Rosenshine's Principles in Action

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Objective: to get students to work effectively in pairs as a means of involving all students and generating more material to be explored in subsequent discussions. This strategy aims to give those students who don’t know the answer or get an answer incorrect opportunities to learn from others in the class and to practise. It also avoids fostering the defensive habit of ‘I don’t know’.

Basically, I’m just not sure Sherrington should have listed any type of staging framework here. It’s potentially misleading for less experienced teachers, it contradicts his comments on variety, and from an ELT perspective it is certainly a questionable framework to have chosen. One misleading aspect of this model might be that ‘basic’ may be seen as synonymous with ‘essential’, and very important stages that are not listed here are seen as optional add-ons. For example, there is no mention of context building or accessing prior knowledge before the presentation stage. As we saw in the previous blog post, Rosenshine also recommends that teachers often think aloud, as a form of modelling. This involves the explicit narration of teachers’ thought processes – for example, when problem-solving (Sherrington, p. 17). This form of modelling relates to the eighth of Rosenshine’s seventeen ‘instructional procedures’: ‘Think aloud and model steps’ (Rosenshine, p. 12). Rosenshine condenses those procedures into his ten principles. Stages of practice: Sherrington’s fourth strand, involving Rosenshine’s fifth, seventh and ninth principlesBruce Joyce and Martha Weil, quoted in W. Huitt, ‘Classroom instruction’ ( Educational Psychology Interactive) (Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University, 2003).

Here we see an example of Rosenshine’s use of research in cognitive science to support the importance of a principle: one of the reasons it’s important to learn something to the level where it becomes automatic is that the absence of effort required to recall what we’ve learned frees up space in our working memory, which we can then devote to other tasks – e.g., learning something new. In the classroom In relation to the above learning model, Rosenshine suggests that more effective teachers recognise the need to deal with the limitations of working memory by breaking down concepts and procedures into small steps, and ensure that students have the opportunity to practise each step (Sherrington, p. 15). In the second stage, Rosenshine offers advice on how the principle can be employed in the classroom. Rosenshine’s guidance is supported by observations of the teaching practices of master teachers. He often provides several suggestions for classroom activities related to the principle under discussion. Mainly, it’s the contradictions. In the conclusion the author shares some ‘improvement agendas’ which roughly focus on each strand of principles. Sherrington makes it clear that teachers and leaders should focus on one thing at a time, rather than aiming for improvements across multiple areas. This contradicts his earlier comment that there is likely crossover between the principles themselves, making it hard to focus on development in one particular area. If you are focusing on developing scaffolding techniques then you might well end up working on ways to support learners moving from guided/controlled practice to independent practice. There doesn’t seem a need to focus on developing individual strategies only, just an awareness that you can’t focus on everything at once. Barak Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Instruction’ has become increasingly influential in educational research and practice since its publication a decade ago. [1] Rosenshine (1930-2017) was formerly a professor of educational psychology in the College of Education at the University of Illinois. His research focused on learning instruction, teacher performance and student achievement. Much of his research focused on the distinctive features of effective teaching. His research has made a significant contribution to knowledge of the effectiveness of certain methods of ‘instruction’, which is typically defined as ‘the purposeful direction of the learning process’. [2] His principles of instruction are the culmination of his research into the effectiveness of methods of instruction.

Sherrington offers further insight into how practitioners can apply these principles. He organizes the principles into four strands, which is certainly useful…