Effectiveness of Models of Teaching in Higher Education: A Comparative Review of Inquiry-Based, Active, Cooperative, and Flipped-Classroom Approaches

Abstract

Models of teaching remain central to instructional design in higher education, yet the field lacks a consolidated comparative account of how well competing models actually perform against one another. This review synthesizes evidence on the effectiveness of five widely researched models—inquiry training, active learning, cooperative learning, the flipped classroom, and problem-based learning—drawing on meta-analytic and primary quantitative studies published between 1991 and 2025. Across models, effect sizes on learner achievement range from small (g ≈ 0.05–0.29 for flipped-classroom and problem-based formats) to large (d ≈ 0.7–1.9 for inquiry training), with cooperative and general active-learning approaches occupying a moderate middle band (d ≈ 0.47–0.54). The review identifies four recurring mechanisms—active engagement, constructivist cognitive processing, structured feedback, and metacognitive reflection—that explain effectiveness across otherwise dissimilar models, while implementation fidelity, intervention duration, comparison-group rigor, and learner educational level emerge as the principal moderators of observed magnitude. A persistent gap concerns higher education specifically: most primary evidence, particularly for inquiry training, derives from school-level populations, leaving conclusions about undergraduate and graduate contexts comparatively tentative. The review concludes that no single model is universally superior; effectiveness is contingent on alignment between model, discipline, duration, and learner readiness, and it proposes a synthesized framework to guide model selection in higher education practice.