Combined Instructional Strategies and High School Students’ Perceptions

The use of technology in education is deemed effective in enhancing academic performance and enabling a learner to develop more and better learning strategies to enhance understanding. Students usually possess different learning abilities, and it is up to the teacher to ensure that all his or her student’s learning needs are met. Unfortunately, lessons are time-bound and it might be difficult to meet all the learning needs of the students during lesson time; hence, make-up classes are usually planned for slower students. In the wake of educational technology, it is possible for a teacher to employ a variety of teaching strategies that enhance the way instructions are delivered. Depending on the content that is being delivered, a teacher is meant to ensure that different instructional modalities are used to capture the varied learning styles of the learners.

Even though there has been emphasis on the essence of blended learning in this era of technology, still, there is no explicit indication of the teaching styles that should be combined to achieve best results. In particular, high school is one place that has received minimal attention and teachers act based on their own discretion. Yet, there is need to understand how different learning strategies are perceived by the students so as to pick the right strategies and combine them to develop a beneficial teaching approach. Despite the fact that there have been several studies that indicate the importance of combined instructions to enhance learning, these studies have been conducted mainly in tertiary institutions; hence, there is need to determine if the same beneficial effects can be realized in high school (Bhagat, Vyas, & Singh, 2015). Therefore, there is need to conduct a qualitative study that seeks to generate knowledge that will help to understand the perceptions of high school students towards combined teaching strategies; thereby, delineate the combinations that should be used for particular content or topic.