1st Edition

What Expert Teachers Do Enhancing Professional Knowledge for Classroom Practice

By John Loughran Copyright 2010
    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    How do expert teachers do it? How do they enhance student learning? How do they manage the dilemmas and tensions inherent in working with 25 different students in every lesson?

    Internationally respected teacher educator John Loughran argues that teachers’ knowledge of what they do is largely tacit and often misunderstood. In this book, he distils the essence of professional practice for classroom teachers.

    Drawing on the best research on pedagogy, he outlines the crucial principles of teaching and learning, and shows how they are translated into practice using real classroom examples. He emphasises that teaching procedures need to be part of an integrated approach, so that they are genuinely meaningful and result in learning. Throughout, he shows how teachers can engage their students in ways that create a real ‘need to know’, and a desire to become active learners.

    What Expert Teachers Do is for teachers who want to become really accomplished practitioners.

    Part One: Understanding teaching and learning: Embracing a knowledge of practice  1. Thinking about teaching  2. Thinking of learning  3. Pedagogy  Part Two: Knowledge of practice in action  4. Prior views  5. Processing  6. Linking  7. Translation  8. Synthesizing  9. Metacognition  Part Three: Professional Learning  10. The growth of professional knowledge through reflection: Valuing teachers and teaching  11. Teacher research: Learning about, shaping and extending one’s own knowledge of practice 12. Conclusion: A vision for professional knowledge and learning.

    Biography

    John Loughran is Professor at the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia.

    'There are a large number of books available on learning to teach and developing pedagogical skills. Most of these books either adopt a "technicist" approach to achieving competencies at various stages of teaching or go for values-based and reflective approaches without indicating how this informs the development of specific pedagogical skills and techniques. This book is unusual in combining the two approaches to good effect.'Professor Jean Murray, University of East London

    'This book gets to the heart of what makes for good teaching. The ideas are robust, principled and practical.'Associate Professor Jane Mitchell, Charles Sturt University

    'At one and the same time practical and intellectually stimulating.'Professor Susan Groundwater-Smith, University of Sydney