The Great Teaching Toolkit Part 2: Interaction, Motivation and…

27 June, 2020 —

The Great Teaching Toolkit Part 2: Interaction, Motivation and Expectation

The second of our posts on the excellent Great Teaching Toolkit

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by Bradford Research School
on the 27th June 2020

The Great Teaching Toolkit from Evidence Based Education is an evidence review that sets out to answer a question: What are the best bets for teachers to invest time and effort in if they want their students to learn more? In the foreword, Dr Tristian Stobie states that ‘helping teachers become better is the most important responsibility we have as educational leaders, as it is the best way to help learners fulfil their potential.’

The 17 elements of the model set out a pathway for teacher development. An understanding of each of their elements is a brilliant launchpad for teacher reflection, coaching and CPD. In a series of blogs, we explore each of the 4 dimensions, and this time we come to dimension 2: Great teachers create a supportive environment for learning.

Interaction

The first two elements concern the relationships in the classroom:
2.1 Promoting interactions and relationships with all students that are based on mutual respect, care, empathy and warmth; avoiding negative emotions in interactions with students; being sensitive to the individual needs, emotions, culture and beliefs of students
2.2 Promoting a positive climate of student-student relationships, characterised by respect, trust, cooperation and care

These recommendations would be things that most teachers would agree that they strive to do, but it is always important to fully reflect on our classroom culture. This can be done at an individual teacher level, but is also something that school leadership teams should constantly reflect on. As Dr Stobie says in the foreword: ‘Professional learning happens when we think hard about our practice and take full ownership of it.’

In element one, a couple of key ideas are emphasised. Firstly, that relationships with students with SEND need particular consideration: ‘Great teachers know their students well as individuals, are well informed about the nature and requirements of their students’ specific needs and have strategies to accommodate them.’ As a professional reflection tool for teachers, it can be turned into a series of simple questions:

How well do I know this pupil as an individual?
How well do I understand the nature and requirements of their particular needs?
Do I have sufficient strategies to accommodate these needs?

Secondly, they highlight the need for ‘culturally relevant teaching’, which is ‘particularly important when the students’ culture differs from, and has the potential to conflict with, that of the teacher or school.’ See Ladson-Billings, Gloria. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for a fuller discussion of this idea.

And the relationships between pupils forms the next element. This idea of student interactions and relationships is a common element of a number of frameworks used to codify great teaching, and often leads to very precise instructions and rubrics. The Great Teaching Toolkit never reduces the complexity of the evidence into lists. Instead, it presents aspects that the evidence points to, leaving it as a point for teachers’ reflection. So the need for student interaction doesn’t necessarily mean one particular approach for behaviour or for classroom organisation. Rather, professionals can reflect on how their approach fits this element.

Motivation

2.3 Promoting learner motivation through feelings of competence, autonomy and relatedness

The element prioritises the idea of autonomous motivation, which comprises those three qualities of competence, autonomy and relatedness.

‘Autonomy refers to feeling that they choose their behaviour and that it is aligned with their values and interests.
Competence means feeling capable of producing desired outcomes and avoiding undesirable ones.
Relatedness means feeling connected with and mutually supported by other people.‘

The evidence review for dimension 2 is particularly interesting. And like every other dimension, there are some grey areas in this. Not least that ‘there may be some confusion in the literature about what kinds of teacher behaviours may be classed as “autonomy-promoting”.’

Self-efficacy, an individual’s belief that they will be successful at a particular task in the future, has been shown to have a correlational effect on a number of factors, including higher academic achievement. It is also likely that self-efficacy is malleable. However, there is a reciprocal relationship most likely in that academic success may lead to greater self-efficacy.

These three ideas can again form the basis for teacher reflection: to what extent do I promote feelings of competence, autonomy and relatedness?

Expectation

2.4 Creating a climate of high expectations, with high challenge and high trust, so learners feel it is okay to have a go; encouraging learners to attribute their success or failure to things they can change

High expectations correlate with academic success, ‘although much of this research has failed to establish the direction of causality’. Yet it is reasonable to conclude from the evidence that subconscious and explicit teacher expectations can improve outcomes. Schools should reflect on the conscious and subconscious ways that they convey expectations. They should reflect on how pupils are supported to meet high expectations, how their attitudes towards these expectations develop, how goals are set.

Much of this might be in the way the classroom culture and school culture is developed through a myriad of different actions. Part may be the explicit teaching of specific strategies and approaches. One approach which we see as having value is building in structured reflection as an explicit part of the learning process. In Becoming a Self-regulating Learner: An Overview (1989), Zimmerman states:

Attributing a poor score to limitations in fixed ability can be very damaging motivationally because it implies that efforts to improve on a future test will not be effective. In contrast, attributing a poor math score to controllable processes, such as the use of the wrong solution strategy, will sustain motivation because it implies that a different strategy may lead to success.

Structured reflection is something that can help to support pupils in attributing success or failure to controllable elements. In this blog post we highlight various strategies for doing this: https://researchschool.org.uk/bradford/news/structured-reflection-the-key-to-self-regulation/

These are our initial thoughts on this evidence review, but the greatest value will be in the conversations and further reflection it leads to. The Great Teaching Toolkit Community is designed to facilitate this.

Read our reflections on Dimension 1 here: The Great Teaching Toolkit Part 1: Into the Fourth Dimension