Learning to Teaching - 1 © Andrew P. Johnson LEARNING TO TEACH By Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Minnesota State University, Mankato andrew.johnson@mnsu.edu www.OPDT-Johnson.com This is an excerpt from my book: Education Psychology: Theories of Learning and Human Development (2014). National Science Press: www.nsspress.com Teaching = Knowing + Planning + Doing + Reflecting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBwZUHOrHyI BEING AND BECOMING A MASTER TEACHING One does not become a master teacher after two years of undergraduate education. Learning to teach and to teach well occurs over time and involves four components: knowing, planning, doing, and reflecting. Teaching = knowing + planning + doing + reflecting • Knowing. Teachers need to have an organized body of knowledge related to teaching and learning (Darling-Hammond, 1999; Sternberg & Williams, 2002). This organized body of knowledge will enable you to align the approaches and strategies you use with a body of research and to make decisions that are more likely to enhance your students’ learning. As stated in Chapter 1, research should inform your teaching practice. There are four areas of knowledge that are necessary to become an expert teacher (Bruer, 1999; Eggen & Kauchak, 2007): (a) content knowledge, (b) pedagogical knowledge, (c) pedagogical content, and (d) knowledge of learners and the learning process. Each of these is described below. • Planning. Good teaching does not happen by accident (lesson plan design will be addressed in Chapter 20). Effective teachers plan their learning experiences (Hay/McBer, 2000). They decide exactly what they want students to learn, the teaching strategies they will use, the questions they may ask students, and related activities and assignments. In your future classrooms, planning will enable you to create more purposeful and effective instruction and results in fewer behavior management issues. • Doing. This third element is where you actually teach the lesson. Here you present the material to be learned using a variety of research-based methodologies and teaching strategies (see pedagogy below). However, the first two elements need to be addressed before you can function well here • Reflecting. What separates good teachers from poor teachers is the propensity to reflect (Sternberg & Williams, 2002; Zeichner & Liston, 1996). Being an effective teacher does not mean that you do not make mistakes or have bad lessons. (If you never make mistakes it probably means that you have not experimented or tried enough new things.) The difference is