An evaluation of the relative efficacy of and child preference for teaching strategies that differ in amount of teacher directedness

Abstract

Although it is generally agreed that learning occurs through children's interactions with their environments, the manner in which the teacher mediates this learning varies across early childhood classrooms. In this study, we used a multielement design to evaluate the efficacy of three commonly implemented strategies that varied in teacher directedness for teaching simple color- and object-name relations. Strategy I consisted of brief exposure to the target relations, followed by an exclusively child-led play period in which praise was provided for correct responses. Strategy II was similar except that teacher prompts to vocalize relations and error correction (model prompts) were provided when the child interacted with the relevant objects. Strategy III incorporated the same procedures as Strategy II except that a brief period of teacher-initiated trials was arranged; these trials involved the use of time delay between questions and prompts, tokens for correct responding, and back-up activity reinforcers. Children's preferences for the different teaching strategies were also assessed within a concurrent-chains arrangement in which selections of strategy-correlated cues resulted in access to the correlated strategy. Our results indicated that Strategy III was most efficacious in promoting the acquisition of the color- and object-name relations and was also most preferred by the majority of children; Strategy I was the least efficacious, and Strategy II was typically the least preferred. Implications for the design of early educational environments based on evidence-based values are discussed.