Teachers impart facts, teaching students specific pieces of information that can be verified, such as definitions, dates and formulae. For example, students in a science classroom learn the name for a leaf and how to accurately measure its weight. On the other hand, teaching students skills is a type of learning that gets better with targeted practice, such as a volleyball serve or using a dictionary. In the science classroom, skills include formulating hypotheses. In the literacy classroom students learn reading strategies. Educators agree that both types of teaching are necessary.
Teachers generally use direct instruction to teach content, or facts. Direct instruction refers to any instructional practice in which the teacher serves as the leader. Generally, teachers impart the relevant information through lecture or demonstration. They model appropriate behavior and provide feedback to students. Direct instruction also calls for reviewing previous learning, checking for student understanding, and checking for appropriate error correction. Additionally, teachers direct students in how to remember facts, such as through rote practice in the case of multiplication tables or with flashcards for vocabulary.
The skill most teachers want to foster is critical thinking. Critical thinking includes skills such as analysis, evaluation, inference and synthesis. A very useful teaching practice for skills is modeled instruction. In this method, teachers explain a skill, then show students how to use it by talking them through the thinking process that goes with the skill. For example, when showing students how to solve a math problem, teachers explicitly detail the thinking that goes into understanding the problem, identifying relevant information, and, ultimately, solving it. Students then practice solving problems using the thinking method the teacher modeled. To foster these skills, teachers often question the students, urging them to go deeper into the topic.
Teaching concepts seems to mix the best of both worlds because students learn to understand the "why" of a topic. Natural selection and photosynthesis are examples of concepts. They differ from facts in that they are both broader and deeper in scope. For instance, naming the anatomy of an animal is very different from understanding how that anatomy relates to survival. Conceptual learning is also dissimilar from skills-based learning in that students must understand and remember the relationships between processes, such as the steps and how they work in photosynthesis. Concept-based teaching enforces both knowledge and critical thinking skills. Adding conceptual learning to a classroom can be as easy as using both example and non-examples and questioning students about hypothetical situations related to the topic.