Description
This book is a straightforward and practical ‘how to teach’ book. It is intended for those teaching in either schools, colleges, universities or work-based learning – indeed for anyone interested in learning and teaching.
Part 1 explores the emotional and practical needs which all learners have. Part 2 gives very detailed advice on the use of the most common teaching methods or learning strategies. Part 3 looks at how to make and use learning resources. Part 4 shows you how to go about planning lessons and courses, how to measure their effectiveness, and how to improve them. Part 5 is about your role and responsibility as a teacher and how you work within your institution. Many teacher training courses start with Part 5, but you will of course fi nd that the earlier parts will greatly help your understanding of Part 5.
For decades I taught an ‘ordinary timetable’ and trained teachers. So, whilst developing my ideas and writing this book, I have had my nose rubbed daily in the messy reality of learning and teaching. If my ideas don’t work – well, my students are the first to make this clear. I hope you will be able to learn from both my successes and my failures, and so take George Bernard Shaw’s advice: ‘Only a fool learns from experience; a wise man learns from the experience of others’.
I am impatient with jargon, so throughout the book I have used the word ‘teacher’ to mean any of the following: ‘teacher’, ‘lecturer’, ‘trainer’, ‘instructor’ or ‘facilitator’. Similarly, I have used the words ‘student’ and ‘learner’ interchangeably, in places where I could also have written ‘pupil’, ‘trainee’, ‘course participant’ or ‘candidate’.
In the lists of further reading at the end of each chapter, particularly useful or noteworthy books are signalled by an asterisk, with an additional comment where appropriate.
I would like to thank Liz Singh for her unshakeable faith, her insistence that I make sense, and for her cartoons and drawings.
This new edition includes some of what I have learned in studying for and writing Evidence Based Teaching, so it is informed by research. It has been extensively updated to meet the new standards for teachers in schools, and the new standards for teachers in the ‘lifelong learning’ or ‘post-compulsory’ sector.
Geoff Petty, 2008