Teaching Models

Traditional Education: Traditional education or back-to-basics refers to long-established customs found in schools that society has traditionally deemed appropriate. In the eyes of reformers, traditional teacher-centered methods focused on rote learning and memorization must be abandoned in favor of student-centered and task-based approaches to learning. Historically, the primary educational technique of traditional education was simple oral recitation.

Behaviorism: Within the schools, educators began to rely heavily on teaching by specific behavior objectives and on using standardized methods of instruction. In other words, the tradition of behaviorism initiated in the early twentieth century by Edward Thorndike came to dominate the schools of the 1970s and 1980s. The tradition of behaviorism fit neatly into the accountability movement.

Constructivism: Constructivism is a discipline based on the construction of reality. It is said that we cannot know what is real or can’t ever find the truth because when we have knowledge of something we base it upon basic perceptions of reality and there will always be an approximant to what we construct in our minds.

Precursors:

Wilhelm Wundt, Ivan Pavlov (behaviorism)

Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky & John Dewey (Constructivism)