The Skillful Teacher

Research Your Students’ Backgrounds
The more we know about those we teach, the better placed we are
to respond to any resistance they display. If we know something
about the different values, expectations, experiences, and preferred
learning styles of our students, we can adjust our teaching
approaches, assignments, and forms of assessment accordingly. The
more information we have about these things the more likely we
are to choose materials and use approaches that our students find
congenial. Knowing these things also helps us make a better case
for the learning we are asking them to undertake. This is the whole
point of the third core assumption of skillful teaching discussed in
Chapter Two and of the adoption of the various classroom research
techniques described in Chapter Three.