Product reviews for Best of the Best: Engagement

-‹“The best advice I ever received on how to improve teaching, and therefore schools, came from the American educator Judith Little, whose research concluded that you knew you were in a good school when the following four characteristics were present:

Teachers talk about teaching.

Teachers observe each other teach.

Teachers plan, organise and evaluate together.

Teachers teach each other.

My reason for liking these findings is because you can easily see how you can increase or decrease the likelihood of these four things happening. For example, if the agendas of meetings are packed with administrative imperatives rather than discussion of pedagogy or curricular subtleties to aid learning, then meetings are wasted time. Conversely, starting primary staff meetings in different classrooms, with the host analysing where they are with optimising the environment for learning, will promote valuable debate - as would an agenda item where, in turns (one member per meeting), staff outline the book they are reading with their class and why it works for that age group.

Or, at secondary level, the senior leadership team (SLT) taking over the teaching of a department for a day could enable the staff to be released to visit a department in another school.

My advice, therefore, would be to have a session where all staff look at the four characteristics outlined by Judith Little and share ideas of how, with minimal effort, school practices could be adjusted to make them happen more often.”

Click here to read the review on Humanising Language Teaching website.