Instructional Strategies for Effective Teaching by Stronge James H.;Xu Xianxuan;

Author:Stronge, James H.;Xu, Xianxuan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Solution Tree
Published: 2015-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Mastery Learning

Anyone who has taught knows that students learn in different ways and at different rates. One well-tested approach for addressing students’ unique learning needs is mastery learning—an instructional method that gives a detailed and personalized roadmap of expectations for each student. The basic features of mastery learning are:

• Preassessing student learning

• Developing appropriate learning objectives

• Providing individualized learning experiences

• Postassessing student learning progress

• Moving on if students achieve mastery

• Providing further instruction or learning experiences to attain mastery

In essence, this is a test-before-you-teach approach to designing and guiding instruction. In mastery learning, students continuously receive corrective feedback and advice for improvement from the teacher regarding their specified tasks. Also, teachers expect students to remain conscious of their present positions, their upcoming goals, and the ways they can bridge the gap between the two. In this manner, mastery learning takes student learning differences into account—their prior achievements, learning styles, and learning paces—and then sets individualized, specific, and sequential learning goals.

Most teachers are familiar with the instructional approach of mastery learning, especially with the contemporary focus on achieving mastery on state- or district-mandated curriculum goals. In a mastery learning classroom, the assessment approach is formative and individual-referenced, rather than criteria-referenced or norm-referenced like many other assessments. Additionally, the teacher avoids rote memory methods or superficial learning merely for the purpose of pushing students to a passing score on a high-stakes test. Mastery learning has many advantages; it:

• Ensures students have the prerequisite knowledge and skills before they move on with their learning

• Offers alternative learning opportunities, builds students’ success with learning, and breaks the cycle of failure

• Makes teachers more knowledgeable about the status of student learning, and guides and adjusts planning based on students’ needs

• Sets high expectations with meaningful learning objectives that every student can master

We attribute the application of mastery learning in education to, among others, Benjamin Bloom (1984). Although behaviorist learning models—such as mastery learning—tend to recall the stimulus-response conditioning experiments conducted by Ivan Pavlov and others, mastery learning is far from mechanistic. A key advantage of mastery learning, as compared with some cognitive models, is that it not only targets the content domain but also takes into account student readiness when targeting learning objectives. Additionally, teachers can use it to design and implement instruction that focuses on the student as an individual—another key advantage in a results-oriented environment.

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