructor reads the technique sections, then returns to those two for the selection logic.
Connections
- 2.7 Human Information Processing and Memory. The cognitive-load and memory-architecture material applied-instruction techniques operate against.
- 3.2 Establishing Set and Closure. The framing skill that opens and closes any lesson.
- 3.5 Questioning. The opening of the questioning chain that runs through to 3.11 Additional Questioning Techniques.
- 6.6 The A-W-A-R-E Model. The briefing structure 3.2 Establishing Set and Closure cross-references for the establishment of Set.
- A1.4 Facilitation Techniques. The fuller treatment of the questioning, silence and active-listening discipline introduced in applied instruction.
- 7.3 General Debrief Techniques. Applies the questioning discipline established in applied instruction to the LOS debrief.