It is therefore not justifiable to brand the lecture method as passive and lacking in meaning for the learners. In the hands of a skilful teacher, it could stimulate the effective learning of vast amounts of intellectual material much quicker than any other method.
What is required is not just to condemn it, but to critically evaluate its strengths and weaknesses to guard against its limitations and to build on its good qualities.
As Spencer (1928) cautioned long ago, “the decrying of the wholesale use of lectures is probably justified. The wholesale decrying of the use of lecture is just as certainly not justified”. This caution should be heeded, particularly in Nigeria, where lecture has turned out to be the most commonly used method of instruction at all levels of education.
A lot is to be gained by making teachers aware of the strengths of the lecture method to help them develop the instructional competence to utilise them. The greatest merits of the lecture method, which justify its continued use, are coverage, understanding and motivation. It remains the method through which a large amount of academic material can be covered.
Besides covering the syllabus, the method is suitable for handling a large number of learners at a time by a single teacher. At a time like this, when funds to expand educational facilities and resources are dwindling, while school enrolment is increasing, this advantage should be maximised.
In addition to coverage, the lecture method could be used to enable teachers to adopt techniques. This is possible because “the teacher has the knowledge to give to the students or he can acquire it easily when necessary or guide the students to some sources” (Palardy 1975).
Contrary to the view that the lecture method trains the learners to rely on the teacher, one of its goals is to motivate the pupils. According to Brown and Atkin (1991), an effective teacher considers what students know and communicates clearly to them, stimulating them to learn, think, and communicate.
A well-organised and delivered lecture sets the learners’ propensities aflame in search of deeper understanding. However, such results could only be achieved with the acquisition of skills which should be improved and extended through appropriate training in the art of teaching for meaningful learning.
As Brown and Atkin (1991) observed, teachers “need to be able to think and problem-solve, to analyse and to reflect upon what is an appropriate approach, to select key strategies and materials, and organise and structure ideas, information and tasks for students”.
To enable teachers to achieve this effectiveness, the following portions of this paper will deal with practical pedagogic devices and strategies of organising information that would result in meaningful learning for students.
1. Hints on Effective Lecturing
According to Obanya (1985), “There isn’t only one correct method of ensuring that teaching performs this task (behaviour change)”. He outlines the requirements for successful teaching to include the lesson being methodical and planned, resulting from resourcefulness on the part of the teacher, being activity-based, being related to the learner’s experience and life, and following a logical sequence.
The lecture method can meet these criteria if the following pedagogic guidelines are observed. These are adequate preparations on the part of the lecturer, delivering instead of reading the lecture, use of voice, manner and gesture to make distinctions, copious use of illustrations, and effective use of the chalkboard.
Highet (1951) believes that “it is impossible to give a lecture without preparation”. Sound preparation is key to a successful lecture. The preparation should involve not only searching for the facts but also organising and structuring the information for logical and sequential delivery.
That is why Highet (1951) advises that “before he opens his mouth, the lecturer must know exactly what points he wishes to tell his audience, in what order, and with what emphasis. He must have a clear scheme of the lecture in his mind. It is this type of clear-cut, planned preparation that sets the stage for a good lecture.
Next to preparation in ensuring successful lecturing is the delivery. A carefully planned lecture could be mishandled through poor delivery. A good lecturer will not read their lecture. As Highet pointed out, “a lecture should be based on written notes, but it should not be read out from them” He recommended that after the lecturer has planned his entire
course, and reduced the separate sections of In writing, he should go over each lecture
and mark off the salient points which he
should deliver slowly and emphatically,
and the connecting arguments, which he should
remember in outline, and deliver in a quicker,
more conversational tone
leaving himself time and opportunity to
Expand them if the class finds them difficult
or manifest an unusual interest in any
one of them.
What these amount to is that the lecturer should build flexibility into his delivery pattern if he is to stimulate the intellect of the students. This stimulation is usually enhanced by the skilful use of the voice, manner and gesture, which some scholars call cueing devices.
With these devices, the lecturer could carry the students along, leading them to follow his line of argument, to evaluate the facts and turn them over in their minds and finally to digest the points.
Another device for making your lectures lively and understandable is the use of appropriate illustrations. No point should be thrown up and left to hang, but has to be driven home by citing familiar examples and linking it with the learners’ previous experiences.
The chalkboard is a valuable aid to a successful lecture. On it, key concepts to be developed are recorded. So also are difficult names, dates, and salient points to be written. As was succinctly suggested by Highet (1951), “One brief sentence or equation can be written down in a few seconds.
It should stay on the blackboard then, while you explain and qualify your reasoning forward to the next, then pause while the next goes up”. If this is done well, it would provide an apt summary for the lecture, bringing out closely the sequence of the development of the lesson.
In addition to the pedagogic hints for improving the lecture method discussed above, one strategy for ensuring that students are involved in stimulating intellectual activities that lead to meaningful learning of materials is the application of the Advance Organisers.
2. The Concept of Meaningful Learning
According to Ausubel (1960), “The key to meaning involves solidly connecting new learning material with existing ideas in the learner’s cognitive structure. In other words, we must relate and reconcile what we know with what we are learning. A meaningful learning set implies that the learners must be ready to comprehend and relate what is being presented, rather than memorise it verbatim.”
He disagrees with the view that meaningful materials cannot be ‘presented’ but must come through independent problem-solving and manipulative experience. He argues further that a person’s cognitive structure, the amount and degree of organisation of knowledge of a field in one’s mind, is the foremost factor governing whether new material will be meaningful.
How well it can be acquired and retained.d He emphasised that we need to increase the stability and clarity of learners’ cognitive structure as a way of enhancing the acquisition and retention of new information, suggesting that this could be done through the use of Advance Organisers.
3. The Concept of an Advance Organiser
Ausubel (1960) describes Advance organisers as introductory materials presented ahead of the learning task and at a higher level of abstraction and inclusiveness than the learning task itself.
They are based on the major concepts, propositions, generalisations, principles and laws of the discipline (Joyece and Well 1990). Unlike an ordinary introduction of statement of facts in which the materials to be learnt are outlined to the learner’s attention, Advance Organisers highlight the concept of principles on which the learners would be guided to obtain facts and information about the learning materials.
As Joyce and Wei (1990) put &.Advanced organiser strategy entails that both discipline and the sequence of instruction are but from the top down, with the most inclusive concepts, principles and propositions presented first.
This approach eliminates the pedagogic practice of making students grapple with several topics or facts at the same level of abstraction without an adequate body of relevant subsumes at an appropriate level of inclusiveness (Ausubel, 1968).
This strategy takes care of one major bane of the lecture method, which is the rolling out of streams of isolated abstract facts and information for the learners to absorb without guiding them to connect them with the concepts in their cognitive structure. Read further on this page.
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