The Art of Teaching

1
The Art of Teaching

• Phase 1 The Teaching Personna and Classroom
  Preparation

2
Goals of Inservice

• 1. To examine the art of teaching and techniques
  successful teachers use
• 2. To discuss the idea of the teaching personna
  or mask
• 3. To discuss self-discipline as a teaching
  tool
• 4. To examine teaching expectations

3
Goal of Inservice

• To examine unifying principles of successful
  educators
• To propose an approach to curriculum and
  instruction designed to engage students in
  inquiry, promote transfer of learning, provide a
  conceptual framework for helping students make
  sense of discrete facts and skills, and uncover
  the big ideas of content
• 7. To examine an array of methods for
  appropriately assessing the degree of student
  understanding, knowledge, and skills

4
Goals of Inservice

• 8. To consider the role that predictable
  student misunderstandings should play in the
  design of curricula, assessments, and
  instruction
• 9. To explore common curriculum, assessment, and
  instruction practices that may interfere with the
  cultivation of student understanding, and propose
  a backward design approach to planning that helps
  us meet standards without sacrificing goals
  related to understanding

5
Goals of Inservice

• 10. To present a theory of six facets of
  understanding and explore its theoretical and
  practical implications for curriculum,
  assessment, and teaching
• 11. To discuss teachers thinking like assessors
• To examine the continuum of assessment
• To discuss the creation of authentic
  performances
• 14. To examine different types of teaching.

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Sources

• Jay Parini, The Art of Teaching
• Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do
• Grant Wiggins, Understanding by Design
• UVTI Teacher Training Competencies

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• Teaching
• Masks

8

• Dr. Jay Parini in The Art of Teaching states
  One of the things I have most prized about
  working in the academy is the sense of
  beginnings. There is always a fresh start, with
  new students, new colleagues, new courses. Even
  old colleagues look new in September... (Parini
  1).

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• He goes on to add that the beginning of school
  always gives him an opportunity to have a fresh
  chance at playing myself, with the live option to
  try on new personae--those brittle masks we mold
  to our skin, that eventually become
  indistinguishable from what we call the self,
  that many-faceted figuration we present to the
  world (Parini 3).

10

• This idea of a mask or persona is critical, in
  my opinion, to solid teaching practice.

11

• Parini forcefully suggests that teachers need
  to invent and cultivate a voice, one that serves
  their personal needs as well as the material at
  hand..., one that feels authentic (Parini 58).
• This created voice needs to take into
  consideration the students being served.

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• Most importantly,
• it should be a conscious act.

13

• This taking on of a voice (persona, mask,
  etc.) involves artifice, and the art of teaching
  is no less complicated than any other art form.
  It is not something natural (Parini 59).
• In beginning, and even veteran, teachers, it
  involves experimentation and variation.

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• And we, as educators, need to get past the
  notion that creating a persona somehow divests us
  of authenticity.

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• Different classes may require different masks,
  but they should not by necessity force the wearer
  to extremes.
• Parinis mentor, W. Edward Brown, talks about
  the teacher as actor and dramatist. A teacher,
  therefore, performs and creates.

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• Parini cautions that good teachers have no
  choice but to consider their public selves in a
  calculated fashion. ...the classroom is a form
  of theater, and the teacher must play various
  roles, often in an exaggerated manner wise man,
  fool, temptor, comforter, coach, confessor
  (Parini 6).

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• The natural teacher is, in actuality, usually
  quite practiced. Teachers can correct past
  errors in practice, reinvent their lessons, and
  know that there are always opportunities for new
  beginnings.

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• Ones ability to wield this voice varies daily.
  But Parini reminds us that...

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• Few outside the teaching profession understand
  the courage it takes to step into a classroom, to
  wear a mask that you know is a construction,
  hiding behind it, letting it give shape and
  substance to your formulations, letting the mask
  become your face. (Parini 68)

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• As one progresses through a teaching career,
  the practicioners closet becomes full of such
  masks.

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• A
• Disciplined
• Life

22

• Parini states that a settled, disciplined
  life is essential for a teacher... (Parini 48).
  I think we can see this in our own practice,
  although our sense of the meanings of settled
  and disciplined may be different.

23

• Self-discipline is connected to teaching style
  and authority.
• Parini writes
• My authority in the classroom is, in a way, a
  fiction I present myself with authority, but I
  do so in ways that allow students to confront my
  point of view, to risk challenging my authority
  (Parini 49).

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• As for style, Parini acknowledges that
  teaching styles differ considerable and
  applauds this (Parini 49). Since he recognizes
  that students have the innate ability to detect a
  lack of sincerity in a teacher, he exhorts all
  teachers...to work toward a sense of personal
  authority and authenticity, while realizing that
  these human virtues come only with time and
  practice (Parini 49).

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• As educators, we need to remember that this is
  a constant process seasoned teachers need to
  remind themselves of this premise while also
  nurturing younger teachers towards it.

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• One of the most important aspects of
  successful teaching is the ability to get things
  done. Parini reminds us that teaching organizes
  my life, gives a structure to my week, puts
  before me certain goals.... I move from event to
  event, having a clear picture in my head of what
  I must do next. Without the academic calendar in
  front of me, I feel lost (Parini 90).

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• While at St. Andrews, one professor inspired
  Parini to use the odd gaps of 20 minutes or so
  that occur at various points in the day (Parini
  92). Parini cautions us that huge quantities of
  time are not needed to settle into a project
  rather such pockets move us towards the creation
  of a larger entity. He adds that most good work
  gets done in short stretches (Parini 92-93), and
  reminds us to acknowledge breaks in effort
  without guilt. A little work every day adds up
  (Parini 93).

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• Rhetorical
• Clarity

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• Parini reminds us that rhetorical clarity, in
  terms of information, expectations, requirements,
  and management, is essential to success.
• The best way to get the attention of the
  student body is to make the classroom a place
  where good things happen.

30

• Parini discusses making connections with
  students, varying instructional pace, and
  demonstrating the process of thinking.

31

• He reiterates the connection between practice
  and content, how they reinforce one another.

32

• He encourages teachers to get out of their
  solitary classrooms and to value the community of
  educators present in their school.

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• Expectations

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• Most teachers agree that it is important to
  have high expectations for all our student, but
  how high? What are the students limits?

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• Ken Bain, in his book What the Best College
  Teachers Do says that
• expecting more does not necessarily mean piling
  on the work. This, in fact, may have the
  opposite effect, merely producing alienated and
  exhausted students.

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• Bain points to a series of attitudes and
  tendencies that underlie the efforts of the best
  teachers
• 1. They look for and appreciate the individual
  value of each student.
• 2. They have great faith in the students
  ability to achieve.
• 3. They tend to use a combination of high
  standards and strong trust in the students
  ability.

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• 4. They promote intellectual curiosity over
  worry and doubt about making the grade.
• 5. They invite students to pursue ambitious
  goals and promise to help them achieve while
  allowing learners control over their own
  education.
• 6. They set standards that represent authentic
  goals. Bain calls this the promising syllabus
  which a. lays out the promises or opportunities
  the course offers to students, b. explains what
  the students will do to realize these promises,
  and c. summarizes how the instructor and students
  will understand the nature and progress of the
  learning.

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• 7. They succeed in their trust of students
  because it is realistic and demands an honest yet
  ambitious appraisal of what any one student can
  do and also requires a sophisticated
  understanding of both individuals and social
  forces that can influence student performance.

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Bains Unifying Principles

• 1. Create a Natural Critical Learning
  Environment
• He uses the word natural because students
  encounter the skills, habits, attitudes, and
  information they are learning embedded in the
  questions and tasks of the course. It is
  critical because students are expected to reason
  from evidence, to examine the quality of their
  reasoning using a variety of standards, to make
  improvements while thinking, and to ask probing
  and insightful questions. How this is
  accomplished is teacher-dependent. It can be
  driven by lecture, projects, discussions, etc.
  Students can be engaged individually or in
  groups. But in the end, everyone feels part of
  the process.

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• Students, of course, need guidance to
  understand the significance of an essential
  question. This too can be accomplished in a
  variety of manners but requires illustration of
  some kind. Students need to be engaged in higher
  level thinking skills during this process
  (comparison, analysis, synthesis, evaluation).
  Students not only get to solve the essential
  questions, but they should end up wondering what
  the next question will be.

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Bains Unifying Principles

• 2. Get Their Attention and Keep It
• These studied teachers consciously strive to
  get their students attention and keep it by
  using a provocative act, statement, or question.
  Once the attention is grasped, it is directed
  somewhere else (solving the question, applying
  the information).

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Bains Unifying Principles

• 3. Start with the Students Rather Than the
  Discipline
• Students are often asked to struggle with a
  question from their own perspective (Socratic
  Method). Bain gives various concrete examples of
  how to put this into practice. Many of the best
  teachers make a deliberate and carefully measured
  effort to confront some paradigm or mental model
  that students are likely to bring with them to
  class (Bain 112).

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Bains Unifying Principles

• 4. Seek Commitments
• Bain says that this must be done directly and
  is different from simply creating a disciplined
  environment. Strong teachers expect students to
  listen, think, and respond.

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Bains Unifying Principles

• 5. Help Students Learn Outside of Class
• The best teachers have expectations for
  learning to occur between as well as during
  classes. Because the best teachers plan their
  courses backward, deciding what students should
  be able to do by the end of the semester, they
  map a series of intellectual developments through
  the course, with the goal of encouraging students
  to learn on their own, engaging them in deep
  thinking (Bain 114). This concept is beyond the
  simple requirement of homework assignments.

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Bains Unifying Principles

• 6. Engage Students in Disciplinary Thinking
• By striving to have students think in the
  manner of scholars, the students can build an
  understanding of concepts rather than simply
  perform their discipline. Fact learning and
  reasoning about those facts occur simultaneously
  in this practiced.

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Bains Unifying Principles

• 7. Create Diverse Learning Experiences
• He reminds teachers that by employing diverse
  activities, all learning styles are engaged at
  some point in this process.

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• The best teachers display an investment in the
  students, rather than control or power. This
  does not preclude strongly stated rules, but it
  requires mutual trust. Since rules alone do not
  embody intellectual or artistic standards, there
  is room for flexibility. It is not enough for
  students to trust the teachers efforts the
  teacher, too, must trust that students want to
  learn and assume, until proven wrong, that they
  can. These outstanding teachers lack the
  paranoia often seen in educators who are
  constantly wary of being tricked by students.

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• The extension of trust is openness these
  successful educators often draw from their
  personal stories of struggle and triumphs to
  motivate students and to create common ground.
  Such stories emerge discretely and wisely. When
  trust and openness are combined, they produce an
  interactive atmosphere where students are not
  afraid to risk failure.

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• Another quality shared by these outstanding
  educators is a sense of awe and curiosity about
  life. Humility, too, about themselves and their
  learning mark these teachers. Rather than high
  priests of their disciplines knowledge, they are
  fellow students on a parallel journey. As such,
  they too risk failure and have confidence in
  their problem-solving abilities. These teachers
  investment in their students is obvious.

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What Can We Learn from Them ?
51
What Can We Learn from Them ?
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• Backward
• Design

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Wiggins Idea Backward Design
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• Ultimately, the key is to distinguish merely
  interesting learning from effective learning.
  The authors call for a systemic thinking shift,
  focusing first on the desired learnings and then
  applying appropriate teaching to said goals
• Our lessons, units, and courses should be
  logically inferred from the results sought, not
  derived from the methods, books, and activities
  with which we are most comfortable. Curriculum
  should lay out the most effective ways of
  achieving specific results (Wiggins 14).
• Thus, we need to focus on learning rather than
  teaching.

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Definitions (Wiggins 5-7)

• Big Idea Concept, theme, or issue that gives
  meaning and connection to discrete facts and
  skills.
• Curriculum Specific blueprint for learning
  derived from desired results (e.g., content and
  performance standards) and indicating desired
  output and means of achievement.

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Definitions (Wiggins 5-7)

• Assessment The act of determining the extent to
  which the desired results have been achieved
  giving and using feedback against standards to
  enable improvement and the meeting of goals.
• Evaluation More summative and credential-related
  than assessment (e.g., a grade).

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Definitions (Wiggins 5-7)

• Desired Results Intended outcomes, achievement
  targets, or performance standards, the focus thus
  on output rather than input.
• Understanding To make connections and bind
  together knowledge into something that makes
  sense of things, implying application of
  knowledge in realistic tasks and settings.

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The 3 Stages of Backward Design

• 1. Identify Desired Results
• What should students know, understand, and be
  able to do? In this stage, one considers goals,
  examines established content standards, and
  reviews curriculum expectations. There must be
  content choices made and clarity about
  priorities.

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The 3 Stages of Backward Design

• 2. Determine Acceptable Evidence
• Teachers need to think about assessment (both
  formal and informal, ongoing and culminating)
  before designing lessons and units and consider
  how students will demonstrate attainment of
  desired understandings.

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The 3 Stages of Backward Design

• 3. Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
• Once desired results and evidence are
  identified, instructional activities are planned.
  The knowledge (facts, concepts, principles) and
  skills (processes, procedures, strategies) needed
  by students to perform and achieve the desired
  results must be identified along with activities,
  materials, and resources.

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Understanding Understanding

• People are often confused when asked to
  distinguish between desired knowledge and
  understanding. Benjamin Blooms Taxonomy of
  Educational Objectives Cognitive Domain (1956)
  attempted to classify degrees of understanding.
  A question arising form this is how understanding
  and knowledge are related. Is understanding
  simply a more complex form of knowledge or is it
  separate from but related to content knowledge?
  (Wiggins 37). Dewey called understanding the
  result of facts acquiring meaning for the
  learner.

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(Figure 2.1, Wiggins 38)
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Understanding as Transferability

• Understanding, thus, requires knowledge plus
  transfer insight into essentials, purpose,
  audience, strategy, and tactics. Transfer is
  important because it enables students to move
  form a small base of ideas, examples, facts, and
  skills to an entire field of study. Big ideas
  provide the basis for transfer.

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Understanding as Transferability
65
Understanding as Transferability

• Understanding requires more the ability to
  thoughtfully and actively do the work with
  discernment, as well as the ability to
  self-assess, justify, and critique.... Transfer
  involves figuring out which knowledge and skills
  matter here and often adapting what we know to
  address the challenge at hand (Wiggins 41).

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Uncoverage

• Designing around big ideas makes learning more
  efficient and effective. Students need a
  context. Transfer provides students with the
  ability to move from our teaching to
  self-teaching. Teachers can not hope or strive
  for universal coverage of material. The cant
  see the forest for the trees analogy holds true
  here. Rather than total coverage, the authors
  speak to the idea of uncoverage

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Uncoverage

• 1. Uncovering potential misunderstandings
• 2. Uncovering the questions, issues,
  assumptions, and gray areas beneath the black and
  white of surface accounts
• 3. Uncovering the core ideas intrinsic to
  understanding a subject, although they may not be
  obvious and may even be counterintuitive or
  confusing.

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• Understanding is not one achievement but
  several, and it is revealed through different
  kinds of evidence. These kinds of evidence
  include the following

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• 1. Explanation sophisticated and apt theories
  and illustrations which provide knowledgeable and
  justified accounts of events, actions, and ideas
  (Wiggins 85). Thus, understanding in not merely
  factual knowledge but inference about the why and
  how. This is demonstrated through specific
  evidence and logic (insightful connections and
  illustrations).

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• Students, in this facet, are given assignments
  and assessments requiring them to explain what
  they know and give good reasons in support.
  Supported opinions are revealed through verbs
  such as support, justify, generalize, predict,
  verify, prove, and substantiate. Students can
  show their work.

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• 2. Interpretation interpretations, narratives,
  and translations that provide meaning (Wiggins
  88). In this facet, students can show an events
  significance, reveal datas importance, or
  provide an interpretation expressing recognition
  and resonance. Such understanding is, to a great
  extent, subjective. It is a form of translation.
  

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• It is often manifested in the classroom in the
  form of discussion. Students move from text to
  personal experience to find legitimate but
  varying interpretations. There must be a
  component here of defensibility.

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• 3. Application ability to use knowledge
  effectively in new situations and diverse,
  realistic contexts (Wiggins 92). Students match
  ideas, knowledge, and actions to context. They
  show their understanding by use, adaptation, and
  customization. Performance is its inherent
  outcome. Thus, its tasks should mirror the real
  world. Performance goals must be clear and
  require the students constant cognition during
  the work process (e.g., the case method used in
  legal study).

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• 4. Perspective critical and insightful points
  of view (Wiggins 95). To a great extent, this
  type of understanding implies a dispassionate and
  disinterested perspective. Students need to be
  aware of what is taken for granted, assumed,
  overlooked, or glossed over in a theory or
  inquiry. It implies making tacit assumptions
  and implications explicit (Wiggins 95).

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• It involves the growth of distance. It begs
  the questions What of it?, What is assumed?,
  and What follows? Thus, students need this
  opportunity to confront alternative viewpoints
  and theories.

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• 5. Empathy the ability to get inside another
  persons feelings and worldview (Wiggins 98).
  Unlike perspective which implies distance,
  empathy requires our personal association with
  anothers viewpoint.

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The Six Facets of Understanding

• 6. Self-Knowledge the wisdom to know ones
  ignorance and how ones patterns of thought and
  action inform as well as prejudice understanding
  (Wiggins 100). Metacognition involves
  reflection. It also involves recognition of our
  own rationalizations. Students need to
  self-consciously confront how they see the world.

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Thinking like an Assessor
79
Thinking like an Assessor

• 1. What evidence can show that students have
  achieved the desired results?
• 2. What assessment tasks will anchor our units
  and guide our instruction?
• 3. What should we look for to determine the
  extent of student learning? (Wiggins 146)

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In planning, then, we need to ask 3 questions

• 1. What kinds of evidence do we need?
• 2. What specific characteristics in student
  responses, products, or performance should we
  examine?
• 3. Does the proposed evidence enable us to infer
  a students knowledge, skill, or understanding?

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Continuum of Assessments

• This moves from informal checks for
  understanding to observations and dialogues to
  tests and quizzes to academic prompts to
  performance tasks. These are defined as follows

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Continuum of Assessments

• 1. Informal Checks for Understanding ongoing
  assessments used as part of the instructional
  process (teacher questioning, observations,
  examination of student work, brainstorming) not
  typically graded.
• 2. Quiz and Test Items content-focused items
  that assess for factual information, concepts and
  discrete skill use selected formats (multiple
  choice, true-false, short-answer) easily scored
  and typically having a single correct answer
  secure (not known by the student in advance).

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Continuum of Assessments

• 3. Academic Prompts open-ended questions
  requiring critical thought, not just recall no
  single best answer but rather open-ended require
  development of a strategy, an explanation, or a
  defense involve judgment-based scoring based on
  criteria and performance standards may or may
  not be secure involving questions typically only
  asked of students in school.

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Continuum of Assessments

• 4. Performance Tasks complex challenges of
  varying length mirroring real world issues and
  problems and yielding a tangible product or
  performance they may include restraints and
  sense of audience and are based on a specific
  purpose that relates to the audience they allow
  students the opportunity to personalize the task
  they are not secure but the task, evaluative
  criteria, and performance standards are known in
  advance and guide the student work. (Wiggins
  153)

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Authentic Performance as Necessity

• An authentic task, problem, or project is
  realistically contextualized, requires judgment
  and innovation, asks the students to do the
  subject, replicates key challenging situations
  from adult personal, work, or civic life,
  assesses the students ability to efficiently and
  effectively use knowledge and skills to negotiate
  a complex and multistage task, and allows for
  appropriate opportunities to rehearse, practice,
  consult resources, and get feedback on or refine
  performances and product (Wiggins 154).

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• To accomplish this, both teachers and students
  need knowledge of how school knowledge is used in
  the greater world context and how discrete
  lessons are meaningful in the performance of
  larger tasks. The goal is appropriate evidence,
  not just interesting projects or tasks. The key
  is to create a problem rather than simply an
  exercise so that the evidence of success shifts
  to the justification of the approach and solution
  rather than simply being the answer.

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• An acronym that can assist in the creation of
  authentic performance is GRASP
• 1. Goal
• 2. Role
• 3. Audience
• 4. Situation
• 5. Performance
• 6. Standards.

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• Types of Teaching
• What the teacher uses What the students need
  to do

89

• Types of Teaching
• What the teacher uses What the students need
  to do

90

• Types of Teaching
• What the teacher uses What the students need
  to do

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• Types of Teaching
• What the teacher uses What the students need
  to do

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The Big Picture

• The overarching and recursive nature of
  essential questions makes them ideally suited to
  framing the macro curriculum of programs and
  courses (Wiggins 276). Such questions are not
  unit specific but are addressed across units and
  provide the foundation for the design. Thus,
  essential questions can frame an entire
  curriculum so too can performance tasks.
  Rubrics can help in the visualization of
  curriculum frameworks. Sequencing learning
  enhances the potential success of the framework
  and its delivery.