Methods of Teaching in Higher Education Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The best solution is diagnostic teaching.

When students have problems in learning a subject, the first step is to find out exactly where and why they are going wrong. Diagnostic teaching identifies the specific difficulties and misconceptions, through diagnostic tests and observation, and then provides remedial teaching aimed at them.

Increasing homework gives more practice of the same errors. Frequent assessment measures the problem again without solving it. Supervised study helps students work under guidance, but without diagnosis the guidance is not aimed at the cause. Diagnosis followed by remedy addresses the learning problem directly.

Answer: D

Such a teacher tends to emphasise discussion and negotiations.

If knowledge is seen as existing mainly in the students' ability to interpret, knowledge is constructed by the learners rather than handed to them. A teacher who holds this constructivist view gives students opportunities to interpret, question and negotiate meanings with one another and with the teacher, which is done through discussion.

Powerful lecturing, transmitting information and presentation all treat knowledge as something the teacher possesses and passes on. They fit the transmission view of knowledge, the opposite of the interpretive view described in the question.

Answer: D

Teaching in higher education implies helping students learn how to learn.

At university level, the aim of teaching is to develop independent, critical and lifelong learners who can find, evaluate and use knowledge for themselves. The teacher acts as a guide and facilitator of this process.

Repeating the textbook, asking questions and conducting examinations, or coaching students to pass examinations are narrow, exam-centred views of teaching. They may be part of a teacher's work, but they are not what teaching in higher education is meant to achieve.

Answer: B

The dialogue method was given by Socrates.

The Socratic method seeks truth through a sequence of questions and answers: the teacher questions a learner's beliefs, exposes contradictions and leads the learner to discover sounder ideas for himself. It is the root of the question-answer method in teaching.

Plato recorded Socrates' dialogues but did not originate the method. Froebel founded the kindergarten and Herbart devised the five formal steps of instruction.

Answer: D

Socrates gave the dialogue method of discovering the truth.

The Socratic method, known from Plato's dialogues, proceeds by question and answer. Socrates asked a series of probing questions, exposed contradictions in the other person's answers and led him step by step to a clearer idea, so that truth was drawn out of the learner rather than told to him.

The experimental method and systematic observation belong to modern empirical science, long after Socrates. Criticism is one element of his questioning, since he examined and refuted opinions, but the method as a whole is the dialogue.

Answer: C

The key gives demonstration method.

History deals with past events that cannot be repeated or demonstrated in front of a class. The demonstration method, in which the teacher shows a process or experiment and pupils observe, suits science and practical subjects.

Maps and digital charts are standard aids for showing where and when events happened, and role play (dramatisation) is a recognised method for history, letting pupils re-enact events and characters. So these are all ways history can be taught.