The first thing to realize about interactive teaching is that it is NOT something new or mysterious. If you are a teacher and you ask questions in class, assign and check homework, or hold class or group discussions, then you already teach interactively. Basically then (in my book), interactive teaching is just giving students something to do, getting back what they have done, and then assimilating it yourself, so that you can decide what would be best to do next.
But, almost all teachers do these things, so is there more
to it? To answer this question, one has to step away from teaching
and think about learning. Over the last twenty years, the field
of cognitive science has taught us a lot about how people learn.
A central principle that has been generally accepted is that
everything we learn, we "construct" for ourselves.
That is, any outside agent is essentially powerless to have a
direct effect on what we learn. If our brain does not do it itself,
- that is, take in information, look for connections, interpret
and make sense of it, - no outside force will have any effect.
This does not mean that the effort has to be expressly voluntary
and conscious on our parts. Our brains take-in information and
operate continuously on many kinds of levels, only some of which
are consciously directed. But, conscious or not, the important
thing to understand is that it is our brains that are doing the
learning, and that this process is only indirectly related to
the teacher and the teaching.
However, whatever the cause, without interacting with the
students (in the simplest case by asking questions), a teacher
has no way to know if his/her efforts to explain the topic were
The third may be termed "motivational". Learning is hard work, and an injection of motivation at the right moment can make all the difference. One motivating factor provided by the interactive teacher is the requirement of a response to a live classroom task. This serves to jolt the student into action, to get his brain off the couch, so to speak. Additional more subtle and pleasant events follow immediately capitalizing on the momentum created by this initial burst. One of these is a result of our human social tendencies. When teachers ask students to work together in small groups to solve a problem, a discussion ensues that not only serves in itself to build more robust knowledge structures, but also to motivate. The anticipation of immediate feedback in the form of reaction from their peers, or from the teacher is a very strong motivator. If it is not embarrassing or threatening, students want to know desperately whether their understanding is progressing or just drifting aimlessly in concept space. Knowing that they are not allowed to drift too far off track provides tremendous energy to continue.