First principles of brilliant teaching

First principles of brilliant teaching

#Brillteach101

Tansy JessopSLTI

@solentlearning17 January 2017

Where are you on the continuum?

Strongly agree Strongly disagree

Poster cruising

• Have a wander around the room

•Mark posters with your view of each statement

• There are no right or wrong answers

Anything light up for you?

Myths about the great teachers

Fixed vs Growth Mindsets

I’m a natural at teaching, gifted and

talented…

I can learn how to teach better, from

both my failures and successes, and especially from

feedback.

Session outline

1. Defining brilliant teaching2. Four metaphors about teaching3. Five principles from Escalante4. From generic to disciplinary: signature pedagogies5. Weaving in teaching tactics….

Your jottings

• Think back to school or university to the best teacher/ or teaching moment you experienced

• What was it about this teacher/ing that inspired you?

• How did this influence your learning and study behaviour?

Your experiential principles

Fox’s 4 personal theories of teaching

• Implicit, tacit, below the surface

• ‘Apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie 1975)

• Linked to disciplinary pedagogies

Transfer theory

Shaping theory

Travelling theory

Growing theory

Fox’s 4 personal theories of teaching

Take five

•Which theory resonates most for you and why?

• How do these theories intersect with disciplines?

Five principles of brilliant teaching

The Big Five

1. Know your subject matter 2. Select, simplify, structure and organise content3. Connect with students’ prior knowledge4. Use metaphor, analogy, story, example,

demonstration5. Challenge students with high expectations

The over-stuffed curriculum (P1 and P2)

Impacts of over stuffed-curriculum….

The scope of information that you

need to know for that module is huge…so you’re having to revise

everything - at the same time, you want to write an in-depth answer

(Student, TESTA data).

Heavy workloads lead to surface learning

(Lizzio et al, 2003).

What students say…. We just have to kind of regurgitate it … there’s no time for us to really fiddle around with it, there’s so much to cover.

The scope of information that you need to know for that module is huge…so you’re having to revise everything - at the same time, you want to write an in-depth answer.

In an exam it's really like diving in and out of books all the time and not really getting very deep into them.

The best approach from the student’s perspective is to focus on concepts. I’m sorry to break it to you, but your students are not going to remember 90 per cent – possibly 99 per cent – of what you teach them unless it’s conceptual…. when broad, over-arching connections are made, education occurs. Most details are only a necessary means to that end.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-students-lecture-to-rofessors/2013238.fullarticle#.U3orx_f9xWc.twitter

A student’s lecture to her professor

Connecting with prior experience and knowledge (P3)

Student learning is deepest when the content or skills

being learned are personally meaningful

Deep and Surface Learning (Marton and Saljo (1976)Deep Learning

• Meaning• Concepts• Active learning• Evaluate evidence• Make connections• Relationship new and

previous knowledge• Real-world learning

Surface Learning• Formulaic• Content• Passive process• Reproducing knowledge• Isolated knowledge• Teaching ‘tabula rasa’ • Artificial learning

Take two in pairs• Think of a time when

you made a connection with students about the subject/or when a teacher made that connection with you.

•What did they do? What did it look like?

Ideas for making connections

• Give students a problem or question to solve first; then teach the theory• Use prompt cards, visual stimuli, flipchart scales; digital

means (eg. padlets) to foreground knowledge and feelings about topics beforehand• Accessing prior learning is not simply saying in plenary

last week we did this, today we are doing a follow on• Find out what students know before you teach

concepts or applications

Use jottings and writing exercises more in class!Thinking power x 30Teaching for introverts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ry369

Ideas for making connections

Connect with the heart, the intuition, the emotions (P4)• Use art, drama, poetry, movies, pictures and

artefacts to connect with students

• Bridge between science and art

• Surprise and intrigue students

Why connect with the heart?

…an absence of emotional investment, even risk and fear, leads to an absence of intellectual and formational yield…

….when the emotional content of learning is well sustained, we have the real possibility of pedagogies of formation–experiences of teaching and learning that can influence the values, dispositions, and characters of students.

(Shulman 2005)

Teaching is not just a left-brain affair(Barnett & Coate 2005)

• Knowing is about content• Acting is about becoming a

historian, engineer, psychologist, or philosopher• Being is about

understanding yourself, orienting yourself and relating your knowledge and action to the world

Knowing

Being

Acting

Assessment Detectives

Why bother with different methods?

Student learning sticks more when the same content or skills are learned through

multiple methods. An approach which adopts one

pedagogic strategy is at odds with the reality of students’

multiple intelligences.

Set challenging and high expectations (P5)

• Chickering and Gamson 1987

• Gibbs 2004

• Arum and Josipa 2011

Challenging students yields huge learning gains

Significant learning gains for students who 1) Read > 40 pages a week of academic writing

2) Write > 20 pages per semester for each unit

How can we engage our students in challenges?

• Move from summative assessment as a ‘pedagogy of control’ to…

• Playful, curious, authentic engagement in learning

• …through meaningful and playful formative tasks for all students with feedback

Formative Blogging Case Study

ProblemAre students reading academic texts?SymptomSilent SeminarsCureWeekly blogging on academic textsImpactsGrowth in writing confidence, complex thinking, reading and engagement

Blogging on academic texts challenges and engages students…

Over the whole three years this is the most engaged I’ve been in my readings. I really liked doing this. I wish we had done it more. Maybe start it in the first year.

Signature pedagogiesIn pairs from different disciplines:

• Talk to your partner about what teaching looks like in your discipline. Go granular: what do lecturers typically do; what do students do?

• Why does your discipline embrace this way of teaching?

Morphing signature pedagogies

We need to avoid signatures pedagogies being marooned in their own disciplines

(Diana Laurillard, SLTCC16)

What one transferable, ‘morphing’ idea will you take away from today to try out in your discipline?

ReferencesArum, R. and Roska, J. 2011. Academically Adrift. Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.Barnett, R. and Coate, K. (2005) Engaging the Curriculum in Higher Education. Maidenhead. Open University. Chickering, A. and Gamson, Z. 1987. Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin.Dweck, C. 2012. Mindset: How you can fulfil your potential. New York. Random House.Fox, D. 1983. Personal Theories of Teaching. Studies in Higher Education. 8:2.James, A. and Brookfield, S. 2014. Engaging Imagination: Helping Students Become Creative and Reflective Thinkers. San Francisco. Jossey Bass. Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. 2014. The influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education 41:4. Jessop, T. and Tomas, C. 2016. The implications of programme assessment patterns for student learning. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. Online published 2 August 2016. Shulman, L. 2004. Pedagogies of Substance. Chapter 7 In Teaching as Community Property: essays on Higher Education. 128-139. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass. Shulman, L. 2005. Signature pedagogies in the Professions. Daedalus Summer 2005.