Students’ Perspectives on Direct, Peer, and Inquiry Teaching Strategies

It was the purpose of this study to examine students’ perspectives on three teaching strategies. Seventy middle school students were interviewed, and they rank ordered the strategies. A constant comparison process guided the interview data analysis, while the rank order data were analyzed via descriptive statistics and a Friedman Analysis of Variance by Ranks. Two key concepts that influenced students’ perspectives on the effectiveness of the teaching strategies were their conceptions of the affective dimensions of each strategy and their knowledge beliefs.