WHAT AND HOW TO

PREPARE TO TEACH?
PRE-PREPARATION FOR
TEACHING
1. Set the academic calendar
2. Decide which course to teach
3. Draw a routine/assign classes
4. Prepare the work plan with class policies
5. Flag out the syllabus/course
6. Conduct short prior-academic-session pedagogic training for teachers
7. Prepare a folder with all these documents and conduct the induction program of the students
8. Ask students to maintain the portfolio in every subject
9. Run the classes the way semester classes run
 WHAT QUESTIONS DO MOST
TEACHERS HAVE IN MIND
WHEN THEY PREPARE FOR
•TEACHING?
Where to teach (classroom/college)?
•What curriculum to follow?
•Which textbook to use?
•What to include in the lecture? What or how much to teach?
•What and how many tests to give?

(Presentation Based on Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers’ do. Harvard
University Press, 2004)
WHAT DO ORDINARY/OLD FASHIONED TEACHERS’ DO?

•Focus on what they do than what students are supposed to learn

•Take teaching as a way of transmitting the truth/information about the discipline
(Following a “Transmission model”)
WHAT DO INNOVATIVE
TEACHERS/EDUCATORS DO?
•Profess teaching as a way to help and encourage students’ to learn
•Take teaching as a way of engaging students to learn
•Engineering a successful learning environment (a serious intellectual (and artistic)
act, a type of scholarship that the best academic should focus on)
WHAT DO BEST EDUCATORS
THINK OF?
•What should my students be able to do physically, emotionally and intellectually
through their learning?
•How can I help/encourage my students to develop those abilities and habits of the
heart and mind?
•How can my students and I understand the nature, quality and progress of learning?
•How can I evaluate my efforts to foster/nurture learning
COMMON DISCUSSIONS
ABOUT “LEARNING
OBJECTIVES”
•Learning the content/material
•Thinking critically
•engaging students in subject matter
•Complacently dealing with the topic
•Leading students to higher order of thinking
EFFECTIVE TEACHERS’ FOCUS

• Effective teachers talk more about what they want their students to do intellectually
than what they should learn
• They think teaching is fostering learning and it is a serious intellectual work
QUESTIONS TEACHERS RAISE
RELATED WITH PLANNING TO
TEACHING
1. What questions will the course help students answer? (through rote memorization or
beyond)
2. What skills, abilities and qualities (to recall, comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize,
evaluate, create) will the course develop in students?
3. How can students be encouraged to take interest in those questions, skills and abilities?

4. What reasoning ablilities students must have to answer questions that the course raises?
What is it to think as a historian, scientist, linguist....?
5. What information will students need to have/understand to answer major questions of
the course?
CONT...
•Should the professor “transfer”/”deliver” information or help or encourage students
to construct explanations, to reason, to draw conclusion?
•How to help students who have difficulty understanding questions (of the course)
and answering them?
•How to confront students with conflicting problems (When some teachers in
disciplines like science consider that students should memorize immutable facts as
opposed to those in the humanities with conflicting claims to the truth?
•How to find out what students already know and what they expect from the course;
how to sort out differences between the expectations of the professor and the
students?
CONT....
•How to help students learn to learn, to examine and assess their learning, thinking?
•How to help students read more effectively, analytically and actively?
•How to find students are learning before assessing them? (Most teachers hold misconception and
think that selecting good students, instructing them, providing right answers and evaluating
them is the right approach.)
•How to keep students thinking about some issue?
•How to spell out inteelctual and professional standards?
•How will students understand the nature, progress and quality of their learning?
•How can fascinating Natural Critical Learning Environment be created to arouse curiosity in
students, and to challenge them to rethink their assumption and examine their mental models?
•How to create a safe environment in which students can try, fail, receive feedback and try again?
DIVERSITY IN PROFESSORS’
PEDAGOGY
•Lecture “a favorate pedagogical tool” for some: passionate about ancient
pedagogical practice/engage students with good lecture (provocative ones)
•Some others horrified of thinking “teaching by telling” and adopt “Case study,
problem-based Learning, powerful assignments, stimulating field work, powerful
arguments working as a guide side by side, conducting discussion, involving in
presentation, giving group work (They may also miserbly fail though)
EXPLORING PRINCIPLES AND
PRACTICES FOR SUCCESSFUL
TEACHING
Some Singificant Principles
1. Creating natural critical environment
2. Drawing students attention and retaining it
3. Starting with the students than the discipline
4. Seeking commitments
5. Helping students learn outside the class
6. Engaging students in disciplinary thinking
7. Creating diverse learning environment
STARTING WITH STUDENTS
THAN DISCIPLINE
Teachers begin with what students care about, know or think they know
Student-centered courses rather than discipline or teacher-centered
NATURAL CRITICAL
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
• “Natural”Learning environment helps students encounter skills, habits, attitudes
and information while learning--while doing fascinating tasks which arouse curiosity
• Such an environment is “Critical” because students learn to think critically, to
reason from evidence, to examine the quality of their reasoning using intellectual
traditions, to make improvements while thinking and to ask probing/insightful
questions
HOW TO CREATE NATURAL
CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT?
1. By asking intriguing question (Socratic pedagogy)
2. By giving guidance to help students understand the question (compare, contrast, evaluate,
analyze, synthesize)
3. By engaging students in higher order intellectual activity
4. By answering the questions for themselves
5. By leaving students with a further question “what’s next?” (going out of the class without
finding any satisfactory answer which may haunt them over and over again.
(NCE can be created in simulations, case studies, problems, field work, projects,
lectures:even a lecture may simplify complex problem by enganging in challenging questions)
DRAWING STUDENTS
ATTENTION AND RETAINING
IT
Some teachers draw students’ attention with provocative action/s, question/s or
statement/s
Engage them to how to understand,apply, analyze, synthesize and evaluate those
things
continue to draw their attention to change things., concepts
STARTING WITH STUDENTS
THAN DISCIPLINE
Teachers begin with what students care about, know or think they know
Student-centered courses rather than discipline or teacher-centered
SEEK COMMITMENTS
Ask students what they want to do
Once they make commitments (Not necessarily formal and public commitments) to
“participate intellectualy”, it turns out to be a responsibility
HELP STUDENTS LEARN
OUTSIDE THE CLASS
Field visits, surveys, talks, discussions, seminars etc
ENGAGE STUDENTS IN
DISCIPLINARY THINKING
Knowledge not from rote memorization of facts, but from ability to reason
understanding applying, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating evidences and drawing
conclusions
constant engagement in reasoning
Interactive lecture to present a problem and coaxing students to identify evidence to
solve the problem or draw a conclusion
CREATING DIVERSE
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Conduct classes using multitudinal ways:
 visual information: pictures, charts, diagrams films, vedio-clips etc

 inductive/deductive organization
TEACHING AS A CRAFT

Practices
Consider “teaching as a craft” and pay attention to:
• Have a good talk
• Use warm/modest language
• give succinct explanation
• get and involve students in talk