Chapter 9
Effective Teachers and the Process of Teaching
 Themes of the chapter
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Thoughtful learning can be fostered by highquality teaching
Teachers’ knowledge of the subject matter they are teaching and their beliefs about themselves, their students, and the processes of learning and teaching have important influences on classroom practices and problems

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Why are teachers’ beliefs important?
How do teachers’ knowledge of subject matter understanding and general knowledge of teaching translate into ways to teach specific material to students?
 How do expert teachers differ from novice teachers?
(See next slide for more questions)

 What are some general teacher-centered approaches to teaching?
 What kinds of teaching tactics can teachers use?
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How can teachers use homework effectively?
How can teachers plan to meet the needs of students who have special needs?
How can teachers develop the expertise necessary for working in culturally diverse settings?

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Expertise in the subject matter being taught
Belief in one’s ability to teach and students’ abilities to learn
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Sensitivity to the needs of different kinds of learners
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Planning and organizational skills
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Interpersonal and leadership skills
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A great deal of hard work

 The interpersonal effort to help learners acquire knowledge, develop skill, and realize their potential

An Integrated Model of
Child/Teacher/Curriculum

 Personal experience – activities, events, and understandings of everyday life
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Experience with schooling and instruction
– experiences when they were students
Experience with formal knowledge – knowledge from academic subjects and pedagogical knowledge from teacher education programs

Example of Inaccurate Teacher Beliefs
 Preservice teachers believing in student autonomy
 First year teachers becoming more controlling
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Custodial – a term that refers to an approach to classroom management that views the teacher’s role as primarily maintaining an orderly classroom

Content, Pedagogical, and Pedagogical
Content Knowledge
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Content knowledge – knowledge about the subject matter being taught
Pedagogical knowledge – knowledge about how to teach
Pedagogical content knowledge – knowledge about how to make subject matter understandable to students

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View classroom as collection of individuals
Plan more globally and for longer periods
Have a more complex view of instructional options
Run a more smoothly operating classroom
Evaluate students more often and in ways closely related to content of instruction
Attribute failure to problems with planning, organization, or execution
Hold complex ideas about the role of students’ existing knowledge and make use of it during instruction

Phases of Development of Expertise
 Decreased focus on self-as-teacher; increased focus on the needs of learners
 Enhanced knowledge about learners
 Automation of classroom routines and procedures
 Growth in problem-solving skills

 Self-efficacy – one’s judgment of how well he or she will cope with a situation, given the skills one possesses and the circumstances one faces
 Teaching efficacy – a teacher’s judgment of, or confidence in, his or her capacity to cope with the teaching situation in ways that bring about desired outcomes

 Verbal persuasion, personal history, and vicarious experience
 Opportunities to experience successful coping
 Observation of other teachers and imitating their behaviors

Self-Efficacy and Learners with
Special Needs
 Teachers with a high sense of self-efficacy are less likely to refer students for evaluation than are teachers with a low sense of self-efficacy
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Referral – educators’ shorthand for the recommendation that a child be evaluated for possible special education classification

Working in Culturally Different
Contexts
 How teachers can relate to students with different backgrounds from their own
 How to create an environment in which students work well together and care about each other
 How to work with students in poverty and whose parents are not present at home
 How to work with students who do not speak
English
 How to work with students with special needs

Developing a Multicultural Curriculum
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Create learning goals and objectives that incorporate multicultural aspects
Include a wide variety of ethnic groups in curriculum materials in variety of ways
Introduce different ethnic groups and their contributions
Include examples from different ethnic experiences to explain subject matter
Show how multicultural content, goals, and activities intersect with subject matter standards

 Instructional goals
 Using goals in classroom teaching
 Translating goals into plans

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A statement of what is being worked for or desired in instruction
Behavioral objectives – statements of goals for instruction that clearly set forth what a student will be able to do as a result of the instruction
Educational objectives – explicit statements of what students are expected to be able to do as a result of instruction

Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives
 Taxonomy – a classification of objects according to a set of principles or laws
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Knowledge
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Comprehension
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Application
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Analysis
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Synthesis
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Evaluation

 Choose an instructional topic and compose a question on that topic for each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom
 Knowledge
 Comprehension
 Application
 Analysis
 Evaluation
 Synthesis
Anderson/Krathwohl
 Remembering
 Understanding
 Applying
 Analyzing
 Evaluating
 Creating

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Standards – comprehensive set of educational objectives organized by subject matter and grade level
Achievement targets – well-specified statements of what teachers want to accomplish in a particular lesson or set of lessons
Products – student creations that reflect their skills as well as their ability to create something new

 Knowledge
 Reasoning
 Skills
 Products
 Attitudes and dispositions

 Setting objectives or goals
 Choosing a way to achieve those goals
 Making decisions concerning the details of the approach
 Making changes as the plan is carried out
 Evaluating the plan after it has been carried out in order to be better prepared the next time around

 Block scheduling – an approach to scheduling at the middle and high school levels that allows for larger blocks of time to be schedules for subjects, usually with fewer blocks per week

 Plan for the year
 Make seasonal plans for the year
 Plan instructional units
 Have daily lesson plans

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What is the teacher trying to accomplish?
What assumptions does this plan make about the students?
How does the lesson plan view students as learners?
Could I teach this lesson from these plans? Would I want to?
Are the assessment procedures adequate?
How likely are students to respond positively to this plan?
Is the level of detail too fine or too broad?

 Team of teachers who are teaching the same curriculum work together to think about how best to approach the lesson
 One member of the team teaches the lesson while others observe and collect data
 Together, they analyze the data
 They refine and reteach the lesson

 Promoting meaningful learning
 Discovery learning
 Direct instruction

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Reception learning – learner acquires knowledge of the structure of knowledge set forth by the teacher
Discovery-based learning – students work on their own to grasp a concept
Expository teaching – teacher provides an exposition of how a particular set of information is structured and organized

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Advance organizer – broad introductory statement of the information that will be presented in a lesson
Comparative organizer – broad statement that reminds the student of what he or she already knows
Expository organizer – broad statement of what is to be learned in a lesson

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Inductive reasoning – abstraction of a general principle from a variety of examples
Guided discovery – students work under the guidance of a capable partner to grasp a concept or understand a lesson

 A systematic form of instruction that is used for mastery of basic skills and facts
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Review the previous material
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Present new material
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Provide guided practice
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Provide feedback
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Provide independent practice
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Review weekly and monthly

 Providing explanations
 Providing feedback
 Asking questions

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Common explanations – how to do something
Disciplinary explanations – from specific disciplines and formal in structure
Self-explanations – explanations you can rehearse to yourself to make sure you understand something
Instructional explanations – provided by teachers, texts, or other materials

 Write an example of each kind of explanation. Tell how they are different and how they are alike. How might these different explanations influence student learning?

 Feedback can enhance:
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Response learning – tasks in which the learner provides a simple response to a stimulus
Concept learning – learning a new rule for classification by generating the rule from examples
Skill learning – acquiring a new procedure

Asking Questions: Five Procedural
Prompts that Assist Students
 Signal words like who, what, where*
 Generic questions or generic question stems*
 Main idea
 Questions that vary in complexity
 Story grammar categories like setting
*Most effective prompts

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Homework based on material taught in class - review, practice, rehearsal
Homework based on new material – preparation, experience
 Homework that expand on and extends beyond the classroom learning – exploration, learning experience, expression

 How much homework will I assign each night?
 When and how should students hand it in?
 What will I do when students do not do homework?
 How will I respond when students hand in homework late?
(See next slide for more questions)

 What kind of help can the student seek with the homework?
 What is the proper role of the parent with regard to homework?
 What help can students expect from me?
 How will I evaluate the homework?
 What should students do if they often have difficulty with homework?

 Tactics to increase rates of homework completion:
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Purpose
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Policy
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Design
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Support
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Feedback

Homework Strategies for Student with Disabilities
 Give clear and appropriate assignments
 Make home work accommodations
 Ensure clear home/school communication
 Teach study skills
 Use a homework calendar

Homework: Cultural and
Socioeconomic Differences
 Economic difficulties
 Extended, blended, and other types of families need to be considered
 Language differences can hinder communication
 Cultural differences can go hand-in-hand with language differences

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Why are teachers’ beliefs important?
How do teachers’ knowledge of subject matter understanding and general knowledge of teaching translate into ways to teach specific material to students?
 How do expert teachers differ from novice teachers?
(See next slide for more questions)





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What are some general teacher-centered approaches to teaching?
What kinds of teaching tactics can teachers use?
How can teachers use homework effectively?
How can teachers plan to meet the needs of students who have special needs?
How can teachers develop the expertise necessary for working in culturally diverse settings?