Pedagogical Strategies for Active Learning: Theory and Practice

Abstract

This article is devoted to effective teaching strategies and their implementation in the classroom. During the first 20 years of the new millennium, researchers in the educational community have established a consensus on the characteristics of modern education both in terms of its results and on the organization of the educational process (Wyse et al., 2015). However, a new agenda of the "student-centered" educational process did not end with the setting of new educational goals. The problem is not only in adopting new guidelines and shifting the traditional focus in teaching. Such a transformation is possible only if a teacher implements certain pedagogical strategies. This article describes strategies whose effectiveness is based on large international studies (Hatty, 2018, OECD, 2018). Those strategies are the following: setting goals, structuring lessons, open (explicit) teaching, worked examples, collaborative learning, questioning, feedback, metacognitive strategies, differentiated learning, multiple exposures. The main question that arises in connection with the presented models is, of course, the question of their relevance to the practice of Russian schools, i.e. in terms of implementation of a particular pedagogical strategy in real teaching practice. Is it possible for a teacher of a particular discipline to regularly apply any of those strategies working within the framework of the Federal State Educational Standard and the educational program of the school? The article presents examples of how each of the 10 strategies is implemented in different subject-specific lessons and for different stages of learning. All examples illustrate the teaching practice of in-service teachers of three Moscow schools. This article is a collective work of researchers and in-service teachers, which is considered by the authors as one of the options for a professional communication and cooperation.