I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. – Socrates
Indirect instruction refers to a set of learner-centered methods to encourage student involvement in observing, investigating, drawing inferences from data, or forming hypotheses. A goal is to maximize students’ learning goals and encourage problem-solving and collaboration. Leaner-centered approaches emphasize each student’s interests, abilities, and learning styles, placing the teacher as a facilitator of learning for individuals rather than for the class as a whole.
Some learner-centered approaches are:
Inquiry – a methodology that relies upon the idea that individuals are able to learn by investigating scenarios and problems, and through social experiences.
Problem Solving – an ongoing activity in which learners take what they know to discover what they don’t know. It involves overcoming obstacles by generating hypo-theses, testing those predictions, and arriving at satisfactory solutions.
Concept Mapping – a technique for graphically organizing and representing information that includes core concepts, relationships between and among concepts and explanations of those relationships
Concept Attainment – verbal or graphical examples are presented and students figure out the common attributes say between predator and prey or impressionistic and representational art. This process enables to students to develop a set of attributes to clarify a concept.
Case Studies – the presentation of realistic and complex narratives often involving a dilemma, conflict, or problem that one or more of the characters in the case must negotiate.
Self-assessment -filling out self-evaluation forms, journaling, surveys, writing revisions, asking questions, and discussing to determine what students know and want to know. This practice helps learners clarify their own beliefs and misconceptions.
Learn at a Distance 