Many of the courses my wife and I have taken over the years in synagogues ranging from Bergen County in New Jersey, Berkshire County in Massachusetts, and finally in Sarasota County in Florida use a similar instructional method. I understand that similar methods are also often in Jewish Day School courses. Typically those registered for the course, i.e., students, are asked to take turns reading aloud a paragraph or so from a book, or other source. The instructor, and sometimes the students as well, then expand on what was read. Obviously, this procedure is adapted from Talmudic study. When I studied in the Mirrer Yeshiva in Shanghai, my study partner and I would go over a sentence or two and then, after reading the commentary of Rashi and Tosefot, we would expand on what was read.
These procedures are perfectly reasonable while studying the Talmud, which is well known for its complexity and density. Often a small phrase, sometimes only a word, in the Torah is painstakingly analysed in a passage, and/or by commentators such as Rashi and Tosefot, for its implications, often expounded on at varying length from a short section of a page in the Talmud up to several pages, and sometimes expanded with commentary by senior students or others. Because of the high level of abstraction reference to the text is often vital in order to follow the train of thought, the evolving argument, and the different interpretations.
Is a similar Talmudic instructional method needed when less dense or complex materials are studied, say books on Jewish subjects, or articles from Jewish publications? It would seem that a lot of time is wasted by repeating in class what students have already been asked to read previously, or could/should have been asked to read at some prior time. Of course, reading from assigned materials provides reassurance that the assignment was read, though there are other ways to achieve that. Would it not be more interesting to ask students to summarize what was read at the beginning of the class? Students are more likely to complete out of class assignments if they know that they might be called on in class to review the reading. Class time can then be used so that the instructor or students could enlarge on the summary of the reading. Instructors in the courses we have taken were usually very well versed in matters of Judaica, and students could have learned a great deal more than they did by taking the time to read a text out loud in class.
Research, theory, and practice in the field of learning from instruction suggests many other activities that could be used in synagogue classes. I do not mean to suggest that there is unanimity in research or theory about ideal teaching methods in the area of learning from instruction. That field is presently having an active debate between those favouring constructivist approaches to instruction and advocates of explicit, also called direct, instructional activities. Typically constructivist approaches advocate inductive procedures and giving students rich examples from which they could infer important generalizations. Adherents of explicit instruction, on the other hand, favour a deductive approach featuring statement of generalizations and then providing students with examples allowing them to master the generalizations. Early in the instructional sequence it is ideal to provide students with examples that have been worked out; gradually these are replaced with other examples that the students have to work out in class, or by themselves.
The brief summaries of the two approaches described above are over generalizations. The interested reader can learn more about both camps in a recent volume describing the two approaches, research dealing with each, and then read a printed debate in which proponents of each approach raise questions about the position of those favouring the alternative, who then answer these questions.1 Sometimes this dialog continues for several cycles. The debate serves to clarify both the similarities and differences in the approaches and their recommendations for instructional practice.
The purpose of this article is not to weigh the relative merits of each position but, instead, to suggest instructional procedures for synagogue courses that are borrowed from both approaches in order to make these courses more interesting and informative to participants. For example, constructivists would recommend that the instructor and students start a course by discussing and reaching some consensus about the procedures and assignments at the start of a course. After that students could engage in a number of different activities. For example, students (individually or in groups) could be assigned books, articles, or Internet resources dealing with extensions of the subject studied by the class, or material related to it. Students could also be asked to report periodically on their assigned activities to the class, so that the rest of the group could learn about what they have been working on. Or students could be asked to review their family history, by interviewing senior surviving relatives, reading diaries or other correspondence, or consulting archives. The instructor and/or students could then integrate reports of such activities with the topics the class is studying. Of course, the selected activities should be related to the aims of the class.
Supporters of explicit instructional approaches would recommend somewhat different approaches.2 Many, but not all, of the findings supporting the explicit instruction approach were based on studies conducted in elementary and secondary school contexts. For example, they would begin every class with an extended review of the prior session. If misunderstandings are revealed, some or all of the prior material would be retaught by instructor lecture in combination with questions and answers with students. Then a moderate amount of new material might be presented by the instructor in lecture, demonstration, or discussion, followed by teacher questions. These presentations are likely to feature many examples especially, if appropriate, worked out examples so that students could then practice solutions to these problems3. Initially instructors should guide and supervise the problem solving, provide feedback and correction, and gradually let students solve problems by themselves.
It should be noted that the procedures suggested by the two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Thus, for example, students reports could be preceded by review of prior meetings, they could be asked to provide worked examples, and their attempts to solve problems could be supervised and feedback for them could be given. The point is that some combination of these approaches is likely to promote more interest and more effective learning than reading material out loud in class that could be read silently, and much more rapidly, by students themselves outside of class. Furthermore, it would allow instructors to share more of their rich fund of knowledge about relevant issues than can occur by merely re-reading texts.
Sigmund Tobias
University at Albany, SUNY
Footnotes
1. Tobias, S., & Duffy, T.D. (Eds.) (2009) Constructivist Instruction. Success or Failure? New York: Routledge, Taylor, and Francis.
2. Rosenshine, B. (2009). The empirical support for direct instruction (pp. 201-220). In S. Tobias & T.D. Duffy (Eds.), Constructivist Instruction. Success or Failure? New York: Routledge, Taylor, and Francis.
3. Renkl, A., & Atkinson, R. K. (2007). An example order for cognitive skill acquisition. In F. E. Ritter, J. Nerb, E. Lehtinen, T. OShea (Eds.), In order to learn: How the sequence of topics influences learning (pp. 95-105). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
