11,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
The Best of the Best series brings together for the first time the most influential voices in education in a format that is concise, insightful and accessible for teachers. Keeping up with the latest and best ideas in education can be a challenge as can putting them into practice but this highly acclaimed series is here to help. Each title features a comprehensive collection of brief and accessible contributions from some of the most eminent names in education from around the world. In this third volume, Wallace and Kirkman explore the core concept of engagement an essential facet of effective learning both for learners and for teachers and share practical, realistic, cross-curricular and cross-phase strategies to make the most of these important insights. Engagement, whether of the teacher or the learners, can't be compelled and will always be contingent on the complexities of motivation. Indeed, it could be argued that it is teacher engagement which is the key to successful learning. Such engagement can be facilitated by encouraging professional dialogue between staff, or it may be that the school's high expectations alone could encourage in its teachers a sense of professional empowerment. But how do we recognise learner engagement, and what can we do to encourage it? From this compendium of expert voices emerge three important themes: that teachers' engagement and positive example should be seen as a prerequisite for establishing learner motivation; that learners' interest needs to be actively engaged, whether by meaningful challenge or by tapping into their natural curiosity; and that an expectation of appropriate behaviour must precede expectations of engagement. In this volume you will find many practical suggestions of ways to apply these ideas both in the classroom and in the staffroom. Each contributor has provided a list of further reading so you can dig deeper into the topic and, in addition, the Teacher Development Trust offer their advice on how to plan effective CPD and responsive changes to practice based on the contributors' suggestions. Contributions include: Sir Tim Brighouse argues that it is teacher engagement specifically their collaborative evaluation, dialogue and planning which is the key to successful learning. Dr Bill Rogers advocates a non-confrontational approach and illustrates how the teacher's verbal communications can be more effective when they are descriptive and assertive rather than imperative and confrontational. Vic Goddard suggests that a bottom-up, staff-led approach to CPD can be a more motivating catalyst for teacher engagement than that which is top-down and senior leadership team-led. Sue Cowley urges teachers to be responsive, adaptable, creative and flexible in the classroom and, instead of focusing on what students need to change, to take control of their teaching and decide what they need to change about themselves. Richard Gerver discusses his passionate belief that teachers and school leaders should trust in their profession and their children more and build a culture that shouts about an assumption of excellence. Andy Cope advises that teachers should focus on how they wish 'to be' in order to achieve the energy and empowerment to engage more effectively with their 'to do' list. Professor Bill Lucas focuses on the numerous ways that schools can encourage parental engagement in their children's learning. Ian Gilbert points out that in order to encourage engaged behaviour we need first to banish classroom boredom, and that the opposite of 'boring' in a learning context should be 'challenging'. Professor Susan Wallace focuses on teacher behaviour, suggesting that one of the most powerful ways of encouraging engagement is for the teacher to model the desired attitude by presenting themselves as enthusiastic and highly motivated.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Ähnliche
PRAISE FOR ENGAGEMENT
The brilliance of the Best of the Best series is in the way it opens up so many new possibilities around some of education’s most heavily used (yet often poorly understood) buzzwords: progress, feedback and, now, engagement. Incisive, provocative thinking from a wide range of experts is smartly contextualised through practical and inventive strategies devised by Wallace and Kirkman – find what resonates with you, and give it a try!
Helen Mulley, Editor, Teach Secondary
Drawing on digestible anecdotes, observations and thinking from some of the leading education experts involved in inspiring teaching and learning, Isabella Wallace and Leah Kirkman galvanise teachers to improve their practice by offering practical strategies that can be easily utilised through subtle changes to working routines.
Engagement would be a perfect accompaniment to a series of staff development sessions, within which the contributors’ ideas could be explored and related to the school’s teaching and learning culture and used to help rouse pupils to attain improved outcomes.
Colin Hill, Founder and Director, UKEdChat
This nifty little book is a hugely uplifting read – a lucky dip of entertaining, no-nonsense theory and practical strategies. It exudes warmth as the contributors share their wisdom, innovation and advice in a humorous, unthreatening and realistic way, making it a genuinely enjoyable read.
Engagement manages to appeal to both the NQT and the senior leader, and quite rightly refocuses our attention on what really matters. By distributing copies in our staff book club we have provided first-class professional development for less than the cost of a conference ticket!
Louise Laming, Head Teacher, Lincoln Castle Academy
The dynamic duo – Isabella and Leah – are at it again. This concise gold mine features an A-list of education’s most prominent voices and enables them to share their ideas and wisdom on the topic of engagement. In this volume you’ll find an array of practical strategies and advice to help teachers consolidate engagement in the classroom, all of which are applicable across the curriculum and in every phase.
There is something for everyone in Engagement, making it an essential read for both new and experienced educationalists.
Rebecca Poorhady, Learning and Development Organiser, Midlands region, Association of Teachers and Lecturers
ENGAGEMENT
ISABELLA WALLACE AND LEAH KIRKMAN
PREFACE
When some of us started teaching many moons ago, our initial preparatory training and the subsequent professional development we received didn’t really expose us to a wealth of educational thinkers, theorists or researchers. There were the staples – perhaps a pinch of Piaget here or a dusting of Dewey there … But times are changing. Today – right now – we are witnessing the dawn of a very different informational landscape. Important, knowledgeable voices in education ring out from all directions. Not simply political ones, but the voices of experts and practitioners who have devoted significant time in their lives to the education of young people or examining the issues that surround it.
This is a wonderful development. But teachers are notoriously busy. Sometimes those of us working in education are so busy that being faced with such an array of diverse opinions and theories can feel overwhelming rather than helpful. It can be hard to see how we might apply ideas to our own schools and classrooms, our own year groups or subjects.
The purpose of the Best of the Best series is to bring together – for the first time – the most influential voices in one accessible format. A compendium of the most useful advice from the most celebrated educationalists. Each title in the series focuses on a different all-important theme and features a comprehensive collection of brief and accessible contributions from the most eminent names in education internationally. In these books you have it straight from the horse’s mouth. But that’s not all: in close liaison with those experts, we have developed practical, realistic, cross-curricular and cross-phase ways to make the most of these important insights in the classroom.
We’ve translated theory into practice for you, and every edition in the series is written for teachers, by teachers. Of course, if a particular concept takes your fancy and you have time to delve a little deeper, all of our experts have pointed you in the right direction for further reading. And all of a sudden the continuing professional development (CPD) voyage seems a little less overwhelming. Contented sigh.
To top it all off, the wonderful Teacher Development Trust has outlined a collaborative group approach for teachers to read the book together and try out the ideas, as well as providing helpful guidance to school leaders on how to set up CPD around the book’s theme for maximum impact.
Have a breathtaking adventure discovering the best tips from the best people, and don’t forget to look out for other titles in the collection!
Isabella Wallace and Leah Kirkman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, we owe a huge thank you to the great educationalists who have taken time out of their busy lives to share their ideas and findings with us in this third book in the Best of the Best series.
Tremendous thanks also to David, Rosalie, Tabitha and the whole Crown House Publishing team, who continue to help us bring together the best authorities on education from all over the world. It was a project that others felt was too ambitious to achieve, but with you believing in us, we did it!
We are honoured that David Weston and the Teacher Development Trust have collaborated with us once again and offered their guidance at the end of the book.
Finally, we’d like to thank the teachers and lecturers of our youth. Some of you showed us how to engage our brains even when the topic was of little personal interest, and some of you showed us how even an interesting topic can be rendered dull with the wrong approach. We are extremely grateful to you all!
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
As fans of Star Trek may well remember, when Captain Jean-Luc Picard pointed his finger and gave the order, ‘Engage!’ his command was met with swift compliance. In education it isn’t so easy. Engagement can’t be compelled and will always be contingent on the complexities of motivation, whether of the teacher or the learners. Indeed, several of the Best of the Best contributors in this volume – such as Sir Tim Brighouse – argue that it is teacher engagement which is the key to successful learning. Such engagement can be best facilitated in schools, suggests Vic Goddard, by encouraging activities such as professional dialogue between staff; and Richard Gerver argues that an institution’s high expectations and assumption of excellence will encourage in its teachers a sense of professional engagement and empowerment. Similarly, Andy Cope – with echoes of the psychologist Eric Fromm – advises that teachers should focus on how they wish ‘to be’ in order to achieve the energy and empowerment to engage more effectively with their to-do list; and Professor Bill Lucas takes this responsibility for engagement a step further by focusing on ways that schools can encourage parental engagement.
The specific link between teacher engagement and learner motivation is argued persuasively by several contributors. Ian Gilbert, for example, stresses the need for teachers to behave in a way that makes our learners feel as though we like them. Professor Susan Wallace and Sue Cowley, too, argue that building a positive teacher–learner relationship is an essential step towards improving learner engagement.
So how do we recognise learner engagement and what else can we do to encourage it? An important point made by Sue Cowley and Dr Debra Kidd is that engagement is by no means synonymous with simply ‘having fun’. Indeed, as Ian Gilbert points out, the opposite of ‘boring’ in a learning context should be ‘challenging’. The challenge must, however, as Andy Griffith argues, be one which learners feel is achievable if they are to become properly involved and absorbed in the state of ‘flow’. Conrad Wolfram, writing specifically about motivation in maths, suggests that in addition to being achievable, the challenge must be carefully chosen: not any old abstract problem but one which learners feel motivated to solve. Sue Cowley and Debra Kidd put this another way, arguing that motivation to remain engaged will always be contingent on learners being able to see the relevance, purpose and value of what they are being asked to do. Paul Dix builds on this notion, illustrating for us the importance of finding ways to engage learners’ natural curiosity with an element of anticipation, surprise or even some mild jeopardy.
A number of the contributors in this book suggest very specific strategies for optimising learner engagement. John Davitt, for example, encourages the idea of engagement as ‘doing’ – where learners are asked to demonstrate understanding in a variety of ways and through means other than simply writing; while Mike Gershon suggests using discussion to help learners refine and articulate their ideas before they engage in a writing task. Susan Wallace, on the other hand, focuses on teacher behaviour, suggesting that one of the most effective ways of encouraging engagement is for the teacher to model the desired attitude by presenting themselves as enthusiastic and highly motivated.
A final theme that emerges among the experts’ chapters is focusing on engagement in terms of appropriate learner behaviour and attitudes. Professor Mick Waters argues that in this context a gentle ‘nudging’ towards improved behaviour – for example, through the awarding of points – will prove more effective than the use of sanctions or shaming. Dr Bill Rogers, too, advocates a non-confrontational approach and illustrates how the teacher’s verbal communications with the class can be more effective in encouraging appropriate behaviour and focus when they are descriptive and assertive rather than imperative and confrontational. Phil Beadle, however, raises the question of whether levels of engagement are largely contingent on geography and environment, suggesting that inner city schools may be facing the problem of learner disengagement on a scale not experienced elsewhere. He points out that, in the absence of other sources of motivation, the learning experience needs to be enjoyable if engagement is to be achieved.
From this compendium of expert voices, then, three important themes emerge about engagement: that teachers’ engagement and positive example should be seen as a prerequisite for establishing learner motivation; that learners’ interest needs to be actively engaged, whether by meaningful challenge or by tapping into their natural curiosity; and that an expectation of appropriate behaviour must precede expectations of engagement. And, of course, as Ian Gilbert points out, to encourage engaged behaviour we need first to banish classroom boredom. In these pages you will find many practical suggestions of ways to do exactly that.
CHAPTER 1
TEACHERS: OUR MOST POWERFUL RESOURCE
SIR TIM BRIGHOUSE
SIR TIM BRIGHOUSE started his career as a teacher in secondary schools and later became an administrator, being chief education officer for ten years in both Oxfordshire and Birmingham local authorities. He was also head of the education department at Keele University where he founded the Centre for Successful Schools. He ended his career as commissioner for London schools where he ran the London Challenge.
The best advice I ever received on how to improve teaching, and therefore schools, came from the American educator Judith Little, whose research concluded that you knew you were in a good school when the following four characteristics were present:
1. Teachers talk about teaching.
2. Teachers observe each other teach.
3. Teachers plan, organise and evaluate together.
4. Teachers teach each other.
My reason for liking these findings is because you can easily see how you can increase or decrease the likelihood of these four things happening. For example, if the agendas of meetings are packed with administrative imperatives rather than discussion of pedagogy or curricular subtleties to aid learning, then meetings are wasted time. Conversely, starting primary staff meetings in different classrooms, with the host analysing where they are with optimising the environment for learning, will promote valuable debate – as would an agenda item where, in turns (one member per meeting), staff outline the book they are reading with their class and why it works for that age group.
Or, at secondary level, the senior leadership team (SLT) taking over the teaching of a department for a day could enable the staff to be released to visit a department in another school.
My advice, therefore, would be to have a session where all staff look at the four characteristics outlined by Judith Little and share ideas of how, with minimal effort, school practices could be adjusted to make them happen more often.
FURTHER READING
Brighouse, Tim and Woods, David (2013). The A–Z of School Improvement: Principles and Practice (London: Bloomsbury Education).
PRACTICAL STRATEGIES
As Sir Tim Brighouse points out, developing any aspect of teaching is usually best done through collaboration with other teachers. To explore the concept of engagement in your own classroom and across your school, try initiating some of the following practices with your colleagues.
TEACHERS TALK ABOUT TEACHING
Organise a teaching and learning event or TeachMeet1 at your school where you invite teachers from your own and other establishments to come and share useful ideas for pupil engagement that they have tried and tested in their classrooms. The traditional TeachMeet approach is to give each contributor approximately three minutes to present their idea. This allows attendees to hear an impressive quantity of suggestions and they can consult with presenters afterwards to find out more about the techniques.
Set up a weekly ‘bring a problem to breakfast’ meeting. This is where breakfast is provided for staff who wish to start the day by sharing a difficulty they are experiencing in their teaching and then obtaining helpful suggestions from other colleagues for addressing that problem.
Launch a ‘listening ear’ initiative, whereby there is a different volunteer available in the staffroom at the end of each day. This volunteer’s role is to offer a friendly ear and informal counsel to any colleague who wishes to debrief the events of their working day before they go home.
Create an idea-sharing area in the staffroom. Ask colleagues to post details of something they have tried that worked well. Preferably this should be a technique that they feel could be used effectively in a variety of curriculum areas, and it could be accompanied by a photograph. This display is likely to attract a lot of readers. It is a wonderful way of encouraging a culture of innovation and of taking pleasure and pride in the job.
