For students to benefit from lessons, they must attend, listen and try their best. But at times, almost all teachers struggle to manage classroom behaviour and to motivate students to learn. Drawing on decades of research on behavioural science, this book offers teachers practical strategies to get students learning. The key is students’ habits. This book reveals simple yet powerful ways to help students build habits of success.
Harry Fletcher-Wood shows how teachers can use behavioural science techniques to increase motivation and improve behaviour. He offers clear guidance on topics such as using role models to motivate students, making detailed plans to help students act and building habits to ensure students keep going. The book addresses five challenges teachers face in encouraging desirable behaviour:
- Choosing what change to prioritise
- Convincing students to change
- Encouraging students to commit to a plan
- Making starting easy
- Ensuring students keep going
Workshops, checklists and real-life examples illustrate how these ideas work in the classroom and make the book a resource to revisit and share. Distilling the evidence into clear principles, this innovative book is a valuable resource for new and experienced teachers alike.
Introduction: how can we get every student learning?
1. What should we ask students to change?
2. How can we convince students to learn?
3. How can we help students to commit to action?
4. How can we encourage students to start?
5. How can we help students to keep going?
6. How can we help students to stop?
7. How can we encourage teachers to change?
Conclusion
Resources
Notes
References
Biography
Harry Fletcher-Wood is a teacher, researcher and teacher educator. He has worked in England, Japan, India and Sweden, and is fascinated by making things better and the social, psychological and structural changes this requires. He leads the Teacher Education Fellows programme at Ambition Institute.
"Being a closet Economics graduate, the concept of nudging has always fascinated me. Books by Kahneman and Thaler are among my non-fiction favourites, and I have regularly tried (and failed) to apply their techniques to get my wife to make my tea and my 2-year-old to sleep through the night. But one thing I had never considered was how these ideas could be applied in the classroom. Step forward Harry Fletcher-Wood. As he displayed in Responsive Teaching, Harry has an enviable knack of making complex ideas entirely comprehensible. Here Harry tackles the big questions, questions such as 'How can we convince students to learn?' and 'How can we help students to start?'. Through the use of dialogue, readers are able to see exactly how scenarios might play out in the classroom, making this one of the most practical and actionable books I have ever read. A big recommend from me."
Craig Barton, Author of 'How I Wish I'd Taught Maths' and 'Reflect, Expect, Check, Explain'
"Habits of Success is one of those rare books that successfully manages to distil a wealth of research into an accessible and practical guide for every teacher. The key issues, behaviours and habits that emerge in most busy classrooms are depicted with unerring accuracy and precision. The book goes on to perform the feat of offering evidence-informed approaches to help solve so many of the complex issues facing teachers and their pupils. I seldom make this claim for a book about teaching, but Habits of Success could prove to have a transformative impact on those school teachers and leaders who read it and apply its intelligent insights."
Alex Quigley, Education Endowment Foundation
"Habits of Success is clear, well organized and full of useful advice. It embraces... research often overlooked, but deeply and profoundly meaningful. What you get from Harry is not just the research and interpretation but deep insight and humanity in thinking about how it fits together and what it means. There couldn’t be a better guide."
Doug Lemov, Author of ‘Teach Like a Champion’, ‘Reading Reconsidered’ and ‘Coach's Guide to Teaching
"Habits of Success is an excellent prompt for looking at all the stages it’s necessary to go through in order to improve students’ habits for learning. It made me consider how I address different learning scenarios in my own teaching, and I’m quite a creature of habit myself."
Stephen Lockyer, Schools Week
