Regardless of the stage of education they work in, teachers are often asked what led them to the career. Many will tell you about an amazing teacher who inspired them. However, for every good teacher, there will be a poor one. For me, that was the engineering maths lecturer who walked into the lecture room, looked at us, and said, “Oh no, not you lot again”, disappointed we were not their preferred pure maths group. Or the electronics lecturer who would draw circuits for us to carry out calculations, only to find that none of the lines representing the circuit joined up. Was every connection meant to be an open circuit, or was it simply a very bad drawing? If you were wondering, it was a poor drawing.
What these two teachers had in common was that they knew their subject incredibly well but they couldn’t articulate it in a way that students understood. While subject mastery is often the entry into the higher education sector, it is no longer enough.
The role of a teacher has changed significantly and requires more than just standing in front of a group of passive recipients of knowledge. Indeed, the student’s role has changed too. With knowledge on demand, thanks to social media and artificial intelligence, teachers need to make topics relevant and applicable and help students develop the critical thinking skills necessary to question the reliability of information presented to them. Students need to be physically and cognitively present.
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As teachers, we need to translate our subject mastery in a way students understand. Remember that you will most likely be teaching students with varying levels of subject knowledge. This does not mean teaching to the lowest level in the classroom, under the misguided notion that you are being inclusive. You need to scaffold your teaching in a way that brings all students up to the required level. Think back to when you were a student and use that experience as a reference point for designing your lessons.
Great teachers treat teaching as an iterative process, constantly adjusting their practice based on student feedback. Before you skim over this section thinking that your end-of-module evaluation is sufficient, it isn’t. Teaching is not a broadcast activity. We need to ensure students understand. The continuous use of planned, low-stakes tasks will help you fine-tune your lesson. Recap specific points, correct misconceptions and help ensure that students leave your lesson knowing more than they did when they arrived. Don’t, however, fall into the trap of simply asking a couple of whole-group questions and being pleased when the same handful of students respond with the correct answer. This only demonstrates that the same students understand, not the whole class.
Too often, peer observers say that the teacher used a range of questions in their lesson. More importantly, did the students get the answers correct? What about all of those who stayed silent? How can we engage them? There are myriad of ways to achieve this, from having a soft ball and asking a student to throw it to a peer who then answers the next question (class size permitting) to using live polls to check understanding. Both methods simply demonstrate the ability to recall information.
More sophisticated approaches include having students apply knowledge to a scenario or problem rather than simply repeat it. Our colleagues in medicine and nursing are particularly skilled at doing this through their simulation suits (wearable training technology), which mimic real life. Have we spent any time observing how they check understanding, and what we can learn from simulations?
As teachers, we need high standards but we must be transparent about those standards. And students need a path to achieve them. The feedback we provide on summative assessments must truly support students in improving. Rubrics and worked examples must all act as invitations to achieve. It is easy to fall into the trap of saying, “Well, it’s hard, it’s university”. What is harder is balancing high academic standards with a path to achieving them.
Teaching is hard; it requires practice and deep reflection. Teachers need to reflect and adapt in the moment, what philosopher Donald Schön calls reflection in action, rather than just at the end of the course. It takes a confident teacher to do this: to constantly reflect on how a topic is landing with students and whether it needs to be revisited in a different way, using different examples or analogies.
Most of all, we need to remember that students are individuals and they need to be treated that way. Remembering their names, or a question they asked a few weeks ago, a comment they made, helps foster that sense of belonging.
Remember, a great teacher is there to inspire students, not through theatrics of personality but because of a burning love of their subject.
Finally, remember this quote from American writer and academic William Arthur Ward, and you won’t go far wrong:
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
Steve Lambert is associate professor of educational leadership at the University of Chester.
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