Essential Teaching Skills - part 6

74 ESSENTIAL TEACHING SKILLS Because intrinsic motivation involves a drive towards increasing competence, as well as a curiosity drive, it can also be fostered by providing pupils with regular feedback on how their skills and competence are developing, and drawing to their attention what they can do and understand now compared with before the course of work began. Building on extrinsic motivation Strategies that build on pupils’ extrinsic motivation include linking effort and success to material rewards and privileges. You must be extremely careful, however, to ensure that the reward or privilege offered is actually one desired by the pupils concerned and does not undermine their intrinsic motivation or alienate those who make an effort but who are not rewarded in this way. For example, offering the opportunity to those who work hard to start their break early, seems to devalue the worthwhileness of the activity; offering a book token to the best piece of project work may again offer far more hurt to those unsuccessful than pleasure to the pupil who wins it. Other strategies include esteem-related rewards, such as high grades or other forms of recognition for effort and success, although again, if such rewards are overtly competitive, you need to be aware of their possible effect on other pupils. Teacher praise is a very important and powerful motivation, although its effect depends on skilful use. Praise that is explicitly linked to the pupil’s efforts and attainment, which conveys sincere pleasure on the teacher’s part, and which is used with credibility, is more effective than praise simply offered on a regular basis but lacking these qualities. Extrinsic motivation can also be highlighted by indicating to pupils the usefulness, relevance and importance of the topic or activity to their needs. These may be their short-term needs, such as academic qualifications or high test scores of attainment, or their long-term needs, such as coping with the demands of adult life successfully or helping to realise their career aspirations. Building on expectation for success Strategies that build upon pupils’ expectation for success include ensuring that the tasks set are challenging and offer pupils a realistic chance of success, taking into account their ability and previous learning. In particular, you need to try to minimise any unnecessary frustration caused by setting up the activities poorly. This requires close monitoring of pupils’ progress once the lesson is under way, together with quick and supportive feedback when a pupil has encountered major difficulties. Your help and expectations must convey confidence in the pupils and your belief that with appropriate effort they will be successful. When dealing with pupils who lack confidence in themselves as learners, such help and expectations are of crucial importance. It is also important to convey that success lies in their own hands, and that they need to be aware of how they approach tasks, the degree of persistence they have to apply to be successful, and that there is no substitute for a willingness on their part to apply sustained effort. Your relationships with pupils A positive classroom climate very much depends on the type of relationship you establish with your pupils. Pupils’ learning is most likely to flourish in a climate where CLASSROOM CLIMATE 75 1111 21 31 4 51 61 7 8 9 10 1 1112 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 46 471111 this relationship is based on mutual respect and rapport between yourself and your pupils. Mutual respect and rapport Mutual respect largely develops from the pupils seeing by your actions that you are a competent teacher, and that you care about their progress by planning and conducting effective lessons and carrying out your various tasks with commitment. In addition, you convey in your dealings with pupils, both during whole-class teaching and in your interactions with individuals, that you respect each pupil as an individual who has individual and personal needs. Good rapport stems from conveying to pupils that you understand, share and value their perspective, as individuals, on a whole range of matters and experiences, academic, social and personal: for example, expressing sympathy when the local football team is knocked out of a cup competition, praise for a pupil who had performed well in a school play, concern for a pupil who has a bad cold, and excitement that a school trip is near. The development of a positive classroom climate depends on this relationship being two-way: your respect for pupils should be reciprocated in their respect for you, and your understanding of their perspectives reciprocated in their understanding of yours. Nevertheless, as an adult, and given your role, it is up to you to have a major influence in establishing such a harmonious relationship in the classroom. The skills involved in establishing a climate of mutual respect and rapport are highly prized in schools, as they also have a major impact on the general climate of the school as a whole. They also contribute to the pastoral care role of the teacher, and make it easier for pupils to come to you with their personal problems and difficulties. Indeed, a high proportion of outstanding teachers in inner-city comprehensive schools tend to be very skilful in developing good rapport with potentially difficult and demanding adolescents and, not surprisingly, many of these outstanding teachers have specific pastoral care responsibilities in the school as a result. Pye (1988), interestingly, noticed how skilful teachers were able to convey a personal manner in their interaction with an individual pupil during a private exchange, in which the mutual respect and rapport established was particularly evident. Pye described this as a situation in which the teacher and pupil were ‘acknowledging’ each other; i.e. they had established a personal relationship that was separate from, and yet still part of, the relationship that the teacher had with the class as a whole. Acting as a good example It is also important to be aware of the influence that your behaviour can have on pupils in acting as an example or model for their own behaviour. This identification with the teacher is evident in both the primary and secondary school years. Pupils will expect you to be a good example of the expectations that you convey. If you insist on neat work, your own board work should also be neat. If you expect pupils to act in a civilised manner, you should not lose your temper or use sarcasm to hurt their feelings. If you want pupils to find the work interesting, you should convey interest in the activities yourself. Indeed, in a number of their reports based on school inspections, Ofsted frequently report on the particular importance of the example set by the teacher in establishing a positive ethos in the classroom. 76 ESSENTIAL TEACHING SKILLS The use of humour One of the difficulties facing beginning teachers concerns knowing whether, how and when to use humour in the classroom, and the extent to which their relationship with pupils should be friendly. Judicious use of humour and conveying that you have a sense of humour can play a useful part in helping to establish good rapport and a positive classroom climate. Humour can be used to good effect in a whole range of situations, including introducing a light-hearted aspect of the work in hand or making a joke at your own expense (and, if done skilfully, making a joke at the pupil’s expense but in a way that enables the pupil to share the joke rather than feel victimised). Humour can also be used to reassure a pupil who is anxious or in difficulties or to defuse a potential conflict with a pupil about misbehaviour. Conveying that you have a sense of humour is indicated in the way you respond to events that occur with good humour or share with pupils some amusement which they see in a situation. It might be something as simple as how you react to a pupil’s aside (e.g. ‘Did a division of “minute men” in the American War of Independence consist of three hours’ worth?’). Linked with the use of humour is the extent to which you try to establish friendly relations with pupils. Part of establishing good rapport with pupils involves sharing to some extent each other’s understanding and perspective on the demands of classroom life and life outside the classroom in general. This will include valuing and respecting each other as individuals and valuing each other’s viewpoints. Much of this forms the basis of friendship between individuals. Nevertheless, the classroom is a unique and, to a large extent, a very ritualised environment. To sustain order and control, your relationship with pupils, above all, must be one in which they respect and accept your authority to manage and control what happens in the classroom so that their learning may progress effectively. This means that your manner needs to be competent, business-like and task-oriented. Frequent use of humour, particularly being ‘jokey’, and trying to act as a friend of equal status, tends to undermine your authority because it does not accord with the ritual of school life and how pupils typically see and react to different aspects of a teacher’s manner. As a result, beginning teachers who attempt to build their relationships with pupils on frequent use of humour or on an over-friendly approach, often find that they are less able to establish and exert their authority when required to do so. The ability to establish mutual respect and rapport in the classroom, and to use humour to good effect, and to be able to establish a friendly ethos without being too friendly, involves very sensitive social awareness on the teacher’s part. It is somewhat like a chef who uses taste while cooking to decide on the right amount of salt to enhance the flavour of the dish rather than spoil it. Use of humour and friendship in the classroom can be seen as ‘flavour enhancers’ to add to the generally business-like and task-oriented manner you convey. Enhancing pupils’ self-esteem Perhaps the single most important feature that has contributed to improving the quality of education provided in schools has been the increasing awareness amongst teachers of the importance of fostering pupils’ self-esteem, self-confidence and self-respect as CLASSROOM CLIMATE 77 1111 21 31 4 51 61 7 8 9 10 1 1112 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 46 471111 learners. Many writers have documented the ways in which schools can damage pupils’ self-esteem by emphasising for many pupils their relative lack of success compared with that of high-attaining pupils. As a result, such pupils attribute a sense of failure to the work they do, even if it is their best. In consequence, they may then get caught up in a vicious downward spiral of underachievement on their part and low expectations by teachers for their future work. Hargreaves (1982) famously referred to this process as involving the destruction of pupils’ sense of dignity, in which they increasingly feel inferior, unable and powerless. He argues that this attack on their dignity stems not only from their experience of the ‘formal curriculum’, but also, and even more so, from their experience of the ‘hidden curriculum’. The formal curriculum refers to learning about the subject and topic being studied, whereas the hidden curriculum refers to all the messages conveyed to pupils by their experiences in school. These messages stem from the way they are treated, and the attitudes and values conveyed to them about their role and worth as individuals and the worth of what they have accomplished. Many of the messages conveyed in the hidden curriculum may be unintended. For example, if during classroom discussion with pupils you never use or elaborate on pupils’ contributions, but always judge them simply in terms of whether they have contributed what you wanted in a narrowly conceived view of their correctness, pupils may get the message that their thoughts and ideas are of little worth or value except in so far as they are correct as judged by you. This may undermine the degree to which they are then willing to contribute ideas, particularly exploratory or uncertain ones, which may be the opposite of what you would wish. The humanistic approach to teaching and learning The increasing awareness of the importance of fostering pupils’ self-esteem has been a major development over the years. It stems in part from its emphasis within humanistic psychology and its applications to education, notably through the work of Maslow and Rogers (e.g. Maslow, 1987; Rogers and Freiberg, 1994). They both argued that education must place an emphasis on the whole person, on the idea of personal growth, on the pupil’s own perspective in terms of how they see themselves and see the world, and on the notions of personal agency and the power of choice. The key elements in applying such an approach to classroom teaching involve: seeing the teacher’s role as essentially that of a facilitator providing pupils with a significant degree of choice and control to manage and organise their learning displaying respect for and empathy with pupils. Studies of the attitudes held by student teachers towards teaching and learning in schools typically show that student teachers tend to hold views consistent with the humanistic approach at the start of their initial training courses, but that by the end of their training they often report that such views are sometimes quite hard to sustain in their actual classroom practice, given the constraints they face in the realities of classroom life (Kyriacou and Cheng, 1993). Nevertheless, despite such difficulties, the classroom climate in schools has become much more humanistic in tone over the years. 78 ESSENTIAL TEACHING SKILLS Fostering pupils’ self-esteem is seen to lie at the heart of this approach. This perspective is evident, either explicitly or implicitly, in many important developments in classroom practice; in particular, the growth of active learning methods, as well as the introduction of new forms of assessment, most notably that of records of achievement. Indeed, some lessons, such as those forming part of a personal and social education programme, are often designed specifically to help foster pupils’ self-esteem in general, as well as their self-esteem as learners in particular. Conveying positive messages The need to foster pupils’ self-esteem as learners is fundamental to establishing a positive classroom climate, and the most important influence on pupils’ self-esteem in the classroom is your interaction with the pupils. If your comments to pupils are largely positive, supportive, encouraging, praising, valuing and relaxing, rather than negative, deprecating, harsh, attacking, dominating and anxiety-provoking, this will do much to foster pupils’ self-esteem. In addition, your body language communicates to pupils how you feel about them, through messages conveyed non-verbally by your use of eye contact, posture and facial expression. It can sometimes make it difficult to convey a message verbally about how you feel if your body language indicates to pupils something different. An awareness of how what you say and how your body language is likely to be perceived by pupils can help you to develop the skills involved in establishing a positive classroom climate. Nevertheless, positive messages are much easier to convey if you genuinely do feel in the ways you are trying to convey; that is to say, you genuinely do like and respect pupils, care for their learning, and feel relaxed and confident in your role. Giving positive help In your interactions with pupils, the two areas that probably have the greatest effect are how you treat pupils’ errors and the extent to which you take a personal interest in their progress. A pupil error is any contribution that falls short of the standard of progress you desire. It includes a poor answer to a question, a poorly written-up project, or simply not being able to undertake a task you have set. In such circumstances you need to consider the type of feedback to give that will be helpful and supportive rather than admonishing. It is generally better to give specific help that relates to the task rather than critical feedback about performance or critical comments about the pupil. For example, pointing out that the pupil needs to remember that the hypotenuse is always the side opposite to the right angle, is better than simply saying ‘You can do better than this’ or, even worse, ‘This is the low standard of work I have come to expect from you’. Also, when a pupil is having difficulties, you need to avoid sounding patronising. This can be difficult, because you are in authority and may, from time to time, be giving advice or diagnosing a difficulty that the pupil is already aware of. This should not be a problem, since the pupil should be willing to tolerate it if it only happens occasionally. The real problem arises if your tone is perceived by the pupil to be conveying an element of ‘put-down’, sarcasm or unfair criticism. Thus, for example, telling a pupil whose diagram would have been much better if a sharpened pencil had been used that ‘You ... - tailieumienphi.vn