Strategy/implicit instruction is a student-centered approach, which focuses on the general skills, rules and processes required for learning a particular concept. The chief objective of strategy/implicit instruction is to encourage the students to apply higher-level thinking skills to problem solving and use acquired techniques in other spheres. Strategy/implicit instruction holds as one of its major goals to teach students to control and evaluate their progress, thus assessing the strategy effect. Strategy/implicit instruction requires a certain sequence of actions: the teacher points out the objective, reviews the knowledge and skills required for comprehension of the new material and then presents the new material. The instructional process consists in the following: the strategy is introduced and modeled by the teacher. While modeling problem-solving with the help of the new strategy, it is crucial that the teacher clearly describes his thinking process so that the students could use the...
Then the students are assigned problems to solve with the help of the newly-introduced strategy.
At this point it appears opportune to dwell upon a few literary sources dedicated to the strategy/implicit instruction. In the book Focus on Exceptional Children by Swanson (2001) the author lists the following components of this instructional strategy: mental scaffolding as basis for new understanding, student assessment of their own understanding and progress, connection between the new information and material already learned, and summarizing new information. The researcher also finds such general learning strategies as questioning, discussions, outlining and underlining, indispensable in strategy/implicit instructional process. Swanson considers it crucial that sufficient amount of time is dedicated to group instruction as well as individual practice. Swanson mentions seven criteria characteristics of strategy/implicit instruction. They are
