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Let’s forget the technology

What are the most effective methods of teaching and learning in the classroom?

There is a fundamental difference between the technology used in teaching (the whiteboard, the ipad, etc, etc) and the actual method of teaching.

And yet, over recent years, much of the focus has been on the technology – perhaps because many companies selling the equipment that emerges from the technology have invested huge sums in advertising their products.

Meanwhile the issues surrounding the actual method of teaching and the methods of learning that students employ have remained largely untouched.

To put this another way, it is possible to deliver a lecture to a class using your voice on its own or your voice plus a diagram drawn on a chalkboard, displays on an interactive whiteboard, a whoe video, or anything else.

But whatever technical additions are used, it is still a lecture.

Which is fine as long as the lecture is the best method of teaching the particular subject that you have in mind. If it isn’t then the lesson will still be limited by the fact that it is a lecture.

Now of course, very, very few teachers ever deliver a lecture in class these days because we all know that lectures are fairly ineffective ways of teaching. But that still raises the question: what are the most effective ways of teaching?

And as we ask that question, what implication does this have for the various methods of learning that the students then adopt?

These are the questions posed and answered by the volume “Methods of Teaching”. The book has articles which can be shared with teaching colleagues, policy statements on methods of teaching, a review of methods of learning, and 22 articles on methods of learning that can, over time, be provided to students to help them organise their own learning.

There are also eight active learning assignments for the students, plus a series of articles on memory which will explore the ways in which teaching and learning can be organised in such a way that the topics and issues under consideration will be retained in the memory for years to come.

The third edition of “Methods of Teaching” is probably the most powerful book on teaching and learning available today. It is available both as a photocopy master and on CD (so that it can be put on the school’s learning platform, or printed out from the disk).

Cat No: 978 1 86083 830 9 Order code: T1784emn – please quote with order.

Sample pages can be viewed at http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/education/T1784.pdf

  • Photocopiable book, £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the book and the CD £36.94 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report…