FOCUS QUESTIONS - Are teachers born or made?
- How is class time organized and what
is academic learning time?
- What classroom management skills
foster academic achievement?
- What are the roles of teachers and
students in the pedagogical cycle?
- How can teachers set a stage for
learning?
- What questioning strategies increase
student achievement?
- How can teachers best tap into different
student learning styles?
- How can teachers use technology to
support effective instruction?
- What are several salient models of
instruction?
CHAPTER PREVIEW Albert Einstein believed that they awakened
the “joy in creative expression and
knowledge.” Elbert Hubbard saw them as
those who could make “two ideas grow
where only one grew before.” Gail Godwin
surmised that they are “one-fourth
preparation and three-fourths theater.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that they
could “make hard things easy.” About
whom are these talented geniuses talking?
You guessed it: teachers. Although
these intellectual leaders shared an
insight into the importance of teaching,
even these artists and scientists could not
decide if teaching was an art or a science,
a gift or a learned skill. Perhaps it is both. Some individuals seem to take to
teaching quite naturally. With little or no
preparation, they come to school with a
talent to teach and touch the lives of students.
Others bring fewer natural talents
to the classroom yet, with preparation and
practice, become master teachers, models
others try to emulate. Most of us fall in the
middle, bringing some skills to teaching
but also ready to benefit and grow from
teacher preparation and practice teaching. In this chapter, we present recent
research findings on effective instruction
and classroom management, focusing on
a core set of skills that constitute good
teaching. We also detail the prevailing
models of instruction, such as cooperative
learning, problem-based learning, and differentiated
instruction—classroom
approaches that have become particularly
popular in recent years.
You may draw on these skills
and models in your own classroom,
selecting those that best
fit your subject, students,
and purpose. |