ABSTRACT
Teaching is inextricably bound together with learning. They are two sides of the same coin. If the pupil has not learned, has teaching taken place? A naive interpretation of the title of this section ‘Putting it all together’ might imply that teaching can be seen as the simplistic assembly of different identifiable elements. But teaching is a multifaceted and complex activity. There is no unique way of teaching. The actions that teachers take depend on their values, confidence and knowledge, and on the context in which they are working. A teacher makes a huge number of decisions before and during the lesson. Those who are learning to teach find that they spend hours planning their teaching, and they are less expert at thinking and making decisions during the lesson. They tend to stick to their plans, come what may! With experience, teachers develop a great deal of embedded knowledge on which they can draw. Planning becomes easier and reacting to what happens in the lesson becomes almost instinctive. The danger, though, of routine practices is that they are not thought about critically, because ‘it’s always done like that’.
