There are many ways of teaching, but some are far more effective than others. Research done in teaching and learning can help us to understand how to teach most effectively but, of course, research only tells us about what works well on average, for most people, most of the time – it has its limitations. Despite those limitations it is very useful, alongside what we find out from our own experience over time, in helping us develop teaching and learning in our school.
My experience of studying research in education, and my personal experience of teaching and leadership in school, tell me that:
- ‘Discovery learning’ can work well in the real world – a young child discovering things in the garden or woods, for example – but it is a poor technique for helping learners in school to gain the vast array of school-based knowledge they need to be successful. Just try learning to read through ‘discovery learning’.
- Some other teaching and learning techniques that are commonly used in schools do not work well in promoting everyone’s learning: teachers typically allowing students to put up their hand to answer whole-class questions; lots of ad hoc group work; relying on students’ self-assessments of how well they are learning as a way of gauging the effectiveness of our teaching; and a diet of lots of extended project work come to mind immediately.
Everything teachers might do to promote learning probably works to some degree, but time at school and time spent on homework is such a scarce resource that we need to prioritise those activities that are most likely to deliver the biggest ‘bang for the buck’.
Explicit instruction delivers the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to helping people learn in school. Hinchingbrooke School’s current version of explicit instruction can be found at:
https://www.hinchingbrookeschool.net/page/?title=Teaching+%26amp%3B+Learning+Information&pid=917
I struggle, frankly, to understand why all schools don’t have a teaching approach – an approach to teaching using those techniques that are common across all subjects, such as questioning.
At Hinchingbrooke, we started this school year by explaining to all our students our approach to teaching, how learning happens and, in particular, how our memory works. We are very hopeful that alongside our consistent use of the Hinchingbrooke Approach to Teaching, this new knowledge will help our students learn better in the future.
Kind regards,
Mark Patterson
Principal
Hinchingbrooke School
Brampton Road
Huntingdon
Cambs PE29 3BN
Part of the ACES Academies Trust
Hinchingbrooke School is a part of ACES Academies Trust. ACES Academies Trust is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales with registered number 07732319. Our registered address is Hinchingbrooke School, Brampton Road, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, PE29 3BN. This email and its attachments are confidential to the ordinary user of the email address to which it was addressed and to the ACES Academies Trust including representatives of its schools, and must not be copied, disclosed, or distributed without the prior authorisation of the sender. It may also be privileged or otherwise protected by work product immunity or other legal rules. If you have received it by mistake, please let us know and then delete it from your system. You should not copy the message or disclose its contents to anyone. Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in the email and its attachments, ACES Academies Trust cannot guarantee its accuracy or currency.
