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.

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?

10. Your experiential principles

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

14. Travelling 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

32. Assessment Detectives

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.