Transcript A Synthesis of Generic Guidelines for Good Teaching

A Synthesis of Generic
Guidelines for Good Teaching
Summer Neel
Advanced Educational Psychology
Spring 2012
Effective teaching
begins with diversity
The key to a well rounded and
effective teaching environment is
rooted in the educator’s ability to
utilize multiple theories, instructional
practices and schema to create a
consistent and comprehensive
system of teaching
12 principles of good teaching
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Supportive Classroom Climate
Opportunity to Learn
Curricular Alignment
Establishing Learning Orientations
Coherent Content
Thoughtful Discourse
Practice and Application Activities
Scaffolding Students Task Engagement
Strategy Teaching
Cooperative Learning
Goal-Oriented Assessment
Achievement Expectations
Supportive Classroom Climate
 Students learn best within cohesive and caring
learning communities
 Research has shown
 Productive learning occurs when there is an ethics of
caring evoked
 The supportive classroom promotes student
responsibility and teacher commitment
Supportive Classroom Climate
Implementation
 To create a climate for molding their students into a
cohesive and supportive learning community,
teachers need to engage in
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Conducive physical environment
Effective Lesson content and delivery
Positive interpersonal relationship with students
Promoting Positive peer relationships
Consistent organization & behavior expectations
Opportunity to Learn
 Students learn more when
 most of the available time is allocated to curriculum related
activities
 the classroom management system emphasizes maintaining
their engagement in those activities
 Research indicates that teachers who approach
management as a process of establishing an effective
learning environment tend to be more successful than
teachers who emphasize their roles as disciplinarians
Opportunities to Learn in the
Classroom
 There are more things worth learning than there is time
available to teach them, and so it is essential that limited
classroom time be used efficiently
 Effective teachers convey a sense of the purposefulness of
schooling and the importance of getting the most out of
the available time
 Successful teachers are clear and consistent in articulating
their expectations
 These teachers spend a great deal of time actively
instructing by elaborating content for students and helping
them to interpret and respond to it
Curricular Alignment
 All components of the curriculum are aligned to
create a cohesive program for accomplishing
instructional purposes and goals
 Research indicates that educational policy-makers,
textbook publishers and teachers often become so
focused on content coverage or learning activities
that they lose sight of the larger purposes and goals
that are supposed to guide curriculum planning
Curricular Alignment in the classroom
 A curriculum is not an end in itself; it is a means of helping
students to learn what is considered essential for
preparing them to fulfill adult roles in society and realize
their potential as individuals
 Goals in planning curriculum and instruction should
develop capabilities that students can use in their lives
inside and outside school, both now and in the future
 Content developed with these goals in mind is likely to be
retained as meaningful learning that is internally coherent,
well connected with other meaningful learning and
accessible for application
Establishing Learning Orientations
 Teachers can prepare students for learning by providing an
initial structure to clarify intended outcomes
 Teachers must also cue desired learning strategies
 Research indicates the value of establishing a learning
orientation by beginning lessons and activities with advance
organizers or previews
 These introductions facilitate students’ learning by
 communicating the nature and purpose of the activity
 connecting it to prior knowledge
 cueing the kinds of student responses that the activity requires
Establishing Learning Orientations in
the Classroom
 Advance organizers
 orient students to what they will be learning before the
instruction begins
 characterize the general nature of the activity
 give students a structure within which to understand and
connect the specifics that will be presented by the teacher or
text
 Such knowledge of the nature of the activity and the
structure of its content helps students to focus on the
main ideas and order their thoughts effectively
Establishing Learning Orientations in
the Classroom
 Other ways to help students learn with a sense of
purpose and direction include
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calling attention to the activity’s goals
overviewing main ideas or major steps to be elaborated
pretests that sensitize students to main points to learn
pre-questions that stimulate their thinking about the
topic
Coherent Content
 To facilitate meaningful learning and retention, content is
explained clearly
 Content is developed with emphasis on its structure and
connections
 Research indicates that networks of connected knowledge
structured around powerful ideas can be learned with
understanding and retained in forms that make them accessible
for application
 In contrast, disconnected bits of information are likely to be
learned only through low-level processes such as rote
memorizing, and most of these bits either are soon forgotten or
are retained in ways that limit their accessibility
skills are likely to be
learned and used
effectively if taught as
strategies adapted to
particular purposes and
situations
Coherent Content in the Classroom
 Whether in textbooks or in teacher-led instruction,
information is easier to learn to the extent that it is coherent
 the sequence of ideas or events makes sense and the
relationships among them are apparent
 Content is most likely to be organized coherently when it is
 selected in a principled way
 guided by ideas about what students should learn from studying the
topic
Combining Curricular Alignment
& Coherent Content
 In order to enable students to construct meaningful
knowledge that they can access and use in their lives
outside of school teachers need to:
 retreat from breadth of coverage in order to allow time to
develop the most important content in greater depth
 represent this important content as networks of connected
information structured around powerful ideas
 develop the content with a focus on explaining these
important ideas and the connections among them
 follow up with authentic learning activities and assessment
measures that provide students with opportunities to
develop and display learning that reflects the intended
outcomes of the instruction
Thoughtful Discourse
 Questions are planned to engage students in
sustained discourse structured around powerful ideas
 Questions to stimulate students to process and
reflect on content, recognize relationships among
and implications of its key ideas, think critically about
it, and use it in problem solving, decision making or
other higher-order applications
 Questions should reflect sustained and
thoughtful development of key ideas
Tell me why you
think that is true?
Well, First, I was
reading the other
day that ……
Thoughtful Discourse in the
Classroom
 Questions should reflect sustained and thoughtful development of
key ideas
 In the early stages of units when new content is introduced and
developed, more time is spent in interactive lessons featuring
teacher/student discourse than in independent work on
assignments
 The teacher plans sequences of questions designed to
 develop the content systematically
 help students to construct understandings by relating it to their prior
knowledge
 Create a dialogue about content
 forms and cognitive levels of these questions should be suited to
the instructional goals in the curriculum
Thoughtful Discourse in the
Classroom
 Thoughtful discourse features sustained examination of a
small number of related topics, in which students
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develop explanations
make predictions
debate alternative approaches to problems
consider the content’s implications or applications
 The teacher presses students to clarify or justify their
assertions, rather than accepting them indiscriminately
 In addition to providing feedback, the teacher encourages
students
 to explain or elaborate on their answers
 to comment on classmates’ answers
Practice and Application Activities
 Students need sufficient opportunities to practice
and apply what they are learning, and to receive
improvement-oriented feedback
 Research indicates that skills practiced to a peak of
smoothness and automaticity tend to be retained
indefinitely, whereas skills that are mastered only
partially tend to deteriorate
There are 3 main ways teachers help
their students to learn
 they present information, explain concepts
and model skills
 they ask questions and lead their students
in discussion about content being studied
 they engage students in activities or
assignments that provide them with
opportunities to practice or apply what they
are learning
Practice and Application Activities in
the Classroom
 Practice is one of the most important yet least appreciated aspects
of learning in classrooms
 Successful practice involves polishing skills that are already established
at rudimentary levels in order to make them smoother, more efficient
and more automatic
 Most practice should be embedded within application contexts that
feature conceptual understanding of knowledge and self regulated
application of skills
 Opportunity to learn in school can be extended through homework
assignments that are realistic in length and difficulty given the
students’ abilities to work independently
 practice must involve opportunities not only to apply skills but also
to receive timely feedback
Scaffolding Students Task
Engagement
 The teacher provides whatever assistance students need to
enable them to engage in learning activities productively
 Research on learning tasks indicates the effectiveness of
assignments is enhanced when teachers
 first explain the work and go over practice examples with
students
 then release them to work independently
 circulate to monitor progress and provide help when needed
 Teaching within the students’ Zones of Proximal Development
(ZPD) implies that students
 will need explanation, modeling, coaching and other forms of
assistance
 teacher structuring and scaffolding will be faded as the students’
expertise develops
Scaffolding Students Task
Engagement in the Classroom
 if they are to have their full impact activities need to be
 effectively presented
 monitored
 followed up
 Teachers must prepare students for an activity in advance
 provide guidance and feedback during the activity
 and lead the class in post-activity reflection afterwards
 Teachers also need to assess performance for completion and
accuracy and reteach when necessary
 Full effectiveness cannot be reached unless the assignments are
followed by reflection or debriefing activities
Strategy Teaching
 The teacher models and instructs students in learning
and self-regulation strategies
 Research shows that Strategy teaching is especially
important for less able students who otherwise might
not come to understand the value of consciously
monitoring, self-regulating and reflecting upon their
learning processes
Strategy Teaching in the Classroom
 Many students do not develop effective learning and
problem solving strategies on their own but can
acquire them through modeling and explicit
instruction from their teachers
 Strategy teaching is likely to be most effective when
it includes cognitive modeling
 the teacher thinks out loud while modeling use of the
strategy
general study skills and learning strategies
that teachers can model for their students
 Rehearsal
 repeating material to remember it more effectively
 Elaboration
 putting material into one’s own words and relating it to prior
knowledge
 Organization
 outlining material to highlight its structure and remember it
 Comprehension Monitoring
 keeping track of the strategies used to construct
understandings and the degree of success achieved with
them, and adjusting strategies accordingly
 Affect Monitoring
 Maintaining concentration and task focus
 minimizing performance anxiety and fear of failure
Cooperative Learning
 Students often benefit from working in pairs or small
groups to construct understandings or help one another
master skills
 Research indicates that there is often much to be gained
by arranging for students to collaborate in pairs or small
groups
 Co-operative learning promotes affective and social
benefits
 Co-operative learning creates the potential for cognitive
and metacognitive benefits by engaging students in
discourse that requires them to make their task-related
information-processing and problem-solving strategies
explicit
Cooperative Learning in the
Classroom
 replaces individual seatwork time with opportunities
for students to work together in pairs or small groups
on follow-up practice and application activities
 Co-operative learning can be used with activities
ranging from drill and practice to learning facts and
concepts, discussion and problem solving
 It is perhaps most valuable as a way of engaging
students in meaningful learning with authentic tasks
in a social setting
Cooperative Learning in the
Classroom
 Some forms of co-operative learning call for students
to help one another achieve individual learning goals
 Co-operative learning methods are most likely to
enhance learning outcomes if they combine group
goals with individual accountability
Goal-Oriented Assessment
 The teacher uses a variety of formal and informal
assessment methods to monitor progress towards
learning goals
 Research has determined that well-developed curriculum
includes strong and functional assessment components
 These assessment components are aligned with the
curriculum’s goals
 They are integrated with its content, instructional methods
and learning activities
 They are designed to evaluate progress towards the major
intended outcomes
Goal-Oriented Assessment in the
Classroom
 Effective teachers use assessment for evaluating students’ progress
in learning and for planning curriculum improvements, not just for
generating grades
 Good assessment includes data from many sources and addresses
the full range of goals or intended outcomes
 Assessment should be treated as an ongoing and integral part of
each instructional unit
 Results should be scrutinized to identify
 learner needs
 misunderstandings or misconceptions that may need attention
 potential adjustment in curriculum goals, instructional materials or
teaching plans
 weaknesses in the assessment practices themselves
Achievement Expectations
 The teacher establishes and follows through on
appropriate expectations for learning outcomes
 Research indicates that effective schools feature
 strong academic leadership that produces consensus on
goal priorities
 commitment to instructional excellence
 Positive teacher attitudes towards students
expectations regarding students’ abilities to master the
curriculum
Achievement Expectations
in the Classroom
 Teachers’ expectations concerning what their students are
capable of accomplishing shape
 what teachers attempt to elicit from their students
 what the students come to expect from themselves
 It is helpful if teachers set goals for the class and for individuals
in terms of floors (minimally acceptable standards), not ceilings
 all students should be held accountable for participating in
lessons and learning activities and for turning in careful and
completed work on assignments
 teachers should emphasize continuous progress relative to
previous levels of mastery rather than how students compare
with their classmates or with standardized test norms
Teachers are likely to be
most successful when
they think in terms of
stretching students’ minds
by stimulating
them and encouraging
them to achieve as much
as they can,
not in terms of ‘protecting’
them from failure or
embarrassment
References
Geneva Switzerland. UNESCO. International Bureau of
Education. By Jere Brophy. Web.
<www.ibe.unesco.org/.../EducationalPracticesSeriesPdf/pr
ac01e.pdf>.
Alexander, Patricia A., and Philip H. Winne. Handbook of
Educational Psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2006.
Print.