Teaching Styles

Teacher Centered:
 Command: Teacher makes all the decision; students respond immediately to the
stimulus or model provided by the teacher.
 Practice: Teacher demonstrates the task and sets up the opportunity for learners to
practice and develop skills at their own pace.
 Reciprocal: Students work in pairs and take turns observing and giving feedback to one
another using the provided criteria from the teacher.
 Self-Check: Similar to reciprocal, however, students work on their own.
 Inclusion Style: Teacher plans and sets out a variety of tasks which has different levels of
difficulty and students decide which task they will do.
Student Centered:
 Guided Discovery: Teacher plans a series of questions and tasks that direct students
towards discovering a pre-determined answer.
 Convergent Discovery: Teacher sets or frames a question which has numerous solutions.
 Divergent Production: Teacher plans and sets a question or challenge for the students
which has numerous outcomes. Once problem has been solved the solution should pose
another problem to be solved.
 Learner Designed: Teacher decides on an area of focus which the student has to develop
by devising their own questions.
 Learner Initiated: Students decide on the initial area of focus and designs their own
learning program.
 Self-Teach: Students take full responsibility for their own development and learning
process.

As I used different teaching styles throughout my time at Zion, I realized that

command/practice was the easiest for me to teach to first graders and they responded better
and were able to follow along better and get more done in a shorter amount of time. When I
moved to more student centered, students were at times all over the place and did not get a lot
done compared to teacher centered teaching styles. I do think it is important to incorporate
many different styles because they allow for the students to learn in different ways and allows
students to learn all the concepts, processes and skills in physical education.