Who’d be a teacher? The advice and reports come thick and fast – the latest suggesting we should praise children less.
Last March, I had the chance to nominate a former teacher of mine for a community award. Ms LC was my English teacher at secondary school, way back in the 90s, and she is the teacher who made the most impact on my life. I doubt she even remembers me. But I remember her, and there is no doubt in my mind that I would not have gone on to study journalism without her.
I am thinking about Ms LC today because of new research led by Prof Robert Coe of Durham University for education charity the Sutton Trust. The 57-page report, What Makes Great Teaching, says some schools are employing teaching strategies whose efficacy is not backed up by evidence. Among the unverified methods – the “ineffective practices” as the report has them – are when teachers “group learners by ability”, “allow learners to discover key ideas for themselves”, and my personal favourite, “use praise lavishly”. It adds: “Children whose failure was responded to with sympathy were more likely to attribute their failure to lack of ability than those who were presented with anger.”
I once worked as a camp counsellor in California, working with kids as young as seven. Our bosses told all of us to make sure we were vocally encouraging of the children’s efforts – calls of “good job!” and “you did great!” rang out across camp every day – in order to keep them enthused and receptive to learning. I rolled my eyes, as did all the other Brits working there, but I know those children were certainly more confident and interested in camp activities than their counterparts back home. It wasn’t perfect, and it was undeniably exhausting (“these American kids really need this!” we would marvel in the staff room), but there must be something between stern-faced disappointment and gratuitous cheerleading.
What makes a great teacher? The report offers no hard and fast cures. It suggests “quality of instruction is at the heart of all frameworks of teaching effectiveness”, so subject knowledge must be top-notch, and learners must be assessed effectively. We all have our views and ideas of what should be going on in classrooms; some of us have even watched all of Channel 4’s Educating … series and are now experts.
There can only be a few groups of professionals more exposed to fickle fads than teachers; the holy grail for imparting knowledge and wisdom changes with every election cycle, and several times during. Who’d be a teacher? It looks exhausting.
