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Pedagogy glossary
39 terms from C04, Pedagogy: the approaches and the evidence — each defined in the primer's own words. Every term the primer teaches links to the slide that teaches it.
C04 · Teaching and learning
Pedagogy: the approaches and the evidence
“Pedagogy is a style choice between traditional and progressive.”
Every term below is defined in the words of pedagogy, primer C04 of understanding the context of education, and opens the primer at the slide where it is taught. 2 terms are also defined by another primer in the series; where the two differ, both wordings are given. The whole context glossary holds all of them together.
| Term | Definition | Referred to in | Read further |
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| A | |||
| Approach, strategy and technique | Three levels of teaching decision. An approach is a broad stance on how learning should be organised, such as inquiry. A strategy is a planned sequence within it, such as gradual release. A technique is a single move, such as cold calling or a think-aloud. Usage varies between writers. |
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| B | |||
| Bildung | Self-formation. In the German Didaktik tradition, teaching is a meaningful encounter between content and students that contributes to it (Deng, 2018). C01 A German tradition of education as self-formation: becoming a cultivated, thoughtful person through engagement with the sciences, arts and philosophy (Curren, 2025). It is broader than training and older than most modern aims statements. |
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| Blended Learning (SG) | Teaching that combines face-to-face and online learning in one course, with the online part doing real instructional work rather than only storing materials. Primer C08 covers learning spaces. C08 Regularly scheduled home-based learning days in Singapore's secondary schools and junior colleges, designed to build self-directed learning and supported by the Student Learning Space (Ministry of Education, 2020). |
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| C | |||
| Collaborative and cooperative learning | Learning in which students work together on a shared task. Cooperative learning usually means structured group work with defined roles and shared goals; collaborative learning is the broader term. Both depend on task design and on each student having something to contribute. |
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| Constructionism | Papert's extension of constructivism: learning happens "especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity, whether it's a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the universe" (Papert & Harel, 1991). |
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| Constructivism | A theory of learning holding that people build new knowledge on what they already know. It is not a teaching method. Mayer (2004) argues that constructivist learning is best supported by "cognitive activity rather than behavioral activity", which explicit teaching can provide. |
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| D | |||
| Dialogic teaching | Teaching that "harnesses the power of talk to engage interest, stimulate thinking, advance understanding, expand ideas, and build and evaluate arguments" (Alexander, 2020). It is a repertoire guided by principles, not a single technique. |
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| Didactic (teacher-led) instruction | In everyday English, teaching by telling: the teacher presents and students listen. The word often carries a negative sense of lecturing or moralising. Alexander (2004) notes that this usage makes "didactics" sound like "chalk-and-talk", which is not what the European term means. | ||
| Didactic triangle | The Didaktik picture of teaching as three essential elements, content, teacher and student, and the relations between them (Deng, 2018). It reminds designers that method is only one of those relations. |
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| Didactics and Didaktik | In continental Europe, the scholarly study of teaching and learning in relation to content: what to teach, why, and how to make it meaningful for learners. German Didaktik is committed to Bildung, or self-formation, and has general and subject-specific branches (Hopmann, 2007; Alexander, 2004). |
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| Direct instruction and Direct Instruction (Engelmann) | Lower-case direct instruction usually means explicit, teacher-led teaching, though Rosenshine (2008) lists five meanings. Capitalised Direct Instruction names Siegfried Engelmann's scripted, carefully sequenced programmes, which have their own large evidence base (Stockard et al., 2018). |
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| Discovery learning | Learning in which learners find the idea for themselves. Unassisted, it trails explicit instruction; enhanced with feedback, worked examples, scaffolding or explanations, it beats other methods (Alfieri et al., 2011). |
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| E | |||
| Experiential learning | Learning through doing and reflecting on experience, often described with Kolb's (1984) cycle of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. |
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| Expertise reversal effect | The finding that techniques that are highly effective with inexperienced learners can lose their effectiveness, and even have negative consequences, with more experienced learners, so help should fade as competence grows (Kalyuga et al., 2003). |
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| Explicit instruction | Teaching in which new content is presented clearly in small steps, modelled, practised with guidance and checked, before students work independently (Rosenshine, 2012). |
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| F | |||
| Flipped classroom | A design in which students meet new material before class, often through video or reading, and class time is used for practice, discussion and help. Its value depends on what happens in the class time it frees. |
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| G | |||
| Generative topics | In Teaching for Understanding, topics that are central to a discipline, accessible to students and connectable to other topics inside and outside it (Perkins & Blythe, 1994). |
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| Gradual release of responsibility | A model in which responsibility for a task passes from teacher to student through modelling, guided practice, and practice or application (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). | ||
| Guided discovery | Learning in which students work out an idea or rule for themselves with prompts, feedback or examples. Mayer (2004) found it more effective than pure discovery in each research programme he reviewed. |
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| H | |||
| High-leverage practices | Core practices of teaching that are especially important for student learning and can be taught to beginners, such as "explaining and modeling content" and "leading a group discussion". TeachingWorks (n.d.) lists 18, building on work by Ball and Forzani (2009). |
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| I | |||
| ICAP framework | A framework that sorts engagement into four modes, passive, active, constructive and interactive, and predicts that learning rises from each to the next. What counts is the thinking, not the movement (Chi & Wylie, 2014). |
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| Inquiry-based learning | Learning organised around questions and investigations, in which students gather and interpret evidence. It ranges from highly guided to open. Its effects depend strongly on guidance (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). |
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| L | |||
| Learner-centred and teacher-centred | Labels for where control and activity sit in a lesson. Alexander (2004) calls the opposition between them one of several dichotomies that are "unnecessary and unhelpful"; a lesson can be teacher-led and still demand a great deal of thinking from learners. |
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| M | |||
| Mastery learning | An approach in which students take formative tests, receive corrective help and move on only once they have mastered a unit (Bloom, 1984). Meta-analyses find moderate positive effects, smaller on standardised tests (Kulik et al., 1990). |
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| Modelling | Showing learners how to do something, often while thinking aloud, so that the steps and decisions of an expert become visible. It is the first stage of gradual release and one of Rosenshine's principles. | ||
| O | |||
| Ongoing assessment | In Teaching for Understanding, assessment that gives "criteria, feedback, and opportunities for reflection" throughout, revised as understanding grows (Perkins & Blythe, 1994). |
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| P | |||
| Pedagogy | "The act of teaching together with its attendant discourse": what one needs to know and be able to do to make and justify teaching decisions (Alexander, 2004). In English it is often narrowed to teaching method. | ||
| Performances of understanding | Also called understanding performances. Activities that ask students to use what they know in thought-demanding ways, such as explaining, applying or representing a topic anew, and that both show and advance understanding (Perkins & Blythe, 1994). |
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| Principles of instruction | Rosenshine's ten principles, drawn from cognitive science, studies of effective teachers and research on cognitive supports: begin with review, teach in small steps, ask many questions, model, guide practice and check understanding (Rosenshine, 2012). |
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| Problem-based learning | Learning that starts from a realistic, often ill-structured problem, with students identifying what they need to learn, usually in groups with a tutor. Widely used in medical education (Dochy et al., 2003). |
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| Productive failure | A design in which students attempt complex problems before being taught the target concept, followed by explicit instruction that builds on their attempts (Kapur, 2008; Sinha & Kapur, 2021). | ||
| Project-based learning | Learning organised around an extended project that ends in a product or presentation. It overlaps with problem-based learning but usually runs longer and centres on making something. |
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| Q | |||
| Questioning | The teacher's use of questions to check understanding, prompt thinking and steer discussion. Rosenshine (2012) found that effective teachers asked many questions and checked the responses of all students. | ||
| S | |||
| Scaffolding and fading | A scaffold is "a temporary support that is used to assist a learner"; fading is its gradual withdrawal "as learners become more competent" (Rosenshine, 2012). The idea draws on Vygotsky's work, covered in primer C03. |
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| Social constructivism | A view, associated with Vygotsky, that knowledge is built through social interaction and shared tools such as language. It underpins much work on dialogue and collaboration. Primer C03 covers the zone of proximal development. |
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| T | |||
| Teaching for understanding | An approach, and a Project Zero framework, for designing teaching so that students can use knowledge flexibly in new situations (Project Zero, n.d.-a; Wiske, 1998). |
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| Two sigma claim | Bloom's report that the average tutored student was about two standard deviations above the control class. It came from short studies with narrow tests, and meta-analyses find much smaller effects (Bloom, 1984). |
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| U | |||
| Understanding goals | In Teaching for Understanding, explicit statements of what students should understand, often phrased as "students will understand that ..." (Perkins & Blythe, 1994). |
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| W | |||
| Worked examples | Step-by-step demonstrations of how to solve a problem, studied before or alongside practice. They help novices and can hinder experts (Kalyuga et al., 2003). The guide Designing for Learning covers them in depth. |
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