GATEways to Teacher Education

A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators especially due to the shifts to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Much of social studies content lends readily to narrative delivery, which has long been established as an effective medium for learning (Lindgren & McDaniel, 2012) Lindgren and McDaniel (2012) noted that narrative storytelling coupled with student agency improved the online learning experience for college students over classrooms that did not use these methods. When used in social studies, narrative can be included in lecture to invite engagement and allow teachers to cover a large amount of content. For example, Russell (2010) argued, “covering the content with the lecture method is a convenient way to disseminate large amounts of content information in a limited time frame” (p. 65). The efficiency of lecture plays a role in whether a teacher chooses to lecture. In a study conducted by Oleson & Hora (2013), 49% of educators who chose the lecture method reported that they did so according to the experiences they had with their teachers who lectured, which conjured up “memories [that] constituted a repertoire of knowledge about teaching that they actively drew upon” (p. 9). Consequently, having experienced many lectures as students, teachers may find learning to implement a lecture to be an easier process than it is to learn how to deliver instruction in ways that they have not experienced.

Another benefit of lecture is the potential for teachers to exude enthusiasm about their content area in a way that can be retained and effectively utilized by students (Alazzi & Chiodo, 2008). Singer (2010) stated that conventional formal lecturing where a teacher speaks, and students record notes can be an effective approach when educators choose an interesting topic and clearly communicate skills and goals to students in an engaging manner. As a result, lecture can optimize student learning of course content and maximize engagement of both learners and teachers simultaneously at high levels. Gregory (2013) contended that while passive lectures can prove dull, active lecturing emphasizes shifts from students to engaged metacognitive learners. Moreover, Hadie et al. (2016) found that lecturing afforded teachers the ability to actively motivate students by delivering guidelines and contexts for lessons that challenged students’beliefs. Hadie et al. (2016) also determined that the lecturing method was effective for moderating intrinsic cognitive loads when teachers monitored their interaction with students between ‘chunks’of information and students’prior knowledge.

Despite the benefits of lecture, constructivists and critical theorists have expressed concerns with this instructional method when teaching social studies. First, the definition of lecture is often conflated with direct instruction. According to Stockard et al. (2018), direct instruction is “a broad set of educational programs that incorporate systematic or explicit instruction” (p. 480). Direct instruction is grounded in the belief that all students are capable of learning, and that “learning is most efficient when the examples are carefully chosen and designed. They must be as unambiguous as possible, sequenced to promote the correct inference for learning a new concept, and involve the fewest possible steps to induce learning” (Stockard et al., 2018, p. 480). Examples of direct instruction include demonstrations, modeling, and lecture. Direct instructional techniques tend to have a behaviorist orientation that are focused on student outcomes (Larson & Keiper, 2013). Hence, lecture is a type of direct instruction that teachers can implement.