The literature highlights different approaches to teaching strategies, out of which we have selected and present the most important ones: “pedagogical technologies”; “general methods”, which makes the success of training, “overall decision” to be adapted to each specific situation; “ways of programming training activity”, resulting from the interaction of many processes “involved in achieving those objectives”, ”pattern matching methods”, determined according to the form of organization of educational process.
Teaching strategy summarizes a double pedagogical option: an option assumed tobe a kind of methods combination, procedures, means of education, forms of learning organization, that means a type of educational technology, an option for a committed approach to learning through problem-solving, heuristic, algorythmic. Teaching strategy in the context of the first option was the subject of scientific research of many Europeanauthors. A great contribution to developing the concept of “teaching strategy” brought: B.Skinner (1982), G.Văideanu (1970), I.Cerghit (1980), M.Klarin (1989), A.N. Leontiev (1978), V. Mândâcanu (1980), D. Pătraşcu (1990), Vl. Guţu (1999). Although the nominated authors have a unique vision regarding the nature of teaching strategy, this phenomenon can be still considered as a “way” of dealing with education, need for achievement as a paradigm of education, providing skills training and student attitudes.. G. Văideanu addresses the issue of teaching strategies from systemic positions and defines them as “all methods, resources, learning experiences, through which the teacher projects, develops and evaluates educational process in the objectives, content and teaching situations”.
V. Guţu highlights three interrelated levels of teaching strategies:
A. The overall teaching: the teaching strategy guides the entire educational process in schools. In this case teaching strategy can be regarded as synonymous with the term “educational system”, which includes all the objectives, content, means and methods of education, business subjects algorithm of subjects educational process.
B. The specific didactics: teaching strategy at this level is a set of methods and means of achieving the project objectives in a specific discipline.
C. The modular (sequential) teaching strategy at this level is technological achievement of the educational process (strategy development agreement after hearing evaluation strategy communicative skills). In this context, it is necessary to note that the didactic strategy is neither the theory teaching strategy nor the teaching-learning methodology to a specific discipline.
As a pedagogical system, the teaching strategy can be applied in any subject. At the sametime, there is no single teaching strategy for achieving educational objectives. The diversity of teaching strategies is determined by the typology of educational concepts and practical objectives. The difference between the general teaching institutional practice, the private teaching practice and the teaching strategy (technology) lies in elements expressivity: setting goals, finalities, algorithmic, integrity management, reverse connection. If the elements contained in the teaching strategies are relevant, then the general and the particular didactics points are generally unpronounceable or missing. Thus, the teaching strategy is both a specific form and superior teaching normativeness, which provides setting the whole process. It integrates a set of processes and methods aimed at producing one or more specific objectives, feasible under certain conditions of internal consistency, compatibility and effects complementarity.
On a functional-structural plan, the teaching strategy is a model of exemplary action resulted in the teacher’s managerial decision, which points out that a single method cannot solve virtually all conflicting processes arising from objective and subjective reasons. This approach supposes, attracting around a „basic method” – imposed because of its ability to activate the maximum communication, stimulating the most knowledge, employing the most creative teaching – and other methods, which amplify the technological procedure of decisions, under conditions of continuous change of the relationship between teacher and student in the educational process. The teaching strategy takes, usually the name of “basic model”, chosen specifically for: to respect the way of teaching task included in the project (e.g., A problem-situation requires problematization strategy), to reduce the field of exploration in which teacher and student sometimes act through trial and error operations, adjustment and return to the initial solution, to increase the probability to achieve goals. Pedagogical exploration activity, necessary for locating the teaching strategy around a “basic method”, involves the elaboration of technologies of relevant actions based on a global functional structure, full and open, “equivalent to organization a chain of learning situations by attending student who appropriates material to learn”. Designing teaching strategies in Cristea’s view capitalizes two ways of action:
1) theoretical action that requires development through the integration of many
processes and methods in a „basic method”;
2) practical action based on the teacher’s teaching style and innovative resources.
Vladimir Guţu’s teaching strategy can be represented by three aspects:
1. The scientific aspect. Strategy teaching is a part of science education.
2. The descriptive aspect. Strategy teaching is described as an algorithm of the educational process as a set of objectives, contents, methods and interactive media.
3. The actional aspect. Achieving technological process itself, the operation of all these means: instrumental, methodological, pedagogical.
In accordance with the following features, we distinguish the following elements of teaching strategies:
1. Conceptual basis.
2. Content: general, reference and operational objectives; units of content.
3. Process: organization process; methods and forms; teacher’s activity; student’s activity, feedback evaluation and implementation.
Currently, education science is oriented on content and procedural components: objectives, contents, methods, forms, resources, assessment. Within didactic strategies the constituent components may have different expression levels: there are modified more frequently procedural aspects and those of content change only in structural, quantitative and logical plan. In this context the content determines procedural aspect, although sometimes the change of methods involves renovation of methods and educational contents and objectives. Classification of teaching strategies overcomes the prospect of the proposed technologies and methods, employing a new hypothetical approach “equivalent to the major classes of educational objectives”.
Bibliography
1. Ausubel, David P., Robinson, F., 1981, Învăţarea în şcoală, Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică, Bucureşti
2. Barna, Andrei., Antohe, Georgeta, 2005, Curs de pedagogie, Editura Fundaţiei Universitare “Dunărea de Jos”, Galaţi
3. Bloom, Benjamin, 1956, Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals; Handbook I: Cognitive Domain New York, Longmans, Green
4. Bontaş, Ioan, 1994, Pedagogie, Editura All, Bucureşti
5. Brown, R., 1973, A First Language. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press