ABSTRACT
There is certainly a significant amount of research evidence on ‘good teaching’, reported by authors such as David Reynolds (in several publications) and others. A crude summary of some of the common features of the ‘effective teacher’ could be listed as follows: s
• thoughtful planning • clear, restricted goals in a lesson • lesson clarity • strong structuring of lessons • careful and effective time management • use of pupils’ own ideas • high percentage of time-on-task for the pupils • appropriate, varied questions, directed at a range of pupils • variety of teaching methods • frequent feedback to pupils (on their spoken and written answers) • high expectations of pupils
These are helpful, if a little bit daunting and certainly hard to live up to. But a list such as this does not really explore what it means to be a teacher, and what a teacher’s guiding values, beliefs and principles might be.
