This week, I wanted to share with you an interesting concept from Evidence Based Education, which characterises the key elements of good teaching into four different areas or ‘dimensions’. The area I want to focus in light of coming back into school is ‘creating a supportive environment’ which is the 2nd of the four dimensions.
Objectives: To understand the key elements of creating a classroom supportive environment for great teaching.
Summary:
The key elements contained within the evidence-based approach proposed here are for dimension two are:
Promoting interactions and relationships with all students that are based on mutual respect, care, empathy and warmth; avoiding negative emotions in interactions with students; being sensitive to the individual needs, emotions, culture and beliefs of students
Promoting a positive climate of student-teacher relationships, characterised by respect, trust, cooperation and care
Promoting learner motivation through feelings of competence, autonomy and relatedness
Creating a climate of high expectations, with high challenge and high trust, so learners feel it is okay to have a go; encouraging learners to attribute their success or failure to things they can change
How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:
How important will these be when we return to face-to-face teaching?
What strategies can I use to demonstrate and build these particular elements of teaching in the classroom?
If anyone would like to discuss this further with Jaya - please comment below! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.
In the first 2 days back I have observed with my classes (specifically with my Year 8 and Year 10 pupils) that they are happy and willing to engage with MWB type work but they need lots of additional encouragement to start and engage with independent work. This seems slightly counter-intuitive given that they have been conducting independent work at home during WA online.
ReplyDeleteHello to the Unknown commenter! That is a very interesting observation. I wonder if it might be, in part, fear of getting something more independent wrong (in a higher stakes environment - which a classroom is?)
DeleteThose four "key elements" are surely as important as pedagogical quality? They link to the idea of student agency, which is increasingly recognised as playing a role in maximising the student (see, for example, http://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teaching-and-learning/learning/student-agency/Student_Agency_for_2030_concept_note.pdf)
ReplyDeleteHello to the Unknown commenter! That is a very interesting observation. I wonder if it might be, in part, fear of getting something more independent wrong (in a higher stakes environment - which a classroom is?)
ReplyDelete