The report reviews existing research studies and frameworks that are relevant to the components and routes to improvement of teacher effectiveness and identified four priorities for teachers who want to help their student learn more:
- understand the content they are teaching and how it is learnt
- create a supportive environment for learning
- manage the classroom to maximise the opportunity to learn
- present content, activities and interactions that activate their students’ thinking
The review is the first stage of a wider project to create a ‘Toolkit’ that will:
- personalise the curriculum for teacher learning (according to ages and subjects taught, school context and student characteristics, current profile of expertise, etc.)
- develop systems and instruments to provide formative, actionable feedback that helps teachers to focus their learning, evaluate their impact and track their professional growth
- coordinate networks for peer and expert support to generate, share and apply evidence about the most effective ways to improve
Main Points:
Understanding the Content
Great teachers understand the content they are teaching and how it is learnt. This means teachers should have deep and fluent knowledge and flexible understanding of the content they are teaching and how it is learnt, including its inherent dependencies. They should have an explicit repertoire of well-crafted explanations, examples and tasks for each topic they teach.
- Content knowledge, of a deep and connected kind is required.
- Teachers need to know how different ideas in the subject or domain are related, similar, sequential, analogous or distinct. *They need to have thought about, and have good answers to, the kinds of ‘Why?’ and ‘What would happen if…?’ questions that students may ask and that teachers themselves should ask to promote connected and higher-order thinking.
- Pedagogical content knowledge involves knowing and being able to explain the dependencies and connections among different parts of the curriculum, and hence the requirements for sequencing.
- Knowledge of curriculum tasks and activities, and of standard explanations, models, analogies, representations and examples to explain and convey hard ideas.
- Knowledge of student thinking and misconceptions - anticipate and address these misconceptions directly and explicitly, both by exposing and challenging the misconception and by presenting the correct conception clearly and directly.
Creating a supportive environment
Great teachers create a supportive environment for learningA supportive environment is characterised by relationships of trust and respect between students and teachers, and among students. It is one in which students are motivated, supported and challenged and have a positive attitude towards their learning.
- Teachers should show respect and sensitivity towards the individual needs, emotions, culture and beliefs of their students. That respect should also be reciprocated.
- Classrooms where students respect and pay attention to each other’s thoughts, and feel safe to express their own thoughts, are more productive for learning.
- Students who are motivated to study, learn, engage and succeed are more likely to do so. Self-determination theory (SDT) prioritises the kinds of motivation that support the individual’s wellbeing and development as much as their task performance.
- Teachers should demand high standards of work and behaviour from all students, being careful not to convey lower expectations for any subgroup, especially one where a common stereotype may be negative.
Maximising opportunity to learn
Great teachers manage the classroom to maximise opportunity to learnNo model of teaching effectiveness could be complete without classroom management: managing the behaviour and activities of a class of students is what teachers do. Yet is it also controversial. Different teachers have very different styles, values and priorities.
- Great teachers plan activities and resources so that everything works smoothly.
- Rules and expectations should be clearly understood and accepted by all students.
- Preventing and responding to disruption - with great teaching disruption is not seen, but this is often because the teacher has successfully anticipated and prevented it happening. A key part of this skill is that the teacher signals their awareness, perhaps with just a look or movement, so students feel they are under surveillance.