The Elements of a Good Lesson - A Psychological Perspective

Maita Cilia Nichols, UK

Maita Cilia Nichols is currently based in Cambridge. Her background was initially in drama but now includes EFL, and she is also studying psychology. E-mail: maita_cilia@yahoo.com

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Introduction
Method
Participants
Procedure
Results
General observations
Discussion
Conclusion
Evaluating the study
The research method
Sample
Ecological validity
Reliability
Applications
Improvements
References

Introduction

Many have said that teaching is an art and underpinning every art is some element of science. My personal interest in teaching stems from wanting to understand the complex webs which constitute human interaction and how these can be utilised in order to achieve full learning potential. This observation is a consequence of my current psychological studies, there is a growing trend amongst educationalists to promote “renaissance learning / teaching” and this study is my attempt to bring different strands of my own development together.

Picture Leonardo Da Vinci sitting in his studio as the sun streams in from the window behind him. The shafts of light illuminate the parchment on his wooden table on which illustrations, diagrams and formula of diverse natures lie scattered across every page. His mind is a bubbling fountain of half formed concepts waiting to meet, to form and to be brought to fruition. As teachers, it is our job not just to stick to the confines of the text book or the teacher’s book, but to draw inspiration from numerous sources and to open the world view of those we teach. As Leonardo dissected cadavers so as to better understand the workings of nature, we too must pull apart the structure of our practice and in doing so question what constitutes success.

The most important question is “WHY?”

Aim

To observe the methods used by a teacher in order to keep a class engaged.

Method

8 participants were involved 7 students and 1 teacher. The observation took place in 1 lesson for 1 hour; results were recorded over 3 different time periods, 0-10mins, 5 -30mins and 30-60mins. An opportunity sampling method was used for this experiment as they were students who turned up on the day of the lesson.

Results

Many different teaching strategies were employed in order to keep the class fully engaged for the observation period.

Discussion

Full learner engagement occurs, when a good teacher/ student rapport is developed, the teacher is fully aware of and caters for the various needs of the learners and a variety of techniques and teaching aids are employed in a lesson.

Method

Participants

The student cohort compromised of 2 Italian students, 1 Russian student, 2 Spanish students, 1 Swiss student and 1 Korean student. The students ranged from 17- 27 years old, the mean age was 21 years old. All the students were gauged to be of a high ability level. The teacher was a Caucasian middle class male with 1 year of teaching experience. The method used was timed sampling, recording all the behaviour in the room at particular times. A different method would have been a structured approach, but this was rejected as the observer could not anticipate all the possible behaviours the students and teacher may produce, especially as they had no prior knowledge of the content of the lesson plan.

Procedure

Participants were observed for an hour in an EFL active English lesson. The observer sat in the back of the classroom and made notes on how the teacher kept the class engaged during the hour. Notes were made on both verbal and non verbal teaching techniques as well as the use of teaching aids. Permission for the experiment was given prior to the observation by both the teacher and the students. The observer had no prior knowledge of the lesson content. The observations were made from 0-5mins, 5-30mins and 30-60mins through the hour.

Results

0-5mins

The subject of the lesson was introduced Idioms. The teacher sat at the front of the class and pre-checked vocabulary needed in order to complete the lesson. As the teacher pre-taught the vocabulary he used student’s names when asking questions in order to verify knowledge, he also took this opportunity to correct incorrect vocabulary and to specify generalisations. The teacher made use of hand gestures in order to visually explain adjectives, adverbs and certain nouns. The teacher was very spatially aware moving extensively around classroom, he also raised his voice towards the end of this time period shouting “Look out!” This tactic was sufficient to maintain discipline.

5-30mins

The teacher moved approached individual students in order to ask questions, he tapped and clapped his hands as he emphasised certain learning points. At his stage he started to inject some good natured jibbing he made a comment about Italian driving “you drive on the wrong side of the road”. He reintroduced gesticulation and made the effort to relate the idioms to topics of students personal interest, one of the students is a member of a band, so he further explained the concept of idioms by teacher her ‘it’s not over until the fat lady sings’ . The teacher encouraged a competitive element into the lesson, putting the students into pairs and asking them to think of as many idioms as they could in 10mins. Some of the students were still a little unclear as to some of the vocabulary in the idioms suggested, so he slowed his speech down in order to consolidate understanding “not your cup…of…tea…” This was done in conjunction with making a note of relevant vocabulary on the board. Some general chatter erupted at the back of the classroom and the teacher moved to the source of disruption. After a few seconds of continued chatter, the students realised that their irrelevant vocal contributions were unwanted and chatter stopped.

30-60mins

The teacher then read some idioms aloud and used lots of different terms in order to find one that the students connected with. He exaggerated some of the answers once again using humour to build rapport and get attention. He changed the game and got the students to move around the room to create new groups. During this activity he repeated key words and phrases; he also gave small chocolate prizes to the winners. For the last 30mins of the session the teacher used a variety of teaching aids cut out card games and a DVD game show.

General observations

The lesson was interjected with many of the teacher’s personal anecdotes. Peer teaching was encouraged during group and pair work. He also set a time limit on activities in order to keep students focussed on the tasks set.

Discussion

The results show

1. Pre-teaching vocabulary helps to keep students engaged as they can focus on the aim of the lesson (in this case understanding idioms) without having to struggle with understanding the language used to promote the lesson aims. Writing the vocabulary on the board provides instant access to the new words and if copied into a vocabulary book, helps the students to retain the information into the long term memory.
2. Personalising lesson helps to build student / teacher rapport which, in turn, helps to keep students engaged in the lesson. When the teacher used the student’s names and shared anecdotes this made the students feel valued and personally involved in the lesson. This rapport is also developed when the teacher takes the trouble to get to know and utilise student’s personal interests. When students feel that a teacher has personally invested in the preparation of a lesson, they want to take an active role in that classroom, which aids the learning process. This process of feeling valued and it’s significance to human development is supported by the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow 1943).
3. When a teacher shows spatial awareness in his classroom, this helps to break the monotony of chalk and talk lesson delivery. Simply by moving from the front to the back of a classroom helps to students attention directed on the teacher. This technique also serves to gently show awareness of any unwanted chatter. Moving to ask individual students questions gives the teacher the opportunity to check individual learning and also helps the students to feel that their individual needs are being recognised.
4. Making sudden noises at unexpected moments such as raising the voice or clapping and tapping hands tends to wake up drowsy students and also injects humour into a lesson.
5. Getting the students to move around the room and change their groups also helps to engage students, as they get the opportunity to have a stretch and increase the oxygen supply into their bodies; it also gives them the opportunity to work with new students which brings an increased exchange of ideas into the classroom. The educational benefits of group work are supported by a study done by Milk (1981) who, in his study on Bilingual classrooms discovered that “The small-group setting seemed to provide and reflect a variety of different speech functions and a higher frequency of speech acts than in teacher-centred settings”.
6. The use of games helps to keep students engaged as learners have an extra incentive to consolidate and apply knowledge, especially if they know that there is a small reward for the winning team/pair. This process of applying learned knowledge to a task through which is student centred and by which learning can be facilitated through making mistakes which are corrected is rooted in constructivist learning, based on Piaget (1967).
7. Giving a variety of activities such as card games and using different mediums such as DVD keeps students engaged as once again it breaks the monotony of chalk and talk and it also caters to different learning styles, auditory, visual, kinaesthetic etc… Setting a time limit on these activities also helps to retain engagement as it means the learners are forced to focus on the task set and not let their minds wander. It also means that differentiation issues are being addressed. Differentiation is a key component to engaging a class as different abilities have the opportunity to gain some level of success, as identified by Bloom’s paradigm (Bloom 1956) later revised by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001).
8. The use of peer teaching also contributed to student engagement. The educational effectiveness of peer tutoring is thought to be due, to the fact that (a) it allows the learners to seek academic assistance from a similar-age peer, which is often less threatening to the learner’s self-esteem than seeking help from an authority figure (Gross & McMullen, 1983), and (b) the peer teacher and learner have more similar amounts of prior experience with the concept being learned and are at a similar stage of cognitive development, both of which serve to facilitate learning (Vygotsky, 1978).
9. There is evidence of Vygotsky’s theory of proximal development (1978) "the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." The teacher builds on what the student already knows by challenging him to push himself a little harder. The teacher found out what they already in terms of vocabulary and idioms and then extended it by asking them to play games which challenged them to try new things.

Conclusion

A variety of teaching styles and techniques, a genuine interest and passion for teaching as well as good preparation on the part of the teacher are essential elements in keeping students engaged in a lesson.

Evaluating the study

The research method

This was an unstructured observation, which was useful a preliminary study as it gave the experimenter the opportunity to observe and record varied forms (qualitative) of behaviour. The collation of results would have had more statistical information (quantitative) if a structured approach had been taken, if a behavioural checklist had been drawn up before the experiment. Another problem with this form of experimentation is that only eye catching behaviour has been recorded, more subtle teaching techniques may have been inadvertently ignored. An event sampling rather than a time sampling approach would have been more useful in the respect of analysing specific teaching techniques.

Both the IV (the teacher and the students) and the DV (teaching techniques and the students reactions to those techniques) were observed under naturalistic setting, the participants were using the classroom they always use at a time they would normally have their lessons and the teacher was free to conduct the class in the way he normally would. This was compromised by the fact that I had informed the teacher before hand that I was going to observe the lesson. It is uncertain as to whether this was indeed the workings of a normal lesson, or whether the teacher had adapted the lesson in order to impress the observer. A disclosed blind experiment may have yielded more interesting results, this could have been achieved by the use of a classroom with a one way mirror and just telling the teacher that I was making general notes on classroom behaviour.

An extraneous variable which should be taken into consideration is that this observation was conducted after lunch (14:00hrs). The circadian rhythm slows down at this time of day (this is verified by a scientifically proven drop in the core body temperature) this affects the brains ability to process information. The study would have benefited from being conducted at different times of the day, in order to compensate for this natural occurrence.

The experimenter was a non-participant in this observation, this was vital to the study as any input on the part of the experimenter would have corrupted the results because the experimenter had to focus fully on natural classroom interaction.

The observations were recorded at very random times, if the observation period was more regular, i.e. every 15mins then more accurate conclusions could have been drawn regarding how engagements techniques alter through the duration of the lesson.

Sample

An opportunity sampling method was used for this experiment as they were students who turned up on the day of the lesson. The experimenter asked teaching staff to nominate themselves to take part in this study. The sample may not then have been represented all the methods in which practitioners in general engage their students. It could be postulated that only a teacher confident in his or her ability would volunteer to be a participant in this experiment, it does not necessarily correlate that a gregarious teacher has better teaching strategies. The teacher in question is newly qualified and is therefore using fashionable teaching methods, this experiment would have been more effective if a range of teachers with differing amounts of experience had been observed. If this were the case then different engagement techniques may have been observed.

As the lesson to be observed was chosen by the teacher it may be assumed that the student participants may have been selected by the teacher because of their lively and yet co-operative natures. This affects the issue of rapport. The students were Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swiss and Korean, in the experimenter’s own experience of teaching EFL classes, these nationalities tend to be very outgoing in nature and particularly enjoy constructivist teaching techniques. The students were aged between 17 -27 years old and therefore had gone through or were still undergoing the educational system, these students are very eager to learn and in fact enjoy the learning environment, they are also eager to please their teacher and are highly susceptible to demand characteristics. The teacher himself may have been influenced by wanting to impress the observer.

The students are also paying for their education, which has two implications (1) they have an added incentive to learn, (2) they are from an affluent background which prizes education. The students were also from European or Western styled cultures; it may have been more valid to conduct this experiment using students from and Asian and Middle Eastern ethnicity and mature students. These students are used to a more traditional classroom environment and may have reacted differently to the engagement techniques.

The teacher was a white middle class male the class may have responded differently to a female non- Caucasian teacher, this is especially true of cultures that are less aware of issues such as equality and diversity. Therefore a wider sample of practitioners would have been more representative of teachers in general.

The students were a high ability class, they had an excellent command of English language and therefore building a rapport through verbal interaction was a relatively easy task. Students range in their ability levels, therefore this study was not representative of learners in general.

Ecological validity

There are many flaws to the ecological validity of this experiment. To make accurate conclusions about the use of engagement techniques used by a teacher within a classroom may factors have to be taken into consideration.

• Every teacher does not practice in the same method as the teacher observed.
• Social and financial status of students varies considerably partly due to topography and the nature of the school. This could affect the student’s receptiveness to learning.
• Learners of different ages and abilities may react to stimuli in different ways.
• Teachers and students who know they are being observed will react differently to classroom challenges / procedure than those who are observed undisclosed.
• Observer bias – the observer had prior knowledge and had built a rapport with all the participants; this could have resulted in the observer only recording the positive aspects of the engagement techniques. This compromises the subjectivity of the observation. This could have been overcome by having more than one observer preferably people who have had no prior contact with the participants.

Reliability

As this is an unstructured observation, it is very difficult to comment on the reliability as the results are potentially ever changing. Reliability would be better assessed if the observation was structured, maybe by using a behavioural check list and training different observers in the use of those checklists.

Applications

Even though this study fails to properly explore its aims, it could be used by EFL teacher trainers who wish to explore possible implications of fashionable teaching practice. It could also be used as a case study to those training to be teachers as it offers some valuable information on how to approach the challenges of newly qualified teachers.

Improvements

This study would benefit from being repeated using a larger more accurate sample and more defined aims.

References

Atherton, J S (2005) Learning and Teaching: Bloom's taxonomy [On-line] UK: Available: www.learningandteaching.info/learning/bloomtax.htm Accessed: 1st March 2009

Gross, A. E. & McMullen, P. A. (1983). Models of the help-seeking process. In J. D. Fisher, N. Nadler &B. M. DePaulo (Eds.) New directions in helping (Vol. 2, pp. 45-61). New York: Academic Press.

Maslow, A. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396

Milk, R. 1981 “An analysis of the functional allocation of Spanish and English in a bilingual classroom” California Association for Bilingual Education: Research Journal, 2 (2), 11-26.

Piaget, J. (1967). Biologie et connaissance (Biology and knowledge), Paris, Gallimard

Santrock, J (2004). A Topical Approach To Life-Span Development. Chapter 6 Cognitive Development Approaches (200 – 225). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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