Enhancing Teaching & Learning: Key Strategies

1. Effective Learning and Teaching Key Principles

2. The overall purpose of this session is: • To affirm your own good practices • To develop self-reflection on them • To identify 4 key principles of effective teaching: • Self-reflection and evaluation • Effective planning • Effective communication • Effective assessment

3. The 4 purposes of self-evaluation are: • 1. To identify our strengths • 2. Minimise our weaknesses • 3. Plan ahead • 4. Evaluate the outcomes of this planning • Why? Because: • Teaching can be a solitary activity • Teaching is a moral activity • Teaching is a professional activity: standards are involved. • HOWEVER:

4. However: • If people simply reflect on their own, there will be no significant change. (Boyd, 1995) • A simple enough statement, but having profound implications for: • Objectivity (rendering the evaluation objective) • Validity (rendering the evaluation valid) • Transferability (rendering our teaching better)

5. Sources for self-reflection include: • A reflective diary • Focus groups • Other groups • Interviews • Critical friendship • Observation • Mentoring • Questionnaires • Closure (transitional and final) • One minute papers • Think/Pair/Share exercises • The muddiest point • One sentence summaries • http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/assess-2.htm

6. Reflect, Identify, Act, Evaluate • Reflect: what is happening in my practice? • Identify: where is this happening? • Act: what could be done to improve practice? • Evaluate: what evidence could be used to validate my practice?

7. Criteria for self-evaluation include: • Those generically identified in the scholarship of learning and teaching • Those contained in Framework Standards • Those contained in observation forms • Those identified through: • peer observation • critical friendship and • mentoring

8. Pause Time: • Any questions, comments or queries? • Common Weaknesses (but turn each into a positive):

9. At the start: • An absence of learning outcomes • Unclear learning outcomes • Few if any links to prior learning • Inattention to the environment for learning • Teacher dominance from the beginning: one is not going to deviate from this • Assuming too much learner knowledge

10. As class progresses: • Imbalance between content and processes • Losing sight of purpose: which is??? • Delivering content in an undifferentiated manner (very important/less important) • No formative learning (assessment): what has been understood/what not? • Limited interaction

11. Leaving students out • Ineffective pacing • Explaining is imprecise • Absence of wait time: thinking time • Whole class/didactic teaching • Not dwelling on complexities: • ‘This is complex…’ • ‘Could anyone explain why it is complex?’ • ‘It is ALSO complex because…’ • ‘Do you understand this now?’ • ‘Who could summarise?’

12. Effective teaching defined: • ‘Effective teaching refers to the extent to which the teacher employed learning outcomes successfully to bring about the intended outcomes for …the programme of study’. (Kyriacou, 1995) • ‘…effective teachers employ a range of assessment methods and techniques to monitor… understanding….’ (Hay-Mc Ber, 2000)

13. Learning Outcomes • The definition above, emphasising learning outcomes, takes us forward to the next essential, which is planning for learning. • In the context of student-centred learning, a learning outcomes model is strongly advocated internationally. • So what are learning outcomes?