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CHAPTER SIX:SHARING IDEAS ABOUT IMPROVING CLASSROOM TEACHING
ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
How can we guarantee that teachers search out, experiment with, guarantee and share ideas and resources for improving classroom teaching?
BIG IDEA — PROFESSIONAL RIGOR AND A PASSION FOR TEACHING ARE CONTAGIOUS.
In this Field Guide we have emphasized that personal collaboration and a focused sense of purpose amplify a school’s influence on student learning. We have also suggested that by acting together to improve the contexts of the school at large, teachers, principals, parents, and students foster greater cohesion and shared commitment. Applying this cohesion and commitment to improve classroom teaching is the topic of Chapters 6 through 10.
As recent research confirms schools rarely improve one classroom at a time. Schools and classrooms improve collectively. Providing resources that simultaneously produce teacher and student development is yet another goal of this Field Guide.
An education that does not begin by evoking initiative and end by encouraging it must be wrong.
— Alfred North Whitehead
Today, we know what good classroom teaching looks like. School effectiveness research in the 1970s and 1980s added to our understanding of the differences between effective and ineffective classrooms. Since then, educators have continued to test, refine, and publish these findings for use by classroom teachers. Among the most noteworthy of these publications is Research You Can Use to Improve Results (1999) by Kathleen Cotton. This compendium of effective schooling research provides a broad and integrated picture of schooling practices that can be used to stimulate discussions of instructional issues and guide school improvement initiatives.
MINDSHIFT:
Active participation in the collective development of other teachers is a critical competency of modern teaching.
MINDFUL TEACHING
Mindful Teaching is a framework for helping teachers incorporate knowledge about optimum conditions for learning into the day-to-day contexts of classrooms. Mindful Teaching is not a formula for teaching. Teaching is a growing living thing that evolves through years of searching and experimentation. Mindful Teaching is a set of core ideas that teachers can use to develop a personal philosophy for teaching that works best for their students. In this sense it is a road map with plenty of room for alternate routes.
Personal participation is the universal principle of knowing.
— Michael Polanyi
Chapters 6 through 10 further expand the defining characteristics of Mindful Teaching as follows:
FOUR PHASES OF MINDFUL TEACHING
1. READINESS
- Establish a reason/rationale for learning
- Connect to existing levels of student understanding
- Guide student curiosity and use exploratory discussion to build mutual respect
- Clarify misconceptions
- Explain expectations and schedules for new learning
- Provide a “road map” for new learning using visual advance organizers
2. DELIVERY
- Identify key concepts
- Systematically direct student attention to similarities and differences
- Define, explain, exchange, model, and relate important ideas
- Probe with questions and provide feedback
- Impose formal structure on material to be learned
- Guide student categorization/organization of ideas for future use
3. PERFORMANCE
- Demonstrate appropriate use and applications
- Guide student practice, challenge and construct applications of ideas
- Provide ongoing assessments, corrective feedback, and encouragement
- Engage students in experimentation, problem solving, and solution-finding activities
- Require and support student creation of learning products
- Build on student success and manage limitations
- Organize flexible learning groups
4.TRANSFER
- Facilitate multiple expressions/representations of subject matter learned
- Generate new questions and applications of ideas learned
- Guide student reflection and learning
- Help students consolidate and integrate new learning
- Move students to insightful thinking and writing
- Invite students to reflect on changes in their thinking as a result of new learning
GETTING STARTED
GETTING STARTED
What classroom practices make the biggest difference in student learning?
GETTING STARTED
What can teachers do to help each other teach more mindfully?
MAKING SENSE
PROFESSIONAL TEACHING COMMUNITY
is a teaching faculty that is organized around core elements of:
- Shared understanding and common values
- Collective inquiry
- Collaborative planning
- Action-oriented problem solving
- Shared responsibility
- Shared success
The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power…
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
TAKING ACTION
Authors Gerald Nadler and William Chandon have developed a Smart Questions Approach (SQA) to problem solving and creative solution finding that is particularly suited to getting people to openly share ideas and take action.
Nadler and Chandon describe SQA as a process that blends people, purposes, solutions, and actions. What follows is an activity designed to use the SQA process to initiate inquiry and collaboration aimed at improving classroom teaching.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
How can our school reduce teacher isolation and guarantee that teachers have opportunities to exchange ideas and resources on a daily basis?
DIRECTIONS:
1. Invite a group of teachers, an administrator, and a few interested parents to explore options for increasing teacher inquiry and collaboration into “best practic...
