Learning to Teach in the Primary School

Teresa Cremin, Cathy Burnett, Teresa Cremin, Cathy Burnett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315453712
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

How do you become an effective primary school teacher? What do you need to be able to do? What do you need to know?

Flexible, effective and creative primary school teachers require subject knowledge, an understanding of their pupils and how they learn, a range of strategies for managing behaviour and organising environments for learning, and the ability to respond to dynamic classroom situations.

The fourth edition of this bestselling textbook has been fully updated with the latest research and initiatives in the field, as well as the most recent changes to the National Curriculum across the UK. Twenty four new authors have contributed, sharing their expertise and experience as practitioners. Ten brand new units have been included on:

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• Becoming a professional in the current context

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• Building inclusive communities of engaged learners

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• Understanding schools' aims and enacting your own

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• Teaching for social justice

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• Reading

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• Grammar and punctuation

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• Mastery in mathematics

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• The value of outdoor learning

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• Primary education in a digital age

A selection of extra tasks have been woven throughout, with an emphasis on innovative, reflective practice, and new 'vivid examples' bring each chapter's argument to life in a classroom context. In addition, each chapter contains M-level tasks and further reading to assist with research assignments, and differences in the National Curriculum and policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are highlighted.

Providing a comprehensive but accessible introduction to teaching and learning in the primary school, covering everything a trainee needs to know in order to gain QTS, this accessible and engaging textbook is essential reading for all students training to be primary school teachers.

This textbook is supported by a free companion website with additional resources for instructors and students (www.routledge.com/cw/Cremin) and an accompanying series of books on Teaching Creatively across the curriculum.

SECTION 1
BECOMING A TEACHER

UNIT 1.1

PRIMARY TEACHING

A personal perspective

Colin Richards

INTRODUCTION

Primary teaching is an immensely complicated business – much more complicated than government ministers and most other politicians realise. It involves so many different elements and dimensions. It changes in form and substance from minute to minute, hour to hour, lesson to lesson, class to class and year to year. Some people see it as a scientific activity, involving the selection of the best ways to ‘deliver’ material to young minds; others stress its artistic side and place emphasis on the ‘feel’ or style of teaching. So what is this enterprise called primary teaching? It is the purpose of this introductory unit to open this up for discussion.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this unit, you should be beginning to:

• form a view of the nature of primary teaching;
• develop an awareness of the personal qualities and skills you require as a primary teacher;
• form views as to the purposes of primary teaching;
• be overawed, yet excited, at the responsibility of being a primary school teacher.

‘ACROSTIC’ TEACHING

When you begin teaching you will be surprised at the range of different types of writing that the children are expected to engage in. Children have to learn to write narrative accounts, imaginative stories, descriptions of their ‘experiments’, diaries, letters, poems, and so on. Some are introduced to acrostics and enjoy the challenge these present. What are acrostics? They are poems or other compositions in which certain letters in each line form a word or words.

I have used an acrostic when giving an introductory talk to students at the beginning of their course of teacher education. You will notice that I don’t call them ‘trainees’ and I don’t talk of ‘teacher training’. They, like you, are not being introduced to a simple, straightforward, uncontroversial activity in which they can be trained to perform like machine operators on a production line or like speakers using autocues.

You are being inducted into a very complex professional activity – illustrated, for example, by the fact that the text you are reading contains over forty units and is just an introduction that will need complementing with further professional development when you are in post! It is not the easy, straightforward activity beloved of politicians such as Michael Gove, Nick Gibb or Boris Johnson in search of sound bites and easy votes. It’s a very demanding set of activities that require intellect, emotional intelligence, imagination and sensitivity – all of which are not easy to acquire or to assess.

Here’s the acrostic:

T ………

E ………

A ………

C ………

H ………

I ………

N ………

G ………

I have asked my students, and I am asking you, to characterise primary teaching using eight adjectives corresponding to the eight letters.

Task 1.1.1 The nature of primary teaching

What do you think primary teaching is like? What does it feel like? What kind of activity is it? Complete your acrostic and share it with fellow students.

Of course, there are no right or wrong answers here, and an activity as complex as primary teaching cannot be captured in just eight words. As ‘a starter for eight’, I offer you my ‘take’ on primary teaching:

T iring: Primary teaching is very demanding work – very demanding physically, as you have to cope with a class of very active, growing human beings all requiring your attention; very demanding emotionally, as you have to deal with a myriad of social interactions and situations occurring in a crowded classroom; very demanding intellectually, as you have to translate complex ideas in your head into terms that children can understand.

E xhilarating: Primary teaching is equally (but paradoxically) invigorating work – especially when both you and the children get ‘fired up’ with enthusiasm for a particular activity, topic or piece of work. That ‘buzz’ needs to be experienced to be appreciated. It cannot be measured, but it can be experienced and should be treasured.

A musing: Primary teaching is enlivened by countless amusing incidents during the course of a day or a week. Some children are natural, self-conscious comedians; others are unintentionally so; primary classrooms provide endless scope for amusement. ‘Never a dull moment’ captures this characteristic.

C haotic: Primary teaching can appear (and sometimes is) chaotic, as unforeseen circumstances arise and have to be coped with; as the government, testing agencies, Ofsted inspectors, parents, the head teacher and children make conflicting demands that have somehow to be met; and as the daily business of fostering the learning of twenty, thirty, or even more, lively and, to a degree, unpredictable youngsters has to be managed.

H ectic: Primary teaching occurs in an extremely busy place called a classroom, where a multitude of activities (some intended by the teachers, others unintended!) take place simultaneously, and where nothing or nobody stands or sits still for long. Stamina, patience, resilience, grit and an ability to cope with the unexpected are at a premium. These qualities are impossible to ‘train’ or ‘measure’, but they can be fostered and ought to be appreciated.

I nspiring: Primary teaching can be inspiring. You can be inspired by the amazing abilities children can reveal, for example in the creative arts; you can be inspired by the personal qualities of kindness and consideration children can show to one another and to you; you can be inspired by the fact that children with unbelievably difficult home circumstances come to school and manage to learn at all; you can be inspired by the work of your colleagues in your own school and in others, from whom you can learn so much. You can be inspired and, on occasion, you can inspire!

N ever-ending: Primary teaching is not a ‘nine till four’ occupation. In fact, it’s not so much an occupation as a way of life. It is never complete, never mastered, never perfected and never ‘sorted’. There is always more to learn and more to do for the children in your class. Teaching can take over your whole life with its never-ending demands, but you have to learn to temper these demands with your own personal needs. Doing this can be conscience-wracking, but is absolutely essential – to your own and, indirectly, your children’s well-being. Work load is a very real issue that you, your school and the government need to address and manage.

G ratifying: Primary teaching can be intensely gratifying (despite some inevitable frustrations). Teaching a child to read, seeing another child’s delight on mastering a skill, telling a story that captivates the whole class, having a lesson that goes really well – such activities can and will give you tremendous satisfaction. But don’t expect it from every single lesson. You cannot be ‘outstanding’ or even ‘good’ all the time, or expect outstanding or good results from every child all the time – despite the fact that some head teachers and inspectors seem to expect this.

A SENSE OF STYLE

You can see from my completed acrostic that I believe that primary teaching is an extremely complex activity. It’s an amalgam of so many elements – emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual and social. It changes subtly in form, substance and ‘feel’, minute to minute, hour to hour, lesson to lesson, class to class, and year to year. It involves qualities such as ‘respect’, ‘concern’, ‘care’, ‘commitment’ and ‘intellectual integrity’, which are impossible to define but which are deeply influential in determining the nature of life in classrooms. The ends and means of education and the aims and methods of teaching are inextricably interwoven. As well as being a practical activity, teaching needs to be conducted with a strong sense of moral purpose – you are doing it primarily to benefit others, not yourself! The word ‘style’ captures something of what I am trying to convey – a sense of considered professional judgement, of personal response, of quality, of distinctive style, which each practitioner (including you!) needs to foster. You need to develop your own style; don’t be misled into believing that there is an ‘approved’ or ‘set’ style from China, Singapore or wherever, that will ‘deliver’ (horrible word!) the results. Primary teaching involves far more than the routine repetition of established procedures; it goes well beyond establishing and maintaining a well-organised, orderly classroom, though that’s important. It cannot be pinned down in a few straightforward sentences or in a political sound bite or in a brief inspection report (or, for that matter, in my simple acrostic!).

TEACHING: SCIENCE, CRAFT OR ART?

Some educational researchers, such as Coe and Waring (2017), Hattie (2012) and Muijs and Reynolds (2001), seem to believe that it is possible to create a science of teaching based on the social sciences. They believe that it is possible to study teaching by comparing the results of different methods in terms of the outcomes they produce in children, and thereby arrive at objective findings as to which teaching methods are effective in which contexts. You will come across books with titles such as Effective Teaching, which claim to provide scientifically defensible evidence on which to base decisions about how to teach. But don’t be afraid to question their conclusions.

Some educationists, such as Marland (1975), regard teaching as a craft – a set of difficult and complex techniques that can be picked up from, or taught by, skilled practitioners and that can be honed and perfected over the years. Currently, many politicians also have this view of teaching, though they tend to see it as much more straightforward than the educationists do. You will come across government documents such as ‘The importance of teaching’ and books with titles such as The Craft of the Classroom that embody this approach. Be questioning of these too.

Others, such as Eisner (1979) and Bennett (2012), regard teaching as an art – a complex creative activity concerned with the promotion of human learning and involving imagination, sensitivity and personal response and an indefinable element of professional judgement, none of which can be taught directly by another person (though they can be learned indirectly).Treat Eisner’s and Bennett’s views with respect: they are close to the truth as I see it, but question them too.

Task 1.1.2 Teaching: Science...