What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about quality teaching? Is it skills in reading and writing? Is it teaching our students that the teacher is the ‘dominate leader’ and students are to follow direct instructions? Or is quality teaching associated with equipping students with a combination of essential skills and knowledge which they can apply beyond the college environment?
Throughout my teacher education I was trained to apply a teaching framework to my pedagogy (classroom practice) called the Quality Teaching Model. This model is made up of three primary elements – intellectual quality, quality learning environment and significance. When planning programs, lessons and learning activities, teachers are encouraged to apply these three components to their classroom practice to ensure students receive ‘quality teaching and learning’. Let me explain it in more detail.
Intellectual quality requires teachers to engage students in deep knowledge and deep understanding of subject content, plan activities that allow students to apply their problematic skills in addition to students engaging in higher order thinking skills. The quality learning environment is developed around the concept that students are engaged and stimulated through learning, have high expectations of themselves and the quality of their work and, most importantly, are self-regulated and motivated learners. Finally, the element significance enables teachers to activate prior knowledge and relate this to students’ learning, teaching concepts from various cultural perspectives so all students feel included, with students knowing that learning should be integrated to create more meaning. After all, we don’t learn important life skills in isolation.
My question to you is….shouldn’t a good, well-prepared teacher be applying these essential components of learning already?
Students learn and discover new material in various ways and should be able to express their conceptual knowledge and understanding through multiple approaches. The role of a teacher should be to provide students with a variety of learning and assessment procedures that encourage them to demonstrate their understanding in spite of their individual differences. A quote by Professor Robyn Ewing says it brilliantly:
‘’Teachers must embed a balance of diagnostic, formative and summative assessment approaches that includes both assessment of learning and assessment for learning.”
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