GOOD TEACHERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Although it is popular to believe that teachers and schools make little or any difference in the lives of
the nation's poorest children, a series of studies indicate quite the opposite children with bright, well
trained and effective teachers scored much higher on achievement exams.

 Higher-order thinking. Exploring real and complex issues requires students to analyse,
synthesize, and evaluate material.

 Cross-disciplinary work. PBI (project-based instruction) encourages students to investigate

how different academic subjects shed light on each other. In exploring ecological issues, for
example, students touch not only on biology and chemistry but also on economics, history,
sociology, and political science.

 Artefacts and exhibits, Students involved in PBI demonstrate what they learn in a very
tangible way. Students may produce a traditional report, or may create video, a physical
model, a computer program, a portfolio of artefacts, or even presentation, such as a play or
a debate. Teachers might organize a class or School wide exhibit to share the progress made
by PBI students.

 Authentic learning. Students pursue an actual unresolved issue. They are expected to define
the problem, develop a hypothesis, collect information, analyse that information, and
suggest a conclusion, one that might work in the real world. The learning is authentic, not
academic, artificial, or hypothetical. .

While features of PBI have been around for a long time, in its current form it’s both a comprehensive
and demanding approach that develops real intellectual skills in students. Moreover, students
function as adults in that they explore authentic co temporary issues. Working together, they
attempt to solve these problems-in effect. Getting a jump on the adult world, even before they are
adults.

New Directions for Effective Teaching

Research conducted in the 1980s sought to determine specific teaching behaviours that would result
in greater student achievement. The goal was to establish a scientifically based blueprint for
effective instruction. However, research in the 1990s was more closely grounded in the principles of
how students learn-not as passively receiving information but, rather, as intentionally constructing
their own meaning. This represents a substantial shift, offering the potential for future instructional
reformation. Four constructs are fundamental to this shift in focus: the structure of knowledge, the
significance of "deep" rather than "shallow teaching, the importance of prior knowledge, and the
social nature of learning

Good teachers have following characteristics:

  Know their subject matter
 Are enthusiastic about teaching and their subject area Develop deep rather than shallow
knowledge
 Connect new learning to prior knowledge
 Spend the major part of class time on academic activities
 Teach content at a level that ensures a high rate of success
 Are organized
 Ensure that students have sufficient time to practice skills
 Clearly present both directions and content information
 Structure learning experiences carefully
 Maintain high student interest and engagement
 Actively monitor student progress
 Involve all students (not just volunteers) in discussions Ask both higher and lower-order
questions as appropriate to the objectives of the lesson
 Use adequate wait time
 Provide clear academic feedback
 Vary student activities and procedures
 Hold high expectations for students
 Have high regard for students and treat them with respect
 Build classroom learning communities

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO CHANGE THE WAY TEACHERS TEACH?

After reading about intriguing approaches to teaching different ways of organising classes, and the
latest research on effective teaching best questions after pop in people mind where are all the
changes? Why does teaching look so similar year in and year out? Larry Cuban tried to answer these
questions in How Teachers taught Constancy and Change in American Classroom 1890-1960 Despite
the efforts of waves of educational reformers working hard to increase student-centred instruction
most classrooms have remained teacher-centred over the past century why?

Cuban uncovered several reasons that change had been thwarted, including simple physical reality,
Schools were built around teachers, not students, especially in the early part of the century
Classrooms featured desks all facing front, bolted to the floor physically reinforcing the notion of the
teacher as the centred of instruction. As if nuts and bolts were not enough. Curriculum demands also
placed the teacher centred stage. To survive instructing right or ten subjects to very large classes.
Teachers became dependent on reading and dictating assignments directly from the text. This
approach also strengthened the idea of the teacher as the focal point of learning, one who moulds
students into vessels to be filled with information Uniformity and standardization became important
in the twentieth century, as principals told teachers what to do and teachers told students what to
do. The organizational climate did not nurture new teaching techniques, nor did it encourage giving
more responsibility students

Cuban believes that the suppression of student-based instruction was no accident. Schools were
designed to me compliant workforce, student-cantered instruction was viewed as rebellious,
dangerous, and threatening to educational and economic stability,

While Cuban recognizes that classrooms have undergo a few relatively minor changes experiments
with open classrooms, greater informality between teacher and student even movable chairs-
instruction at the close of the century looks strikingly similar to classroom instruction when the
twentieth century was new. Do you agree?

Each subject have its specific structure that need to be taught with different
methodology;
The structure of knowledge varies across the content areas. Each subject history, literature, science,
math-has its own patterns, facts, ideas, notations, and structure. "A map is not like a musical score,
which is not like the equation of a function, which in turn differs from an evolutionary tree." The
actions a chemistry student goes through to gain knowledge do not look or feel like what a literature
student goes through to write a creative story. Given these essential differences, content specific
teaching skills are needed.

Effective teaching research of the 1990s asks the question "What teaching skills are most relevant to
each of the different academic disciplines?" How does the organization of the French language, for
example, lend itself to teaching and learning French? What instructional skills should be taught to
French teachers, based on the unique organization of the French language? These questions and
answers are not often guiding the development of current teacher education programs-but perhaps
they should.

The idea of the classroom as a "learning community conceives of the teacher as someone who helps
students activate their prior knowledge of some subject and thereby become intellectually engaged
with one another.

"Less is more," an aphorism attributed to education reformer Ted Sizer, applies directly to this new
approach to teaching and learning. According to Sizer, todays schools are mistaken when they
emphasize "covering" material. The goal seems to be teaching and learning a vast body of
information, albeit superficially, in order to have a sense of accomplishment. In textbooks, this is
called the "mentioning phenomenon," the tendency to include as many potential topics as possible,
even if the top is only "mentioned." But international tests in science, for example, show that though
U.S. students have studied more science topics than have students in other countries, they have not
studied them in depth, and their lower test scores reflect this superficiality. In Sizer's vision of
effective instruction, good teachers limit the amount of content they introduce but develop it
sufficiently for students to gain in-depth understanding. Some have termed this deep teaching,
Teachers work to organize the content around a limited set of key principles and powerful ideas and
then engage students in discussing these concepts. The emphasis is on problem solving and critical
thinking, rather than on memories

Through discussion and higher-order inquiry, the teacher's challenge is to elicit the prior knowledge
students bring to the classroom. The approach of many teachers today is to simply plan a structure
for a lesson that assure all students enter the class with precisely the same level of information and
the same kind of experiences. Such an assumption rarely holds true. When prior knowledge is made
explicit, teachers can help students connect new information to this existing knowledge base or
enable them to confront and revise prior knowledge that is inaccurate. Finally, this new vision of
effective teaching highlights the social nature of learning and of the classroom. As the builder of a
classroom learning community, the teacher is called on to be a guide or facilitator, skilful in
conducting discussions, group work, debates, and dialogues. In this way, the teacher empowers the
students to talk with one another and to rehearse the terminology and concepts involved in each
discipline.

Whether you are methodically working to hone individual skills, such as questioning, structuring, and
giving critical feedback, or are embracing new and different models of instruction, perhaps the most
important thing you can do is practice reflective teaching. Good teachers continually and intensely
analyse their own practices, and they use their analysis to improve performance. "In order to tap the
rich potential of our past to inform our judgment, we must move backward, reflect on our
experiences, then face each new encounter with a broader repertoire of content specific
information, skills, and techniques. When teachers engage in this active and systematic reflection,
they ask themselves such questions as

a) What teaching strategies did I use today? How effective were they? What might have been
even more effective?
b) Were my students engaged with the material? What seemed to motivate them the most? If
I were to reteach today's class, how could I get even more students involved?
c) How did I assess my students learning today? Would there have been a better way to
measure their learning? How well did the students grasp the main points of today's lesson?
d) Do I need to reteach some of these concepts? Can I fine-tune tomorrow's or next week's
lessons to capitalize on the gains made today?
e) Going far beyond the rhetorical, these questions are designed to raise consciousness,
engender self-scrutiny, and result in effective teaching.

Summary
1. The way in which the teacher allocates time spent on academic content affects student
achievement. Allocated time is the amount of time a teacher schedules for a particular
subject. Engaged time is the amount of allocated time during which the students are
actually involved with the subject matter. Academic learning time is engaged time with a
high success rate.
2. Good classroom management is a skill that can lead to high student achievement. It
involves planning effectively, establishing rules that are reasonable and not excessive in
number, and arranging the classroom so that instruction goes smoothly.
3. Skills that are necessary for maintaining a well-managed classroom include group alerting,
wittiness, overlapping, use of the principle of least intervention, and the creation of smooth
transitions.
4. The pedagogical cycle describes the interaction between the teacher and students. The four
steps of the cycle are (1) structure, (2) question, (3) respond, and (4) react. The structure
must give students a clear understanding of what they are expected to learn. The teacher
should ask both higher-order and lower-order questions. Teachers need to remember to
 wait three to five seconds after asking question (wait time 1) and before reacting to a
student answer (wait time 2) Teachers also need to be thoughtful in the way in which they
react to student comments. Generally, teachers react by using either praise, acceptance,
remediation, or criticism in responding to the student. Research indicates that teachers use
acceptance more than all the other reactions combined, a sign the reactions may lack
precision, and perhaps their questions may not be challenging students.
5. Four models of instruction that can lead to high student achievement include (1) direct
teaching, (2) cooperative learning, (3) mastery learning, and (4) project-Based instruction.
6. The principles of direct teaching include daily review, presentation of new matter in a clear
manner, guided practice, teacher feedback, independent practice, and weekly and monthly
reviews.
7. In a cooperative learning classroom, students work in small groups, and appraise often
reflect the entire group's performance.
8. Mastery learning programs involve specific objectives that must be met, as indicated by
assessment. Typically, students work at their own pace, going on to new material only when
mastery of previous work has been demonstrated. Teachers often play a central role in
content and skill mastery.
9. Project-based instruction stimulates students to explore authentic issues. Individually and
in small groups, students cross traditional subject boundaries as they investigate real-life
problems and demonstrate what they have learned.
10. New research in effective teaching emphasizes the structure of knowledge, deep rather
than shallow teaching, the importance of prior knowledge, and the social nature of learning.

References;
 Herbert Walberg, Richard Niemiec, and Wayne Frederick, "Productive Curriculum Time, The
Peabody Journal of Education, 60, no. 3 (1994): pp. 86-100; Steve Nelson, Instructional Time
as a Factor in Increasing Student Achievement (Portland, OR Northwest Regal Lab, 19ys
Sevid Berliner, "The Half-Full Glass A Review of Research on Teaching in P. Hoolend (ed.),
Using What We Know About Teaching (Alexandria, VA Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development, 1964).
 CM. Evertson, E. T. Emmer, B. S. Clements, J.E Sanford, and M. E. Worsham, Classroom
Management for Elementary Teachers (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984). See also
Carolyn Evertson and Alene Harris, "What We Know About Managing Classrooms,
Educational Leadership 49, no. 7 (April 1992) pp. 74-78
 Robert Slavin, Classroom Management and Discipline, in Educational Psychology: Theory
into Practice Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986).
 E.T Emmer, C. M. Evertson, J. P. Sanford, B. 5. Clements, and M. E. Worsham, Classroom
Management for Secondary Teachers (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984),
 Jacob Kounin, Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms (New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1970)
 Jere E. Brophy, "Classroom Organization and Management, the Elementary School Journal
83, no. 4 (1983), pp. 265-85.
 Marilyn E. Gootman, The Caring Teacher's Guide to Discipline Helping Young Students Learn
Self-Control, Responsibility, and Respect (Thousand Oaks, CA: Coprin Press, 1997).
 David Berliner, "What Do We Know About Well Managed Classrooms? Putting Research to
Work" Instructor 94, no. 6 February 1985): p. 15.
 Arno Bellack, the Language of the Classroom New York: Teachers College Press, 1966).
 Robert Slavin, "The Lesson," in Educational Psychology: Theory into Practice, 16. John
Dewey, How We Think, revised, (Boston: D.C.
 Benjamin Bloom (ed.), Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain
(New York David McKay, 1956).