5 Standards of Effective Pedagogy

Author : Learning for Justice

Link to Article

Year : 2011

Joint Productive Activity

At all stages of education experts and novices working together is a common form of learning. Only through K-12 learning is this rarely found. The benefits of teachers and students working towards a common project/goal are:

• Learning of language and meaning in a common context.
• It is inherently collaborative and constructivist.

Language Development

In addition to the learning of language, reading and writing as separate studies, it should be woven into all subject areas. The process of reading, writing, speaking and listening (comprehending) must be woven in as a part of the classroom which students can easily mimic and pick up. This often means allowing students to express and communicate in a way which is comfortable, but acting as a model who is easy to mimic, and providing small and subtle improvements which they can incorporate in their own language. This is important to teach both languages on the whole, as well as effective means of general communication and also to develop subject specific lexicons.

Contextualisation

Most teaching in schools should not be a set of abstract rules. Rather, it is best if it builds on top of skills and everyday knowledge that students already have, and can be applied to their tangible world. This practical learning process makes it easier to learn and makes retention easier.

Challenging Activities

It is important for students’ abilities to be stretched, but only by small steps at a time. The right amount of challenge helps maximise engagement and thus learning. Through challenges it is important to provide students with:

• Clear context and understanding of the whole picture (a larger problem), and thus why a greater level of understanding is needed.
• Actionable feedback, to help them up their standard and understanding.

Instructional Conversation

Beyond well structured teaching approaches, more informal conversation (with a fixed learning goal) must be used in teaching. Maintaining a balance of informal conversation with structured pedagogies is a useful way to ensure that learning from classes sinks in easily. Instructional (informal) conversations are useful in language development and contextualisation. They can also be easily worked in during joint productive and challenging activities.