Teaching Strategies and Tactics in K-12 Blended Education: The Flipped Classroom Model

Meeting Challenges In Education Using The Flipped Classroom Model

This first section will highlight current challenges in education. It will describe how a flipped classroom model approach can help educators meet long-standing challenges while supporting teachers in meeting the diverse needs of their students. Traditional norms of direct teaching methods have faced various challenges to meet students’ needs in advancing knowledge to become 21^st century global competitors. Direct teaching methods consisting of lecture and auditing are not well aligned with the ways modern students improve their literacy skills. Students have become accustomed to learning with digital devices and multimedia. Additionally, direct teaching lecture methods fail to consider students’ self-directed learning tendencies. Students are more likely to locate information for their own learning purposes through this pedagogical framework.

In assuming a micro perspective of teaching, educators’ efforts to move beyond lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy can be difficult within limited class-time constraints. The teacher may be acutely aware that many students do not understand the day’s lesson, but does not have the time to meet with them individually during the 50-minute class period. The next day, the teacher will collect and briefly review the homework assignment. Students’ additional questions are more likely to be left unanswered due to the lack of class time. Teachers make their best effort to keep the class on schedule. Teachers’ instruction is largely driven by the amount of material to cover before the test at the end of the unit. There is not much room to differentiate instruction based on students’ interests, learning styles, and readiness, which are critical elements to consider in attempting to address the diverse needs of students (Tomlinson, 2014).

Educators have been working to break this lecture-centered instructional model by shifting the focus from the curriculum-driven instruction to student learning needs to drive instruction. They are, increasingly, turning to an alternative model of instruction termed Flipped Learning in which digital technologies are used to shift direct instruction outside of the group learning space to the individual learning space, usually via videos. Transforming direct instruction into a self-directed learning approach allows teachers to reconsider how to maximize individual face-to-face time with students. Time becomes available for students to collaborate with peers on projects, engage more deeply with content, practice skills, and receive feedback on their progress. Teachers can devote more time to coaching their students, helping them develop procedural fluency (if needed), and assisting them with challenging projects that allow them to exert greater control over their own learning (Hamdan, McKnight, McKnight & Arfstrom, 2013b).