FOCUS QUESTIONS

1. Are teachers born or made?
2. How is class time organized and what is academic learning time?
3. What classroom management skills foster academic achievement?
4. What are the roles of teachers and students in the pedagogical cycle?
5. How can teachers set a stage for learning?
6. What questioning strategies increase student achievement?
7. How can teachers best tap into different student learning styles?
8. How can teachers use technology to support effective instruction?
9. What are several salient models of instruction?

CHAPTER PREVIEW

Albert Einstein believed that they awakened the “joy in creative expression and knowledge.” Elbert Hubbard saw them as those who could make “two ideas grow where only one grew before.” Gail Godwin surmised that they are “one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.” Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that they could “make hard things easy.” About whom are these talented geniuses talking? You guessed it: teachers. Although these intellectual leaders shared an insight into the importance of teaching, even these artists and scientists could not decide if teaching was an art or a science, a gift or a learned skill. Perhaps it is both.

Some individuals seem to take to teaching quite naturally. With little or no preparation, they come to school with a talent to teach and touch the lives of students. Others bring fewer natural talents to the classroom yet, with preparation and practice, become master teachers, models others try to emulate. Most of us fall in the middle, bringing some skills to teaching but also ready to benefit and grow from teacher preparation and practice teaching.

In this chapter, we present recent research findings on effective instruction and classroom management, focusing on a core set of skills that constitute good teaching. We also detail the prevailing models of instruction, such as cooperative learning, problem-based learning, and differentiated instruction—classroom approaches that have become particularly popular in recent years. You may draw on these skills and models in your own classroom, selecting those that best fit your subject, students, and purpose.