The Skillful Teacher

Maxim 3: Ground Your Teaching in How Your Students Are
Learning
If I had to choose one process that exemplifies skillful teaching
above all others, it would be the extent to which teachers make a
deliberate and consistent attempt to discover what and how their
students are learning and then to use this information to inform
their teaching choices. This is why I devote the whole of Chapter
Three to exploring this process. We should certainly watch for non-
verbal reactions that indicate interest or disinterest, and we should
Surviving Emotionally
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always listen to what students tell us in class. But the Rosetta Stone
of skillful teaching is the anonymous data regularly given by stu-
dents regarding how they are experiencing the course. The instru-
ment I rely on in this regard is the Critical Incident Questionnaire
(CIQ), but Chapter Three describes several alternatives.
Sometimes teachers become understandably impatient about
this process of research, feeling that it takes valuable time away from
what everyone is there for—to learn important skills or knowledge.
I feel this impatience also. But I tell myself that this impatience
springs from my conviction that what I’m teaching is important for
students to know. If this is so, then it follows that I should work dili-
gently to make sure students are actually learning what I think they
should be learning. And one important way I can be sure this learn-
ing is happening—that students are acquiring an accurate under-
standing of concepts, assimilating correct knowledge, or developing
skills in the way I want them to—is by getting weekly information
from them that indicates precisely what is happening in their learn-
ing. So for me classroom research is a foundation of good, content-
based teaching.
Let me reiterate a point made in Chapter Three. Sometimes you
will receive anonymous responses from students that make it clear
they don’t wish to learn what you wish them to learn. I often find
myself dealing with a majority of learner responses that say, in effect,
“Enough with the critical thinking—just tell me what to think,
what’s the right viewpoint on this question. It’s too difficult for me
to think this through on my own so give me the right answer.” In
the face of comments like this my response is to reiterate why I can’t
give them the “right” answer and to reaffirm why I insist on critical
thinking as a major learning process. In doing this I may be open to
renegotiating how critical thinking is demonstrated, but I won’t be
open to renegotiating the process itself. To do so would mean I had
no right to show up to work each day or to call myself a teacher.
It’s also true that students often judge that certain prescribed
content or skills are irrelevant to their needs, or too difficult to
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assimilate, at the time of their initial exposure to them. However,
subsequent experience—perhaps the application of this content or
skill in a work setting or its indispensability to success in a later
course—often proves the relevance of the learning. A quickly
arranged alumni panel of students who are working and using the
skills or knowledge taught in a course to good effect can help rejus-
tify to new learners why this learning is so important. Sometimes,
however, this option is not possible, and you are left having to
explain, in the clearest way possible, why you are asking students to
engage in certain learning activities. This is when a well-articulated
working philosophy of practice is so crucial.