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.
