How to become a better teacher in two easy steps

(Note, this article was written by me, not Paulo Freire)

1. Focus on the psychological and psychosocial needs of the student

Ryan and Deci, in their Self Determination Theory, talk about the three inherent needs of students, and all people for that matter, in order to develop the intrinsic motivation to learn. These three needs are competence, autonomy, and relatedness. If a teacher can succeed in providing these three things, then they have succeeded in creating an optimal environment for student learning to occur. Erikson explores the 8 phases of a person's psychosocial development and asserts that adolescents at high school age are primarily concerned with forming their identity and positioning themselves within an adult world. In order for them to succeed in these identity formations and not to develop behaviours of avoidance, Erikson contends that teachers need to support students psychologically throughout these years which brings me to my main point - students have a fundamental right and an innate need to feel safe and valued in the classroom, and only when they feel this can learning truly occur. According to Vygotsky, all learning occurs first in one's social context before it is internalised and incorporated by an individual. As teachers our first role is to ensure that students are being catered to socially and psychologically and we can do this by addressing Ryan and Deci's psychological needs:

Relatedness: Are we as teachers relating to our students? This could mean selecting content knowledge that is appropriate, interesting and engaging for students - that incorporate their real lives. It also means are we being sincere in our social interactions? Students are like blood hounds when it comes to sniffing out insincerity, so I suppose the moral of the lesson is, if you don't care about teaching and you don't care about your students, really, honestly care about them, then perhaps it's time to start seeking out a new profession.

Autonomy: Are we allowing our students a level of autonomy in our classes? As teachers we need to know when to step back and let students learn, this is what Vygotsky calls "scaffolding" and it is commonplace terminology in schools world wide. As teachers we want our students to succeed, however we also know by now that failure is a natural part of life, and that a life without failure is closely related to a life without taking risks. We need to give students real experiences that they have ownership over to create their own meaningful connections and pathways between knowledge. This form of experiential, or embodied learning has proved highly effective every since Dewey's critique of traditional education in 1938. There is that famous quote by Benjamin Franklin, "tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn". It's not the nicest quote but you get the point. Not only do students need to experience autonomy over their learning, but also as people, finding their way into the adult world. It is hard for teachers to think about giving our students autonomy in our classes, some simple things could be to design an assessment task WITH your students, to incorporate their individual interests into your lessons, to allow opportunities for them to have their voices heard and listened to... however you do it, once managed your classes will come to life with our students creativity.

Last but not least is competence: We need to teach to students within their Zone of Proximal Development in order to ensure that every student has the opportunity to experience success. In a lecture by Patrick Griffin at the University of Melbourne this year, the opportunity for students to experience success is essential, not just for the high flyers but for every student. As teachers we need to be assessing our students accurately, and identifying their zones of proximal development and actual development in order to create targeted teaching strategies to enable students to learn. as Griffin states "if teaching is targeted to the level of development demonstrated by students, all students can learn." (Griffin, 2014). It is important for students to experience success in order to become competent learners, and it is important for students to become competent learners because without competency it is hard for a person to find true and intrinsic value in what they are doing and who they are. Competency is what motivates students intrinsically to achieve a level of mastery in whatever task they are completing or goal they have set.

2. Be Passionate

Having excellent content knowledge and being passionate about your learning area will translate to your students who will experience (hopefully) some of your enthusiasm. Any of us who have worked in a customer service role know how contagious a smile is - and any of us who have had the pleasure of being taught by a teacher who is really passionate about their subject will also understand this contagiousness of passion. According to John Hattie, teachers are the single largest influence on student learning and those of us who have had bad teachers will know this all too well. I remember my high school years - I was positive beyond any doubt that I was mentally challenged when it came to Science. I couldn't score higher than a D if my life depended on it. I had this stone faced teacher called Mrs Smith who would coldly set us work from out text books and leave us to work in silence. It wasn't until year nine when Mrs Smith was replaced with a younger, warmer teacher who was interesting and made our subject fun that I realised I could and did get straight A's for the entire year. In year 10 I was unfortunate enough to get Mrs Smith yet again and my marks plummeted.

Mrs Smith had been teaching for a while, and it seemed quite obvious that whatever enthusiasm she may have once had for the subject was well and truly dead, and this translated to her students. It is important for us as teachers to keep our passions alive, and to incorporate them into our subjects and learning areas. Our students are all individuals, and so are we. We all have our own values and our own interests and sharing those with our students is not only interesting for them, but it models and promotes a culture of openness and honest communication within our classrooms. Whether we want to talk to our students about our passion for animal welfare, the environment, Beyonce's outfit at the Grammys, if we can make it work and make it relevant to learning, then it will only add colour to our pedagogy. It is important to note here that as teachers, we are in a position of power, and we are highly influential over our students, so when we share our personal views and beliefs it is important to emphasise that they are our own, and to be sensitive and never self righteous.  It is not our position as teachers to tell our students that our beliefs are more valid than theirs. One of my lecturers told me once that in Sweden there are no separate words for "learning" and "teaching", instead the word for them both is one and the same. I'm not sure how true this is but I like the thought of learning and teaching as an exchange that happens. Perhaps teaching in Cambodia and on my travels around the globe I have realised just how much we can learn if we shut our mouths every now and then and let somebody else speak. As academics we are perpetual learners, and thus our students can be our best resources. In this exchange of knowledge, every person regardless of powerless or hierarchy deserves and appreciates respect and what better way to show our appreciation than to share and include our students passions and interests into our pedagogy?

So when it comes to resources (which is what this blog post was initially supposed to be about), I suppose I am taking the same view as John Hattie, who, in a controversial lecture at The University of Melbourne this year, told us that we don't need more resources! We have enough out there. What really matters, what makes the biggest difference to student learning is us, the teacher. In other words, a student's best resource is YOU!

References:

Dewey, J. (1938). John Dewey experience and education. New York: McMillan.

Griffin, P. (Ed.). (2014). Assessment for Teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Hattie, J. (2013). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 54-67.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1980). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press.

  

The MTeach - So Far In The Journey

I am finishing up my first semester of the Master of Teaching course at the University of Melbourne and what an experience it has been!

I have undertaken subjects such as Social and Professional Contexts - which examines the social aspects of teaching, and has covered topics such as indigenous education, the inclusive classroom, sexuality, gender, exploring disadvantage, culturally diverse classrooms, wellbeing and bullying, and post-compulsory pathways. It has been such a fantastic subject, and what I love about the MTeach course is how we are expected to be active with our learning. It is all very experiential and centres heavily around Paulo Freire’s “praxis” - ie. the process of active and continuous reflection governed by theory

I have just recently completed my Clinical Praxis Exam (CPE), which was a presentation detailing my experiences on placement, in which I applied pedagogical theories to my teaching methodologies in order to address the learning needs of a focus student. I found the whole experience unbelievably beneficial. This course has really turned us all (the teacher candidates) into pedagogical geeks! We walk around casually slipping terms like “disequilibrium”, “scaffolding” and “MKO’s” into our everyday lingo, and trust me, it’s hard to switch off when you get home. However within the four walls of a classroom, having so much knowledge and theory as a foundation is invaluable. A strong pedagogical framework, from which to draw upon, shape and alter depending on the unique context and culture of my class - and then to watch it begin to take shape and to yield results - there’s really nothing like it.

My favourite subject (did I mention I was a bit of a geek?) has been Learners, Teachers and Pedagogy - “the teaching subject” where we have been exploring a range of learning theories and concepts such as, Behaviourism, Developmentalism, Social Constructivism, Experiential Learning, Visible Learning, Connectavism, Critical Pedagogy and Cognitive Theories.

My favourites have been Social Constructivism (Vygotsky), Experiential Learning (Dewey & Kolb), Visible Learning (we had the man John Hattie himself come in and give us a controversial lecture), oh, and of course Connectavism which is the not yet learning theory around digital natives and the involvement and integration of technology and students’ “e-lives” into the learning space.

Other subjects have been Language and Teaching, which focuses solely on literacy in the classroom - and I don’t mean just reading and writing, but all multi-modal text types. This again is a subject based on Constructivist approaches (such as Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development), however it also takes into account the role of the teacher to scaffold students through various roles of code breaking, meaning making, building knowledge and transformation. For me, the most interesting and beneficial aspect of this subject has been the study of oral language - it’s various components, techniques and how we apply them as educators in the classroom. We had an assignment in which we recorded our oral interactions with a group of students and then did a close analysis of our language - it was just fascinating, especially when taking into account all the theory on gender and language around (for example).

Last but not least has been the placement subject itself, in which I have spent six weeks at Melbourne Girls College in Richmond putting theory into practice. The forming of relationships with students and teachers, and finally having the competency and autonomy to take on a teacher workload and creating and designing lessons and assessment tasks has really been a second to none experience.  I found the staff and students at MGC lovely - the school itself is progressive, (there is a copy of Hattie’s, Visible Learning in the staffroom) and teachers peer assess and have a range of PD’s on things we cover in university such as Differentiation. Seeing high schools pairing up with universities and acknowledging/taking onboard new educational research as it arises is really awesome. It reminds me of the schooling system in Finland.

The Master of Teaching at Melbourne has been ranked number 2 in the world in the discipline of education in the QS World Ranking by Subjects 2014 and it’s easy to see why.

There has been nothing better for me than getting up each day and learning from such incredible and knowledgeable people. The experience has been very unexpectedly humbling. To my surprise, my lecturers and teachers weren’t all aging, academic snobs, yet experienced, caring, and realistic educators, most of whom started out and are still teaching and participating/running programs in low SES, culturally diverse and rural schools. Growing up myself in Melbourne’s Western Suburbs, I have a personal affiliation with the underfunded, slightly rough around the edges type schools. Exploring education is thrilling and endless, what a world I have stepped into!

I read this article in The Guardian today about critical pedagogy, that although set in England, it makes some very valid points that can be directly translated to an Australian context (especially as education begins to head down this economic route as prescribed by our current government).

Many lines struck out to, but what I really want to end on is this description of critical pedagogy which draws on the likes of Freire, Giroux, McLaren, Focault, and Simon. It reads:

“Critical pedagogy isn't a prescriptive set of practices – it's a continuous moral project that enables young people to develop a social awareness of freedom. This pedagogy connects classroom learning with the experiences, histories and resources that every student brings to their school. It allows students to understand that with knowledge comes power; the power that can enable young people to do something differently in their moment in time and take positive and constructive action.”