Marzano's Teaching Philosophy

Educational research contributes many factors to effective teaching and the effective teacher. Beliefs and values that guide the research change by the decade, however, most of the research agrees that the highest impact on achievement is the teacher. The writer feels that the three factors Marzano pinpoints are ones truly necessary to guide effective teachers. He states “the act of teaching is a holistic endeavor. Effective teachers employ effective instructional strategies, classroom management techniques, and classroom curricular design in a fluent, seamless fashion”. (Marzano, p.77) By combining these three key components, the teacher will do what is necessary to foster student achievement. It is important to have an effective classroom curricular design, yet this factor is usually given the least amount of attention. Historically, teachers relied on textbooks for curriculum whereas today, many school systems and states set the guidelines for curriculum. The effective teacher must let the students’ needs and classroom environment drive the curriculum. Marzano (2003) presents three principles from cognitive psychology to help implement effective classroom design. Marzano uses these principles to identify “steps that addressed teachers’ needs to identify and articulate the specifics of content, to ensure that students have multiple exposures to content, to identify procedures to be mastered, to structure content and tasks using the principle of sameness, and to engage students in complex tasks that require them to address content in unique ways” (120). The writer agrees that the use of these principles is the base upon which effective teachers design curriculum for their students. The teacher must first set clear learning goals even if the learning is student driven. Each lesson plan should include exactly what the teacher wants the students to learn from the curriculum, regardless of the instructional strategies used to get each student to the goal. Marzano