Effective Teaching

Printable version of the entire Effective Teaching Unit

In this introduction to effective teaching, you are going to do three activities.

1) We ask you to think critically about what makes a good teacher in Activity 1.

2) You will compare what you think about a good teacher with what the State of Kentucky says make a good teacher in Activity 2.

3) You will review best practices in teaching students with moderate and severe disabilities and connect them to the standards for all teachers in Activity 3.

In this peer tutoring course, we want you to learn about people with disabilities and improve you understanding of what is helpful to them. An important point to recall throughout this course is the basic principle that standards of quality are pretty much universal. If you think something would be good for you, then it probably would also be good for your peers who have a disability. Yes, it is true that sometimes the nature of a disability means that an accommodation may be required, but the basic standard remains the same. If you think some place would be a good place for YOU to live, work, or learn, then it is likely that with needed accommodation it will be a good place for anyone else to live, work, or learn.

As a peer tutor, you are working in a classroom, and a major focus of the content of this course is on effective education of students with disabilities. In this unit, we are going to examine certain aspects of effective instruction for students with moderate and severe disabilities, but we want to start with some reflection on what the characteristics of good teaching are--for everyone!

As an experienced student, you know quite a bit about good teaching. Anyone who has made it as far as high school has spent thousands of hours with teachers. Although you may not have ever careful thought about it, you know some of your teachers have been excellent, while others were less effective.

What makes for good teaching? Sometimes when we are in class and we have not done our homework or we are feeling stressed by the demand being placed on us, we think good teachers are easy teachers. But think about it--is that true? Of course not! The good teacher is the person who really teaches us something. They help us develop the skills and knowledge we need to excell, make it in next year’s classes, get into college, get a good job, and otherwise provide us with a foundation for success in life beyond the walls of the school.

Good teaching is effective teaching--it does more then keep us entertained (although the ability to make material interesting is certainly part of the job). Think about it. Think about your best teachers (the ones who taught you the most) and think about your worst teachers.

*ACTIVITY* Let’s compare the two groups. Draw a line down the middle of a sheet of notebook paper. Title the column on the right "BEST," and the column on the left "WORST" (Do not include names--this is not to demean people but to get you thinking about what is good teaching). In the right column, brainstorm everything that comes to mind about your best teachers--stretch those memory cells. Try to fill the whole column. What did they do? How did they act? How did they grade? What were their assignments like? How did they structure the classroom? What were their rules like? How did they make decisions? How did they present information? And how did they deal with students who had a tough time learning? After you have completed that column, brainstorm everything that comes to mind about your least effective teachers. As you are making your list, you will probably find it useful to do an item-by-item comparison. What did a less effective teacher do that was different from a more effective teacher? After you have finished your list, turn your page over and summarize what you have learned form this process. Write a couple of paragraphs that compare and contrast effective and ineffective teaching. Don’t just repeat what you put in your two columns on the front--reflect on what you have learned in this process. You should be able to fill the entire backside of the paper with your reflection. When you have finished the other activities in this section, turn this paper in to your peer tutoring instructor as part of your assignments for this unit.

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There has been a lot of research into effective teaching. We know that people can learn to be highly effective teachers. Certainly inborn talent and personality can contribute something to the art of effective teaching, but the truth is that not all good teachers are born that way. Effective teaching is not a only a question of inherent ability. Just like other professions, hard work and practice can enable a person to become a fine teacher--just like someone can learn to become an automobile mechanic, a pharmacist, or a software engineer.

The researchers that has identified the basic skills needed to be a good teacher utilized the same basic approach that you just used to focus your thinking. Researchers who examine this topic start by asking what is the result. First, they identify groups of successful students. They then use these student outcomes as the basis for identifying effective teachers. They compare what effective teachers do with the teaching styles of those who are less effective. Based on this work, we can develop a list of what is sometimes called “best practices,” which are tools for teaching that are most likely to contribute to student success.

Since so much public money is invested in education, these best practices are becoming increasingly important. Taxpayers, your parents, and political leaders want to be assured that all that money is being well spent. They want to know that what teachers are doing is likely to lead to student success. They do not want their money and your time being wasted on ineffective approaches or teachers that are ineffective.

For this reason, many states have made these research-based best practices part of the process for certifying teachers. They establish standards of practice that require teachers to demonstrate these skills at a certain level in order to be allowed into the classroom. In Kentucky, this list of behaviors is call the New Teacher Standards for Preparation and Certification. Colleges use them as a basis for teacher training. Principals and others use these standards for evaluating new teachers during their first year of teaching.

*ACTIVITY* Carefully review the Kentucky New Teacher Standards. Each one of the nine standards is a general statement of needed skills. They are followed by a list of performance criteria, actions you could see a teacher performing in the classroom that show they are actually putting the standard into practice. Now reflect how your personal list of good teacher behaviors compares with the indicators listed under the New Teacher Standards. Write a one page reflection on the similarities and difference between your list and the Kentucky standards. Write about how the two lists are the same and how they are different. What accounts for this variation? As an experienced consumer of teaching, do you agree with everything on the Kentucky list? What did you learn about teaching from this process?

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Now we shift our focus to how these standards for effective teaching apply to the education of students with moderate and severe disabilities. To start, we want to repeat what we already said: “Effective teaching is effective teaching--everything we have already looked at about teacher standards applies to special education teachers!”

The same basis for evaluating effective teaching applies: Do the students have the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in this class, next year, and as an adult?

The main difference is that students with moderate and severe disabilities have a harder time learning than anyone else in the school. Because of the nature of their disability, they need support and accommodation to access, participate, and be successful in school. This means that many of the topics relevant to their effective education are addressed under other topics such as “Inclusion,” “Access and participation,” “Preparation for adult life,” and others. Here we want to build on our general discussion and emphasize key aspects of the teaching process.

"Creating Opportunities for Students with Intellectual or Multiple Disabilities" is an on-line resource manual published by the Saskatchewan Provincial Department of Education to assist teachers working with students with severe disabilities. Chapter four of this manual provides an over view of effective practice in delivering instruction. The discussion is divided into two parts. The first summarizes inclusion as a critical context for meaningful learning. The second part, on effective instruction practices, is our primary focus in this unit.

*ACTIVITY* Access the Chapter 4 of the Creating Opportunities document and review the section beginning on page number 36 (page 10 of the section you will down load). It lists 15 “Recognized Successful Practices” in education of students with severe disabilities. Reflect on these 15 topics by writing a brief reflection of a sentence or two on why you thing this factor needs to be considered in teaching students with disabilities. (Please do not merely repeat how the topic is described in the manual, but base your reflection on what you have learned thus far.) How do these 15 topics connect with the New Teachers Standards we looked at earlier? At the conclusion of your discussion of each of the 15 practices and in one sentence, indicate to which of the nine New Teacher Standards you feel this practice relates and why. (Example: “…Use of assistive technology is directly related to New Teachers Standard nine because the standard requires teachers to use computers and other technology in teaching.”)

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As you have seen, careful instructional planning, effective delivery of information, continuous tracking of student progress, and evaluation of teaching are consistently identified as important components of effective teaching. In the 4 sections of this unit, we want to look at each of these four elements in greater detail.

You can access the additional sections of this unit below, or you can access them through the links provided in the left navigation column at the top of this page.

· Individualizing Instruction. It is true that every student is different. However, the need to carefully consider individual differences becomes critical when a person has significant disabilities that require unique supports and accommodations. We will look at the process involved in developing a special education Individual Educational Plan (IEP) that addresses these differences and outlines a plan for success.

· Systematic instruction. Many of us learn some things almost accidentally with almost no study. Sometimes, we are very good at something or are very interested in it, and we learn stuff related to that topic very quickly without much study. Other times, we have some trouble learning something, but we have figured out how to work at it and learn what we need. In addition, sometimes we need to have the teacher or a peer explain or demonstrate something repeatedly before we start to put the pieces together. When people have a hard time communicating and learning that means the teacher may need to use a more structured way of teaching to insure student learning. In this section, we will introduce you to some of the techniques that are often used with students with moderate and severe disabilities.

· Tracking student progress. Sometimes students with moderate to severe disabilities learn things very slowly, so standard teacher tools like a quiz or a test will not provide a good picture of how a student is leaning. This section will have you explore some of the ways teachers can collect useful information. Your teacher may have you use some of these tools as you are working with your peers.

· Alternate Portfolios. As a student, you know that on a regular basis, the State requires tests and portfolios to evaluate whether your school is teaching you what you are supposed to know and whether you are learning it. These test or assessments are part of educational accountability, holding schools and teachers responsible for student leaning. This kind of on-going check-ups on schools has become a valuable tool in assuring effective teaching. The state says we are not going to just take your word that you are doing a good job--we want you to prove it. However, you have spent time with students with moderate and severe disabilities and you know that much of what they are learning is different from the material you are learning. Does that mean that the school does not have to be accountable for what they are doing? No! The school is accountable for every student. In this section, we will look at the Kentucky Alternate Portfolio, the tool the State is using to assure effective instruction of all students.