The Role of the Teacher in Cognitive Strategies
The
teacher's role in cognition is equally as important as the learner's role in
making sure that comprehension occurs.
From Durkin's study (1978-1979) it was concluded that many teachers believed
that they were teaching comprehension, when in actuality they were more often
assessing instead of directly explaining how to comprehend. Today strategy teaching is taught by
teachers as a way of encouraging both strategic and student-centered processing
of text to develop more independent learners in the classroom (Dowhower,
1999).
Teachers
have the important role of introducing, explaining, modeling and monitoring the
strategies that learners are introduced to (Davey, 1983; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams,
Baker, 2001; Palinscar, & Brown, 1986; Roe, 1992) that will later be
transferred into other school situations (Davey, 1983; Rhoder, 2002). Strategies are taught in context, not in
isolation, as part of the topic or text being explored in the classroom
(Dowhower, 1999).
The learners need to first
be introduced to the strategy they are about to learn and this is most
successful when the teacher identifies and describes the reading strategy that
is needed with a specific text (Roe, 1992).
The teacher needs to explain what the strategy is and how the strategy
is best used in different situations.
There is a need for the learners to have procedural and conditional
knowledge, according to Simpson and Nist (2000), who explain procedural
knowledge as the understanding of the steps or processes involved with using a
strategy and conditional knowledge as the why, where, and when of selecting and
applying a specific strategy based on its effectiveness.
Modeling the strategies for
the students is one of the most important roles of the teacher in strategy
learning (Rosenshine, & Meister, 1994).
The teacher must assume the responsibility for instruction by explicitly
modeling the process of using the strategies on a selection of authentic text
(Rosenshine, & Meister, 1994). The
teacher must also model implicitly, by modeling his or her own thoughts
(Rhoder, 2002). This shows the learners
what a good reader does while comprehending text. Students are encouraged to comment on the teacher's use of
modeling the strategies and add their own voice for better clarification
(Palinscar, & Brown, 1986).
Dialogue is a very important element in the modeling process that helps
the learner internalize the workings of the strategies (Rosenshine, &
Meister, 1994).
When the learners have been introduced to the strategies, have had the strategies explained to them, have observed the strategies in use, and have had a good amount of time to practice the strategies, it is time for the teacher to monitor the independent use of the strategies by the learners. Through self-questioning and written responses the teacher is able to see what is being understood in the text, what strategy is being applied, and how successful the reader is while working cooperatively or independently on the text ( Oster, 2001). The final component of strategy instruction is the transfer of the strategy to other content areas and text (Bryant, Ugel, Thompson, & Hamff, 1999).