A critical review on what effective teaching and learning are

4. Research into the theory of effective teaching and learning

I will now present evidence to what is effective teaching and learning, and how they link, as in the Ofsted definitions. I will suggest how you can become an effective teacher and how to ensure effective learning. Throughout I will make links with my placement school and my own experiences.

In order to pursue what we mean by effective it is helpful to firstly have a definition. Emery (2007) defines effective as “having an effect; able to bring about the result intended”. This definition helps us to understand that to be effective there should be an effect and have the desired result. The difficulty with any definition would be how do you measure what one person would define to be effective, and another, if each person has their own expectations.

There are many views on what makes an effective teacher, everybody has there own opinion of what they believe to make an effective teacher, which is often a reflection of their previous experiences of teachers. In another major review of the literature Porter & Brophy (1988) suggest that effective teachers are semi-autonomous professionals who possess certain characteristics, summarised in appendix A. Some critics question the role of the teachers’ preparation as a key to teacher effectiveness. Research supports the idea that high quality teacher preparation is important. Well prepared teachers outperform those who are not prepared, but there is no credible research that reveals any advantage to students of having teachers without preparation to support this opinion. (NCATE 2006)

Stephens and Crawley (1994) produced a book ‘Becoming an Effective Teacher’ aimed at training teachers to give advice and guidance on how best to accomplish the required professional competencies in the classroom. They wrote the book from their own experience of being effective teachers and they believed that by accumulating wisdom of good experienced teachers, by talking with them and watching them at their craft, and seeing if that knowledge works for you, is one of the best ways they knew of becoming an effective teacher. The book is based on research at the time and with the book being over ten years old it could be out of date for today’s teaching practice, but most of their advice will not change with time. However, you must consider that it is only two people’s view on how you become an effective teacher and therefore you would need to research other views and research to get a true picture.

Accumulating wisdom of good, experienced teachers is part of initial teacher training, which involves observing other teachers, and evaluating in order to reflect how to improve their own teaching. I felt that it was a valuable experience observing other teachers so that I learn from what I have observed and reflect, but that I did not always get to see effective teachers, and at the beginning of the course I would not have known what to observe to know if the teacher was effective or not.  Research from Darling-Hammond and Baratz-Snowden (2005) also supports the need to have opportunities to practice and reflect on teaching early on and continuously in their preparation and during their initial entry to teaching. I found that with well-supervised classes and student-teaching experiences lead or are managed jointly with coursework, studies find, students are better able to connect theoretical learning to practice, more comfortable and confident in learning to teach, and more able to perform what they are learning in ways that are effective for students, hence they teach effectively. I found that teachers who learn to teach without guidance often learn merely to cope rather than to promote learning for all their students, and they can acquire bad habits that are hard to unlearn. I have experienced this when there is less supervision and guidance; I have felt like I had got to worry more about coping with the class, rather than ensuring that pupils’ are learning. I found that watching the same lesson that you have taught or going to be teaching taught by an experienced teacher, a useful exercise, as other more experienced teachers will do things differently and a lot can be learnt from this.

You also have a mentor in your school placements whose leading role is to ensure training teachers become effective teachers. This can be positive if the mentor does their job well, but from the my discussions with other training teacher it is not always the case, and so training teachers are not moved on to become effective teachers themselves. Part of the mentor meetings is to ensure standards are met which in order to be a teacher a set of professional standards all have to be achieved. This is meant to ensure that every training teacher has all the qualities to be an effective teacher. As all schools are different the evidence for these standards will be diverse, for example, in a school with very few EAL pupils it would be difficult to evidence this standard being achieved. The standards do not necessary equal a more effective teacher, as it is complicated to measure effective teaching.

Measuring teachers’ effectiveness is complex, research by Hay McBer (2000), which was commissioned by the DfEE to design a framework describing effective teaching, resulting in the researcher concluding that teachers' effectiveness could not be predicted on the basis of data such as age, experience, qualifications and background. That effective teachers could be found in all kinds of schools, and came from diverse backgrounds. That although he was not able to predict how to measure teachers’ effectiveness he still produced a model to measure teacher effectiveness and this is still used by many schools when evaluating teacher effectiveness.

In order to be an effective teacher learning should occur, this can be problematical to establish when no one theory of learning has provided all the facts (Ellis 2004). Roblyer (1996) reminds us that there are opposing views as to whether learning should be structured and directed by teachers, or taken charge of by students constructing their own knowledge and have more ownership of that learning. With the emphasis the government have made on introducing personalised learning, students are expected to work as partners with their teachers to strengthen the link between learning and teaching. This is already happening in BTEC and diploma courses where pupils are responsible for their own coursework, for example, with a DiDA group I teach the pupils have most of the skills required, therefore, the students work independently and I become more of a facilitator, and they take charge of learning any additional skills they will need.

ICT is one of the stronger subjects for the ability to personalise learning, as pupils are often given a task to complete, but pupils have the freedom of how they complete the tasks which allows them to be more creative. When planning for personalised learning for pupils, teachers have to take into consideration the needs of their pupils, an example of this would be for Christmas I gave the task to create an interactive Christmas card. I allowed for personalised learning by allowing pupils to create an interactive story, which took into consideration Jehovah’s witnesses or those who did not want to create a Christmas card for religious reasons.

The government believes that the way forward in teaching is by personalising learning and teaching. Any strategy for personalising learning must focus on improving the consistency of high quality teaching to meet learners’ needs as effectively as possible. The diagram below shows the five components of personalised learning and how they fit together according to the DfES (2004). Personalised learning in my present placement has been rolled out into the school, but they are concentrating on the Assessment for learning strand as recommended by an external advisor working for the DfES. The first focus was to get all the teachers in the school to start to teach objective lead lessons, so they could measure learning outcomes. The advisor then came back in January 2007 and observed core teachers using Assessment for Learning Shared Observation Sheet (see Appendix B) and Observation schedule for Assessment for Learning (see Appendix C) and is due back soon to give feedback, this shows the school is starting to take positive action towards personalising learning.

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I have observed teachers delivering object led lessons, and have seen that they allow pupils to know what to expect, and what is expected from them, but as this is still new to some teachers it has not been perfected yet, and the school is still seeking advice as to how they should teach to object led lessons. This is part of Assessment for Learning (AfL) as AFL means using evidence and dialogue to identify where pupils are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there (DfES 2004). Brown et al (1997) also supports object led lessons, as he believes effectiveness is concerned with ensuring that student learning matches course objectives, firstly though one needs to know how students learn, how to express objectives in forms that guide the learners and course designers and how to create teaching and learning situations that move the students towards the outcomes, which are the objectives of the course.

There is a relationship between effective teaching and learning because effective teaching leads to effective learning, as nothing is taught until it has been learned. It is my belief that teaching and learning are interrelated activities that cannot be separated, but need to be treated as complementary opportunities. There are many features that can improve effective teaching and learning and many different theories about the nature of learning; one famous theory is from the work of Dr Howard Gardner who pioneered the theory of multiple intelligences. He believes that each person is unique with individual learning requirements and that all individuals have the capacity to develop mentally and to excel regardless of genetic make-up.  

When I have observed good teaching and learning some of the key features that the teacher had were, high but realistic expectations of pupils' use of ICT. They used a variety of teaching approaches, including some very effective direct teaching to groups or the whole class using a large electronic screen facility.  The pupils I taught consistently displayed high levels of interest, motivation and enjoyment when involved in ICT-related activities. They remained on task for sustained periods of time in meaningful activities. The least effective teaching I have observed has been when teachers rely too much on a traditional style of classroom delivery and do not use enough variety of teaching techniques. Teaching in these cases is often too teacher centered, with too little active involvement of learners. This can result in limited development and work from the learners’. Other bad observations of teachers include not setting learners objective for the class, or there been no real challenge or targets to achieve and allowing learners’ to generally make slow progress.

As I am an ICT trained teacher, I have the advantage of integrating the use of ICT into learning and teaching and ensure an overall balance in the range of approaches used in the classroom. I believe that I have already started to show signs of being an effective teacher, as I use ICT selectively and appropriately to enliven the teaching process, to motivate pupils and to achieve positive attitudes to learning. I provide pupils with good opportunities to take responsibility for their own learning, both in small groups and individually. I believe I have a clear understanding of the learning process as it relates to that area, and that I am confident that the use of technology will help to improve pupils’ attainment and capacity to learn. I also assess the impact on pupils’ achievement of using ICT to ensure that it adds value to the learning and teaching process, and ultimately with time and experience should produce effective teaching and learning.

5. Implications of the research on future teaching practice

From my research I have found that it is difficult to measure effective teaching and learning, and there is so much research out there to suggest what they are and how they can be achieved, which makes it difficult to define what makes them effective? In summary, it is important to have a solid training experience for teaching, whereby effective teachers are observed and their effective practice experience shared, and that a good mentor is important to move the training teacher to becoming an effective teacher. I felt I have already started to become an effective teacher, as I already do most of the things that are suggested in the research, such as planning for effective learning for pupils’, and that what they need is more experience and time. I feel I need to get more experience of observing effective teaching and evaluate my own practice, with the help of my mentor to ensure I develop into an effective teacher.

From my research, in order to improve teaching and learning and to raise standards for the pupils’ I teach, in my future practice I will need to:

• have good planning of course outlines and ensure that necessary content is covered;
• ensure that learning and teaching approaches promote balanced development of knowledge and understanding, problem-solving and practical abilities, of pupil attitudes and of general skills such as the ability to work independently;
• make sure that they are aware of the policies for teaching and learning;
• plan teaching sessions carefully with clear aims and objectives that learners understand;
• use a variety of teaching and delivery methods, ensuring at least visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning are incorporated in all lessons, and to make full use of IT to make learning interesting and informative;
• give information, instructions and support, prompt thought and discussion, use effective questioning, and react to requests for help and advice;
• use more ‘real’ problems for learners in their assessments;
• monitor and assess learners’ progress regularly and provide them with clear written and oral feedback that enables them to improve their work;
• established clear structures, routines and rules, to ensure good classroom management;
• ensure that pupils’ learn the full range of skills required to be competent, independent users of computers, including the ability to find out technical information from a variety of sources; and
• gain more experience of personalising learning and assessment for learning to ensure pupils have the most effective teaching and learning. (Gallacher 1999; ESTYN 2004).

6. Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel that the training I have had for my PGCE and subject knowledge should start the path to becoming an effective teacher, but to be truly effective I need experience and time, as well as reflection, enquiry and continuous professional development and growth, and in my classroom I will have clear structures, routines and rules.

That to be an effective teacher you must ensure effective learning in pupils, and this can be done in a number of ways, planning lesson with clear objective and outcomes, through the use of personalised learning and then following the Assessment for Learning, to assess if learning was effective. These were the issues reviewed in this report, however there are other influences, such as, ensuring the right learning environment is created, classroom management and the type of teacher you are.

This area is of great influence to me in my training to become a teacher, and one that will continue to change in the future, be developed and reviewed in order to keep up-to-date with the changing world.

7. Bibliography

8. Appendices

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

OBSERVATION SCHEDULE FOR ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING