Yes, children do learn in unplanned ways all the time, and many will learn from even the most chaotic lesson. But to really challenge students, to get their best efforts, to help them make conceptual leaps and organize and retain new knowledge, teachers need to be purpose, thought, and flexible, without ever losing sight of their goals for every child. In a word, they need to be intentional.
The idea that teachers should always do things for a reason seems obvious, and in principle it is. Yet in practice, it is d~fficultto constantly make certain that all students are engaged in activities that lead to important learning outcomes. Teachers very frequently fall into strategies that they themselves would recognize, on reflection, as being time fillers rather than instructionally essential activities. For example, an otherwise outstanding third-grade teacher once assigned seatwork to one of her reading groups. The children were given two sheets of paper with words in squares.
Their task was to cut out the squares on one sheet and then paste them onto synonyms on the other. When all the words were pasted correctly, lines on the pasted squares would form an outline of a cat, wlich the children were then to color. Once the children pasted a few squares, the puzzle became clear, so they could paste the remainder without paying any attention to the words themselves. For almost an hour of precious class time, these children happily cut, pasted, and colored-not high-priority skills for third-graders.
The teacher would have said that the objective was for children to learn or practice synonyms, of course; but in fact the activity could not possibly have moved the children forward on that slull. Similarly, many teachers have one child laborio~zslyw ork a problem on the chalkboard while the rest of the class has nothing important to do. Many secondary teachers spend most of the class period going over homework and classwork and end up doing very little teaching of new content.
Again, these may be excellent teachers in other ways, but they sometimes lose sight of what they are trying to achieve and how they are going to achieve it. Intentional teachers are constantly asking themselves what goals they and their students are trying to accomplish. Is each portion of their lesson appropriate to students' background lu~owledge, slulls, and needs? Is each activity or assignment clearly related to a valued outcome? Is each instructional minute used wisely and well?
An intentional teacher trying to build students' synonym skills during follow-up time might have them work in pairs to master a set of synonyms in preparation for individual quizzes. An intentional teacher might have all children work a given problem while one works at the board, so that all can compare answers and strategies together. An intentional teacher might quicldy give homework answers for students to check themselves, ask for a show of hands for correct answers, and then review and reteach only those exercises missed by many students. An intentional teacher uses a wide variety of instructional methods, experiences, assignments, and materials to be sure that children are achieving all sorts of cognitive objectives, from knowledge to application to creativity, and that at the same time children are learning important affective objectives, such as love of learning, respect for others, and personal responsibility. An intentional teacher constantly reflects on his or her practices and outcomes.
Research finds that one of tile most powerful predictors of a teacher's impact on students is the belief that what he or she does makes a difference. This belief, called teacher efficacy (Henson, 2002; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 200 1 ), is at the heart of what it means to be an intentional teacher. Teachers who believe that success in school is almost entirely due to children's inborn intelligence, home environment, or other factors that teachers cannot influence, are unlikely to teach in the same way as those who believe that their own efforts are the key to children's learning. An intentional teacher, one who has a strong belief in her or his efficacy, is more lilzely to put forth consistent effort, to persist in the face of obstacles, and to lzeep trying relentlessly until every student succeeds (Bandura, 1997). Intentional teachers achieve a sense of efficacy by constantly assessing the results of their instruction (Schmoker, 1999), constantly trying new strategies if their initial instruction didn't work, and constantly seeking ideas from colleagues, books, magazines, workshops, and other sources to enrich and solidify their teaching slulls.
Groups of teachers, such as all teachers in an elementary school or all teachers in a given academic department, can attain collective efficacy by working together to examine their practices and outcomes, seek professional development, and help each other succeed (see Lieberman & Miller, 1999; Sachs, 2000). Collective efficacy can have a particularly strong impact on student achievement (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2000).
The most important purpose of this book is to give tomorrow's teachers the intellectual grounding in research, theory, and practical wisdom they will need in order to become intentional, effective teachers. To plan and carry out effective lessons, discussions, projects, and other learning experiences, teachers need to know a great deal. Besides knowing their subjects, they need to understand the developmental levels and needs of their children. They need to understand how learning, memory, problem-solving sldl, and creativity are acquired and how to promote their acquisition. They need to know how to set objectives, organize activities designed to help students attain those objectives, and assess students' progress toward them. They need to lulow how to motivate children, how to use class time effectively, and how to respond to individual differences among students.
Like Leah Washington, the teacher in the vignette that opened this chapter, intentional teachers are constantly combining their knowledge of principles of educational psychology, their experience, and their creativity to make instructional decisions and help children become enthusiastic and effective learners. They are continually experimenting with strategies to solve problems of instruction and then observing the results of their actions to see if they were effective (Duck, 2000). This text highlights the ideas that are central to educational psychology and the related research. It also presents many examples of how these ideas apply in practice, emphasizing teaching practices, not just theory or suggestions, that have been evaluated and found to be effective. The text is designed to help you develop critical thinking skills for teaching: a logical and systematic approach to the many dilemmas that are found in practice and research. No text can provide all the right answers for teaching, but this one tries to pose the right questions and to engage you by presenting realistic alternatives and the concepts and research behind them.
Many student have looked at the differences between expert and novice teachers and between more and less effective teachers. One theme comes through these studies: Expert teachers are critical thinkers (Anderson et al., 1995; Hogan, Rabinowitz, & Craven, 2003; Shulman, 2000). Intentional teachers are constantly upgrading and examining their own teaching practices, reading and attending conferences to learn new ideas, and using their own students responses to guide their instructional decisions. There's an old saying to the effect that there are teachers with 20 years of experience and there are teachers with 1 year of experience 20 times. Teachers who get better each year are the ones who are open to new ideas and who look at their own teaching critically. Perhaps the most important goal of tlis book is to get you in the habit of using informed reflection to become one of tomorrow's expert teachers.
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