A lot of interesting instruction styles exist nowadays, and each teacher can find one to his/her liking. I have experience of learning Socratic Technique of dialog to uphold moral and ethical standards. This instruction style entails dialogic or interactive teaching, whereby the teacher sets up the strategy or puts across questions to initiate a series of thought-provoking arguments from participants (VanTassel-Baska, 2002). In my experience, the teacher put across series of questions about how professionals are expected to behave ethically. However, no direct answers were given by the students, so they were expected to argue comprehensively and make meaning of what to internalize as knowledge. At the end of the session, I had gained considerable insights on how to behave ethically through the indirect instruction mode facilitated by dialogic teaching as opposed to direct instruction.
Backward design is applied to this experience. According to VanTassel-Baska, it is a technique used by many educators and other professionals to design educational curriculum by setting clear objectives prior to selecting instructional methods and forms of assessment (2002). In my experience, the main objective of the teacher was to teach students on how to behave ethically in professional settings. The teacher then determined acceptable evidence by setting up the questions that were used to guide the dialog. It can then be argued that the teacher used these two to plan learning experiences and instruction by having the knowledge that dialogic or interactive instruction stood to provide optimal learning outcomes to learners due to the nature of topic.
Clark and Mayer’s work on cognitive resources applies to this experience by virtue of the fact that students were able to gain knowledge of how to behave ethically in professional settings even though no active learning took place. In other words, the series of arguments and counterarguments facilitated by the teacher not only ensured that participants remained engaged mentally but were also actively constructing new knowledge on how to behave ethically (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Specifically, the personalization principle (conversational instruction and learning) was used during the experience as a triggering agent to direct cognitive resources toward arguments that were relevant to the learning process.
References
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). e-Learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
VanTassel-Baska, J. (2002). Curriculum planning & Instruction design for gifted learners. Denver, CO: Love Pub Co.