EFFECTIVE LEARNING

Ensuring effective learning in science

Ensuring effective learning in science

Over the past several decades, a revolution has occurred in the definitions of 'good' teaching. Researchers have found that defining good teachers by community ideals, personality characteristics, and number of credit hours earned, or college grade point average proved disappointing, as these variables showed little relationship to what teachers actually do in the classroom. This directed researchers to study the impact of specific teacher activities on the specific cognitive and affective behaviours of their students. The term good teaching changed to effective teaching, and the research focus shifted from studying teachers exclusively to studying teachers and their effects on students. This new approach to studying classroom behaviour has made the teacher-student relationship in the classroom the focus of modern definitions of effective teaching.

Linking Teacher Behaviour with Student Performance

During this new era of research in classrooms, researchers developed methods of studying the classroom interaction patterns of teachers and students. Their goal was to discover which patterns of teacher behaviour promoted desirable student outcomes. With a rich variety of classroom observation instruments, a picture of classroom activity could be captured within and across research studies and could be related to various measures of school achievement, such as better scores on classroom and standardized tests, an increase in the incidence of successful problem solving, and improved learning skills.

It was in this manner that consistent patterns of effective teaching began to emerge in studies conducted by different researchers. As in all research, some studies provided contradictory results or found no relationships among certain types of classroom interactions and student outcomes. But many studies found patterns of teacher-student interaction that consistently produced desirable student outcomes. The following are some of the most important characteristics of effective teaching to emerge from this research.

Key Behaviours Contributing to Effective Teaching

From this research approximately 10 teacher behaviours have shown promising relationships to desirable student performance, primarily as measured by classroom assessments and standardized tests. Five of these behaviours have been consistently supported by research studies over the past three decades. Another five have had some support from the research findings and appear logically related to effective teaching. The first five are key behaviours, because they are considered essential for effective teaching. The second five are helping behaviours that can be used in combinations to implement the key behaviours. The five key behaviours for effective teaching are (1) lesson clarity, (2) instructional variety, (3) teacher task, (4) student engagement in the learning process, and (5) student success rate.

Lesson Clarity

Lesson clarity refers to how clear a teacher's presentation is to the class, as indicated in the following examples:

More Effective Teachers

Make their points clear to learners who may be at different levels of understanding

Explain concepts in ways that help students follow along in a logical step-by-step order

Have an oral delivery that is direct, audible to all students, and free of distracting mannerisms

Less Effective Teachers

Use vague, ambiguous, or indefinite language

Use overly complicated sentences that convey more than a single thought at a time

Give directions that ...