2.3 METHODS

The instructional strategies and methods will put into action the goals and use of the content in order to produce an outcome. Teaching strategies convert the written curriculum to instruction..

Among these are inquiry approaches, constructivist and other emerging strategies that complement new theories in teaching and learning. Educational activities like field trips, conducting experiments. imeracting with computer programs and other experiential learning will also form part of the repertoire of teaching.

The methods outlined in a curriculum:

• Deal with teaching and learning experiences,
• Involve organizational strategies.

Flexible teaching methods facilitate learning. Having decided what the topic is intended to do, what capabilities students should have on successful completion. how their learning will be assessed and what content to include, we can now look at how to promote learning towards the intended learning outcomes.

Detailed consideration of learning and teaching interactions helps to clarify decisions about what practices staff wishes to develop in students and how to communicate and model those practices through teaching activities.

The key question at this stage is:

• What is the most appropriate learning and teaching approach for the topic?

This decision sets the broad tone of the learning experience and helps to establish the role and responsibilities of the students in relation to the overall learning experience. The selection of a dominant strategy and supporting strategies needs to take into account

• Consistency with stated aims and intended learningoutcomes
• Learner appropriateness
• Resources
• Constraints
• The learning site

A combination of strategies can promote greater learning for more students. Students learn more, when they are actively engaged in their academic work: become aware of their own preferred way of learning: seek and find real world applications of what they are learning: and work regularly and productively with staff and other students. The next questions are.

• What are the most appropriate and practical learning activities?
• What are the most appropriate teaching activities, sequences and combinations?

Whatever methods the teacher utilizes to implement the curriculum, there will be some guide for the selection and use, here are some of them:

• Teaching methods are means to achieve the end
• There is no single best teaching method.
• Teaching methods should stimulate the learner's desire to develop the cognitive, affective, psychomotor, social and spiritual domain of the individual.
• In the choice of teaching methods. learning styles of the students should be considered
• Every method should lead to the development of the learning.
• Flexibility should be a consideration in the use of teachingmethods

Teaching should:

• Focus on desired learning outcomes for students, in the form of knowledge, understanding, skill and attitudes
• Assist students to form broad conceptual understandings while gaining depth of knowledge
• Encourage the informed and critical questioning of accepted theories and views
• Develop an awareness of the limited and provisional natureof much of the current knowledge in all fields
• See how understanding evolves and is subject to challenge and revision
• Engage students as active participants in the learning process, while acknowledging that all learning must involve a complex interplay of active and receptive processes
• Engage students in discussion of ways in which study tasks can be undertaken
• Respect students' right to express views and opinions
• Incorporate a concern for the welfare and progress of individual students
• Proceed from an understanding of students knowledge, capabilities and backgrounds
• Encompass a range of perspectives from groups of different ethnic background, socio-economic status and gender
• Acknowledge and attempt to meet the demands of students with disabilities
• Encourage and awareness of the ethical dimensions of problems and issues
• Utilize instructional strategies and tools to enable many Cant styles of learning
• Adopt assessment methods and tasks appropriate to the desired learning outcomes of the course and topic and to the capabilities of the student