Adaptive Teaching: An Invaluable Pedagogic Practice in Social Studies Education

Abstract

The paper delved into the issue of learner/teacher centredness in Social Studies and held that the choice of around whom Social Studies teaching would be centred should be determined by the individual differences of the learners. Adaptive teaching was explained as an approach aimed at achieving a common instructional goal with learners considering their individual differences. Differentiated teaching and individualized instruction were contrasted with adaptive teaching and illustrated with a diagram. The paper further discussed the application of, and obstacles to adaptive teaching. It was concluded that the dynamic nature of Social Studies as a discipline necessitated adoption of adaptive teaching to take care of the learners’ individual differences via remediation and compensatory approaches.

Keywords: Adaptive teaching; differentiated instruction; individualized instruction.