Good teaching

When I trained to be a teacher twenty or so years ago, the inspection framework was different and different pedagogical approaches were in favour. I took the graduate teacher programme pathway and was critiqued when my lessons weren’t entertaining enough, when I talked too much (there were whole rules around this), when I didn’t include enough group work.

The criticism went on and on, but I passed my course and moved on from my unsupportive mentor. He was so unsupportive that in the end I had to ask for someone else to observe my teaching. I remember one observation where I’d broken my rib the night before (mixed martial arts) and was told I didn’t move around enough, despite having told him about the injury before the lesson started. Really it didn’t matter what I did, he made the decision that I was a poor teacher and I could have had a lesson with bells and whistles on he would have marked it down somehow.

So I set this scene because I’m curious about what we mean by good teaching. I’ve observed about ten lessons in the last week and I still believe it comes down to strong subject knowledge (children of all needs respect this), careful questioning, and enthusiasm for the subject itself.

I’ve also seen great modelling: I do, we do, you do. Careful scaffolding, equally carefully removed as the lesson progresses. For example, the use of sentence stems that give children a way in without doing the thinking for them. Or modelled answers to help develop their own response.

What strikes me, watching lessons now, is how much of what we once dismissed as old-fashioned has quietly returned, and how much of what was once fashionable has quietly slipped away.