Learning from experience and teaching by example

Learning from experience and teaching by example: reflecting upon personal learning experience to inform teaching practice

One of my publications is:

[Note: the Journal of Cambridge Studies became the Cambridge Journal of China Studies]

Abstract:

Part of the folk wisdom of teaching is that one really comes to understand a subject when one has to teach it to others. This article considers the ramifications of such a ‘simple truth’. Three key questions are explored: Why should preparing to teach provide such effective learning?, What does this suggest about the way teachers should organise learning in classrooms?, and Why does school learning not seem to reflect the conditions of learning that teachers found so effective. It is suggested that teachers should do more to recreate the circumstances surrounding their own intensive learning experiences for their students. A motto might be: ‘teacher, teach thyself, and then teach others by your example’.

Key words

• teaching
• learning
• teacher development
• autodidactism
• metacognition

"Teaching is a contrary business. It can be a source of intense satisfaction and also of deep frustration. Good teachers are highly skilled – and yet teaching is of the most natural human activities in the world. Teaching is an interactive process: which requires great sensitivity and flexibility from its practitioners so that they can respond to their pupils in real-time: yet we also expect teachers to have prepared highly structured and detailed advanced plans for their lessons.

Perhaps it should not be surprising then that this contradictory vocation is both highly complex and yet often reduced by practitioners to ‘simple truths’. Teachers’ craft knowledge includes simple heuristic rules (such as ‘tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you have told them’, and ‘be firm for the first few lessons, then when you’ve established the ground rules you can ease up’). One of those ‘simple truths’ that many teachers acknowledge is that they only really learnt their subject, when they had to teach it. Yet, although most teachers seem to accept this to a greater or lesser extent, it does not generally seem to have much influence on how they set out to help others learn.

Perhaps a cynic would explain this…"

If you would like to read on, you can download the full piece here.