Models of Teaching: A Solution

to the Teaching Style/Learning

Style Dilemma*
Susan S. Ellis
Teachers in an elementary school decide not to match students with teachers. Instead,
the teachers learn a variety of styles.
Every spring, countless elementary school
teachers and principals face the task of making
student assignments for the following year. Some
principals avoid the problem by moving whole
classes, and others have only one or two teachers
per grade and therefore limited choice in pupil
assignments. Most elementary school principals
and their staff members find themselves attempt
ing to "match" (or optimally mismatch 1 ) at least
some students with some teachers.
Frequently the matching is based on the
recommendation of a child's present teacher and
the intuition of the principal. In several elemen
tary schools in Greenwich, Connecticut, parents'
opinions are also solicited. But just how do teach
ers, parents, and administrators determine which
teacher's style will be most appropriate for which
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EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

child? How is each child's learning style meas

ured?
A group of teachers from the Parkway
School in Greenwich, who were dissatisfied with
their own methods of grouping children and who
were interested in learning more about the possi
bilities of matching teaching and learning styles,
formed a committee in the fall of 1977 to study
styles of learning and teaching. Their goal was to
1 See: David E. Hunt. Matching Models in Education.
Ontario: The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,
1971.
* While the conceptualization and planning for the
staff development program described in this article took
place before the publication of ASCD's S elected Learning
Experiences: Linking Theory and Practice b y Bruce Joyce,
this author happily acknowledges her debt to the earlier
works by Joyce and his colleague Marsha Weil.

find ways to improve the process by which stu

dents at Parkway School were assigned to a par
ticular teacher. After eight months of study, the
committee concluded that the problem confront
ing them was extremely complicated and that
their efforts had yielded questions, instead of a
solution. Among these questions were:
1. Which learner characteristics are most im
portant in attempting a match with a particular
teacher? Is conceptual level (however defined)
more relevant than emotional maturity or moti
vational orientation?
2. How do you measure conceptual level,
or maturity, or motivation?
3. How would you decide what to do if you
could measure learning styles? If a child's con
ceptual level is 1.4 on Hunt's scale,2 what does
that tell you about his/her ability to function in
a particular classroom? Or, if a student responds
more readily to extrinsic rather than intrinsic re
wards, should he/she be assigned to a teacher
who relies on extrinsic reinforcement or to one
who encourages children to value intrinsic re
wards? Or, if you discover that a child's preferred
sensory mode is visual rather than auditory, how
do you know which teacher is more likely to
utilize visual modes of presenting materials and
concepts?
4. What happens to all your matching if a
teacher moves, takes a leave of absence, or retires?
The committee became convinced that suffi
cient data about matching pupils to teachers did
not exist. But their lack of success in reaching
their initial goal did not discourage them from
trying to provide each child with an individual
learning environment. Perhaps teachers could
learn to use a variety of teaching styles or strate
gies and thereby meet more of the needs of more
of their students.
At this point, I became a consultant to the
Parkway teachers. Their principal, Tom Brown,
played matchmaker: I was looking for a school
in which to introduce models of teaching3 as an
approach to staff development, and the Parkway
committee was looking for someone who could
help them learn about varieties of skills and
strategies. Together we began exploring the mod
els or strategies that would help the Parkway

teachers expand their individual repertoires of

teaching behaviors.
Models of Teaching

Models of teaching are strategies based on

the theories (and often the research) of educators,
psychologists, philosophers, and others who ques
tion how individuals learn. Each model consists
of a rationale, a series of steps (actions, behav
iors) to be taken by the teacher and the learner,
a description of necessary support systems, and
a method for evaluating the learner's progress.
Some models are designed to help students grow
in self-awareness or creativity; some foster the
development of self-discipline or responsible par
ticipation in a group; some models stimulate
inductive reasoning or theory-building; and oth
ers provide for mastery of subject matter. Bruce
Joyce and Marsha Weil have identified more than
80 distinct models of teaching from which a
teacher can choose4 provided that the teacher
knows the models exist and that they meet his/
her needs for creating various learning environ
ments.
My function, then, was to help the Parkway
teachers:
1. Identify a range of desirable teaching
skills and strategies, and determine which ones
they wished to acquire;
2. Identify those models that contained or
represented the teaching skills and strategies they
had selected as desirable; and
3. Learn to use the models to accomplish
their individual goals.
Application of Models of Teaching
The Parkway teachers discovered that they
would not have to learn a large number of models
in order to increase their ability to provide alter
native learning environments for their students.
2 I bid., p. 32.
3 See: Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weil. M odels of
Teaching. E nglewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1972. Second edition in press for 1979.
4 Bruce Joyce. S electing Learning Experiences: Linking
Theory and Practice. W ashington, D.C.: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1978.

JANUARY 1979

275

While some models create a particular learning

environment, others can be used to achieve a
variety of goals. Two models that are particularly
useful to a teacher who wants to provide a variety
of learning environments for students are the
Inductive Thinking Model5 based on Hilda
Taba's work and the Role-Playing Model6 devel
oped by Fannie and George Shaftel. Together,
these two models outline strategies for (a) teach
ing concepts from the simple to the complex; (b)
providing structure or negotiating it with stu
dents; (c) selecting topics and materials for study
or permitting students to select part or all of
them; (d) fostering the development of empathy;
(e) encouraging participation in group discus
sions and activities; (f) helping students formu
late and test hypotheses; and (g) enabling stu
dents to engage in creative problem-solving and
testing of alternatives. In addition, by learning
to use these two models, a teacher practices
modulating the cognitive level of a discussion
from the factual to the conceptual to the theoreti
cal, serves as a facilitator and clarifier of student
discussions rather than as a source of informa
tion, and creatively uses incidents that occur in
the classroom as concept or role-playing material.
Other models provide teachers with strate
gies that are not usually taught in teacher train
ing programs. These models are valuable not only
for achieving the goals appropriate to the model,
but also for introducing variety into the class
room. Among these are Rogers' Non-Directive
Model,7 where the teacher reflects feelings to help
the student solve his/her own problems, and
Gordon's Synectics,8 a model for developing
metaphorical thinking in creative problem solving.
Other models because of their potentially pow
erful impact on student behavior can also alter
the climate of a classroom. Among such models
are Skinner's Behavior Modification,9 Dewey/
Thelen's Group Investigation Model, 10 and Glasser's Classroom Model. 11
Engaging the Entire Staff
The Parkway committee tried not only to
improve and expand their own ways of teaching,
but also to involve the entire Parkway staff. To
capture the interest of their colleagues, they sug
gested that I make a presentation in which I
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EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

would stress the usefulness of several models of

teaching in meeting a goal of the school's Plan
ning Team: To "stress the interrelationship of
cognitive and affective growth in the academic
setting." Since each teacher was required to "ap
proach one unit primarily from the affective point
of view" and to describe in an article for the
school newspaper the relevant activities under
taken, and since several teachers were concerned
about finding strategies appropriate for meeting
this goal, why not bring to their attention those
models that provide for affective as well as cog-

"We do not expect any teacher . . . to fully

engage the efforts and enthusiasm of every
student. Likewise, we cannot expect any
staff development program to elicit the
whole-hearted participation of every
teacher."
nitive outcomes? If the teachers could acquire
new strategies that were exciting and challenging
and were also useful in achieving a particular
school goal, perhaps most of the faculty would
decide to participate in the in-service program
the committee and I were proposing.
Modeling the Model
Because teachers no less than children
possess unique learning styles, we agreed that a
staff development program that provides teachers
5 Hilda Taba. Teacher's Handbook for Elementary
Soda! Studies. R eading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Co., 1967.
6 Fannie Shaftel and George Shaftel. R ole-Playing
for Social Values: Decison-Making in the Social Studies.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967.
7 Carl Rogers. O n Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1951.
8 William Gordon. Synectics. N ew York: Harper and
Row, 1961.
9 B. F. Skinner. T he Science of Human Behavior. New
York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1956.
lfl john Dewey. D emocracy in Education. N ew York:
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1916; and Herbert Thelen.
Education and the Human Quest. N ew York: Harper and
Row, 1960.
11 William Glasser. S chools Without Failure. New
York: Harper and Row, 1969.

with a variety of teaching strategies for use in their

classrooms must also provide various ways that
teachers can acquire those strategies. We planned
a two-tiered approach for our first offering: we
proposed "mini-courses" designed around teach
ing goals (stimulating inductive thinking, foster
ing responsible participation in a group); teaching
skills (providing reflective feedback, negotiating
structure with students); and c urriculum a reas
(social studies, language arts). We also suggested
that teachers create their own approaches to
learning about several models of teaching. This
way we would appeal both to those teachers who
prefer to choose from among predesigned learn
ing experiences, modifying them when neces
sary, and those teachers who are more comfort
able designing their own learning experiences,
either alone or in consultation with an instructor
and/or their peers. We hoped to "model the
model." By giving teachers the opportunity to
choose what they wanted to learn and to design
how they would learn it, we might also be help
ing them understand how students might respond
to a variety of options. Just as we hoped the
teachers would learn to do in their classrooms,
we tried to anticipate s ome of the probable needs
for structure, sequence, and content, and also to
rely on the "learners" to give us feedback about
their own learning styles.

Evaluation
Models of teaching can also help teachers
evaluate themselves. Built into each model is a
mechanism for measuring or evaluating the stu
dent's learning, and built o nto the models, as
Joyce and Weil have designed them, is a mecha
nism 12 for observing and evaluating the teacher's
performance of a model. Just how a teacher
chooses to use that mechanism is an individual
decision. Several Parkway teachers wished to en
gage in colleagial observations and found the
models useful for that purpose: a model provided
an agreed-upon framework for determining a
goal, the steps he/she took to achieve that goal,
and the success of his/her efforts. Other teachers
preferred to use my services as a consultant for
private evaluation sessions. Because Parkway
School has access to a videotape machine, these
teachers could tape a lesson and then review with

me their objectives and their performance. Still

other teachers preferred to evaluate their own
performance without outside help. This method
may appear questionable to some supervisors
since there is no way to determine how accurately
such teachers observe and evaluate their own
behavior. It does, however, provide teachers with
practice in following a particular strategy with
well-defined steps and then in comparing their
actual teaching behavior with their intentions.
Eventually, as teachers become more comfortable
with models of teaching and with the evaluation
process, some may choose to share their experi
ences with others. In any event, "development"
cannot be forced on teachers. We do not expect
any teacher no matter how skillful to fully
engage the efforts and enthusiasm of every stu
dent. Likewise, we cannot expect any staff de
velopment program no matter how varied the
offerings to elicit the whole-hearted participa
tion of every teacher.

Conclusion
Instead of attempting to make matches be
tween teaching and learning styles, we are recog
nizing and capitalizing on the variety of styles
that teachers possess and that they can acquire.
We are also attempting to provide the children of
Parkway School with a variety of learning en
vironments that will be responsive to their indi
vidual learning styles.
12 See: Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weil. Social Models
of Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1977; Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weil. I nformation
Processing Models of Teaching. Englewood Cliffs> New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977; and Bruce Joyce and
Marsha Weil. Persona! Models of Teaching. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1977.

Susan S . Ellis is a con

sultant in staff develop
ment, Greenwich, Con
necticut.

JANUARY 1979

277

Copyright 1979 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum

Development. All rights reserved.