What is an instructional decision?
Instructional decision is a procedure of determining what is suitable for students to improve their achievements and to guide their efforts to improve. Teachers use the data gathered from different assessment tools to take instructional decisions on daily basis in everyday classroom. A good instructional decision is the one which is designed to improve learning of all students.
Let us compare the approaches of Mr. Hani and Ms. Layal in the classroom.
Case 1: Mr. Hani shows his students step by step how to solve problems and expects them to do the problems exactly the way he does.
Case 2: Ms. Layal asks Stephanie to explain how she arrived at the answer to his problem.
Case 1 is considered less effective instructional decision because Mr. Hani adapted the didactic approach, which Ms. Layal approach is more effective in her instructional decision because she allows students to draw their own learning paths and to figure out the solutions by themselves.
Check below many scenarios that present less effective versus more effective decisions……………
Scenario 1:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
Ms. Layal ensures that her students do not get lost by requiring them to stop when they finish an assignment and wait for others to finish.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Mr. Hani stimulates students’ curiosity and encourages them to investigate further by asking them questions that begin with, “What would happen if…?”
Scenario 2:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
To keep them interested in math, Mr. Hani works problems for his students and “magically” comes up with answers.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Ms. Perkins shows her students how “cool” math is and assures them that they all can learn algebra.
Scenario 3:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
Two students are working problems on the board while the rest of the class watches.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
The students in Mr. Hani’s class are talking to each other about math problems.
Scenario 4:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
Students have been given 30 ordered pairs of numbers and are graphing them.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Students are working on creating a graph that shows the path of an approaching storm.
Scenario 5:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
Mr. Hani will only allow calculators in his classroom during the second half of the year. He believes that students need to learn all their facts before they use calculators.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Students are using calculators to determine patterns when multiplying integers.
Scenario 6:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
Ms. Layal is showing her students how they can use formula to easily find the value of any term in a sequence.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Mr. Hani tells his students that their text book is only one resource that he uses in his classroom. Tonight their homework is out of that resource.
Scenario 7:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
During the first week of school Ms. Layal holds up the textbook and says, “I hope you are all ready to work very hard this year. This is a very thick book and we will be covering every single thing in it ”
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Students are using color tiles to build the terms in a sequence.
Scenario 8:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
Students find the mean, median and mode of a set of numbers.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Students are conducting an experiment, collecting the data and making predictions.
Scenario 9:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
The students on Mr. Hani class are sitting in rows and are all quietly working on their assignment.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Students are sharing ideas while working in pairs or small groups.
Scenario 10:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
Students are in groups. One student in the group works out the problem while the others closely observe.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Students are acting out problem in front of the class. Others in the class participate in a discussion of the problem.
Scenario 11:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
At the end of the class Ms. Layal collects everyone’s worksheets and grades them.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Students have done their work on chart paper and are holding the chart while explaining to the class how they reached their conclusions.
Scenario 12:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
Mr. Hani believes that all students should get the same instruction at the same time. To accomplish this he only uses whole group instruction.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Some students are working in groups, some in pairs and some individually. Not all students are working on exactly the same thing.
Scenario 13:
Less Effective Instructional Decision:
In Mr. Hani’s class he spends 99% of class time on skills and computation because his students have difficulty understanding word problems.
More Effective Instructional Decision:
Students read about the history of the Pythagorean Theorem. After reading, they solve problems using the theorem. Students then write about what they did compared to the original uses of the Pythagorean Theorem.