Ms. Ashwin wants his students to develop 'deductive reasoning' while teaching the concept of different types of cells. Which of the following activities is MOST appropriate for the purpose ?

Option 2 : Explaining features of animal and plant cells to students and then ask them to identify a given cell as an animal or plant cell. 

In the deductive method first, a generalization or a rule is family arranged to the students then according to the generalization the examples will be taken. An established formula will be followed by solving the problems according to it. Features of the deductive method:

• Hear the flow goes from complex to simple.
• The approach progresses from abstract to concrete.
• The flow of concepts goes from unknown to known.
• For example, first, a generalization will be formed like all birds have wings then examples will be followed like a crow is also a bird, the eagle is also a bird and pigeon is also a bird.
  • Similarly in the above example first the teacher explain the features of animal and plant cells to the students then they were asked to identify a given cell as a plant cell or an animal cell.
  • As the generalized features were already presented before students and now they are insisted to identify the cells.

Hence the activity in option two is most appropriate to develop deductive reasoning while teaching the concept of different types of cells. 

• On the other hand, remaining all three options are examples of inductive reasoning as they progress from simple to complex and examples to generalization.