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Category Archives: Learning to teach
Different kinds of teacher knowledge
One way to understand what is required for good teaching is to analyse the different kinds of knowledge a teacher needs. This analysis then allows a teacher to identify the areas where they are strong and the areas in which … Continue reading
Posted in Learning to teach
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Teaching failures, blunders and catastrophes: learning from our mistakes
I recently organised a panel session on teaching failures. Three teaching award winners—Roslyn Kemp, Anthony Robins and Clinton Golding—shared some major failures in their teaching with a group of c.25 academics, and then we discussed what we might learn from … Continue reading
Engaging teaching
Why am I interested in learning about some things (movie history) but I couldn’t care less about other things (motorcycle engines)? If we can crack the secret of intellectual curiosity we can make our teaching engaging for any student.
Posted in Learning, Learning to teach, Uncategorized
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Promising leads for improving teaching
There are many ways to improve teaching, but in my experience when enhancing my own teaching or mentoring other teachers, there are three paths that are most likely to lead to improvement. 1. Covering too much We commonly try to … Continue reading
Posted in Learning to teach, Mentoring, Students
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Disobedient Teaching
Welby Ings (2017) Disobedient Teaching, Otago: University of Otago Press. Welby Ings doesn’t tell you how to be a teacher, he shows you who you can be. Disobedient Teaching was profound not because of what Ings was saying but … Continue reading
Posted in Book review, Learning to teach
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Ah-ha! Reflective insights about teaching
We need to reflect about our teaching to improve, but how common is it for reflection to lead to ‘ah-ha!’ moments about our teaching? There seems to be an assumption that reflection should lead to profound, transformative insights. This is … Continue reading
Writing my teaching philosophy: abstract claims and concrete illustrations
Sometimes a teaching philosophy is too abstract: “I believe in a student-centred approach and I adopt this in all my teaching. I attempt to create a safe space so learners can blossom.” These can be important claims about you and … Continue reading
Getting to know your students
In another blog I argued that we need to know our students if we are to teach well, because teaching is about who you know, not just what you know. But, every time we start a new course we have … Continue reading
Posted in Evaluating Teaching, Learning to teach, Students
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Refining my reflections
Here is an example of my reflective thought process from rough reflections to more and more clear, elaborated and insightful reflections. This process normally happens very quickly, but I have deliberately slowed it down to show you how I think … Continue reading
Mentoring teachers
One of my roles is to mentor other teachers and enable them to improve and enhance their teaching. How do I mentor another teacher (the mentee)? When I reflected on this I realised I went through roughly ten steps. My … Continue reading
Posted in Learning to teach, Mentoring
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Learning to teach by reflecting on your teaching
How do we learn to teach? We begin as novices to teaching in the sense that we have not taught before. But even then, we are not total novices as we have all experienced being taught. From these experiences we … Continue reading
Teaching is about who you know (not just what you know)
If you don’t know who you are teaching, it’s easy to teach badly. You can misjudge what your students already know and so your explanations are too complex or too simplistic. You can employ methods of teaching that your students … Continue reading
Posted in Learning to teach, Students
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Clinton Golding 