JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION 5,(1&2) 53-60 (1998) ISSN 0794-4543 SELECTION AND UTILISATION OF INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES IN TEACHING S. A. ONASANYA Abstract Teaching and learning are inseparably linked. When teaching is poor or ineffective, learning becomes impoverished and the nation's manpower needs among other expectations remain largely unfulfilled. This paper examines the instructional strategies, which research and experience have shown as consistently promoting teaching and learning. More importantly, it attempts to refocus on the methods of selecting and utilising appropriate instructional strategies to enhance classroom performance and communication. Introduction Instruction is a serious educational enterprise that takes place in formal and informal settings. It is defined as any specifiable means of controlling and manipulating the sequence of events to produce required behavioural modification in learners. Through instruction, the environment of an individual is deliberately managed for him/her to learn to emit or engage in specified condition or as a response to specific situation (Mager, 1975). Instructional strategies connote a comprehensive approach to instruction using objective guidance as against fewer objectives and less directional instruction. It is a systematic approach to instruction with a view to ensuring accountable learning experience for the learners. It is a way of providing structural foundations for instructions. It provides the teacher the precise guidance to providing structural foundations for instructions. It provides the teacher the needed guidance to enable him/her know what a teacher is supposed to do, where and when to do it. Instructional strategies entail sequence of activities, need assessment and objective specification; content selection, instructional materials design, selection and production, instructional planning, evaluation and modification (Sanders, 1979). Against this background, this paper is concerned principally with information on the selection and utilisation of instructional strategies as identified through instructional planning and design, instructional implementation and evaluation. The extent of the learners' understanding of concepts of study remains the ultimate feat of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness' of the teacher in using appropriate instructional strategies. Understanding a topic implies being able to perform in a number of thought-demanding ways with the topic. This involves performances such as explaining and applying concepts, giving examples, making generalisation, utilising instructional media and representing what has been learnt in a new way (Mclead and Griffiths, 1997). The effective teacher is one that uses instructional strategies in communicating with the learners and guiding him or her to the desired performances of understanding as specified in the lesson objective(s). Educational research findings have consistently brought to the fore the outstanding learning-facilitating strategies that characterise effective teaching (Harberman, 1992). These strategies include: i. Beginning a lesson by stating its objectives and outlining its structure. ii. Demonstrating effective delivery skills built on clarity, gestures and direct eye contact with learners; iii. Presenting clear, precise guidelines and routines that make the classroom run smoothly; iv. Involving the learners actively in the learning task; v. Scanning the classroom frequently and drawing the learners back to the lesson when attention wanders; vi. Moving round to supervise and offer help as needed when students work at their desks; vii. Getting down to students interest level, listening sensitively, and accepting meaningful learner responses that differ from the teacher's view; viii. Commencing and stopping lessons on time;