Chapter 9 Effective Teachers and the Process of Teaching

1. Chapter 9Effective Teachers and the Process of Teaching • Themes of the chapter • Thoughtful learning can be fostered by high-quality teaching • Teachers’ knowledge of the subject matter they are teaching and their beliefs about themselves, their students, and the processes of learning and teaching have important influences on classroom practices and problems

2. Guiding Questions • Why are teachers’ beliefs important? • How do teachers’ knowledge of subject matter understanding and general knowledge of teaching translate into ways to teach specific material to students? • How do expert teachers differ from novice teachers? (See next slide for more questions)

3. Guiding Questions (continued) • What are some general teacher-centered approaches to teaching? • What kinds of teaching tactics can teachers use? • How can teachers use homework effectively? • How can teachers plan to meet the needs of students who have special needs? • How can teachers develop the expertise necessary for working in culturally diverse settings?

4. What Is Teaching? • Expertise in the subject matter being taught • Belief in one’s ability to teach and students’ abilities to learn • Sensitivity to the needs of different kinds of learners • Planning and organizational skills • Interpersonal and leadership skills • A great deal of hard work

5. Teaching • The interpersonal effort to help learners acquire knowledge, develop skill, and realize their potential

6. An Integrated Model of Child/Teacher/Curriculum

7. Sources of Teacher Beliefs • Personal experience – activities, events, and understandings of everyday life • Experience with schooling and instruction – experiences when they were students • Experience with formal knowledge – knowledge from academic subjects and pedagogical knowledge from teacher education programs

8. Example of Inaccurate Teacher Beliefs • Preservice teachers believing in student autonomy • First year teachers becoming more controlling • Custodial – a term that refers to an approach to classroom management that views the teacher’s role as primarily maintaining an orderly classroom

9. Content, Pedagogical, and Pedagogical Content Knowledge • Content knowledge – knowledge about the subject matter being taught • Pedagogical knowledge – knowledge about how to teach • Pedagogical content knowledge – knowledge about how to make subject matter understandable to students

10. Expert Teachers • View classroom as collection of individuals • Plan more globally and for longer periods • Have a more complex view of instructional options • Run a more smoothly operating classroom • Evaluate students more often and in ways closely related to content of instruction • Attribute failure to problems with planning, organization, or execution • Hold complex ideas about the role of students’ existing knowledge and make use of it during instruction

11. Phases of Development of Expertise • Decreased focus on self-as-teacher; increased focus on the needs of learners • Enhanced knowledge about learners • Automation of classroom routines and procedures • Growth in problem-solving skills

12. Teachers’ Self-Efficacy • Self-efficacy – one’s judgment of how well he or she will cope with a situation, given the skills one possesses and the circumstances one faces • Teaching efficacy – a teacher’s judgment of, or confidence in, his or her capacity to cope with the teaching situation in ways that bring about desired outcomes

13. Developing Self-Efficacy • Verbal persuasion, personal history, and vicarious experience • Opportunities to experience successful coping • Observation of other teachers and imitating their behaviors

14. Self-Efficacy and Learners with Special Needs • Teachers with a high sense of self-efficacy are less likely to refer students for evaluation than are teachers with a low sense of self-efficacy • Referral – educators’ shorthand for the recommendation that a child be evaluated for possible special education classification

15. Working in Culturally Different Contexts • How teachers can relate to students with different backgrounds from their own • How to create an environment in which students work well together and care about each other • How to work with students in poverty and whose parents are not present at home • How to work with students who do not speak English • How to work with students with special needs

16. Developing a Multicultural Curriculum • Create learning goals and objectives that incorporate multicultural aspects • Include a wide variety of ethnic groups in curriculum materials in variety of ways • Introduce different ethnic groups and their contributions • Include examples from different ethnic experiences to explain subject matter • Show how multicultural content, goals, and activities intersect with subject matter standards

17. Planning • Instructional goals • Using goals in classroom teaching • Translating goals into plans

18. Instructional Goals • A statement of what is being worked for or desired in instruction • Behavioral objectives – statements of goals for instruction that clearly set forth what a student will be able to do as a result of the instruction • Educational objectives – explicit statements of what students are expected to be able to do as a result of instruction

19. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives • Taxonomy – a classification of objects according to a set of principles or laws • Knowledge • Comprehension • Application • Analysis • Synthesis • Evaluation

20. Your Turn • Choose an instructional topic and compose a question on that topic for each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy

21. Bloom Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Evaluation Synthesis Anderson/Krathwohl Remembering Understanding Applying Analyzing Evaluating Creating Two Frameworks for Objectives

22. New Approaches to Goals • Standards – comprehensive set of educational objectives organized by subject matter and grade level • Achievement targets – well-specified statements of what teachers want to accomplish in a particular lesson or set of lessons • Products – student creations that reflect their skills as well as their ability to create something new

23. Stiggins’s Taxonomy • Knowledge • Reasoning • Skills • Products • Attitudes and dispositions

24. Translating Goals into Plans • Setting objectives or goals • Choosing a way to achieve those goals • Making decisions concerning the details of the approach • Making changes as the plan is carried out • Evaluating the plan after it has been carried out in order to be better prepared the next time around

25. Planning on and Planning for: Instructional Time • Block scheduling – an approach to scheduling at the middle and high school levels that allows for larger blocks of time to be schedules for subjects, usually with fewer blocks per week

26. Levels of Planning for Instruction • Plan for the year • Make seasonal plans for the year • Plan instructional units • Have daily lesson plans

27. Lesson Plan Evaluation • What is the teacher trying to accomplish? • What assumptions does this plan make about the students? • How does the lesson plan view students as learners? • Could I teach this lesson from these plans? Would I want to? • Are the assessment procedures adequate? • How likely are students to respond positively to this plan? • Is the level of detail too fine or too broad?

28. Lesson Study • Team of teachers who are teaching the same curriculum work together to think about how best to approach the lesson • One member of the team teaches the lesson while others observe and collect data • Together, they analyze the data • They refine and reteach the lesson

29. Approaches to Teaching • Promoting meaningful learning • Discovery learning • Direct instruction

30. Promoting Meaningful Learning • Reception learning – learner acquires knowledge of the structure of knowledge set forth by the teacher • Discovery-based learning – students work on their own to grasp a concept • Expository teaching – teacher provides an exposition of how a particular set of information is structured and organized

31. Expository Learning • Advance organizer – broad introductory statement of the information that will be presented in a lesson • Comparative organizer – broad statement that reminds the student of what he or she already knows • Expository organizer – broad statement of what is to be learned in a lesson

32. Discovery Learning • Inductive reasoning – abstraction of a general principle from a variety of examples • Guided discovery – students work under the guidance of a capable partner to grasp a concept or understand a lesson

33. Direct Instruction • A systematic form of instruction that is used for mastery of basic skills and facts • Review the previous material • Present new material • Provide guided practice • Provide feedback • Provide independent practice • Review weekly and monthly

34. Teaching Tactics • Providing explanations • Providing feedback • Asking questions

35. Providing Explanations • Common explanations – how to do something • Disciplinary explanations – from specific disciplines and formal in structure • Self-explanations – explanations you can rehearse to yourself to make sure you understand something • Instructional explanations – provided by teachers, texts, or other materials

36. Your Turn • Write an example of each kind of explanation. Tell how they are different and how they are alike. How might these different explanations influence student learning?

37. Providing Feedback • Feedback can enhance: • Response learning – tasks in which the learner provides a simple response to a stimulus • Concept learning – learning a new rule for classification by generating the rule from examples • Skill learning – acquiring a new procedure

38. Asking Questions: Five Procedural Prompts that Assist Students • Signal words like who, what, where* • Generic questions or generic question stems* • Main idea • Questions that vary in complexity • Story grammar categories like setting *Most effective prompts

39. Taxonomy of Homework • Homework based on material taught in class - review, practice, rehearsal • Homework based on new material – preparation, experience • Homework that expand on and extends beyond the classroom learning – exploration, learning experience, expression

40. Developing Homework Policies • How much homework will I assign each night? • When and how should students hand it in? • What will I do when students do not do homework? • How will I respond when students hand in homework late? (See next slide for more questions)

41. Homework Policies (continued) • What kind of help can the student seek with the homework? • What is the proper role of the parent with regard to homework? • What help can students expect from me? • How will I evaluate the homework? • What should students do if they often have difficulty with homework?

42. Getting Homework Done • Tactics to increase rates of homework completion: • Purpose • Policy • Design • Support • Feedback

43. Homework Strategies for Student with Disabilities • Give clear and appropriate assignments • Make home work accommodations • Ensure clear home/school communication • Teach study skills • Use a homework calendar

44. Homework: Cultural and Socioeconomic Differences • Economic difficulties • Extended, blended, and other types of families need to be considered • Language differences can hinder communication • Cultural differences can go hand-in-hand with language differences

45. Guiding Questions Revisited • Why are teachers’ beliefs important? • How do teachers’ knowledge of subject matter understanding and general knowledge of teaching translate into ways to teach specific material to students? • How do expert teachers differ from novice teachers? (See next slide for more questions)

46. Guiding Questions Revisited (continued) • What are some general teacher-centered approaches to teaching? • What kinds of teaching tactics can teachers use? • How can teachers use homework effectively? • How can teachers plan to meet the needs of students who have special needs? • How can teachers develop the expertise necessary for working in culturally diverse settings?