I'm Brian Myers. I'm Mike Ritalik. I'm Becky Hideo. And this is Out pellets a podcast featuring tips for ag teachers.
We are your agricultural education resource across the web sharing research based tips and tackling the tough questions facing agriculture teachers every day. Hey out pellets. This is Brian and I am here by the out pellet with Becky and Mike and we are coming to you live recorded in front of a live studio audience of no one. Live studio live studio live studio audience as compared to it.
I don't think you get to say live if you're not actually like live to your audience. I'm live and you're live. Anyway we're here with out pellets and we have with us two phenomenal guests Blake and Blake co-claser and Jack Dempsey here are going to talk to us about some of their research around instructional methods. And so we are so excited and glad to have you guys with us today.
Well thanks so much for having us. We're excited to be here. So to get things started Blake why don't you go to introduce yourselves tell us a little bit about who you are and what you got going on. Yeah absolutely so currently I'm starting at the University of Tennessee here just in a couple weeks actually in agricultural leadership education and communication department.
I'm a former high school ag teacher and then for the past few years I've been teaching at DONE University in Nebraska Small Liberal Arts University there. Yeah and then can I go now please go right ahead yes. Hi my name is Jack Dempsey I've known Blake for years both inside and outside academia. I'm currently an adjunct lecturer at the University of Illinois and then I work full time for an educational technology startup company.
Although most of my work has focused more on reading development. I have recently started looking at instructional methods especially in my work with Blake because you know learning is one side but teaching is the other so I'm glad to be here. Excellent well welcome we're always glad to have another Illinois into the crowd. Yeah yeah Illinois is a great place to be from.
So to dig me out of this Blake tell us a little bit about what we're going to be talking about today. Absolutely well we did a study a few years ago and recently got published and so Jack myself and then our co-author Andrew Thorin from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. We surveyed Florida ag teachers to identify what instructional methods they were using in their classroom as well as their belief of effectiveness with those methods and collected some demographic variables as well. So we have some pretty interesting results to share and some of those results aligned with similar findings from ag teachers well from studies based in other states as well so some common themes kind of showing through.
Excellent I'm excited to hear a little bit about what you found out so tell us a little bit about some of the initial findings that you had from the study. Yeah absolutely so we got responses from 150 ag teachers in Florida and we asked them what percent of their classroom time they used different instructional methods and we gave them a list of 12 common instructional methods ranging from lecture discussion, cooperative learning, brainstorming, debate, case study roleplay, etc. And so they selected that percent of class time that they used these certain methods and so much other studies we found that overall teachers used the most of lecture discussion. So back around an average of 30 percent of class time was used lecturing followed by around 16 percent of their class time using cooperative learning, 12 percent with demonstration and a little bit over 10 percent using paired small group discussion.
And we also looked at teachers' belief of those of the effectiveness of those instructional methods. That was kind of interesting as well so we would say hey how effective do you think demonstration is from not effective at all to extremely effective and you know overall we found that the teachers believed most of these methods to be effective of course some were effective than others. So leading the list of effectiveness teachers believed demonstration to be very too extremely effective same thing with cooperative learning but things like debate or roleplay they believed to be less effective and also lecture discussion was actually slower on that list so kind of moderately effective. Andrew, so we're doing the one we think not uneffective or ineffective but the one toward the bottom we were doing the most often.
Right so yeah with the instructional methods that the teachers believed to be more effective they tended to use those methods more in the classroom with the exception of lecture discussion. So there were still some correlations there where teachers who believed lecture would be more effective used lecture more in the classroom but what is high as some of these other instructional methods. So essentially we took the top four most commonly used instructional methods which was lecture cooperative learning demonstration and paired and small group discussion and we ran some models right to see okay what kind of influence the use of these most commonly used methods and we looked at things such as teachers years of experience in the classroom whether or not they were traditionally or alternatively certified whether they were male or female and their belief in method effectiveness and the one kind of shining light was belief in method effectiveness was a strong kind of predictor of use of that method in the classroom. Right but we do want to emphasize that the one exception to that in these you know kind of more sophisticated models that we ran was with lecture and discussion and so it kind of works along with finding that lecture and discussion was the most used and in that you know it doesn't really matter whether teachers believed in effectiveness or not it was still used often and so it's really with these other methods which I think Blake can talk to more about the research that's shown that these other methods can be more effective for learning and retention but these other methods can really benefit from believing that they work.
So tell me I want to impact this thought about lecture for a while and we know you know conceptually and philosophically student-centered approaches versus teacher-centered approaches were you surprised at the 30 percent of class time being used by lecture was that surprised were you expecting it to be higher lower what kind of expectations did you have there? Well you know I so I wasn't surprised but that's because I looked at other studies that were similar most of those studies focused on actors from other states right and the use of lecture was was a similar amount between 30, 40 percent of class time they would use that but then if you think about kind of the philosophy of a bag education and and what we do as a discipline and how we teach you know we teach through students doing things right and we know with lecture students are usually just sitting there absorbing information so that was maybe a little bit surprising when you think about ag education as a whole that actors are still using so much lecture and you know there's a time and place to use lecture but I think one of the things that we try to do as a discipline is to get back toward more student-centered approaches instead of teacher-directed approaches to instruction. How much when you think about some of the effectiveness I think about like you've talked about effectiveness in terms of how does it help students learn I think it can be pretty easy to think about effectiveness and I hear this from my own colleagues when we talk about learning science and teaching like but I can't get it all done if I don't lecture like it's just not possible I have all this content to deliver so is there a difference in I need to be effective in the amount of content compared to like I really need to focus on students learning like this essential efficiency versus effectiveness or is it really versus you know yeah well and I think too isn't there there's probably some things that are more appropriate for lecture versus maybe other activities and and we always have this negative approach about what lectures are but high quality highly effective lectures can still be an effective teaching tool and you know yeah I can just speak to that I mean it kind of highlights you know what teachers actually have to do teachers need to convey a certain amount of information to a class and sometimes the most streamlined way to do that is lecture so you know what as to whether these other methods are meant to replace lecture discussion or rather just scaffold let's learn during the lecture I think that's open to debate but I think what do you think about that Blake? No I think that's a very good point and you know I think we need to kind of narrow down why teachers are using so much lecture right so is it that they want to get a lot of content to students are they using lecture because they're not comfortable using other types of teaching methods are they using lecture because that's the way that they were taught right so not to say that a lecture is bad right but we know that other teaching methods might be better for things like to instill students problem solving abilities and critical thinking abilities so yeah so I mean that's a good thought of you know how can we get teachers to explore different types of of methods that are more students that are well we've had some conversations on the podcast this season and in previous seasons talking about skill development and I guess you can you can begin instruction a part of instruction about developing skill that's a lecture but it does come down to having to build that you know actually do the skill but order to teach how to demonstrate and do the skill the teacher has to know it so part of that might be do you know our teachers less comfortable in teaching some of the content and some of the skill development and some of those areas they may not be comfortable with and so it's actually more comfortable and safer to to teach a lecture about the content rather than really be out there hands-on laboratory where they may not be able to demonstrate or do the skill themselves so I can just I can talk about it instead in a little bit of a safer environment and that's just part of our you know the teacher can't know everything can't be able to do everything so you're not going to be an expert in all the everything animals plants mechanics all those sort of things so maybe that's an area of growth that we have to give our teacher more more experiences and more skills yeah and even you know to that nature resources to do you know different things demonstrations or even cooperative learning sometimes it just takes additional resources that the teachers don't have and it probably takes more time right to plan those type of activities for them to be effective in the classroom where lecture you know you can get ton of resources just online and through the textbook do just basically teach through notes and discussion so it's an easier thing to do and you know also on that point you know at least in my teaching experience and again this is a safe space where I don't necessarily feel comfortable teaching on a specific topic for whatever chapter or unit that I'm teaching on right and what I found is that by actually giving lectures I become more knowledgeable in that area because I have to do the research to figure it out to begin with and you know going from that if we if we think that these other teaching methods might be important to staffable what's learned in lecture or even a better way of teaching students and if by teaching we're also learning then you know it might just be worth it to use these other methods not only to teach our current students but to teach ourselves better than we would learn if we were teaching through lecture discussion so you know we didn't investigate that in the current study but it would also be worth seeing how much retention is kept when teachers are learning and teaching something new with these different methods right yeah I think you're you're on to something they're jacked because I think there's a there's a degree of safety and when we're standing up front we're lecturing students can't ask questions they can't be inquisitive and and we can kind of stay on our path and not have to react and so I think that's certainly something to give some consideration to and why we do lecture and why scaffolding certainly is important so as we as we think about the Egg teachers that are out listening to this what recommendations what kind of suggestions do you have for them kind of based upon the work that you were doing here yeah so I would say to try new things right I mentioned four kind of this teacher toolbox where there's such a variety of instructional methods so if you're a teacher out there and you haven't explored some of these different methods give them a try right and then and then you can always kind of do your own research in a way in the classroom what I mean by that is to take notes do observations you know our students engaged in the content are they having fun how's classroom management and then most importantly you know our students are they learning are they achieving whatever objectives that you set out for them to achieve and I think you might be surprised with some of these other types of instructional methods that the students are more engaged maybe than they aren't in a lecture maybe they're learning just as much maybe they have long-term knowledge retention by doing experiments right or is improving their critical thinking skills and problem solving skills being taught through a different instructional method beyond lecture that's such good advice there to do that I'm sitting here thinking blink as you're talking we just wrapped up what's called the Florida teacher institute here in Florida where we brought teachers and they were here for a whole week from noon on Sunday to noon on Friday and engaging in a variety of Ag and natural resource content and man if we would have done lecture we probably could have could have quote covered all the material then maybe a day day and a half what took us a whole week ago but they were engaged in it get their hands dirty and their ability and then to develop plans on how to integrate that into the curriculum I think was much greater because they had that experience but that took a lot of time that took a those teachers had to commit a week to getting that kind of experience and that just that maybe part of the deal is you're thinking through this your idea of variety to do what you're telling them the teachers have to be intentional about the professional development they get at because I'm thinking and I'll be honest I can't remember if there's research base or just one of those old wives tales that say we teach how we are taught how we ended up seeing it and again maybe the smart people in the room can remind me I can't remember if I can research to back that up or that was just something we were always told I think we see it all the time like yeah you know the current setting you know at least you know the most common method I learned by was lecture discussion for sure and lo and behold lecture discussion was the most used method we see here so so with that maybe we encourage is we select our own professional development investing the time to go into ways that are actually hands on that again these teachers invested a week that's a long time during the summer to do that but they got they were able to see things being taught in a demonstration and hopefully that will then translate according to your study what you're seeing here translate into more variety of instruction in their own classroom so I think there's some implications there and how we what professional development we back right and you know going off of what Blake was saying with getting teachers you know comfortable and trying these new kinds of teachings methods that might not be comfortable with a big finding was you know remember the belief of effectiveness and whether they use it is highly correlated with the exception of lecture discussion that relationship's not as strong and so you know it kind of creates the scenario at least the way I interpret the data are that you know any deviation from lecture discussion that's going to take a little bit more guts right and you know a more principled way of trying out these new methods is just like Blake said take notes ask your students about how they're learning because if you actually are you know doing your own research in your classroom and seeing what works and what doesn't that's going to help your beliefs go up for a certain method and you know that's what we found is that if your belief in a method of effectiveness goes up that will likely result in you using that method more we've heard a couple times this even just these messages that kind of requires to slow down and take stock a little bit in terms of it might take a little longer to get there it might take a little longer to plan but that slow down helps your practice it helps your students and that it gives you a little room to step out of this race of like a more and faster and get it done and really think about what's what's that quality going to be and how do I just take a breath and do that yeah I'm one thing that I realized too you know it might take more time initially to maybe design some really neat you know week-long cooperative learning activity or something like that but then afterwards you know you can reuse that resource year after year and just make small adjustments to what maybe it works so well to improve whatever project that is so then I think long-term it actually may take less work as the instructor right because when you're getting lecture hey you're the center of attention you have to do that you know for the 30 minutes you know every day or something like that but then when you organize a good let's say cooperative learning activity right it gets pushed on the students so it takes a little bit to organize that initially but then you could use that resource year after year yeah you know especially with ensuring classroom engagement that's one thing that all these methods have a over lecture discussion because you know when you're given a lecture as a teacher you can kind of survey the class and you know take notes like oh jim he's not paying attention he's taking an app but with a you know with lecture discussion you never actually know if students are engaged to the same level as when you use for example peer-to-group discussion you can see whether students are talking to one another or you can see if students are doing a hands-on activity etc well you know you're sitting there talking I'm thinking that so often we we think about the teacher and we plan for that particular course without maybe taking into the exam you know into account the entire teacher's day so and you know I think Blake when you were describing this you really talked about the importance of variety and we've talked about those are trying to first effective teaching is in varieties one of those things and so maybe you pick you know you're doing whenever you have to be one of the more intense teaching methods like a demonstration or a big group activity you're using lecture in other classes during that same time for you to kind of balance out your mental load to do all those sort of things it probably wouldn't be good to have you know an intense lesson or an intense teaching method in all of your classes for the for a week-long period you know how do you and really doing your instructional planning not just not on a course basis but looking at your entire workload that a teacher has whether that you know so many of our I teachers have five six seven preps a day that they end up having to do and using the variety across that way as well just for your own physical and mental well-being yeah absolutely I remember when I became an actor I decided to become an actor because I wanted variety right I wanted every day to be a little bit different and to help students and to just not have this boring routine right so if you did the same type of instructional method day in a day out it probably become pretty boring so yeah absolutely we're adding variety in your classrooms good for your students and good for your own sanity well speaking good for your own sanity listening to our pellets on a regular basis is great for your sanity like you like that segue like that up Blake Jack thank you both so very much for sharing your research with us and you've given us all some great things to think about encourage everyone to check out their work and really you know it's really about being intentional and Becky really summed it up well it's about slowing down and really thinking about our practices teachers in the in the craziness it's always coming at us all the time and I think Blake Jack the study you all have been doing really fits in well with several other conversations we've been having this season about just helping teachers again to be more intentional about our practice and looking at everything that we're trying to do and really see all the good things that we do as ag teachers but again trying to make sure that we're being intentional with that so I encourage everybody again to check out the work that they've been doing engage with with them and with all of us on social media as it gets posted out there and check out their work that they've got going on and so again Blake Jack thank you so very much for spending some time with us today here on out pellets hey it's been a blast thanks for having us yeah thanks for having us remember believe in what you do you hope you've enjoyed this episode of out pellets check out our website for more information on this topic and to learn more about our guests follow us on facebook twitter and instagram just a connected and be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never miss an episode for Mike and Becky this is Brian here by the out pellets saying thank you and we look forward to seeing you again on another episode of out pellets tips for ag teachers