Learning how students can best learn is the strongest teaching tool for educators, says an expert in educational studies.
“Teaching isn’t just a set of methodologies,’’ said Steven Katz, a cognitive psychologist and researcher with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.
“It’s not just having a set of rules and routines and motions that we go through and then we just assume that learning will be a natural consequence. We actually start off with an understanding of the learning, of where kids are at, of what they can and can’t do. And the nature of what teaching means very much is as response to what we can understand about the learning.’’
Katz told hundreds of educators gathered in a Charlottetown hotel Friday for the P.E.I. Teachers’ Federation Annual Convention that the quality of classroom instruction is the single greatest predictor of student success.
“Nothing,’’ he told the teachers, “is more important than you.’’
Katz says the key question is not how to teach, but rather how to learn how to teach.
He says emphasis should be placed on determining what leaders need to learn to support what teachers need to learn to support what students need to learn.
He describes effective leadership as promoting and participating in teacher learning and development. The single most important leadership quality for administrators like principals is being visible in public and learning alongside their teachers.
“I see a lot of places there are many, many administrators who are marvelous lead learners as there are many who see their role as operational and not as instructional as we would hope to see,’’ he said.
“So it’s all over the place and that goes for superintendents (of education) and everybody else in the system.’’
Katz says he consistently hears people complain of structural restraints on how much they can and can’t move. He argues that even in a restricted environment, there is always a little room for constructive movement.
“So you just decide if a slight shift left or a slight shift right is preferable and so whatever degrees of freedom you have - however much movement you have - you want to be thoughtful and purposeful and intentional about the moves that you are making.’’
He also cautioned the educators from falling into what he calls the activity trap - doings that, while well intentioned, are not needs based and divert both human and material resources away from the school improvement focus.
Katz says it is “absolutely critical’’ for teachers to challenge one another’s assumptions about teaching and learning, to be receptive to feedback from their peers, and talk openly with school colleagues.
“We must move from an activity-based to a learning-based culture,’’ he said.
“You can say a lot of things about teaching,’’ he elaborated in an interview with The Guardian.
“You can say I’ve got my teaching objectives, I’ve got my teaching curriculum - I’m covering the curriculum. It doesn’t say anything about learning...that is not where the learning happens and that isn’t learning.’’