Learning outcome:
- LO3: Identify which disciplines use deductive or inductive instruction, whether these approaches adequately facilitate learning, and how teaching approaches can be improved.
How do you approach teaching?
Approaches to knowledge production and communication are largely influenced by the discipline within which the content is based, or the disciplinary identity of the teacher. However, the approaches that teachers choose to utilize may not always adequately deliver the content being taught.
In this class-wide discussion forum, you are encouraged to share and interrogate discipline-specific approaches to teaching and learning. Use the following questions as a starting point for your discussions:
- How do researchers in your field or discipline create original knowledge? Do they begin by collecting raw data “in the wild”, and then work up to a theory, argument, or explanation (that is, inductively)? Or do they begin by developing a theory or hypothesis, and then test it through carefully designed or selected experiments and observations (that is, deductively)?
- How does your discipline teach? Does it introduce its findings to students by leading them down the same inductive or deductive path through which the knowledge was originally produced? If so, why? If not, why not?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages associated with having students learn through this approach (in the context of your discipline)? For example, how does it facilitate learning?
- Could this approach be improved or expanded upon to reflect current research on how students learn (within your discipline)? If so, how?