Models of Learning: Tools for Teaching

Learning experiences are composed of content, process and social climate. As teachers, we create for and with our children opportunities to explore and build important areas of knowledge, develop powerful tools for learning, and live in humanizing social conditions.
The purpose of this book is to introduce some of the array of models of teaching that have been developed, polished and studied over the last twenty-five years. It is hoped that teachers, advisers, inspectors, teacher educators and educational researchers will study these models. If they do, they will discover elegant modes of teaching that have great power for learners. Some of these models have been shown both to accelerate rates of learning and also bring within reach of pupils types of conceptual control and modes of inquiry which have been almost impossible to generate through traditional chalk and talk teaching. Rather than being formulas to be followed slavishly, each model brings teachers into the study of how students learn thereby promoting reflective action research in the classroom.

Bruce Joyce is Director of Booksend Laboratories, Pauma Valley, California.