- How to we learn? Chapter 1
In order to pass into the LTM, information must first be processed and structured in the STM so that it ‘makes sense’ to the student. The process of structuring new information takes time; but it is time well spent, because students find it almost impossible to remember something that they do not properly understand.
If a student is given new information too quickly, he or she will not have time to process it properly in the STM, so the information will not be retained. Experimenters tried halving their normal speech rate to students with learning difficulties, and found that the students’ retention was doubled
What we call ‘forgetting’ is the brain’s built-in technique for ensuring that it is not cluttered up with useless knowledge. Its aim is to remember nothing but useful information. Unfortunately, however, it tends to consider a fact or idea ‘useful’ in the long term only if it comes across it regularly. Forgetting and remembering, then, are not under direct conscious control; they are automatic. There is only one way to ensure that something is remembered: repetition. As teachers we must make sure that any knowledge we want our students to remember is recalled and used frequently
Don’t cover new material too quickly. Also, leave a silence after an important sentence, so as to leave time for it to ‘sink in’
Activities that make students use – and hence develop a personal restructuring of – the ideas you are trying to teach them will make them learn more efficiently than passive activities such as listening.
The cognitivist school looks at the thinking processes involved when we learn. The behaviourist school ignores these, and looks at how teacher behaviour and other external factors influence learning. The humanistic school has an interest in education as a means of meeting the learner’s emotional and developmental needs
What does it mean to ‘understand’ a concept? It means to be able to explain it in terms of other concepts. This cognitivist theory called ‘constructivism’ is now almost universally accepted by all experts on the brain or the mind.
If students cannot evaluate then they cannot take even the first steps towards their own improvement
Enjoyable tasks create more participation, concentration, persistence, and more cognitive engagement
the principles of learning according to the behaviourist school; Learners require some reward or ‘reinforcement’ for learning, Reinforcement should follow the desired behaviour as soon as possible, Learning proceeds step by step rather than happening all at once, and is strengthened by repeated success
Reinforcement should follow the desired behaviour as soon as possible If a rat pushes a lever and food drops immediately into its cage, then it quickly learns to press the lever for food. If reinforcement is delayed, learning takes longer.
If a learner is never successful in your lessons, he or she will soon give up.
Humanist psychologists believe that fear of failure and rejection produces maladjustment. Either learners play it safe and withdraw, feeling crushed and lacking in self-confidence as a result; or they hit out in retaliation, becoming disruptive. Either way, pupils, and their learning, are damaged.
The humanistic school believes that emotional factors, and personal growth and development, are the highest values, and it argues that these are ignored in a society which is unduly materialistic, objective and mechanistic.
learners should be allowed to pursue their own interests and talents in order to develop themselves as fully as possible in their own unique direction.
The materials, methods and rate of learning are also customised to meet the needs of the individual.
A HMI report on Summerhill School, which was run by A. S. Neil on humanistic principles, said the pupils were ‘full of life and zest and of boredom and apathy there was no sign’
‘We think of the mind as a storehouse to be filled when we should be thinking of it as an instrument to be used.’ J. W. Gardener
Teachers’ tests, it is argued, encourage rote memorising and working for grades rather than real learning and personal development
There are now hundreds of thousands of classroom trials of teaching methods, showing that, regardless of your subject and the academic level at which you teach, the best results are gained by active learning on challenging tasks, including dialogue and informative feedback on how well the task was done.
‘Coverage’ of detail should never have priority over deep understanding.
Studies show that what we as teachers do is overwhelmingly more influential than what we say. Setting an example in this way is called ‘modelling’.
what is obvious to the teacher is rarely obvious to all the students
Most students rightly value practice very highly as a method of learning. Unfortunately, many teachers do not rate it so highly as a method of teaching!
The ‘check and correct’ phase also provides vital feedback for the teacher. Is learning taking place? Am I teaching too quickly? Are they doing it properly?
- Teaching is a two way process - chapter 4
- • Eye contact. That is, sustained eye contact while you are speaking, and for enhanced effect, before and after you have spoken.
- • Posing questions. It is often more powerful to put the student ‘on the spot’ by posing a question than to deliver a lecture. However, this is sometimes best done when you have the student alone. For example, ‘Why haven’t you started?’
If teaching were a one-way process, we would learn perfectly satisfactorily from books and videos, and teachers would just be an unnecessary irritation.
If students do not want to learn, their learning efficiency will be so low that they may learn virtually nothing. If you know how to motivate students, you can hugely increase their learning rate.
This is the main motivator for most students (even the not very motivated ones). We all have our self-esteem raised by learning successfully; it gives us a sense of achievement. This is why students are sometimes competitive about their learning
- Praise and criticism - chapter 6
giving the criticism in a forward looking and positive manner (rather than in a backward-looking and negative one). For example: ‘Next time check the spelling’, not ‘There are lots of spelling mistakes here’, and not ‘Next time, don’t make so many spelling mistakes’, which is forward looking, but negative.
If you imagine that learning is like rolling a rock up a slope, then learners need their feedback to be referenced to where they are on the slope, not to where someone else is. That is, feedback needs to be non-judgemental.
Recognise partial success. You should look for something positive in every piece of work; you will often find something right if you look very carefully
Recognise the ‘process’ as well as the ‘product’. Comment positively on how they worked, as well as on what they did. Recognise effort
Some students will see public praise as a slur on their anti establishment image. However, I have yet to meet a student who will not accept praise privately!
Your students’ mistakes may leap from the page, but don’t let their successes be taken for granted.
Research shows that reinforcement (e.g. medals, praise and other rewards) is one of the teacher’s most powerful tools.
Praise should not be ego-centred, such as ‘You are very good at this’, ‘You are a very able student’, ‘I’m proud of you’. This is because ego-centred praise assumes that success is due to personal attributes rather than effective efforts to learn
Praise should not sound like a ‘reflex action’ or a habitual phrase, as if you are using praise just as a means to control them.
- Equal opportunities - chapter 7
We all have stereotypes, but we rarely see them for what they are, because they are sometimes partially true, and as a result they fall easy prey to our rationalisations and our selective memory.
The self-fulfilling prophecy. Likes, dislikes, prejudices and stereotyping would matter less if it were not for the effect of the teacher’s expectations on a student’s learning. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, in a celebrated book Pygmalion in the Classroom (1968), describe research in which they deliberately gave teachers false expectations of their pupils. They tested school pupils, and pretended to their teachers that they were able to identify pupils whose attainment was about to improve substantially. In reality, the names of the ‘improvers’ which were passed on to their teachers were chosen at random. When the researchers returned a year later, objective tests showed that those reported as ‘improvers’ had indeed improved! The authors showed that the IQs of the ‘improvers’ had increased significantly in comparison with the IQs of ‘non improvers’. Thus the prophecy, despite having no basis in fact, was ‘self-fulfilling’.
Rosenthal and Jacobson claimed, then, that a teacher’s expectations affected the student’s performance in the direction of that expectation. In other words, if a teacher thinks a student is ‘good’, they get better – and conversely, if the teacher thinks the student is ‘bad’, they get worse. Other researchers have shown the self fulfilling prophecy at work in almost every conceivable teaching situation, from nursery teaching to the teaching of adult professionals.
student efforts to learn are recognised, and judged without bias. It is not enough that they are tolerated. They must feel that they, and the groups to which they belong are fully and equally accepted and valued by you.
teachers assume that if they set the same learning activities for the whole class, and give help to anyone who asks for it, they will provide equal opportunities. This is not the case. Shy students need more help than they ask for, and the vociferous less.
because students have different needs you will find that you must treat them differently
Arabs developed our number system, the Chinese invented the suspension bridge, and Africans developed writing and the first cities; but you would hardly know this from the ethnocentric curriculum taught in most schools and colleges
If you have people in your classes for whom English is their second language, try to make your English particularly clear, and encourage peer tutoring in the first language.
- Classroom management - chapter 8
Good teacher–student relationships are based on mutual respect.
a teacher starting with a new class must insist that the students accept his or her ‘formal authority’ and they must show confidence in their ability to enforce their authority. - David Hargreaves
Why should you feel shy or apologetic about the use of the teacher’s formal authority, if you are using it for the students’ benefit? You are there to teach, and you cannot teach without order; use your authority.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. To begin with, you must act. Stride about the room as if you are absolutely confident of your ability to control the group. Appear to be self-confident, relaxed and in control – especially when you are not! This is particularly important in your first few lessons
when giving instructions the effect on the student is increased, not by shouting or anger, but by:
- • Proximity. The closer you are, the greater your effect, especially if you invade the student’s ‘personal space’ and adopt a commanding posture.
Usually, proximity and eye contact are enough without posing questions; they should certainly be tried fi rst, with a positive statement such as ‘Come on, let’s get started’, before combining them with questions
Don’t over-rely on enforcing formal authority in this way, though; interesting lessons, good relations and proper classroom management are much more effective in keeping order
never use put-downs or sarcasm
Remembering names - ‘frequency and recency’ are the clues to all memory learning. She made a plan of the class, with each student’s full name written in the place they sat. She read through this a number of times every day, even if she couldn’t remember the face to go with each name. She spent a few minutes with her plan before each lesson – and especially after it. She openly referred to her plan in the class, and always used her students’ names when she talked to them
Be patient. You will be disliked if you are desperate to be liked.
Canadian university students were asked to say which were the teaching habits they most disliked. Their answers were:
- ignoring students
- discouraging and restricting questions
- ridiculing a student’s contributions
- sarcasm, belittlement, hostility or anger
- arrogance
- interrupting a student’s contributions
- failure to promote discussion or questions.
The bridge from chaos to order in the classroom has four spans
- • effective lessons based on a well-conceived curriculum
- • good organisational skills
- • good teacher–student relationships
- • effective discipline (almost impossible to achieve without the first 3).
Whether or not you make your rules explicit, expect them to be tested, and be consistent in their enforcement.
Start on time; waiting for students who are late is unfair on those who have arrived on time, and encourages late arrival in the future.
If you don’t get silence in your first lesson you probably never will
Never start your lesson over the class’s noise. If you do, students will be given the impression that it is permissible to talk whenever they like
The first five minutes of any lesson are crucial in setting the atmosphere for the rest of the lesson. If you want to enliven a sleepy class, then start with a bang; if you want to quieten a noisy group down, start quietly
Inappropriate behaviour soon spreads, unless it is dealt with promptly; this is called the ‘ripple effect’. Students are quick to think, ‘Why should I behave if no one else is?’
- Discipline and problem solving chapter 9
If students are bored because their work is too simple, no amount of juggling of rewards and punishments will solve the problem.
Be strict but fair, and never appear flustered, even when you are angry.
Give lots of attention for learning related activities, and as little attention as possible for the disruptive attention seeking behaviour.
Never touch a student during adult-to-child talk; the student may interpret it as an attack and strike you in ‘retaliation’. Don’t show aggression. Never allow a student to walk away or turn away: ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’
There is a difference between authoritarianism and the vigorous use of legitimate authority. The former is resented and the latter is not.
class rules should be based on educational, moral and safety criteria only. They should not be seen by students as being primarily for the teacher’s benefi t. The rules and their purposes should be well understood. The rules should be equally applied to all students
Many criticise our school system because it recognises and rewards intellectual skills, but in comparison ignores, for example, manual skills, creative skills and personal skills, even though these are of great personal and economic importance. Students with these non-intellectual skills feel undervalued, and as a result tend to reject the system they feel has rejected them. Many ‘behaviour’ problems are really curriculum problems.
You might like to ask your students to prepare mind-maps for the topics you teach; research shows they aid understanding and memory
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Creativity, design and invention chapter 30
Creative activities are fun, and increase the learners’ sense of self-worth. Whatever your subject discipline, you cannot afford to ignore their motivating effect.
• To develop our students’ ability to think creatively and to solve problems.
• To enable students to use knowledge productively and meaningfully.
• To increase motivation. Creativity satisfies a deep human need to make something and to gain recognition for this. Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs places emphasis on self-esteem and self-actualisation, both of which can be satisfied by creative work. Being creative is fun.
• To provide an opportunity to explore feelings and develop skills in self-expression. There is more to education than learning facts and work-based skills. Students need to exercise their imagination, and explore feelings and perceptions. They need to make personal meanings of their experiences, and to express these to others.
Anyone can make use of the creative process, and anyone can improve their application of it. The ability to think and act creatively is a skill all students need, no matter what walk of life they follow, no matter what their hobbies or interests.
ICEDIP for creative lessons, inspiration, clarification, distillation, incubation, perspiration, evaluation
Creative work never follows a strict pattern, so it is not easy to plan for. However, consideration of the ICEDIP phases can help to make your creative lessons more productive.
Learners gain immeasurably from evaluating their own and each other’s work, especially in open discussion with peers and/or a teacher. Appeal to general principles should be encouraged, rather than simple statements of taste. Severe criticism of each other’s work is probably counterproductive.
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