Teaching Processes in Social Studies Classrooms and Prescriptive Instructional Theories

An exploratory study of teaching styles in 40 social studies classrooms was described. Observational data were cluster‐analysed and three teaching styles were described. It was found that inexperienced teachers favoured an informational teaching style. The implications of the study for the possible empirical testing of prescriptive, instructional theories were discussed, and it was suggested that sufficient variance of teaching style could be found in natural, intact classrooms to justify optimism about the feasibility of using these classrooms in such empirical tests.