Institutional Affiliation
The Criticaldifference between teaching strategies and Learning ActivitiesTeaching strategies are the methods that teachers use to assist
students to not only learn, but also become independent learners. According to
Orlich et al (2009) teaching strategies are used by instructors to help
learners to understand the new knowledge that they are teaching. Among the main
teaching strategies are discussions, lecture methods and group projects. On the
other hand, learning activities are the things that students engage in to gain
the knowledge from the instruction process. Learning activities are
learner-based and are part of the larger pedagogical scenario of the teaching-learning
process (Orlich et al, 2009). While the two are different, there is one
critical difference between teaching strategies and learning activities.
The critical difference is that teaching strategies are aimed at
helping the students to be independent learners, while the learning activities
are aimed at prompting the learners to respond to the knowledge they are
acquiring. This difference is critical because it gives the basis of using the
two in a pedagogical process. While teaching strategy focuses on the teacher
turning the student into a learner, a learning activity focuses on helping the
learner gain knowledge in the pedagogical process.
Through the use of the two pedagogical aspects, the critical
difference provides the basis of directing the teacher on which strategy to use
and learning activity to apply. For instance, to encourage students to engage
in cooperative learning activities, the teacher might use group discussion as a
teaching strategy. At the same time, learning activities are more
learner-based, while teaching strategies are teacher-based (Orlich et al, 2009).
All in all, the critical difference is that the teaching strategies turn a student
into an independent learner while learning activities help the student to
learn.
Orlich, D., Harder, R., Callahan, R., Trevisan, M., &
Brown, A. (2009). Teaching Strategies: A Guide to Effective Instruction. New York: Cengage
Learning