This document summarizes key points from a presentation on effective teaching techniques. It discusses moving away from content-heavy, passive learning towards a more student-centered approach focused on concepts and making personal connections. Six principles of good teaching are outlined: 1) having mastery over content; 2) constructing a clear argument; 3) connecting to prior knowledge; 4) breaking up lectures; 5) creating emotional connections; and 6) getting feedback. A variety of interactive teaching methods are presented, like think-pair-share activities, reflective writing, and using visuals/multimedia to engage students.

1. Thinking space about teaching:
Theories, thoughts and techniques
Tansy Jessop
Winchester Diocese
10 September 2018

2. 14,400 seconds of your life…
• What you want to get out of
the next 14,400 seconds…

3. 240 minutes of your life…
• Scoping the problem
• What is good teaching?
• Who you are as a teacher: your
teaching identity
• Learning from Escalante and
other classics: some pointers
• My top stabs for great teaching

4. State of the art classrooms…

5. State of the art teaching?

6. Scoping the problem
• We see teaching as being about transferring knowledge
• We see teaching through the eyes of our own experience
• We see teaching as a third person activity rather than as
a first person activity
• No surprises here: students are passive, disconnected
and disengaged

7. Learning how to learn
Caring
Human dimension
Integration
Application
Foundational knowledge: Topics A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I…
The learning-
centred
paradigm
pushes
teaching and
learning in
this direction,
into multiple
dimensions of
learning
The content-centred paradigm pushes teaching and
learning in this direction, along one dimension of learning
Content vs learning-oriented (Fink 2003)

8. The over-stuffed curriculum

9. 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….

10. The apprenticeship of observation

11. • We have over-stated
objective, rational, abstract
notions
• We have understated
education as a human
interaction
• We have lost personal
connection to knowledge and
each other
Third person to first person

12. Solent’sCurriculumFramework

13. Content-heavy, didactic, detached..
Image, "Alienation Nightmare" © 1996 by Sabu

14. So, what is good teaching?

15. Individual jottings: 10 minutes
• Think about a teacher who made a real impression on you
– a ‘good’ teacher
• Do some free writing about what made them stand out as
a teacher. Think about what they did, who they were, how
they got you thinking and learning – describe some
concrete things about their practice. What did you learn
from them?
• Share your thoughts with a partner (someone you don’t
normally chat to) and then swap stories.

16. Identifying best practice
• What can we learn about best practice from your own
stories?
• Go to www.menti.com and type in 51 15 79
• Type in three words or phrases which sum up the
distinctive characteristics of your best teacher

17. What characterises good teaching?

18. • Identity and integrity
• Making connections between
knowledge, you, experience
and students
• What about methods and
techniques?
• What about understanding
educational principles?
Teaching is about you!

19. Choose a picture that draws you

20. Reflective jottings on your teaching
identity
• Why does the image appeal to you?
• How does the image relate to your approach to
teaching?
• How does the image express how you feel about your
teaching, both the aspects that engage you, and the
more troubling sides?
Share your thoughts with a different partner and then
exchange stories.

22. Relationships, relationships,
relationships

23. Jigsaw activity
• Take a hard copy of the article. In pairs choose one
relationship discussed in the article.
• Read the section about that one relationship, noting
words that jump out at you. Highlight or circle those
words or concepts.
• Discuss the words and implications of the relationship
for teaching on your course.
• Fill in the section of the chart relating to your chosen
relationship.

24. Putting the jigsaw together

25. Pause
• Have you learnt anything so far?
• What methods have we used so far?
• Which are familiar to you? Which could you adapt,
extend or build on in your teaching?
• What questions hang in the air?

26. Principles of good teaching

27. Six simple principles
1. Know your stuff: select, simplify, structure, organise
content
2. Construct a clear line of argument
3. Connect with students’ prior knowledge
4. Break it up into a chunks, and break class up into pairs
5. Create emotional connections through stories,
pictures, metaphors, artefacts, poems, short media
clips
6. Find out how it is going; respond and change tack

28. Principle 1: Know your stuff
This is not
trivial
This is frankly
terrifying!
Get me out
of here!
I am an
imposter!

29. The problem
• Many lecturers get stuck here
• They never master the content and they are forever
chasing their tails
• So they fill up lectures and taught sessions with a
mind dump
• This, and fear, are at the centre of the content-
centred curriculum

30. Strategies
• Find out what students already know at the outset
• Share your genuine questions about the content
• Be ruthless about key concepts and slashing content
• Invite students into a dialogue about the content in
lectures through pair activities – writing, talking,
collaborating on problems

31. • Share your questions to start the
discussion; start with why rather than
what
• Invite students to identify problems,
tensions and to build a case for
particular positions
• Take students through your reasoning,
step by step
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sioZd3AxmnE
Principle 2: Construct an argument

32. Principle 3: Connect with prior
knowledge and experience
Student learning is deepest
when the content or skills
being learned are personally
meaningful

33. Let’s do it!
Group A: Write down
things which students
seem to really enjoy and
benefit from when you
teach them
Group B: Write down
things which don’t seem
to work for you in
teaching

34. Your prior knowledge & experience
What works What doesn’t work

35. The problem
• Most lecturers go in all guns blazing with what they
want to get across to students
• They treat students as tabula rasa, as empty vessels
• The only nod at prior learning is often recapping last
week’s content
• Students don’t have a starting point from where they
are and disengage quite quickly when being talked at.

36. 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. mentimeter) 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

37. Assessment and feedback challenges

38. Principle 4: Break it up!
• 15-20 minutes of
continuous activity
before a learner’s
attention starts to wane
• Use technology, pair
work, silence,
movement, writing
activities, quiet reading

39. Talking at students bores them
2
39
29
30
Bored most of the time
Bored half of the time
Bored some of the time
Bored none of the time
(Mann & Robinson 2009)

40. What do students do when bored?

41. Large meta-analysis (n=225 studies)
Lecturing increased failure rates by 55 percent;
active learning resulted in better grades
and a 36% drop in class failure rates.
(Gross-Loh 2016)
Talking at students doesn’t really work either….

42. Principle 5: Create emotional
connections, take risks
Tansy Jessop BA HDE 1980-1984.
One of the only lectures I can remember….

43. The Heineken effect:
refresh parts that cerebral knowledge
doesn’t reach
Metaphor
Media
Artefacts
Poems
Short film clips
Novels
Paintings
Mindfulness
Story
Humour

44. The problem
• We feel we haven’t got the time to do this given the
burden of a fully stuffed curriculum
• We are afraid of taking risks; we haven’t seen many good
examples. Besides it feels more difficult to prepare.
• We have seen this done badly by poorly prepared
teachers who just witter on
• We don’t really believe that this is educational because it
is a bit fluffy and emotional. We are not convinced.

45. Let’s do it! Write a bio-poem
Line 1: Your Name
Line 2: Four character traits
Line 3: Lover of… (list three things)
Line 4: Who feels… (three items)
Line 5: Who needs…. (three items)
Line 6: Who fears…. (one item)
Line 7: Who hopes for… (three items)
Line 8: And who finds … (three items)
(Adapted from John Bean, 1996, 110)

46. Use jottings and writing
exercises more in class
Thinking power x 30
Teaching for introverts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ry369
Why all the writing?

47. Writing builds engagement…
Exploratory
writing: an
antidote?

48. Read more, write more

49. Artefacts, posters, visuals

50. 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.

51. Principle 6: Find out how it is going

52. Try the Critical Incident Questionnaire
Stephen Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire http://bit.ly/1loUzq0

53. An antidote to this…

54. Using power-point well
1) Few slides or many?
2) It’s not an aide memoire
3) It’s a visual medium (snipping tool)
4) Transitions between slides
5) Remember that students can’t read & listen at the
same time
6) Let them read the words!
7) Tell a story through the headings

55. From this…

56. …to the adult equivalent of this

57. Final pause
• What is your take home message from today?
• What one method or activity you haven’t used before
will you try?
• Have we done the ‘learning outcomes’?
• The critical incident questionnaire challenge: will you do
it?

58. References
Arum, R. and Roska, J. 2011. Academically Adrift. Limited Learning on College
Campuses. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
Behar, R. (1996) The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart.
Boston. Beacon Press.
Fink, L. Dee 2013. Creating significant learning experiences: an integrated
approach to course design on college courses.
Gross-Loh, C. 2016. Should Colleges Really eliminate the College Lecture? The
Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/eliminating-
the-lecture/491135/
James, A. and Brookfield, S. 2014. Engaging Imagination: Helping Students
Become Creative and Reflective Thinkers. San Francisco. Jossey Bass.
Mann, S. & Robinson, A. 2009. Boredom in the lecture theatre: an investigation
into the contributors, moderators and outcomes of boredom amongst university
students, British Educational Research Journal, 35:2, 243-258
Palmer, P. 1983 To Know as We are Known. San Francisco Harper and Row
Palmer, P. 1998. The Courage to Teach. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.
Shulman, L. 2004. Pedagogies of Substance. Chapter 7 In Teaching as Community
Property: essays on Higher Education. 128-139. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.