Quality Teaching in NSW Schools - An Annotated Bibliography

Why focus on the quality of pedagogy? For many teachers, for a very long time, it has been common sense to say that what matters most in students’ learning occurs within classrooms (or whatever the learning setting happens to be). Educational research has finally caught up with teachers in recognising the importance of teaching. The above document title really should have been titled Quality Learning... Even though the changes in education have been in effect for nearly a decade the thinking is still back at the chalk n talk teacher oriented structure of the past. This document focuses on:-

• Pedagogy that promotes high levels of intellectual quality;
• Pedagogy that establishes a high quality learning environment;
• Pedagogy that generates significance by connecting students with the intellectual demands of their work.

The Changing Face of Education

In the 70's schools became uncontrollable, students knew that what they were learning at school was irrelevant. Social consciousness knew it was time to change the structure and values of learning. The Adelaide Declaration of National Goals for Schooling in the 21st Century (MCEETYA) 1999, was convened. This generated the trend towards Outcomes Based Education (OBE). This document is very idealistic and unprejudiced. All states separated and needed to grapple with their understanding of the document and how to implement these changes. Some states have not been able to implement the changes effectively. Politicians tend to go back to a past structure to please and win elections, this does not have a positive effect on schooling. The new approach needs to reflect that children need to be active participants in their learning and how to take children from the dross thinking of the chalk n talk era to problem based learning, higher order thinking and deep understanding. The way to achieve this is through critical reflection.

The Characteristics of an Expert Teacher

A lot of research has been done on the qualities needed by teachers to be “experts” in their field. Some of the personal qualities of an expert teacher are:

* Expert teachers are passionate about teaching and learning. Expert teachers are highly knowledgeable and up to date in their subject matter but do not pretend to know it all. They are willing to learn from their students. Expert teachers are learners for life. Expert teachers are able to see the gifts of all children and through positive interaction and correct content handling bring the light of each child to the forefront of their being.

* Expert teachers have a high respect for students and colleagues and work in a shared and collegial way with other staff. Hattie stated; “The manner used by the teacher to treat the students, respect them as learners and people, and demonstrate care and commitment for them are attributes of expert teachers. By having such respect, they can recognize possible barriers to learning and can seek ways to overcome these barriers. The picture drawn of experts is one of involvement and caring for the students, a willingness to be receptive to what the students need, not attempting to dominate the situation. Too often experienced teachers tended to create more physical and psychological distance between themselves and their students than do experts.” (Hattie, 2003) Expert teachers recognise themselves and their colleagues as co-learners.

* Expert teachers have deep core beliefs and values. They have a genuine desire to promote the growth of humanity through their teaching and bring out the best in their students. Expert teachers have a broad view and perspective on life. Expert teachers are honest and open in their approach and can show their mistakes and improvements. They are often seen as “easy going” and “relaxed” and have a high ability to communicate effectively.

* Expert teachers have an entrepreneurial flare and take risks. Expert teachers are quick to see different approaches to different scenarios are opportunistic and flexible and can improvise. Experts will seek further information and will take advantage of new information quickly. They will seek and use feedback about their teaching strategies and change direction easily when needed. Experts are skilful at keeping lessons on track and accomplishing objectives while allowing for student discussion. Expert teachers are more inclined to take educational risks.

John Hattie delivered a paper to the Australian Council for Educational Research called Building Teacher Quality. This paper identified the greatest differences between experienced and expert teachers and created a possible benchmark for professional development of teachers. Three dimensions that distinguished between experts and experienced teachers were:

* Challenge

* Deep Representation

* Monitoring and Feedback

Challenge
Expert teachers set tasks for their students that are both challenging and engaging. An expert teacher takes the time to know the gifts of all children in the classroom and their prior knowledge. Expert teachers are able to integrate prior knowledge and new subject matter to create challenging and complex tasks that stimulate and enhance students’ self-concept and self-efficacy about learning. Experts aim to motivate students to mastery. Experts engage students more in challenging tasks and less in student listening. Expert teachers have high enthusiasm for subject matter and give constant acknowledgement and positive feedback. Expert teachers connect content learning with deeper learning giving meaning and understanding to students work. Expert teachers can relate and extend ideas allowing for deeper, higher learning.

Deep Representation
Expert teachers have deeper representations about teaching and learning and possess knowledge that is more integrated. Expert teachers have a wide knowledge of teaching and learning theories and are able to relate to different theorists according to different circumstances with ease. Expert teachers are able to use and integrate different teaching and learning theories into their lesson plans to formulate their lessons in accordance with multidimensional complex classroom situations.

Hattie states:
Because of these deeper representations expert teachers:
* can spontaneously relate what is happening to these deeper sets of principles,
* can quickly recognize sequences of events occurring in the classroom which in some way affect the learning and teaching of a topic,
* can detect and concentrate more on information that has instructional significance,
* can make better predictions based on their representations about the classroom,
* can identify a greater store of algorithms that students might use when solving a particular problem, and therefore are able to predict and determine what types of errors students might make,
* can be much more responsive to students [One of my criticisms of secondary schooling in New Zealand is the degree to which it is powered by curriculum, assessment, time bells, and other bureaucratic controls and not by responsiveness to students]

I find it fascinating that experts take more time than experienced teachers to build these representations, have more understanding of the how and why of student success, are more able to reorganize their problem solving in light of ongoing classroom activities, can readily formulate a more extensive range of likely solutions, and are more able to check and test out their hypothesis or strategies. (Hattie, 2003)

Monitoring and Feedback
Expert teachers have greater insight and ability to interpret events in more detail and can filter relevant from irrelevant information. They are able to monitor, understand and interpret events to provide more and better feedback. Due to their ability to monitor and interpret they have a wider scope to anticipate and prevent disturbances from occurring. Expert teachers test hypotheses and strategies about learning and are adept at evaluating their feedback. Expert teachers use feedback to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching. Children cannot be thanked, appreciated and praised enough. The affirmation of a student is the most important thing in teaching. Expert teachers praise their students to success.

Other attributes of expert teachers are:

Inclusiveness
Expert teachers recognise that everyone must be valued and feel valued. Expert teachers contribute valuable time – not leftover time, and often their teaching commitments go above and beyond the classroom. Expert teachers teach the children to include everyone and respond positively to the responses of each person, this is especially important in group work. Expert teachers know the importance of group work and are proficient at constructing good social interaction in groups.

Critical Reflection
Expert teachers enable deep learning to occur in students through critical reflection and include critical reflection in every lesson. Expert teachers critically reflect on their own teaching ability, strategies, theories and daily practices. Expert teachers are adept at creating lessons that cause students to pause and reflect on their learning strategies and ideas enabling them to link into other cognitive thought processes and underlying beliefs and knowledge.

Constructivism
What is meant by constructivism? The term refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves---each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning---as he or she learns. Constructing meaning is learning; there is no other kind. Therefore we have to focus on the learner in thinking about learning (not on the subject/lesson to be taught and there is no knowledge independent of the meaning attributed to experience (constructed) by the learner, or community of learners.

There are two main subsets of research that the constructivist approach to teaching and learning is based on; they are cognitive psychology and social psychology. Piaget (1972) is considered as one of the chief theorists among the cognitive constructivists, while Vygotsky (1978) is the major theorist among the social constructivists.

Swiss epistemologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) devoted much of his life to the study of child development in the learning process. One of the basic premises, upon which much of his work in the theory of constructivism was built, is that for learning to take place, the child's view of the world must come into conflict with his actual experience of that world. It is when the child puts forth effort to reconcile the two, his expectations and his experiences, that he is able to learn.

Lev Vygotsky, born in the U.S.S.R. in 1896, is responsible for the social development theory of learning. He proposed that social interaction profoundly influences cognitive development. Central to Vygotsky's theory is his belief that biological and cultural development do not occur in isolation (Driscoll, 1994).

Vygotsky approached development differently from Piaget. Piaget believed that cognitive development consists of four main periods of cognitive growth: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations (Saettler, 331). Piaget's theory suggests that development has an endpoint in goal. Vygotsky, in contrast, believed that development is a process that should be analysed, instead of a product to be obtained. According to Vygotsky, the development process that begins at birth and continues until death is too complex to be defined by stages (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

The importance of prior knowledge. Advocates of a constructivist approach suggest that educators first consider the knowledge and experiences students bring with them to the learning task. The school curriculum should then be built so that students can expand and develop this knowledge and experience by connecting them to new learning.

Piaget’s particular insight was the role of maturation (simply growing up) in children's increasing capacity to understand their world: they cannot undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough to do so. This process is not wholly gradual, however. Once a new level of organization, knowledge and insight proves to be effective, it will quickly be generalized to other areas. As a result, transitions between stages tend to be rapid and radical, and the bulk of the time spent in a new stage consists of refining this new cognitive level. When the knowledge that has been gained at one stage of study and experience leads rapidly and radically to a new higher stage of insight, a "gestalt" is said to have occurred.

It is because this process takes this dialectical form, in which each new stage is created through the further differentiation, integration, and synthesis of new structures out of the old, that the sequence of cognitive stages are logically necessary rather than simply empirically correct. Each new stage emerges only because the child can take for granted the achievements of its predecessors, and yet there are still more sophisticated forms of knowledge and action that are capable of being developed.

The four development stages are described in Piaget's theory as

1. Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2 years (children experience the world through movement and senses and learn object permanence)

2. Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (acquisition of motor skills)

3. Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events)

4. Formal Operational stage: after age 11 (development of abstract reasoning).

Vygotsky believed that this life long process of development was dependent on social interaction and that social learning actually leads to cognitive development. This phenomenon is called the Zone of Proximal Development. Vygotsky describes it as "the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978). In other words, a student can perform a task under adult guidance or with peer collaboration that could not be achieved alone. The Zone of Proximal Development bridges that gap between what is known and what can be known. Vygotsky claimed that learning occurred in this zone.

“Because Vygotsky asserts that cognitive change occurs within the zone of proximal development, instruction would be designed to reach a developmental level that is just above the student's current developmental level. Individuals participating in peer collaboration or guided teacher instruction must share the same focus in order to access the zone of proximal development. "Joint attention and shared problem solving is needed to create a process of cognitive, social, and emotional interchange" (Hausfather, 1996).

Reflection plays an important role in both theories.

Vygotsky

Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective strategies to access the zone of proximal development. Scaffolding requires the teacher to provide students the opportunity to extend their current skills and knowledge. The teacher must engage students' interest, simplify tasks so they are manageable, and motivate students to pursue the instructional goal. In addition, the teacher must look for discrepancies between students' efforts and the solution, control for frustration and risk, and model an idealized version of the act (Hausfather, 1996). Reciprocal teaching allows for the creation of a dialogue between students and teachers. This two way communication becomes an instructional strategy by encouraging students to go beyond answering questions and engage in the discourse (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996). Cognitively Guided Instruction is another strategy to implement Vygotsky's theory. This strategy involves the teacher and students exploring problems and then sharing their different problem solving strategies in an open dialogue (Hausfather, 1996).

Piaget

By showing how children progressively enrich their understanding of things by acting on and reflecting on the effects of their own previous knowledge, they are able to organize their knowledge in increasingly complex structures. At the same time, by reflecting on their own actions, the child develops an increasingly sophisticated awareness of the ‘rules’ that govern in various ways. For example, it is by this route that Piaget explains this child’s growing awareness of notions such as ‘right’, ‘valid’, ‘necessary’, ‘proper’, and so on. In other words, it is through the process of objectification, reflection and abstraction that the child constructs the principles on which action is not only effective or correct but also justified.

Both theories promote deeper higher learning.

Piaget
"...The incredible failing of traditional schools till very recently has been to have almost systematically neglected to train pupils in experimentation. It is not the experiments the teacher may demonstrate before them, or those they carry out themselves according to a pre-established procedure, that will teach students the general rules of scientific experimentation--such as the variation of one factor when the others have been neutralized (ceteris paribus), or the dissociation of fortuitous fluctuations and regular variations. In this context more than in any other, the methods of the future will have to give more and more scope to the activity and the groupings of students as well as to the spontaneous handling of devices intended to confirm or refute the hypothesis they have formed to explain a given elementary phenomenon. In other words, if there is any area in which active methods will probably become imperative in the full sense of the term, it is that in which experimental procedures are learned, for an experiment not carried out by the individual himself with all freedom of initiative is by definition not an experiment but mere drill with no educational value: the details of the successive steps are not adequately understood."
--Piaget, To Understand is to Invent

Vygotsky
"The psychological prerequisites for instruction in different school subjects are to a large extent the same; instruction in a given subject influences the development of the higher functions from beyond the confines of that particular subject; the main psychic functions involved in studying various subjects are interdependent--their common bases are consciousness and deliberate mastery, the principal contributions of the school years. It follows from these findings that all the basic school subjects act as formal discipline, each facilitating the learning of the others; the psychological functions stimulated by them develop in one complex process."
--Vygotsky, Thought and Language, p. 186

Board of Studies Syllabuses

Scope and Sequence

Teaching Programme

Assessment Program

ED 4236/1120 FINAL EXAMINATION

Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teaching.
And he said:
No man can reveal to you aught but that which
already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple,
among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of
his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house
of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of
your own mind.
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding
of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.
The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is
in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests
the rhythm, nor the voice that echoes it.
And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell
of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot
conduct you thither.
For the vision of one man lends not its wings to
another man.
And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s
knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his
knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.
Kahlil Gibran (1923) The Prophet

THE E MYTH

Something is missing in most of our lives.

Part of what's missing is purpose. Values. Worthwhile standards against which our lives can be measured. Part of what's missing is a game worth playing.
What's also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs.

And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things with which to fill the emptiness. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion.

What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganised thinking that pervades our culture becomes organised and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are; the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost.

That’s what a business (or School) can do. It can become that place of community. It can become that place where words such as integrity, intention, commitment, vision and excellence can be used, not as nouns, but as verbs, as action steps in the process of producing a worthwhile result.

Michael Gerber, The E Myth

Coming together
is a beginning;
keeping together
is progress;
Working together
is success.
Anonymous

Margaret Wheatley
Bringing Schools Back to Life: Schools as Living Systems

In Creating Successful School Systems: Voices from the University, the field, and the community. Christopher-Gordon Publishers, September 1999

Margaret Wheatley has addressed in a wonderful and inspiring way some of what is missing in society as a whole, not just in schools. Reading this paper, however, has made it clear to me the extent of lag time in education as there are forward thinking organisations with incredible integrity that have been teaching leadership and interconnected behaviour in the world for years. The educational world has withstood setbacks such as political suppression, pious domination, class discrimination and many forms of widespread criticism and judgement, making education in the world an unfavourable and confusing subject. I believe that teaching will take on a different role in society and end up the backbone of society, not companies, not politicians but teachers and the art of teaching. As human nature slowly evolves through the seven deadly sins it is becoming apparent to us all that the world will not cope too much longer with the greed of corporations, the gluttony of consumerism, the lust of politicians, the envy and wrath of opposing nations etc. At the end of the day human nature will be left to contemplate human nature and the stunning realisation of our intrinsic interconnectedness to all things on this planet and beyond. Human beings will be left to ponder the question “What does it mean to be human?” triggering a different type of educational process. So the teaching of teachers will need to alter a bit to incorporate these future changes. Leadership and the ability to work with others will become an essential quality in human nature so teachers need to be demonstrable leaders in society. That does not mean that teachers need to spend every spare moment forging leadership projects in the world, but teachers need to have imbibed the qualities of leadership for themselves and be masterful in group interaction. This can only elevate teachers, and therefore schools, to a place of solidarity in the world. I agree with Margaret Wheatley's viewpoints on Living Systems, and in line with Hattie's viewpoints I believe that the process of teaching teachers will be the answer. I think that the focus needs to be not on the school as an organism but on the growth that is happening inside the heart of that organism - from within the teachers. I believe that teaching will gradually go back to what it once was, a spiritual art.

Fundamentals of Lesson Planning

The Blooms Wheel is a very useful tool in lesson planning. The verbs and matching assessment tasks show ways to evoke the different levels of thinking needed for a student to achieve deeper and higher learning. The different levels are hierarchical so the first level must be achieved before the second level can take place.

Prior Knowledge
Knowing the prior knowledge of a student is fundamental to the outcome of any learning experience. There are different types of prior knowledge, three examples are; what someone actually knows at the level of knowing, societal knowledge from a political and class viewpoint and cultural knowledge from the different communities that live in our society. In one class there can be students from many different backgrounds giving different viewpoints from the environments from which they come. Tacit knowledge is important in that students can know an enormous amount about a subject without knowing they know it. The first level of Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain (Bloom et al., 1956) is Knowledge – recall, recognise information or data. Key verbs that give the learner knowledge of what they have learned are - defines, describes, identifies, knows, labels, lists, matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes, reproduces, selects, states. A simple assessment task would be to ask students to make a list of what they know about a subject so that teachers can build meaning and understanding to a solid foundation of prior knowledge.

Outcomes
The Board of Studies Syllabus documents give the required Outcomes of all Key Learning Areas. Learning Outcomes need to be very precise in order for a lesson to go to plan regardless of what happens inside of the lesson. Two attributes in John Hattie’s paper Building Teacher Quality (Oct. 2003) are:-

A3. Expert teachers can anticipate, plan, and improvise as required by the situation.
B6. Expert teachers have a multidimensionally complex perception of classroom situations.

If the flow of the class takes a lesson in a different direction than the lesson plan but will give the same if not better outcome, then the teacher needs to be capable of allowing the change without loosing focus of the outcome.

The table below is a simple example of achieving Outcomes using Blooms Taxonomy. Blooms Taxonomy is hierarchical so the previous level needs to be mastered before going onto the next level. To ensure deeper, higher learning all levels must be used.

In a maths lesson students are asked to recall a list of mathematical symbols.

Category	Verb	Example
Knowledge	Recall, List	Recall prior learning’s of mathematical symbols and write a list.
Comprehension	Explain	Verbally explain what the symbol means using a story, skit, speech, analogy etc
Application	Demonstrate	Demonstrate the meaning of the symbol through a diagram, illustration, painting, game etc.
Analysis	Distinguish, separate, identify	Distinguish the difference in the symbols to understand the separate parts of an equation by a report, graph, word defined, etc
Syntheses	Combine, construct	Combine symbols to construct equations by games, book, play, graph
Evaluation	Evaluate, summarise	Evaluate the equation and give the reasoning behind the use of the symbols and their effectiveness in the equation by group discussion, debate, using comparisons, concluding

To know what Knowledge, Skills, Understandings, Values and Attitudes have to be covered in the lesson, the verbs in the Blooms model above can be referred back to. In this case it would be; recall, list, explain, demonstrate, distinguish, separate, identify, combine, construct, evaluate, summarise. Key words from the Affective Domain of Blooms Taxonomy may be included to describe values and attitudes, for example; acts, discriminates, displays, influences, listens, modifies, performs, practices, proposes, qualifies, questions, revises, serves, solves, verifies.

Strategies
Creating experiences to help students learn subject matter gives a much deeper meaning to what is being taught. I believe the most important strategy in any lesson is to construct a Zone of Proximal Development (“ZPD”). Lev Zygotsky stated that social interaction and social learning leads to cognitive development. Vygotsky focused on the connections between people and the cultural context in which they act and interact in shared experiences (Crawford, 1996). This interaction between peers creates the ZPD. Therefore I believe an equally important strategy in teaching is in group work. A lesson should consist of 1/3 teacher interaction, 1/3 individual student work and 1/3 group work. Creating group work that is effective and manageable can be a challenge for teachers. The SPRinG Project, a research study into group work, involves over 30 research teams with contributions from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Work began in 2000 and will continue to 2008/9. Below is an excerpt from a paper delivered in 2002.

There are three main contexts for learning in any classroom. First, there are those involving interactions between the teacher and pupils in the class. Second there are those when children are working on their own on a task. The third is when children are working with each other. If you go into any classroom it is likely that you will see quite a lot of the first and also of the second - we know from many studies of classrooms that children spend much of their time either listening to the teacher or working on their own - but it is likely that you will see very little of the third. They can be seated in groups, of course, but they are not often working AS a group.

Blatchford, P, Baines, E (2002) The SPRinG Project: The case for group work in schools Paper presented at the Institute of Education, University of London, May 2002, http://creict.homerton.cam.ac.uk/spring/current.doc

Having a Constructivist approach to lesson planning as a strategy allows students to construct their own knowledge, individually and socially, giving meaning to their learning. There is an enormous amount of creativity involved in students connecting ideas, thoughts, scenarios etc together that previously was not in their consciousness. Students create communities of self directed intentional learners which in turn create a distributed learning environment. Due to the pool of cognitive development within a distributed learning environment creative processes are heightened allowing for higher order thinking and learning. This is a very powerful learning process as it gives the student a sense of freedom, power and purpose. Again the ability to engage in group work is important.

Using Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence approach in lesson planning affirms within a child their own individual gifts. When students are able to creatively display their own understanding of their learning, whether it be via a spreadsheet or audio/visual experience, their own intelligence and self-esteem is enhanced. Students also need the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned and this can be done through assessing their work through their own particular intelligence. To assess what a student has learned in a lesson they may be asked to display their work in a graphic such as Inspiration, have a debate, create a play etc, all these methods of assessment cause a student to reflect on their work, not merely describe what they have done. Using the higher levels of cognitive development in Blooms Taxonomy, Analyse, Evaluate and Create, gives students the opportunity of reflectively assessing their own learning inside of their own intelligence.

Blooms Taxonomy

In 1948 Benjamin Bloom spearheaded a group of educators whose intent was to develop a method of classification for thinking behaviours. This intention grew into a taxonomy of three domains: The Cognitive – mental skills or Knowledge based domain consisting of six levels; The Affective – growth in feelings or emotions, the Attitudinal based domain consisting of five levels; and The Psychomotor – manual or physical Skills based domain consisting of six levels. These domains are often referred to as KSA (Knowledge, Skills and Attitude). The different levels of learning associated with each domain are designed give a structure for educators to achieve higher levels of learning and mastery of subject matter. The levels form a hierarchy from a less complex behaviour to a more complex behaviour. Bloom wanted educators of focus on all three domains so that students would experienced a shift in knowledge, skills and attitude in every lesson, giving a more holistic approach to education. In 1956 Bloom completed his work on the Cognitive Domain which is now commonly referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain (Bloom et al., 1956). This was Bloom’s major work, others developed the different levels for the Affective and Psychomotor domains.

Click on this link below to see a detailed table of the three domains and levels of thinking behaviour.

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html

The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them.

Albert Einstein

Studying a three-year teacher-student relationship, George, Spreul, and Moorefield (1987) found that approximately 70% of the teachers reported that teaching the same students for three years allowed them to use more positive approaches to classroom management. Ninety-two percent of them said that they knew more about their students, and 69% described their students as more willing to participate voluntarily in class. Eighty-five percent of the teachers reported that their students were better able to see themselves as important members of a group, to feel pride in that group, and to feel pride in the school as a whole. Eighty-four percent of the teachers reported more positive relationships with parents, and 75% reported increased empathy with colleagues. The reactions of students in this study were equally favorable and grew more positive with each successive grade level. Ninety-nine percent of the parents in this study, when asked, requested that their child have the same teacher as the previous year (Burke, 1996). Burke, Daniel L. (1997) Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education Champaign IL. Looping: Adding Time, Strengthening Relationships. Retrieved October 15, 2006, from http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-2/looping.htm

Multiple Intelligence & The Expert Teacher

Building Teacher Quality

Distinguishing Expert Teachers from Novice and Experienced Teachers.
Reflections on a paper delivered by John Hattie at the Australian Council for Educational Research Annual Conference, University of Auckland, October 2003.

This brilliant paper delivered by John Hattie gives a detailed description of the attributes of an expert teacher. John Hattie stated that his search was driven for the purpose of developing appropriate professional development and to extol the teaching profession as truly having recognisable excellence which can be identified in defensible ways, and the basis for a renewed focus on the success of our teachers to make the difference. (Hattie, 2003) I have two inquiries with regard to the findings of this study;

1. as this paper was given to pre-eminent researchers and expert teachers in the field for comment, changes and input, would it be possible that the findings of this paper are the results of those experts and studying those experts would give us an understanding of the unique qualities needed to work with the 16 attributes of excellence; and

2. considering Dr Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence, would it be possible to use this as a benchmark for all teachers given the nature of the 16 prototypic attributes of expertise,

Intellect and intelligence are two different things.

Intelligence is a natural expression of what you know, of what you live for and intellect is an imbibed concept. Intelligence is harmonious expression of your beliefs, your thoughts, your lifestyle, your nature. I can be an intellectual giant but not have intelligence. I can have intelligence yet be an absolute ignorant fool. So we have to learn to differentiate between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is something that deals with the process of knowing and intelligence deals with the process of expression. And these things have to be understood in relation to human nature. There is the theory which I call the SWAN principle and these are acronyms for Strength, Weakness, Ambition and Need. These are 4 things which are inherent in a human personality. We all have our strengths, we all have our weaknesses, we all have our ambitions and we all have our needs and we have to realise what our particular SWAN principle is. And we have to be very careful so that we don’t confuse our need with ambition, our ambition with our strength, our weakness with our need. There have to be a clear division in the recognition of personal strength, weakness, ambition and need. And once you are able to do that you should also be able to observe the personality of the person with whom you live. And that way when you begin to actually realise the principles that govern your personality you will find the attitude and the perception change. The change in attitude and the change in perception is the beginning of education in yoga. If you can recognise the strength and weakness of the child, if teachers can, they can be better teachers. They can encourage and support a child to grow and develop.

Paramahamsa Niranjanananda Saraswati (Speaker) (1996) The Integration of Yoga and Science in the 21st Century, World Yoga Convention [tape recording] New South Wales.

This distinction between intelligence and intellect leads me to wonder whether the pre-eminent researchers and expert teachers that gave comment, changes and input to Hattie’s paper have highly developed abilities in both their intellect and intelligence. As I do not believe that Hattie’s 16 prototypic attributes are a normal level of operating in society, I believe research into the above distinctions may give evidence as to why only a select few (considering the population of the world) live life at this higher level of operating. I would personally like to see more research go into the above distinctions, maybe it would carve a pathway for the biggest explosion in human creativity in the history of mankind.

The 16 prototypic attributes are:

A1 Expert teachers have deeper representations about teaching and learning.
A2 Expert teachers adopt a problem-solving stance to their work.
A3 Expert teachers can anticipate, plan, and improvise as required by the situation.
A4 Expert teachers are better decision-makers and can identify what decisions are important and which are less important decisions.
B5 Expert teachers are proficient at creating an optimal classroom climate for learning.
B6 Expert teachers have a multidimensionally complex perception of classroom climate for learning.
B7 Expert teachers are more context-dependent and have high situation cognition.
C8 Expert teachers are more adept at monitoring student problems and assessing their level of understanding and progress, and they provide much more relevant, useful feedback.
C9 Expert teachers are more adept at developing and testing hypotheses about learning difficulties or instructional strategies.
C10 Expert teachers are more automatic.
D11 Expert teachers have high respect for students.
D12 Expert teachers are passionate about teaching and learning.
E13 Expert teachers engage students in learning and develop in their students’ self-regulation, involvement in mastery learning, enhanced self-efficacy, and self-esteem as learners.
E14 Expert teachers provide appropriate challenging tasks and goals for students.
E15 Expert teachers have positive influences on students’ achievement.
E16 Expert teachers enhance surface and deep learning.

Personally, I believe Hattie’s findings are an excellent place to stand for the future of teaching and indeed worthy of pursuit, however, given the complex nature of human beings I am unsure whether these attributes are achievable to all people who want to be teachers.

Multiple Intelligences

Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, developed the theory of multiple intelligences. Dr. Gardner proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:

Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"):
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

Dr. Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. Armstrong, T. Dr (1998-2000) Multiple Intelligences. Retrieved October 15, 2006, from http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm

Critical Reflection

Hattie states that findings were sent to pre-eminent researchers and to expert teachers in the field for comment, changes and input (Hattie & Jaeger, in review). It would be interesting to know what the intelligences of the pre-eminent researchers and expert teachers are according to the Gardner model. If the intelligences of these people were heavily weighted to one or two particular intelligences would that make Hattie’s findings biased? Considering these people were already expert teachers, if we looked closer at the expert teachers would we find that they share a particular nature that is the cause of their expertise and which would not/or would be very difficult to transfer to another with a totally different intelligence? Let us note that researchers share a particular intelligence that would be quite different to a musical intelligence. Of course some of Hattie’s 16 prototypic attributes of expertise are shared by all intelligences, for example D11, D12 & E15. However, attributes such as A3, A4, B5, B6, B7, C8, C9, C10 & E13 are quite complex Interpersonal and Intrapersonal qualities that may not be so easy to grasp for a Logical-mathematical intelligence. I would personally like to see more research done on the qualities of expert teachers and what is it in their personality that allows them to continually function at that level, and then re-evaluate the findings of this paper. I believe that with this perspective in mind appropriate professional development would account for the diversity of all individuals wishing to become teachers and bring out the expert in everyone.