Secrets of Effective Teaching

by Robin Pope

 

These materials were presented by ACA ITE Sam Fowlkes at updates for ACC/ACA instructors at Camp Couchdale, July 24 & 25, 2004.
Used with Sam's permission.

Audience is Instructor Candidates

Environment is classrom with handouts and/or blackboard

Goals are for candidates to gain basic understanding of:

• Why effective teaching is important
• How people learn
• How to use that knowledge to improve learning
• How to write lesson plans and syllabi, and why they're important
• Some "tricks of the trade" for effective teaching

1. Who Cares?

   Teachers

   if you teach this makes your life easier

   Learners

   if you learn, understanding how people teach makes your life easier.

   We are all teachers and learners, every day. What we do while paddling really does reflect on the rest of our lifes

    

2. Stages of Knowledge

   Unconscious incompetence

   I don't know what I'm doing and don't realize it(and may not care)

   Conscious incompetence

   I don't know what I'm doing, but I realize it(I still may not care)

   Conscious competence

   I know what I'm doing, but I have to think about it.

   Unconscious competence

   I can do things without thinking about them.

   Our goal is to develop unconscious competence, but that really requires practice. As teachers, we can help people move from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence, and help them gain opporunities to practice and develop true unconscious competence.

    

3. How People Learn
   (These are presented as discrete steps, but in practice they are not)

   Presentation

   material presented to learners

   Impression

   makes an impression and is stored in short term memory

   Incorporation

   into long term memory

   Bridging

   links to other memories and experiences

   Understanding

   develop an ability to use the information: strong understanding leads to ability to present material to yourself and self teach.

    

4. How do we use learning stages to teach?
   • Presentation
     • Use multiple presentation methods with multiple sensory input
       • Hear
       • See and Hear (and Write)
       • See, Hear and Do.
       • Self Discovery and Practice
     • Use graphic aids, handouts, demonstrations, kinesthetics--be creative!
     • Sell the Skill! Grab Attention! (Remember This!)
     • The show the skill and allow students to do it.
   • Impression
     • Thinker, watcher vs doer feeler
     • Perceive concretely vs abstractly, precess reflectively vs actively, then watch vs do
     • We need to address all the styles and consider how our students learn
     • Discuss the technique. demonstrate it, and allow practice:
     • The experiential students are likely to jump in and do, while the visual students may hold back to obtain more information. Remember that both groups are doing what they need to do in order to learn. Neither is right or wrong. Try to facilitate each student by incorporating multiple presentation methods. Remember that we all use all the approaches, it's a matter of when we use them and which we prefer.
   • Incorporation
     • Occurs as an extension of the impression
     • Reflective contemplatio vs physical experimentation
     • Give students opportunities; help them learn how they learn
     • Can use several approaches for practice and skills development
       • Whole teach and practice the entire skill
         good for simple things, essentially impossible for complex skills.
       • Whole-Part-Whole demonstrate and discuss the entire skill, then practice parts leading to the entire thing.
         
       • Part-Progressive
       • Part-Whole
     • No one approach is correct all the time, but some combination whole-part-whole and part-progressive provides a clear understanding of where you are headed while allowing you as an instructor to break the material down into useful chunks
   • Bridging
     • Skills presented in a vacuum are easily lost
     • Provide an opportunity to link skills together, as well establishing bridges with material learned in the past.
     • Practice, drills, and scenarios: Homework
     • This is really where students begin to combine discrete skills into a usefull/useable continuum.
   • Understanding
     • Students can truly use the information
     • "Big Picture" of how things fit together
     • Helps students teach themselves, speeds learning when taught by others
     • Critical mass of Knowledge: the more you know, the better you can bridge and connect individual knowledge nuggets.
     • "Knowledge is power, but communications is the key" - help students connect all their knowledge.

    

5. So that's how people learn! Now how do I teach?
   1. Basically, Follow how people learn
      • Present the information
      • Grap their attention
      • Help them understand
      • Give a chance to practice
      • Connect to Prior knowledge
   2. Of course that's too easy, but leads us to lesson plans and syllabi
   3. Lesson Plans
      • Over view of what you want to teach
      • Includes target audience, environment, limitations, specifiec goals, aids, needs.....
      • Provides enogh detail for you to teach in a coherent. May need extensive detail for some topics, minimal detail for others.
      • Describes the order you plan to teach: helps you proceed in a logical fashion.
      • Helps you practice the lesson: Perfect practice makes perfect so keep practicing!
   4. Syllabi
      • An overview for the entire class
      • Amount of detail varies widely
      • Where a lesson plan helps insure that an individual topic is taught in an appropriate order, syllabi help insure the entire class flows well.
   5. Things to Consider for Both
      • Order depends on logical flow, time and space limits, student and instructor interests.....
      • Think about systemic limitations. Where you teach, travel time....
      • You have to deal with system limits: advance planing helps the class go well!
      • Know why you present what you present. Know why you want students to get out of the class.
   6. Lectures
      • Effective at communicating large amounts of material in a short amount of time
      • Easy to be long winded
      • Need to be highly organized.
   7. Visual Aids
      • Increase the number of senses used by students (and thus increase retention)
      • Need to be focussed on what you want to present.
      • Use them to grab and keep attention.
   8. Sensory input
      • The more sensory input students have, the more they'll remember.
      • Hear
      • See and Hear
      • See, Hear, Touch (take notes, practice,...)
      • Add smell and taste if you can
      • Kinesthetic teaching (move the person through the motions.)
      • but SELF DISCOVERY, via practice and understanding, will provide the most intense and long-lasting learning.

    

6. So you still want those secrets?!?
   1. Poor Teaching is easy; effective teaching is HARD WORK!
   2. Know your subject
   3. Know your students
   4. Know your co-instructors
   5. Know what you want to teach and why you want it taught
   6. Practice, practice, practice.
   7. Never be afraid to say "I don't know."
   8. Be brief, be positive, be yourself
   9. Be safe, be happy, be flexible.
   10. Take your responsibilities seriously; don't take yourself seriously.
   11. "Those who can do. Those who can't teach." Those who believe this have never taught (or at least not well!) Effective teaching is hard work- the only thing that makes it worthwhile is the tremendous personal reward.

    

7. Elements of supervision
   Part of any teacher's job is to supervise students. Supervision becomes vitally important when students do potentially hazardous things (like swimming class III rapids). What do we need to do to reduce the risks to our students and to ourselves?
   • Look at the "secrets"
     • Know what you're doing and why.
     • Know your people
     • Know the environment
   • Minimize hazards whenever possible
     • PFD, hekment, shoes, gloves, pads...for people
     • Remove strainers, devris,...in the environment
     • Remember the weather and the water level, and watch for them to change.
   • Treat drills as rescues
     • Set up-stream and down-stream safety
     • Minimize the number of people in the water at any time
     • Know what is going on
     • NO Horseplay
     • Set redundant backups
     • Have a safety plan and make sure everyone knows it.
     • Have an IC who oversees thigs, use assistants for immediate feedback.
     • Empower students to look out for their own safety. Make sure they understand the dangers.
     • Look our for hypothermia, dehydration and fatigue in your students and yourself.
   • Supervise the scene
     • Direct supervision is essential. You need to be on the scene paying attention.
     • Have a real lesson plan, in your head at least, and a plan for what you want to do.
     • But, don't be so fixed in the plan that you can't change when the situation changes.
   • Risk Management
     • Remember that by teaching a class on whitewater, you have a legal and moral obligation to your students.
     • Treat your responsibilities as real responsibilities.
     • Teach within your skill and safety envelope
   • Listen to your students and co-instructors
     • Many problems fall into the "too cold, too hot, too thirsty, too hungry, too tired, to scared, bladder too full,..."category
     • These are all pretty easy to deal with, at least initially, but can easily be overlooked.
     • Anticipate the problems and take steps to minimize their occurrence.

    

8. Interpersonal Skills

   Teachers must by definition, work with people. Strong interpersonal skills are thus essential. The best lesson plan, presented by the most knowledgeabe instructor, is essentially useless if the teacher can't connect with their students. However, interpersonal skills are some what subjective. So, what type of characteristics are desirable in an instructor?

   What I Want:
   • Plays well with others.
   • Listens to what other people say, even if it involves criticism.
   • Makes an effort towards self-improvement; can apply criticism to themselves
   • Speaks clearly and effectively
   • Exudes and inspires confidence
   • Works hard and treats certification as a responsibility and privilege, not a gift and a right.
   • Passes the beloved test. Makes me feel that I can trust them to teach a class taken by my beloved.
   • Buys into the ACA concept. This doesn mean blind acceptance, but it does mean that people agree in principle to turn in their paperwork, cover the material we need covered, keep up with skills, stay abreast of advances or changes......

    

   Skills sought by the Duke University Physician Assistant Program during applicant interviews:
   • Ability to express self in one-on-one and group setting
   • Listening skills
   • Respect for others/nonjudgmental behavior
   • Sensitivity to others
   • Ability to self -reflect
   • Ability to contribute to group discussion content
   • Ability to encourage team communication
   • We also observe for what are know as "dysfunctional behavior" such as:
     • aggrssiveness/hostility
     • interrupting
     • dominating
     • joking/disrupting
     • withdrawing
     • defensiveness
     • sexism and other bias

   In the instructor classes I've taken and taught, most of the candidates seemed to meet the positive requirements above. In fact, I think that most people who want to teach will self-select for these requirements. However, I've also seen a few instructor candidates who where abrasive, unwilling to listen to others and unwilling to try and improve themselves. In these cases, the root of the problem seemed to be an inadequate knowledge base (potentially leading to defensiveness) combined with an unwillingness to listen to feedback or attempt self improvement. Here the desire for certification might reflect a way to establish self-worth -- not a good reason to become a teacher!

   To be honest, it seems to be harder to correct the personality traits than the knowledge deficits. Given how unlikely it is for an insturctor to have their certification removed, I think it's a great idea to explicitly address personality and interpersonal skills during the certfication process. If we miss something then, we're basically stuck with a bad instructor.