(a) Explain why students with learning disabilities respond better to explicit and interactive teaching as opposed to implicit teaching. (b) Give an example of how a teacher would differentiate instruction explicitly, interactively, and implicitly on a specific lesson

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

(a) Explicit teaching:
- Teacher serves as the provider of knowledge.
- Skills and concepts are presented in a clear and direct fashion.
- Teacher explains and models skills and concepts.
- Teacher guides students in a variety of situation.
- Student mastery is emphasized.

Implicit teaching:
- Students are assumed to be naturally active learners who construct new personalized knowledge through linking prior knowledge and new knowledge.
- Students make connections between classroom activities and real-world problem solving.
- Teacher guides students only as much as is necessary for them to build their own understandings.
- Scaffolding, or teacher support through questioning and explaining, is only provided as needed.
- Students collaborate to discover alternative ways to solve problems and construct new knowledge.

Interactive teaching:
- Based on belief that knowledge is a collaborative enterprise and instruction should include both explicit and implicit methods.
- Teacher provides instruction as necessary to guide student discovery.
- Key feature is that the dialogue between the teacher and the student provides the learners with support and guidance they need to achieve a goal efficiently.

Most educators favor explicit teaching when students with mild-to-moderate disabilities are the target population. The position is understandable when the characteristics of these learners is are considered. Students with histories of problems in automaticity, metacognitive strategies, memory, attention, generalization, proactive learning and motivation cannot plausibly engage in efficient self-discovery learning (i.e., implicit teaching).

(b) [Students will have different responses to this portion of the essay question. For example, the text used an example of a ski lesson:

"The instructor worked with Ann and me for several hours. He explicitly taught us how to fall, get up with skis on, turn, traverse a slope, and snow plow to slow down. He described, modeled, and gave corrective feedback and encouragement. Slowly, I gained confidence, but I continue to work hard at skiing. Finally, the instructor said, "If I could stop you from thinking so much about all the techniques, I could help you discover the ease and joy of skiing." Then he told me to stop looking at my skis and to look at the mounting across the valley and ski down the mountain. He told me that I was ready and could do it. I tried it, and I skied down the mountain without looking at my skis. What an exhilarating experience! The techniques that the instructor had taught seemed to develop naturally. He was indeed a gifted instructor. When reflecting about the ski instructor's teaching, I realized that he had used a continuum of explicit and implicit instruction. Initially, he taught me the basics explicitly and gave me confidence. As I learned, he became more implicit. In the end, he challenged me to discover skiing at a more advanced level."