First principles of brilliant teaching
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This document summarizes key principles of brilliant teaching from a conference presentation. It discusses 5 principles: 1) knowing your subject matter, 2) selecting and structuring content, 3) connecting to prior student knowledge, 4) using metaphors and examples, and 5) challenging students with high expectations. Specific techniques are described like formative blogging assignments, connecting course content to students' emotions, and adapting teaching methods across disciplines. The presentation also covered theories of teaching, signature pedagogies of different fields, and myths about innate teaching abilities.
![How much are students actually
learning in contemporary higher
education? The answer, for many
undergraduates, is not much.
Do universities reproduce or
reduce inequality among students
from different family
backgrounds?
[There is ] evidence of limited
learning and persistent
inequality…](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/firstprinciplesofbrilliantteaching-161005154137/85/First-principles-of-brilliant-teaching-35-320.jpg)
First principles of brilliant teaching
- 1. First principles of brilliant teaching #Brillteach101 Tansy Jessop SLTI @tansyjtweets 5 October 2016
- 2. Where are you on the continuum? Strongly agree Strongly disagree
- 3. Poster cruising • Have a wander around the room • Mark posters with your view of each statement • There are no right or wrong answers
- 4. Anything light up for you?
- 5. Myths about the great teachers
- 6. 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.
- 7. Session outline 1. Defining brilliant teaching 2. Four metaphors about teaching 3. Five principles from Escalante 4. From generic to disciplinary: signature pedagogies 5. Weaving in teaching tactics….
- 8. 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?
- 11. Fox’s 4 personal theories of teaching • Implicit, tacit, below the surface • ‘Apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie 1975) • Linked to disciplinary pedagogies
- 12. Transfer theory
- 13. Shaping theory
- 15. Growing theory
- 16. Fox’s 4 personal theories of teaching
- 17. Take five • Which theory resonates most for you and why? • How do these theories intersect with disciplines?
- 18. Five principles of brilliant teaching
- 19. The Big Five 1. Know your subject matter 2. Select, simplify, structure and organise content 3. Connect with students’ prior knowledge 4. Use metaphor, analogy, story, example, demonstration 5. Challenge students with high expectations
- 20. The over-stuffed curriculum (P1 and P2)
- 21. 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).
- 22. 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.
- 23. 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
- 24. Connecting with prior experience and knowledge (P3) Student learning is deepest when the content or skills being learned are personally meaningful
- 25. 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
- 26. 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?
- 27. 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
- 28. Use jottings and writing exercises more in class! Thinking power x 30 Teaching for introverts http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ry369 Ideas for making connections
- 29. 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
- 30. 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)
- 31. 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
- 33. 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.
- 34. Set challenging and high expectations (P5) • Chickering and Gamson 1987 • Gibbs 2004 • Arum and Josipa 2011
- 35. How much are students actually learning in contemporary higher education? The answer, for many undergraduates, is not much. Do universities reproduce or reduce inequality among students from different family backgrounds? [There is ] evidence of limited learning and persistent inequality…
- 36. 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
- 37. 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
- 38. Formative Blogging Case Study Problem Are students reading academic texts? Symptom Silent Seminars Cure Weekly blogging on academic texts Impacts Growth in writing confidence, complex thinking, reading and engagement
- 39. 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.
- 40. Signature pedagogies In 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? • Share your partner’s insights about their discipline with the group
- 41. 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?
- 42. References Arum, 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.
Editor's Notes
- #2: Technical rational apparatus – stakeholder, risk analysis etc
- #4: Implicit theories of teaching
- #13: The lecture is an occasion where the notes of lecturer become the notes of the students without passing through the minds of either. Language of ‘covering material’ Should we be surprised?
- #14: The exercises have specific predetermined outcomes and the success of students in practical work is judged according to how closely they approach these specified models. Curiously, in science laboratories these exercises are often called 'experiments'. Anything less like a real scientific experiment, with all its essential uncertainty and unpredictability, would be hard to imagine…. we have a 'static' model of knowledge and an approach to teaching and learning as a 'closed system‘ (Fox 1983)
- #15: Education is seen as a journey and the subject being studied represents one of many interesting and challenging areas of countryside to be explored. There is nothing flat about this terrain and the effort of climbing the hills is rewarded by the views from the tops. These views enable the traveller to see, in perspective, features previously only experienced out of context. ….The teacher can help others to make sense of the views from the tops and he often finds himself learning something new himself--perhaps when one of his students from a slightly different perspective, points out something that he himself has never seen before.
- #16: growing theories are commoner in subjects where attitudes, activities and personal skills are more important than detailed knowledge--such as fine art, drama, management and subjects associated with the caring professions.
- #21: Lizzio Wilson and Simon 2130 students; heavy workloads lead to surface learning
- #26: The Swedes didn’t just give us IKEA
- #28: Lizzio Wilson and Simon 2130 students; heavy workloads lead to surface learning
- #29: Lizzio Wilson and Simon 2130 students; heavy workloads lead to surface learning
- #30: (eg. learning environment pics); creative and critical; rational and intuitive
- #31: (eg. learning environment pics); creative and critical; rational and intuitive teachers must manage levels of anxiety so that teaching produces learning rather than paralyzing the participants with terror.
- #36: Exeter economics/